Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana (17 page)

“And this was the leader. He told everyone what they should do. He shouted that he would kill us all.” Her eyes narrowed. “Trooper Johnny said they had caught him and tied him up and put a gag in his mouth. He said they would hang him.”

Ice went through Charlotte. “That’s the leader?”

“Yes.”

That’s the Angel of Death,
Charlotte thought.
That’s the killer.

She kissed the girl. “You are very brave to make this picture, very brave. But if they’ve caught him, you don’t need to think about him anymore, not at all. It’s over, honey. So I really think this is enough. No more drawing, all right? See, you’re trembling.”

“I hate him. I hate him. I don’t ever want to see him again.”

“Shh, shh, you won’t, not ever, not ever again. Put the pictures down and get under the blanket.”

Cheyenne shook her head. But she allowed Charlotte to put her arms around her. Then she laughed.

“What is it?” asked Charlotte in surprise.

“Pa and Cody look so funny with their mouths hanging open.”

Charlotte smiled. “I guess they do. If this was the summertime, a big old fly could buzz right in there.” “Yah, a lot of flies!”

Cheyenne slept in Charlotte’s arms. Charlotte watched the snowfall, but after a while her eyes fell on the picture of the gang leader. Cheyenne had given him long hair past his shoulders and tried to make it look light colored. The eyes bulged a bit, and the twist of his mouth gave the drawing a nasty feeling. Down one side of his face Cheyenne had drawn a long line that started in his eye and ended somewhere under his jaw. At the bottom of the page she had neatly printed A
NGEL.

Charlotte stared at the line that ran from eyeball to chin. So he had a long scar. From what? A knife? A sword? That would have made him easy to identify anytime he did not wear a mask. Well, it didn’t matter now. That story was over. For a moment she indulged an image in her mind of a man standing on a scaffold with a black hood over his head and a thick rope around his neck. A minister who looked like Jude was reading the Bible to him. Then she made a noise as if something was caught in her throat and shook her head to shake off the picture in her imagination. It was finished. She and Zeph and the children were safe and on their way to Pennsylvania.

Yet once she thought of Pennsylvania and Lancaster County, a knot began tightening itself in her stomach again.
Lord, help me get free of these fears,
she prayed. It was not a very satisfying prayer, because she knew there were things she herself could do to rid herself of some of her anxiety. She blew out a breath. Then she picked up Zeph’s Bible.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid.
Her hands turned over page after page.
What am I looking for?
A part of her wanted to sleep. Another part felt her dreams would be stressful and unpleasant. A third part of her felt the right passage from holy scriptures would give her some measure of peace.
But which one? There were so many.

Zeph had mentioned how Jude had used certain parts of his Bible so many times during the war it naturally fell open to several of these places. Now it happened to her. She was leafing through the New Testament when the book seemed to stop on its own and open where it wanted. The verse her eyes fell upon, 1 John 4:18, was underlined by sharp lines of black ink. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

Charlotte leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She listened to the
click-click-click
of the iron wheels over the rails. The sky darkened in the east, and the train moved into that darkness.

She knew what she had to do. But she did not think she had the courage to do it.

Chapter 18

O
nce he’d told her it would take another two days to reach Harrisburg—“Well, just under”—she’d insisted on having a bath, even if it meant missing a connection. Which it did. Since there was no help for it, he and the kids had baths, too. Zeph even treated himself to a shave. “But not the whole beard,” Charlotte had protested, “just the upper lip. That sort of beard goes with the clothes I made for you.” “You mean it makes me plain?”

“Yes. You will go over very well with the Amish in Lancaster County.”

“Why does it matter if I go over very well with the Amish in Lancaster County?”

She’d patted his cheek. “Because, my dear, we have enough to overcome in Pennsylvania without having to worry about what the in-laws think of you. I want them to see that my Fremont is humble as well as handsome.”

They had reverted to their Wyoming names again. He touched the broad flat brim of his hat. “As you wish, Conner.”

Clean as a whistle, upper lip shaved, the beard trimmed, he stood with Cody in their sheepskin coats and plain clothes and hats on one of Chicago’s main thoroughfares and watched wagons, carriages, horse-drawn tramcars, and people stream past without ceasing. Steam and breath rose from the street like a fog. Zeph wanted to tilt his hat back on his head as he watched, but the hat Charlotte had given him did not work as well at this as a Stetson, so he was left with nothing to do except rub the beard on his jaw.

“It’s like standing on the banks of a Mississippi chock-full of people and teams of horses,” said Zeph. “Makes a fellow dizzy.”

Cody had been to Chicago several times. “Pittsburgh is not so full. And Harrisburg has more trains than people.” “That so?”

“There was a great fire here four years ago. All of this has been rebuilt. And they’re still building.” Cody pointed down the street to where two steam cranes were hard at work and new buildings were rising into the cold winter sky.

“I guess you could say the mountains around here are manmade,” mumbled Zeph. “I miss the real thing.”

Cody nodded. “I do, too, but sometimes I like the excitement of the cities.”

“Excitement! You call Chicago excitement?” Zeph lifted Cody’s hat and rubbed his knuckles into the boy’s hair. “Excitement is having a Sioux war party breathing down your neck and bullets and arrows making a colander of your clothes.”

Cody laughed and fought back. “I wouldn’t care. I hate these clothes.”

“Me, too.”

Two policemen in boots and belted overcoats with brass buttons and large stars over their hearts approached them. They wore revolvers in holsters at their sides. One policeman touched the brim of his cap. “Everything all right here, sir?”

Zeph was confused and released Cody from a headlock. “Sure.”

“You all right, lad?”

Cody’s face was red. He put his hat back on his head.

“Everything is fine, Officer.” “Where are you two from?”

Zeph straightened up. “Just off the train from Omaha. We’ll be pulling out for Harrisburg in a few hours.” “That’s a long trip.”

Zeph nodded. “Three states. But not as long as coming all the way from the Montana Territory.”

The other officer spoke up. “Did you?”

“Picked up the Union Pacific in Ogden, Utah.”

The officer whistled. “We had a telegram about a wee bit of excitement down that way, was it yesterday or the day before that, Pete?”

The older man grunted. “They caught the Angel o’ Death and that whole murderin’, thievin’ gang o’ his.” “I’m glad to hear it,” said Zeph.

“The noose is too good for ‘em and all the savages like ‘em,” the older police officer went on. “Burn ‘em at the stake would fix ‘em. The Ind’ns understand that.”

I know this accent,
thought Zeph.

“You two sound like a man I was friends with back in the gold rush days of Iron Springs,” he said. “Seamus O’Casey.”

The older officer beamed. “A fine Irish name. Seems our people are everywhere, Pat.”

The younger officer nodded. “Irish like to travel. And when they don’t, someone always plants a boot in their pants and gets them moving.” He laughed. “Oh, I think about going west someday. I have a cousin in Dakota. He joined the army. He’s with that Custer.”

“Fort Abraham Lincoln,” said Zeph.

“I believe that’s it. What’s it like out there?”

“It’s wide open and free, Officer. Everything’s big. The prairies, the mountains, the rivers. Room to ride a hundred miles and never see another human being.”

“Lots of outlaws?”

“A fair amount.”

“Indians?”

“Plenty.”

“Is there desperate need for lawmen in the West?” asked the younger officer.

“My brother’s a federal marshal in the Montana Territory. He could use a fine young officer like yourself.”

“What’s his name, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Matthew Parker. You can always telegraph him at Iron Springs. Acres of train robbers and bandits for you to chase down and slap behind bars.”

The older man snorted. “Ha! We got our own bandits and robbers thick as summer flies on a mule. We don’t need to be chasing ‘em all the way to the ends o’ the earth in Utah and Montana.”

The younger officer smiled. “Sure, Pete, but I get restless just the same. The Irish in me gets awful cramped in Chicago when the spring comes. I wasn’t from Dublin or Cork like your kind, y’know; I grew up under the stars of Connemara.”

The older man put his hands behind his back. “Suit yourself. I’d miss my baseball games. And the wife would miss her church teas.”

The young officer put out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Zeph gripped his hand and shook it. “If you ever make it out west, look me up in Iron Springs. Zephaniah Parker.”

“I may just do that. Pat Cavanaugh.”

The other officer nodded. “Pete Cassidy. A safe trip to Pennsylvania to you both. And”—he winked at Cody—“no more horseplay on the streets o’ Chicago, if you don’t mind. It looked to me like you were layin’ an awful lickin’ on your poor father here.”

They all laughed.

“Come along and let’s walk, Pat,” said Pete. “It’s getting nippy, and I want the blood moving in my veins to warm myself up.”

Zeph and Cody watched them march away down the crowded sidewalk. Then Zeph dug the silver watch Austen had given him out of a pocket of his sheepskin coat. He opened the lid, looked at the time, whistled, and snapped the lid shut. “We’d better find our womenfolk and escort them to the evening train, pronto.”

Charlotte and Cheyenne were in one of the shops down a block that Charlotte had indicated to Zeph earlier, dressed in matching navy blue dresses and bonnets with white lace, their arms full of bags and parcels.

“We were just coming,” said Charlotte. “Here.” She handed several brightly wrapped packages to Zeph.

“What is all this?” he demanded.

“Gifts for the Amish families in Pennsylvania.”

“You mean peace offerings.”

“Call them what you will. Cody, help your sister with her bags. What were you two gentlemen up to?” “Just watching the locals.”

They were walking briskly up a street toward the train station. Charlotte glanced over at Zeph. “Did you get a chance to get to the telegraph station?”

“There were no telegrams for us. Wrote Matt and told him we’d be in Harrisburg in two days—”

“I know we go left here,” she interrupted.

“You’re right. There’s the Pennsy Station. I’d better make sure they’ve put our luggage on the right train. That’s our locomotive there, I believe, Missus Wyoming, am I right?”

“Well, the number is correct. Unless they have two engines using exactly the same numerals.”

“Do you have the tickets?”

“You
have the tickets in your pocket, and you know it perfectly well.”

“Here.” He gave Charlotte the boxes he’d been holding. “Find us some good seats in one of the sleepers.”

After talking with an official for the Pennsylvania Railroad who looked over a sheet of paper and nodded his head—“Harrisburg, the Wyomings”—Zeph made his way back to platform four. A young boy was selling the
Chicago Daily Tribune
and hollering at the top of his lungs, “Double hanging in Wyoming! Raber Gang plunged into eternity!”

The feds sure didn’t waste any time,
thought Zeph.

He bought a paper and opened it up. Above the fold were large black letters: H
ANGED
! There was a photograph of two men hanging from ropes with black hoods over their heads. He kept walking toward the train as he read the story under the grim picture.

Charlotte was standing behind Cody and Cheyenne on the steps of one of the cars. Her arms were full of bags and parcels. She was rolling her eyes at a heavy woman who was taking her time making her way into the car. “Move ahead, Cody,” she was saying, “move on ahead, son.”

“I can’t budge.”

“Just push a bit, a little bit. Let them know we’re behind them and that we need to get on board the train, too, before it leaves without us.”

“Conner,” said Zeph as he came up to the car.

“Oh, thank goodness. I thought you’d taken a horse back to the Montana Territory. Can you help me with these boxes again?”

“Conner, it’s over.”

Charlotte looked down at him from the steps. He held up the newspaper. She saw the headline and the picture. The blood ran out of her face. “Oh, my Lord Jesus,” she said. Her eyes rolled back white, and she collapsed, falling down the steps onto the wooden boards of the station platform, cracking her head and lying still. Her bags and parcels tumbled out of her arms and over the toes of Zeph’s boots. Five or six dropped down onto the tracks and lay under the wheels of the 5:17 to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Chapter 19

Z
eph watched her sleep, listening anxiously for changes in breathing that might signal she was in some sort of distress. He had not bothered to transform their seating area into beds, so Cody had rolled his sheepskin into a pillow and leaned his head against it and the window. Cheyenne was awake. She slowly and continuously stroked Charlotte’s hair.

Lights flickered in the dark square of the window. Zeph supposed they would be coming into Fort Wayne soon. The morning would find them well into Ohio and through the Great Black Swamp. Travel would be a bit slower through the swamp, but vast sections of it had been drained for the railroad, and Zeph didn’t think there would be much trouble. He smiled briefly when he remembered a story of how the Michigan and Ohio militias had tried to fight a war with each other over a boundary dispute, but each had gotten lost in the swamp and had a hard time finding one another. What if the Union and Confederate armies had kept missing each other on their marches north and south? But there had been no Black Swamp between Virginia and Maryland to confuse them.