Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana

by Murray Pura

  There was a long pause. Zeph decided to quote the verses he felt Sheriff Friesen had in mind. “‘For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.’ Romans, chapter thirteen, part of verse three and all of verse four.”

  Sheriff Friesen chuckled and glanced over at him. “That’s pretty good. You go to Sunday school?”

  Zeph laughed. “Yeah, my brother Matt’s Sunday school. He’s drilled that passage into me ever since he became a lawman back in the ‘60s. My other brother’s a clergyman, and Matt always tells him he’s a minister of God, too, the Reverend B. A’Fraid.”

  Friesen laughed along with Zeph and nodded. “Well, it’s God’s truth, even my Mennonite relatives admit that. They question whether a Christian man ought to be caught up in it; that’s the issue they have. I say to them, ‘Would you rather have outlaws pinning on sheriff’s badges and enforcing God’s laws for you?’ That’s usually when they tell me to take a second helping of chicken and dumplings to shut me up.”

  They walked a little farther, and then the sheriff spoke again. “I had a telegram from a Marshal Austen in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It seems we are about to have some unwelcome visitors in Lancaster County.”

  “I contacted Marshal Michael James Austen from Lancaster. Seraph Raber wasn’t hung, sheriff. He slipped through K Company’s fingers the day they caught two members of the gang.” “Mm.”

  “Raber knows we’re in Lancaster County. I told my brother in Iron Springs, Montana, we’d be pushing on to Philadelphia.

  Raber has an accomplice in Iron Springs. He will pass on the news to the gang.”

  Sheriff Friesen shook his head. “Raber won’t buy it. You tricked him at the railroad. He’ll come here.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Well, if I thought it was just Raber, I’d sleep a lot easier. No, he’s got the rest of his men with him, the ones that got away after they held up the train.”

  They reached the road and stopped.

  “Raber telegraphed you from Omaha on Thursday, is that right?” asked the sheriff.

  “Him. Or someone else. He could have already been far up the line in Chicago.”

  “Well, let’s hope it was him and that he really was in Omaha. He could be here Monday if that’s the case. What am I looking for?”

  “He has a cut that runs from his eye to his chin.”

  “Which side?”

  “I can’t tell you that. I’ve never seen him. The girl did a drawing of his face and put it in. The left side maybe.”

  “Mm.”

  “He could have covered it with a beard by now.” “Or a woman’s makeup.”

  “Sheriff, if he knows I’m not here, he won’t stop in Lancaster. The information about his scar is going to be right across the country after a couple more days. Killing the kids won’t change anything now. But he has a score to settle with me. Two of his gang were hung. I helped the army trap them. He wants me. I’ve got to be bait again.”

  “I told you. He’s not likely to go for it a second time.”

  “If I pick a spot he can check out before he makes his play, a spot that will make him confident, I believe he may go for it. He has to prove to whoever’s left in his gang that the people who cross Seraph Raber die hard deaths. He’ll build another gang around that reputation.”

  “How do you expect us to protect you if you go someplace where he can see gophers and wood ticks for a thousand miles?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What are your intentions? To be a holy sacrifice?”

  “He murdered Amish in Iron Springs. I don’t intend to let him do more of the same here in Lancaster County. If he wants me, I’ll make sure he knows where to find me.”

  “Have you got a place in mind?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And you won’t tell me when you do anyhow.”

  “No, sir. I’d rather have you keeping an eye out for the good people of Bird in Hand. In case I get it wrong and he comes here to work mischief, regardless of where I’m holed up.”

  The sheriff swung up on his horse. “I’ll have some deputies riding the roads hereabouts. And I’ll have men watching that railroad station the way a hawk watches a pigeon. Raber doesn’t get by with anything in Lancaster County, not without a fight. To quote that verse, I don’t bear the sword in vain.”

  Friesen rested his hands on the pommel of his saddle and looked at the snow-covered landscape. “I always hoped the James-Younger gang would try to take the bank in Lancaster some fine day, but it’s never happened yet. Things are so quiet here among the Germans it gets a lawman hungering for action, even the most hazardous kind. I may never get Jesse James, but the Lord has so arranged matters that I may just get the Angel of Death instead.” He smiled down at Zeph. “I need to go tell my good wife, May, what’s going on. She’ll be fussing with our horses and dairy herd. Mister Parker, I wish you all the luck in the world.” Then he spoke to Shotgun, and the big chestnut began to trot along the road back to Lancaster.

  Zeph walked back to the smithy. Augustine called to him from the front door of the house, his hands in his pockets.

  “How about some coffee?”

  “Sure, I’d like that.”

  At the kitchen table Augustine worked a toothpick back and forth in his mouth. “So? Did you have a talk with Mister Friesen?”

  Zeph smiled. “How does Romans thirteen, verses three and four suit you?”

  Augustine paused and thought. Then he shook his head and growled, “Yah, yah, flammenschwert.” Then he barked his laugh and slapped the table and shook his head again. “Ach, we need more coffee.”

  “Zephaniah,” he said, when he had poured both of them another cup, “tomorrow we have worship at our Katie’s home, at Amos Zook’s. We would like you to join us. It will also give you an opportunity to see Samuel and Elizabeth. And Lynndae Raber, if you are interested.”

  “I’d be happy to join you.”

  Augustine stared at him. “How do you feel about the woman now?” “I don’t know.”

  “She did not do what her brother did.”

  “I didn’t know who she was all those years. I don’t know who she is now. She made a fool of all of us. She made a fool of me.”

  Augustine sipped at his coffee.

  “This afternoon, the wife and I will take the buggy into town to buy some things she needs for baking. I also have a few items I must look at. Do you wish to join us?”

  “What about the plow you have been working on this week?”

  “The plow? Spring is months away. Smucker has time. I have time. Everyone will bring their plow for repairs and sharpening in March. There will be plows from here until spring planting.”

  Zeph hitched Matchbox up to the buggy, and the three of them went into Lancaster. After stopping in a few shops, Zeph excused himself and walked over several streets to the telegraph office. When he was given the pad of paper to write on, he leaned against the counter and thought as hard as he’d thought about anything in his life.

  What will flush Raber? What will make him risk coming out into the open?

  Getting his hands on Zephaniah Parker, of course.

  But where? Where will Raber feel safe enough to show himself?

  Zeph went over the verse from Revelation in his head. Again and again he came back to Abaddon, the Place of Destruction. Did Raber have such a place in mind? Or was he going to create such a place, maybe turn Bird in Hand into a location fixed for slaughter and devastation? How could he get Raber and his killers away from Lancaster County and spare these people’s lives?

  Lord, I need Your help with this, one way or the other. I don’t

  care if I make it through. But I care if Lynndae and the kids and all these decent folk do.

  After several minutes, images began to fo
rm in his mind, images of death and suffering he had worked hard at suppressing for more than ten years. Soon his head was flooded with them. He could hear the crack-crack-crack of thousands of muskets and the roar of cannon, and he could smell the stink of smoke and sulphur and blood. He almost gasped, the memories were so raw and overpowering. The telegraph clerk glanced his way once or twice. Finally Zeph leaned over and wrote a message on the pad.

  Raber

  I will come alone to the Place of Destruction. It is only forty miles south of Lancaster. You know the location I am talking about.

  If you have the courage, meet me there.

  Parker

  “Send this to the office of the federal marshal in Iron Springs, Montana Territory,” Zeph said to the clerk. “Matthew Parker.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Zeph paid him and left. Then he walked quickly to the station and purchased a ticket for the Sunday evening train to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

  Chapter 26

  Several dozen buggies were already lined up outside the Zook house when Augustine and Rebecca Yoder and Zephaniah came down the road, Matchbox trotting cheerfully through the sparkling frost and blue sky of a Lancaster winter morning. Rebecca carried in several snitz pies, and Augustine walked carefully, with a large container of bean soup. Zephaniah came through the doorway balancing several loaves of heavy brown bread and a massive pot of beef and cabbage, still warm, against his chest.

  Zeph had risen early, bathed in a large wooden tub with water heated on the stove, trimmed his beard, and shaved his upper lip clean. Put on a fresh shirt. Used the suspenders Augustine had lent him to hold his pants up. Brushed his dress coat and pulled it on over a plain Amish vest Augustine had also lent him. Wiped muck off his black boots and polished them to a gloss. Exchanged the hat Lynndae had purchased for him in Ogden for a hat the Yoders’ son Daniel had left behind. Rebecca Yoder called it a piker. It had a crease in its crown that gave it, Zeph thought, a bit of dash. He placed his silver watch in a vest pocket.

  “How do I look?” he asked Rebecca.

  She had smiled and nodded. “Very plain. A good Amish.”

  When Zeph entered the Zook house with the food, there were people everywhere, talking in Pennsylvania Dutch, at least a hundred of them, he figured, probably more. He noticed when he glanced out a window that a number of boys had gathered near the barn. Some of the older horses were being stabled there. Women were rushing about in the kitchen organizing the food. Several men were carrying benches into the house. Elizabeth found him and wrapped her arms around him. He kissed her on the top of her head.

  “Hello, Mister Parker.”

  “Hello, Miss Kauffman. Are you well?”

  “Very well. But I miss our train rides.”

  “I do, too. Where is Master Troyer?”

  “With the other boys at the barn.”

  “And Miss Raber?”

  “Oh, I saw her outside walking with Sarah Beachey and Rachel Otto. But then Aunt Rosa called them into the kitchen to help.”

  “I didn’t notice her there.”

  “Well, she is dressed very plain and is in and out of the pantry with things.”

  Zeph looked toward the door of the large kitchen and thought about invading the Amish women’s domain on some sort of pretext. But he didn’t know if he was even halfway ready to make peace with Lynndae Raber. Maybe he never would be. A hand fell heavily on his shoulder. He turned around and it was Augustine.

  “Mister Yoder,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Come. I have some men I would like you to meet.”

  He was introduced to the pastors, David Lapp and Malachi Kauffman. Moses Beachey he had already met at the train station. Then in swift succession, he met a number of Zooks, Hooleys, Umbles, Petershwims, and Planks, until he could no longer match faces with names.

  “I am James Lambright,” said one thin man, taking Zeph’s hand in a tight grip. “A pleasure.”

  “They tell me you are from the West.”

  “Montana Territory.”

  “Do you farm there?”

  “I raise horses and graze beef cattle.”

  “Who do you sell them to?”

  “Some of my horses I sell to officers in the army. The beef goes east to feed people in New York and Boston.” “What about Indians?”

  “All is quiet, sir. I am hoping we may have found a way to live at peace with one another, something that will last.” “I pray so, I pray so.”

  Another man came up with glasses and red hair and pale skin.

  “I am Jonathan Glick. All praise to God.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear you have become quite a blacksmith, yah?” “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. So far, all I have done is pump the bellows.”

  “Do you like to work?”

  “I do.”

  “A smithy is a wonderful place on a cold day.” “It is.”

  “I have been cutting and storing ice for the summer. Chills you to the bone.” “It would.”

  “Do you do that out west?”

  “We cut the ice from lakes and rivers, yes.”

  “Store them in sawdust and straw?”

  “Please, everyone, it is time to meet with God.” This was said in Pennsylvania Dutch, but as people began to move toward the benches, Zeph followed them. His pocket watch read eight o’clock. He caught a glimpse of Lynndae and felt an unpleasant darkness inside himself. She saw his glance, but he looked away and bowed his head. She looked so Amish in her dress and head covering, Zeph would not have been able to tell her apart from any of the other young Amish women.

  He felt a sting in his heart. Lynndae was one of them. She had returned to her home, and this was where she belonged and where she was going to stay. All her years in Iron Springs she had been one of them, but he had never known it. He shook his head. There couldn’t be any future for them as man and wife. All the things he would have done for Charlotte Spence, he could not do for Lynndae Raber, the sister of a heartless killer, a woman who had lived so many different lies he no longer knew who she really was. The only thing he was sure of anymore was that he had a date with her brother in Gettysburg.

  People continued to find places to sit all around him, but he scarcely noticed. His thoughts had made their way to Gettysburg. Monday night could find him buried with Union soldiers in southern Pennsylvania. Strangely, the thought of that had not yet frightened him. Still, now that it had surfaced, he was glad to be in a place of worship where he could hand everything over to God among a people of faith and goodwill.

  “The men sit together,” said Augustine, who was suddenly at his side. “Here, sit with my son-in-law, Amos. I must join the pastors in another room during the singing. We need to decide which of us will preach today.”

  Zeph sat next to a tall, straw-blond, young man who smiled and shook his hand.

  “Amos Zook.”

  “Zephaniah Parker.”

  “The cowboy?”

  “Yes. And you are the honey man?”

  “For sure.”

  A young man came and stood by them, uncertain of his welcome. It was Samuel. “Good morning, Mister Parker.”

  Zeph shook his offered hand. “Why, good morning Master Troyer. You’re looking very well. Where have you been hiding these past couple of days?”

  “I have been with my friend Nathaniel Mast and his family, Mister Parker. I hope I may introduce you to him at lunch if that is all right with you?”

  “I’d be glad to meet your pal, Samuel—”

  “Shh,” came a woman’s voice behind them.

  Zeph shrugged off his cape overcoat. Hymnals were passed down the rows. They were thick and heavy. When Zeph opened his, he saw that it was in German, but he left it open in his lap anyway. A man began to sing. All around him men and women and children joined in. There were no fancy notes, Zeph noticed, no harmonizing or polished transitions, just a simple strong melody that was carried by earnest voices far beyond their hearts or the roof of t
he house. No piano played, neither was there an organ in the room. He closed his eyes, listened, worshipped, and prayed.

  After about half an hour, Moses Beachey came into the room with the other pastors and began to preach. He had a lilting way of talking, almost like chanting, and Zeph watched, fascinated, as he wandered about the room and then disappeared into other parts of the house where people were seated, still preaching. It was as if his voice were floating far away in a cave or catacomb. Then he returned. It seemed as if he was pleading with them. A man groaned out loud and sunk his head into his large hands. A woman nearby began to cry openly. Next to him Amos Zook was nodding his head, mesmerized, and biting his lower lip.

  Lord, I am not used to this, prayed Zeph.

  Moses sat down. There was the sound of sniffling and amens for a few moments, and then Amos stood up and began to read from his black Bible. Once he had finished, another man’s voice came from a room Zeph could not see. He presumed the man was reading scripture as well, his tone rich and deep. Then everyone went to their knees and Zeph did likewise. A man prayed out loud, then another. When Amos rose, so did Zeph.

  Augustine Yoder was preaching now. He, too, moved from room to room, his voice now booming, now scarcely more than a whisper. He began to cry, tears rolling down his broad cheeks and into his dark beard. Again and again, Zeph caught the words, Jesu Christi am kreuz, and he realized Augustine was talking about Jesus Christ on the cross. Women and men began to weep. This went on for more than an hour. It was as if the hearts and souls of the congregation were suspended in the air of the house and God was personally touching each one as He walked among them. Zeph understood nothing—yet, it seemed to him, he understood everything, far more than he might have understood in a calmer worship service in an English church.

  When Augustine sat down, David Lapp got to his feet and seemed to Zeph to be addressing himself to various points Augustine had raised. Malachi Kauffman got up and did the same. Then everyone went to their knees to pray again, and after that the hymnals were opened and there was more singing. Once they began to clear the rooms to set up tables for lunch, Zeph felt he needed to be alone with God and not sitting and talking with the men again, as good-natured as they were. So in the moving of the benches and the setting out of breads and jams and soups and meat dishes, he slipped out the back door of the kitchen and walked off across the fields of snow without the long overcoat Augustine had lent him.