Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana (6 page)

She inclined her head. “Mister Parker.” “Cody. Cheyenne. I am sorry for today. God bless you.” “They are alive in heaven,” said Cheyenne, looking up at him.

Zeph nodded. “I believe that.”

Charlotte put her arms around Cody and Cheyenne. “We decided to come, but to have our own private ceremony up here.”

“A good plan.”

“We listened to your brother’s words. He has always been a fine preacher.” “Yes, he has.”

She studied Zeph’s face. He noticed that her eyes looked violet.

“Do you have something to tell me?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Well, climb down and we can step over there. You children don’t mind if Mister Parker and I have a short chat, do you?” “No, ma’am,” said Cody. “Miss Charlotte,” she corrected. “Miss Charlotte, ma’am.”

She waited for Zeph by a large boulder with a bronze plate embedded in it which he’d never bothered to read. The sun poured down over her and caught a wisp of blond hair that had escaped the edge of her bonnet, igniting it like a match. The mountains were blue and white behind her, a perfect backdrop, he thought, for her granite strength and her striking blue eyes.

She smiled as he approached, squaring his hat on his head. “What do you think of the view?”

“It’s beautiful up here,” he said, but he did not take his eyes off her.

She shook her head. “I meant the mountains.” “I’ve seen the mountains.”

She averted her face quickly and began to walk. “I used to come up here with Ricky. We both liked it so much, especially at sunset when the snow turns so many bright colors: pink, scarlet, gold, green. He’d say, ‘Char, you have to bring your beau up here some day,’ and I’d tell him, ‘Ricky, you have to bring your bride.’ But he never had that chance.”

“Well, Miss Spence, I’m sure you will have yours.”

“Miss Spence. I suppose it’s too much to ask that up here on Lincoln Creek Ridge you might use my Christian name?”

“Matt asked me to talk to you.”

“Matt? You mean you can’t decide to talk to me on your own?”

Zeph caught the edge in her voice. “I didn’t mean it that way. I would have come out to the ranch to see you and the kids tomorrow like you wanted.”

“Like I wanted? Do you want it?”

Zeph swallowed.
Okay,
he thought,
here goes.

“Any excuse to get out to the Spence Ranch and see you is a good excuse, Miss Spence.”

She lifted her head. Then her voice and the stiffness in her body gentled. “Thank you, Z.”

The blood started roaring in his head, but he knew he had to stay calm and not blurt something foolish. If anything was to come of Miss Charlotte Spence and Mister Zephaniah T. Parker, there was still a long way to go. And there were other matters that had to be attended to right now.

“Miss Spence, three telegrams came in this morning. One of them was from Lancaster County. The sheriff there told us the three families were part of a church in that county, at a place called Bird in Hand, but that they’d been asked to leave the church—excommunicated, I guess, was the high-grade Wells Fargo word he used.”

Her face and eyes darkened again. “Yes. I know the word. And they weren’t asked. They were ordered.” There was that sharp steel in her voice again.

“They did say they’d take the children back,” he added.

“Did they? Did it ever occur to them the children might not want to go back to such people? That they might find more love and a better life out here?”

“There was another telegram, too. It was from Seraph Raber—”

“I’m not afraid of Seraphim Raber!”

“He said he wanted us to turn over the two kids, or he’d kill you—”

“I am not afraid of Seraphim Raber!”

Zeph thought she was going to start shouting and pummeling him with her fists. “And that he’d kill as many citizens of Iron Springs as he could.”

She was silent. They stopped walking.

“We figure he has about five in his gang, Miss Spence, six counting himself. If he comes against us, there’ll be a lot of bloodshed, his and ours. He telegraphed from Copper Creek. It’ll take them three days to get back here. Four or five if the weather turns nasty.”

Her voice was cold, and her blue eyes like new ice. “What are you suggesting I do with the children, Mister Parker?”

“We can get you safe to the railhead in Ogden, Utah in less than three days. Why don’t you take the children east to their kin and stay with them for a spell?”

“He thinks the children have seen his face?”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t know for sure. But he’s never left anyone alive, ever. He doesn’t want them drawing a picture and having it plastered all over the West.”

“What’s to stop them from drawing a picture in Pennsylvania? What’s to stop him from following those children all the way to Lancaster County with a gun in his pocket?”

“I don’t believe he’ll take it that far.”

“You don’t believe he will? Do you know him well enough to say that with a certainty? Do you know what’s in a man’s heart?”

“I don’t, Miss Spence, but it’s a chance we have to take.”

“A chance you have to take? Or a chance the children and I will have to take? I notice you don’t even wear a gun!”

The blood was roaring in his head again, but it was different this time. Zeph clenched and unclenched his fingers.
Lord, help me,
he prayed. He knew he shouldn’t say anything. He knew he should bite his tongue and swallow his anger. But she’d pushed him too far.

“Miss Spence,” he said, struggling to keep his voice down, mindful that the children were only a little ways behind them, “if it came down to fighting for a woman like you, I’d take on the state of Texas and all of Wyoming and Montana Territory and the entire Lakota nation, if I had to, and not think twice. The only way Seraphim Raber would get to you is through my dead body. The trouble is, I can’t protect you and Cody and Cheyenne and five hundred people from Raber’s gunmen and neither can Matt, no matter how many men he deputizes. If you’re here three days from now, they’ll burn your ranch and shoot up the town, kill decent folk and settlers and little old grandmothers and all your hired men, whatever it takes to get to the kids and make sure they don’t make a sketch of Raber’s face. Now you may not like it, but we’re gonna save lives by putting you on the Union Pacific to Pennsylvania, and you’re gonna stay out east until we telegraph you that it’s safe. And you know that it won’t ever be safe for you or the kids until Raber’s locked up or hung, and that’s what I’m gonna work on next. But first, I’m putting you on that eastbound train if I have to tie you to my saddle like a sack of white flour. Do you hear me, Charlotte?”

Zeph blew out his breath, and his eyes and hands were twitching.
You fool,
his head was raving,
you crazy fool, you’ve done it now. You’ve lost Miss Charlotte Spence for sure, and there’s nothing you’re ever going to be able to say or do that’ll win her back.

Charlotte’s eyes were fixed on him. Zeph couldn’t tell what color they were—in fact, he couldn’t see any color.

“Well, Mister Parker,” she said quietly, “it took an awful lot to get you to say my Christian name, didn’t it? Seraph Raber and his five guns, the state of Texas, Wyoming, Montana, the Sioux nation … I guess I needed a little bit of help.”

She reached up and touched his face with one black-gloved hand. “It was wrong of me to mention the gun you never wear. The truth is, I’m proud of you for that. Forgive me. I will take you up on your proposition, and if you give me one hour, the children and I will be packed and ready for the Union Pacific Railroad. But, Z, there is just one small thing you’ll have to agree to.”

Zeph’s head was spinning from the play-out of his anger, from her quiet words, and from her gloved hand pressing against his cheek. “What’s that?” he managed to get out.

“You have to come with me to Pennsylvania. And you have to come as my husband.”

Chapter 6

C
harlotte laughed as she looked at his face. “Z, I don’t think your body knows whether to leap for joy or run and hide. Oh, forgive me, I have a mischievous streak I haven’t been able to do much with since my brother died, but I just had to put it out that way to see how you’d feel about getting hitched. It’s all right, Z, I didn’t mean we had to get married for real. I just meant it’s going to have to look that way to others, and Cheyenne and Cody are going to have to act like they’re our children. Isn’t that the safest way to get to Pennsylvania?”

She could see that a lot of things were going through Zeph’s head, and she let him take a moment to let them settle down. She knew she’d shown a side of herself he’d never seen before and that he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Finally he spoke up.

“A family of four wouldn’t get any second looks, you’re right about that.” “Is that a yes?” “A yes to what?” “A yes to my proposal.”

Zeph took a good look at her face instead of looking down or away or over her shoulder. She made up her mind to hold his gaze. It felt different and it felt strange, but she found she also liked the sensation it gave her. She watched him muster up the words to respond to her.

“It’s a yes to your plan as far as it goes.”

“And do you have a plan that takes it further?”

“I got a plan that takes us to Ogden, Utah, and tickets on the transcontinental railroad.” “What do you propose?”

“The stage doesn’t come into Iron Springs until noon tomorrow, and it’s a milk run. Goes north for two or three more hours to Picture Butte and Nine Forks. It doesn’t turn around till it’s had a supper stop at Purple Springs. It’s too slow. Now if we can get into Virginia City at six tomorrow morning, there’s an express taking gold out. It won’t stop except to change horses and drivers until it reaches Ogden. It’ll have extra guards, and all of them armed to the teeth. I say we make sure we’re on it.”

“The four of us are going to ride down to Virginia City tonight?”

“No, there’ll be six or seven of us. Matt won’t let us head south on our own. Ninety minutes we’ll be there, and we’ll make ourselves comfortable. Once we’re on the stage, the deputies will head back here.”

Charlotte looked at the sun on the mountain peaks. “How long to Ogden?”

“It’s an express. We go all day and night. A couple of days. We should be on the train before Raber reaches Iron Springs. By that time his people will know we’re gone.”

“What people?”

“Raber’s got to have some friends in Iron Springs. How else would he know those two kids are alive and staying with a woman?”

Charlotte frowned and crossed her arms over her chest to rub her shoulders. “That God’s earth should have such kind of people.” She looked at Zeph. “Are we going to make it, Z?”

She saw him swallow hard. “You can depend on it, Charlotte.”

She gave a little smile and glanced down to the cemetery. “The graves are filled in. I told the children I would take them down there once everyone had left.” She turned to Cody and Cheyenne, who were standing about fifty feet behind her and Zeph and just waiting. “We can head down now. Please get in the buggy.”

Zeph rode alongside as they wound down to the town and pulled up by the cemetery’s black iron gates. Charlotte brought a bag with her as they climbed out. Zeph walked with them.

The wooden marker for each of the graves was the same: K
AUFFMAN
, T
ROYER
, M
ILLER
, F
EBRUARY
1875,
WITH
J
ESUS.
On two of them were the additional words: A C
HILD.
Zeph removed his hat.

Charlotte took Cheyenne and Cody to each grave, where they placed a hand-sewn cross made out of quilt material they had stiffened with wood. When the children were bent down by one marker and planting a cross in the earth, Charlotte stood by Zeph and whispered, “They could not tell one person from another?”

“There was no one that could identify the bodies. Who knew them? And some had no faces.”

Charlotte bit her lip. “That there should be such people who would do that to others.”

A loud rumble made them glance toward Main Street. Freight wagons carrying iron ore thundered past on their way to the railroad spur at Vermillion. Zeph and Charlotte looked at one another. Zeph shook his head.

“The train can only handle ore and cattle. There’s no room for people.”

“I know,” she said. “And it’s slow. Very slow.” “I know.”

The children had taken a cross to one of the child markers. “I don’t know when’s a good time to ask this,” said Zeph. “Ask what?”

“Do you think—is Cody—is Cheyenne—did they see the men’s faces? Could they—would they—try to draw any of them for Matt?”

She stared up at him. “Oh, Zephaniah, you know they’re not up to that. It’s enough to say a quiet good-bye without upsetting them about making drawings of those horrible beasts.”

“I know, Charlotte. I hate to ask. But those men will be riding in here in a few days, and they could walk their horses bold as brass down Main Street, and nobody would know a thing. They could place men with rifles in doorways and rooftops and back alleys, and not a person would look twice until the shooting started. I know the kids have been through something no boy or girl should have to see. I don’t want them to keep reliving it. But I don’t want more good people to die on account of Seraphim Raber, either.”

Charlotte looked at the children coming back toward them and blew out her breath. “I will talk to them about it when we’re alone at the ranch. I haven’t asked them if the men were masked. It’s not something I wish to bring up. But you’re right. Others deserve a chance to live.”

The children’s eyes were wet. Charlotte put her arms around their thin shoulders. “You have been very kind to them all. They look down and see that. The crosses are as beautiful as flowers. Wouldn’t you agree, Mister Parker?”

“They are handsome. I don’t know too many resting places that have such special colors by them.”

“Thank you, Mister Parker. Would you children like a prayer to be said?”

“Yah, please,” said Cheyenne softly.

Cody hesitated and then nodded.