Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana (26 page)

She drew back and slapped him across the face with all the force she could muster, which, Zeph knew, was not inconsiderable. Blood sprayed from Raber’s lips. Still he did not move or speak. His men looked alarmed, and Spunk Early took a step toward Lynndae.

“Child killer!” she spat. “Woman killer! Thief! Murderer! Is this how you honor our father? Would he be proud to stand up among the saints in heaven and have them look toward earth with him? ‘There is my youngest boy, Angel. There is my pride and joy. There is my heart and soul, my righteous and holy Christian son?’ Do you remember nothing of the prayers he prayed over you or the Bible stories he read to us by the fire at night? Have you forgotten your own baptism or the day you kneeled before us all and said Jesus was your Savior and Lord?”

Raber continued to stare at her, his face white, blood trickling from the cut on his mouth.

“What about our mother? They say there are no tears in heaven—oh, Seraph, how could she have no tears when she looks down on the babies you have murdered and the mothers you have slaughtered and the fathers you have put in early graves—unarmed, unwilling to fight, innocent—yet you butchered them like cattle and hogs, no remorse, no conscience, not a drop of pity in your heart. Oh, stop it, stop it, put away your guns and ask God’s forgiveness and give yourself up. End this bloodshed, and even if you find death in this world for your sins, you will find eternal life in the next in the presence of God. Angel, I beg you, don’t go into eternity an unrepentant killer—”

“Shut up, you devil!” shouted Early.

Raber turned to him. “No, Spunk, don’t—”

But Early’s gun swung up on Lynndae, and his face was a mask of hate. “I’ll close that mouth forever and thank the good Lord in heaven I did it!”

Chapter 29

E
arly was going to shoot. Lynndae didn’t even notice him; she was still looking up at her brother’s face, tears springing into her eyes, her gloved hands on his chest.

The snow was pouring down. Raber drew his revolver as he turned toward Early. But Early caught the movement of Raber’s hand and flicked the barrel away from Lynndae. He fired and Raber went down. Lynndae cried out and knelt over her brother. Early shifted his pistol back to her.

Zeph pulled his father’s gun free from under his vest and overcoat. He knew there were no bullets in it, but there was nothing else he could think of to do that might save the life of the woman he loved. He hoped Early would see him draw the revolver and swing his weapon away from Lynndae a second time. But Early ignored him, yelling as he aimed his pistol to fire. Zeph squeezed the trigger of the six-gun. A roar filled his ears, and the bullet caught Early high up on the shoulder of his gun hand. He flew backward into the snow, and his pistol went spinning into the air.

Dad loaded six chambers,
Zeph thought in astonishment as the gun smoke burned his nostrils.

But now the two men at the gatehouse had decided to shoot.

“I got him!” shouted one, aiming his rifle at Zeph. “I got the woman!” shouted the other. Zeph ran at Lynndae and drove her backward with the weight of his body. Something like a hot knife went through his clothing and into his arm. The force of the blow spun him around and hurled him onto his back. Snow stabbed at his neck and made him wince.

Lying in the snow, he thought he could hear cannon fire, the shouts of men charging, the crack of muskets, and the whiz of minié balls as they scorched the air over his head. He glanced to his right and saw Raber push himself up on an elbow, his revolver flashing. All of earth and heaven seemed to be roaring, seemed to be on fire.

Where was Lynndae?

He struggled to sit up. One of the men at the gatehouse was lying in the snow. He was not moving. The other was wounded in his leg and leaning against the brick of the arch and fumbling to reload his rifle. Finally he tossed it to one side in frustration and dug a small pistol out of a coat pocket. Zeph watched him aim it at Raber and fire twice. Then he pointed it at Lynndae, whom Zeph saw was only a few feet to his left. She was struggling to get to her feet, bracing both hands against the snow and frozen earth. All he could think to do was roll. In a sudden swift movement, he came at her. Again, he felt heat cut through his clothing and sting his flesh. This time it was the back of his leg. She fell as he smacked into her.

“Stay down!” he hissed.

There was still firing. Snow and dirt spat into his face from a near miss. A ricochet whined nearby. He lifted his head and saw that Spunk Early had climbed back to his feet and was trying to cock a revolver with his one good hand. Early ignored Raber and Zeph. He was clearly interested only in getting a shot off at Lynndae. Zeph squirmed through the snow and placed his body between Lynndae and the gunman. A bullet smacked into his boot, but he felt only a short stab of pain. Early fired again, and Zeph heard it go past his ear like a wasp.

Zeph glanced at Raber, who had pulled another pistol from a holster under his arm and was aiming it at Early. Zeph saw him shoot three times. Then an invisible hand seemed to lift Raber off the ground, shake him, and drop him into the snow. He fired a final shot in the direction of the gatehouse and then lay still, snowflakes covering his face and hands so rapidly that soon all his flesh had vanished.

The roaring stopped.

Zeph was on his stomach. One arm would not work, so he used the other to push himself up. The man at the gatehouse had slid to the ground with his pistol in his hand, and his eyes were closed. He could see Early sprawled on his face and the snowfall burying him as it came down thicker and thicker. Zeph tried to reach out to Lynndae with a hand that would not respond to his commands.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She looked at him. “There’s blood on your coat.”

“No matter.”

He turned and began to crawl toward Raber, propelling himself with his good arm and leg. When he reached Raber’s side, he collapsed.

“That you, Captain?” asked Raber in a raspy voice.

“Sure is, General.”

“How’re we doing?”

“Lynndae’s fine. You saved her life.”

“I saved her life? I recall as you were the one who pulled a pistol out from under all those Amish clothes and stopped Early from shooting her.”

“The same way you stopped those two sharpshooters at the gate from killing all of us.”

“It’s strange the things a man will do for family, Captain.”

“I know it. Are you hurt bad, General?”

“No, no. Early always was a poor shot, and Billy and Wyatt were only reliable if the target was a thousand yards away.”

“Never thought I’d have to come all the way back here to Pennsylvania just to get a proper wound.”

Raber laughed and coughed up blood. “Ain’t it the truth? The ways of God are past finding out.”

Lynndae was at their sides. “Oh, no, oh, no no no, my Angel, my Z,” and she began tearing at the hem of her dress to make bandages even though both Zeph and her brother protested. She moved swiftly to staunch the flow of blood from her brother’s two leg wounds, and then she bandaged Zeph’s shoulder, leg, and foot. Turning back to her brother, she whipped the bonnet off her head and pressed it down over a large wound in his chest. But he firmly placed a hand on her arm to stop her from doing anything more.

“What I really need, Little L,” he whispered, “is someone to pray with me.”

“There are three or four other wounds—”

“Let it be. I’ve only got time enough for one good confession and one good prayer, so pay attention to my words and not my wounds. The holes in my spirit are bigger, and you need to tend to them first.”

He reached up a hand to her face. “I haven’t felt shame in more years than I can count, but I felt shame today when you spoke to me like you did. It’s as if your talk snapped me out of some kind of spell. Seems I haven’t been able to see straight or think straight for a long time. I fooled myself into believing God approved of what I did because He never meant for the war to end until all slavery was vanquished. Now here I’m about to meet Him, and my hands are smothered in blood. I can’t undo the wickedness I’ve done. I can’t stop what my men are doing right now at Bird in Hand. All I got to offer up in place of all my murders is saving your life today. That’s a big thing to my way of thinking, but big as it is, I know it’s not near enough. Little L, can God forgive me?”

She kissed the hand against her face. “Oh, Angel, if you are sorry for all the killing you’ve done—”

“I believe I am.”

“—and you know you’ve committed terrible sins—” “That I am certain of.”

“—and you repent of all the crimes and bloodshed—”

“I do, I do repent. When you spoke to me, I wished again and again I had laid down my sword at Appomatox.”

“—then the Lord has promised to forgive you and cleanse you. Jesus has died for your sins on the cross. You know that, Angel, you know that.”

His whisper grew harder and harder to hear. “Sure, I know that. I just needed to hear it again coming from Little L.”

He turned his head. His eyes were almost colorless.

“Captain?”

“Yes, sir,” responded Zeph. “Pleasure to soldier with you, Captain.” “Pleasure to soldier with you, General.” “They say we’re all of us Americans now, Captain. What do you say?”

“I believe that’s so, General.”

“Then you take good care of my sister and you raise a good American family, y’all hear?” “I will do that.”

“Got any names picked out? For the first one?” “How’s Angel suit?”

Raber smiled and closed his eyes. “Works for a boy or a girl.” He drew a deep breath. “Lord Jesus, have mercy on my soul, have mercy on me a sinner.” His breath came back out in one long sigh, and he was gone.

As Lynndae cradled her brother’s body in her arms and wept, Zeph looked on and felt a great sadness well up inside him. Here was the man they had been fleeing, who had sworn to kill the children, who had left a trail of innocent blood behind him all of his adult life, and now Zeph wished, like Jesus with Lazarus, he could bring the man back to life. He groped for one of Raber’s hands with his good hand and held it tightly. A verse passed through his mind:
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.

Zeph felt a pounding in the frozen earth he was lying upon. Horses. There was nothing he could do if this meant more of Raber’s men. He could scarcely move. Turning his eyes to the left, he saw three men ride up through the snowstorm and dismount, each of them bristling with guns. They stood over Lynndae and him, and he could tell one of them was surveying all the bodies and trying to figure out what had just happened.

“What in the world? Did you folks have a need to refight the battle or something? Can either of you explain to me just what went on here?”

Zeph looked up into a face with a chin beard and a mustache that drooped around the corners of the mouth. “Who are you?”

The man pulled aside the flap of his winter jacket so Zeph could see the star. “Sheriff Buck Levy. Gettysburg township. Adams County. Elected, genuine and official. These are my full-time deputies, Mister Flint Mitton and Mister Josh Nikkels. Our citizens heard the gunfire and became concerned that Lee and Meade were going at it again.”

“These men are the last remnants of the gang that Seraph Raber led.”

“Is that a fact?”

“I am Zephaniah Parker, Deputy US Marshal. This woman has just lost her brother. He died defending us.”

The man stooped over Zeph and flipped both the front of the overcoat and the mutze open and found the badge on his vest. He grunted. “Kind of a funny occupation for an Amish man like yourself, isn’t it, Mister Parker?”

“I’m not Amish, though this woman is. It was simply a way for me to travel unnoticed in these parts.”

“That so? Maybe you can explain to me how your travels brought you to my battlefield cemetery and involved the deaths of four men.”

“That’s a long story, Sheriff, and I’m not sure I’m up to telling it right about now.”

“Maybe not. But I need some kind of explanation to take back to the town fathers.”

For the first time, Lynndae pulled herself away from her brother, laying him gently back on the ground, and turned her grief-stricken face toward the sheriff and his deputies. Her features were so distraught and broken that all three men took off their hats and bared their heads to the snowstorm.

“Sorry for your loss, ma’am,” mumbled Mitton. Snow had already made his red beard white.

Lynndae stood to her feet, snowflakes catching in her pinned-up hair and eyelashes. “Deputy Parker came from Lancaster to Gettysburg to apprehend these members of the Raber Gang, Sheriff. They were supposed to talk, but the gang members chose to ambush him. I traveled down on my own to see if I could be of assistance. I can assure you, the first shots were fired by the gang members and my brother, and Mister Parker returned fire only in self-defense.”

“I’m sure that’s the case, ma’am, but we do have to check the facts. Flint, Josh, make sure all those bodies are armed and that their weapons have been discharged.”

The deputies placed their hats back on their heads and made their way through the blowing snow to the bodies by the gatehouse and to Early. Sheriff Levy returned his hat to its rightful place as well.

“Sorry, ma’am, I realize this is a bad time to question someone who has lost a loved one under such circumstances—”

“Do your duty, Sheriff,” replied Lynndae coolly.

“But what brought your brother into this fracas? You make no mention of him being a lawman or being deputized by Mister Parker here. Was he your escort?”

“No, I escorted myself from Lancaster.”

“Very well.”

“My brother was in the company of the gang itself, Sheriff, but it was his express desire that he disentangle himself from his involvement with notorious criminals and take that opportunity to live an honest Christian life.”

“That so?”

“His dying wish, Sheriff.”