Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana (16 page)

“I believe Marshal Austen left it for us.”

“Marshal Austen?”

“Who else would have done it?”

“But we were both here—”

“He did it while we were in the baggage car, I expect. He left this also.” Zeph held the silver pocket watch in his hand. “And this.” A package of Black Jack chewing gum.

Tears sprang to Charlotte’s eyes, and she took a handkerchief out of a pocket in her coat. “Of course a gunslinger in black would chew that kind of gum.”

“Could I have some?” Cody has his eye on the package.

Charlotte reached over, still sniffing, and plucked the Black Jack from Zeph’s lap. “If the blanket was meant for me, and the watch was meant for your father, then I’m sure the chewing gum was meant for our two troopers from the Second Cavalry.”

Zeph was examining the watch. “Don’t know why he did that. It’s a Waltham and it’s engraved under the lid.”

“To you?” Charlotte was surprised. “He didn’t even know you before today.”

He went silent as he read the entire inscription on the watch lid. Then he blinked several times and snapped the lid shut.

“Well, what does it say?” asked Charlotte impatiently.

He handed her the watch. She looked at him a moment and then opened it up. The etching on the underside of the lid was very fine. She turned the pocket watch toward the sunlight.

F
OR
C
APTAIN
Z
EPHANIAH
T
RUETT
P
ARKER
. W
HO FOUGHT SLAVERY
. A
ND WHO STILL FIGHTS FOR OUR FREEDOM
. T
HE OPPRESSOR SHALL FEAR THEE AS LONG AS THE SUN AND MOON ENDURE
. C
OLONEL
M
ICHAEL
J
AMES
A
USTEN
. P
salm
72:3–5.

Charlotte looked up. Zeph was rubbing his eyes in a peculiar way.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m just tired. I kind of had a rude awakening.” He smiled.

“But this inscription is beautiful. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?” “Sure.”

“And he hardly knows you. But he’s right, isn’t he?”

Zeph did not answer. He leaned his head back and watched the prairie slip past. “They’ve got more snow here,” he finally commented.

“Where’s your brother’s Bible?”

Zeph tugged the small Bible out of the pocket of the baggy coat she’d made him wear since Ogden. She took it from him and flipped pages. Then she read the passage inscribed on the watch: “The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the hills, by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.”

“My goodness,” she said when she had finished, “He is paying you quite a compliment.”

“For all his gunslinger looks, he is a kind man.”

“And to say these things about someone he’d never met when he had the watch engraved.”

“He was one of my commanding officers.”

“Pardon me?”

“Look, I didn’t want to bring it up. I had him pegged for a gunslinger at first. Then there was the holdup and all the excitement. I only figured out who he was a few minutes before he got up to leave. He had a beard back then—it was twelve years ago. I just wasn’t sure.” “Obviously he was sure.”

“Matt’s doing, I expect. He sent the telegram asking Austen to help me. Likely mentioned I’d served in the war and wouldn’t carry a gun now. The mention of the war would have jarred his memory, and then he would have made the connection with my name.”

Charlotte’s eyebrow arched. “Why? He must have known scads of soldiers.”

Zeph was slow to answer. “Because of what happened. There was an incident he wouldn’t have forgotten.”

“What incident?”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Charlotte.”

She stared into his eyes. “Z. What incident? Tell me. Please.”

“A night in Virginia. There’d been a clash. My boys had managed to free a dozen men, no, fourteen—it was fourteen men they freed from a Rebel company. They were freemen, African men, but they’d been captured when Lee invaded Pennsylvania, and the Rebs were taking them back to be slaves. There was a lot of that even though Lee forbade it and never kept slaves himself. We’d caught them out in the open, in a meadow; it was raining so hard the field was flooded. We could see the kind of men they had as prisoners, they weren’t even soldiers. It was wrong.

“This was just after Gettysburg, and Lee was retreating. I guess he never stopped retreating from Gettysburg to Appomattox, and my boys were fed up with the whole Army of Northern Virginia and that attitude the Confederacy had about Africans and slavery. They went at the Rebs hand to hand—they wanted to make sure they didn’t kill any of the freemen by mistake. It was after the fight I stood in front of Austen’s tent in the rain with the Africans until he could see me. He had no idea yet of what had happened, but I brought two of the men with me into the tent once the orderly called my name. The orderly tried to stop me from bringing the Africans in. I just brushed him aside.”

Zeph stopped, gazing out the window.

“Please continue,” Charlotte urged.

“Well. Austen was a lot younger then, of course, but just as slender, and he had a dark beard, like I said. One arm was in a sling from a wound. There was a lamp burning on his table and a Remington New Model Army revolver by his elbow. I noticed that because Dad had the same gun. Austen’s uniform was buttoned right to the top.”

Zeph stopped a second time, his thoughts far away. Charlotte put a hand on one of Zeph’s.

“Do you remember what you talked about?” she asked gently.

“It’s funny. You know how some things you’ve gone through come to mind again and again? You go over every word each time your memory calls those experiences up, and you can see every face? I haven’t thought about that tent in twelve years—I haven’t wanted to. I see the freemen; one was a lawyer, he’s talking to Austen, Colonel Austen, and the other is waiting his turn. I don’t remember anything Austen said. But he got the men into a couple of large tents, made sure they were served hot food and coffee, put them on horses at daybreak, gave them a mounted escort back to Pennsylvania.”

“You can’t recall even one sentence of what he said?” “Have you got a piece of that black gum for me, Cody?” “Yes, sir.”

Zeph chewed slowly. “It’s very good.”

Charlotte was staring at him. The edge came into her voice.

“Z.”

He shook his head. “It’s like I buried it.” He chewed a little longer. “All I can bring back is Austen saying, ‘You did the right thing, Captain. Your men are to be commended.’” Then Zeph’s face clouded over. “He asked if we had taken any Rebel prisoners. I said we had not. He thanked me and dismissed me.” Zeph looked over at Charlotte. “Not one.”

“I see. So that explains the inscription and him having the watch ready for you. Not an incident a man is likely to forget, even in a war full of them.”

“No.”

There was silence between them. Around the car others talked and laughed, and Zeph heard a woman say a meal stop would be coming up soon. Charlotte was opening Jude’s Bible to the spot where she had placed the bookmark. She held it out to him.

“Are you a praying man, Captain Parker?”

“I try.”

“Then read this. Out loud. Remember, I marked this passage before the outlaws assailed our train.”

Zeph took the Bible from her. “Which psalm?”

“Number one hundred twenty-four, please.”

“‘If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul.… Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.’”

Charlotte leaned forward. “We prayed and the Lord rescued us, Z. Sending those telegrams, one to Fort Laramie and the other to Iron Springs, so Raber’s accomplice would read it, that was the right thing to do. Now we’re free.” She took one of his big hands in both of hers. “I’m sorry about what happened in the war. About what happened to my father and what happened to you. For the killing that happened in that meadow in Virginia. But I’m not sorry you rescued those men from being taken down to Alabama or Mississippi and turned into slaves. You did the right thing. You fought to set them free, and that was the right thing to do. It’s hard for me to admit, it’s hard for me to accept, but if there was one good thing that came out of that terrible war, it was just that—some of you soldiers fought to end the enslavement of a whole race of men and women and children that God had created to be a blessing to the earth.”

Zeph leaned back and closed his eyes, the Bible open in his hands. “Rich words, Miss Spence.”

Zeph’s jaw muscles tightened and then relaxed. He opened his eyes and tried to make light of the moment. “Pretty soon there won’t be one secret of mine left hidden. I’ll be an open book. Then I’ll just be this dull person you know inside out and that you’re bored to death with.”

She smiled. “I doubt that.”

“But what about all your secrets? Do I know any of them?

Am I ever gonna know any of them?”

“Why, Mister Parker”—she fanned her face—“us girls have to keep our deepest secrets close to our hearts until the day we die.”

Chapter 17

S
nowflakes were swirling down and mingling with the gray billows from the smokestack. Charlotte found the rolling plains a welcome relief after so many days of flat prairie. The farm buildings were also a pleasant sight, with their rows of windbreaks and their red barns and livestock. She was not sure Zeph would agree with her. Once the US Grant had pulled out of Omaha and crossed the Missouri River, he had groaned and said, “That’s it. We’ve left the West.”

They were halfway through Iowa, and she felt her apprehension growing with every mile. They had left the US Grant and the Union Pacific behind in Omaha and were traveling with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad now. The train would pass over into Illinois in no time, and then they’d be buying tickets for a different one to take them from Chicago to Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. Before she knew it, she would be facing her old neighbors at Bird in Hand in Lancaster County, and she had no idea what she ought to say or do once she met them face-to-face. It was something she had pressed to the back of her mind because of the imminent danger from the Raber Gang. Now that the danger from the gang was past, other worries came crowding in to engulf her thoughts.

It was not just Bird in Hand. It was undoubtedly God’s will that she deal with her past and confront the Amish community of her childhood and, it was hoped, learn to forgive and perhaps even love those men and women once again. What worried her far more than that was whether she could graciously give up Cheyenne and Cody to the Amish world and its ways—and whether that world would keep her darkest secrets hidden or bring them out into the open for all the world to see, including Zephaniah Parker. She began to argue with herself.

Why not tell him those darkest secrets instead of waiting for the Amish church to break the news? It would come across much better that way to Zephaniah. It would build trust.

No, I can’t; these are terrible things to tell someone. It would be better if they were left unsaid.

It is your Christian duty to tell him.

I don’t care.

The Amish will tell him who you are if you don’t.

I can’t risk it.

Just by being silent you are risking it. You are risking everything.

The snow was falling more thickly and more swiftly now. Cody and Zeph were leaning against one another, practically head to head, breathing in and out through open mouths, fast asleep. Despite her anxiety and inner turmoil, Charlotte could not prevent herself from smiling. Oh, they looked so much like father and son. During the robbery, Cody had acted just like a fiery young Zephaniah. How could she let Cody go? How, for that matter, could she let Zephaniah go?

Beside her, Cheyenne had been drawing all afternoon: cavalrymen and men being captured. Charlotte supposed it gave her a considerable amount of peace and freedom from fear, even some healing in her heart, to know the men who had killed her mother and father had been taken prisoner by the army and were never going to be able to harm her again. Yet, for some reason Charlotte could not yet fathom, Cheyenne’s drawings were adding to the emotional stress she herself was experiencing.

The ten-year-old suddenly held up a full-page drawing of a man’s face. Like all her work, it was well done. Charlotte could see Cheyenne had meant to portray someone friendly and kind.

“That’s very good. Who is it?”

“His hat has a number two on it and swords. And here is his scarf.”

“Your Johnny?”

“Yah.” She smiled. “It was easier to draw his horse than to draw him.”

“What else do you have?”

“I drew some of the wicked. Two of them had long beards and long hair. They looked like bears.”

Charlotte glanced at the drawings and felt a chill. “Don’t you find it icy in here today, Cheyenne? There must be a new draft coming in from one of the doors or windows.” She took the white point blanket Marshal Austen had left with them and bundled herself in it. A corner was lifted for Cheyenne. “Do you want to get warmed up?”

“I’m fine.”

She lifted up another drawing. “This one had red hair. It was very short. This other was fat and always yelling.” She shuddered. “I was really scared of him.”

“I’m sorry, honey. Maybe we should put the drawings away for now.”

“They are all in jail. Or they’ve run to another country.”

She pulled two more drawings from her pile. “These are the only other ones. This man was so skinny he made me think of a hoe. The others kept calling him Lunger.”

“I see.”