The Last Pilgrims (37 page)

“Exactly. Then, after the first night of
travel, I went through Rollo’s bag and found this.” He pulled a
pistol out of his coat and laid it on the table. “It has been fired
twice, recently.”

“What is Rollo doing with a pistol?” Timothy
asked.

“That is the point, Tim,” Piggy replied.
“What is he doing with a pistol? Whom did he shoot? Why all the
secrecy? If we were to have guns on this mission, we could all have
been issued weapons from the armory at Harmony. None of this
tracks! It only adds up if you consider my hypothesis… what I
already suspected but could not prove, that Rollo is an agent of
Aztlan and that he is actively beheading the opposition.” Piggy
looked around the room. They knew he had more to say, so everyone
remained silent.

“That leads us to this afternoon. I was
watching him. I had already taken the gun, and he never knew it was
missing. I was waiting for him to make his move on Jonathan when he
appeared. His behavior even further proved my suspicions. He moved
down that wall away from the conflict, supposedly to increase the
triangulation, but I could tell that he was angling for a shot at
Mr. Wall. His angle put him in a cross-fire position and it put
you, Rob, at risk. He could have taken you both out with one or two
arrows properly placed. This is completely against our training.
And, he couldn’t stop watching me. He knew that I knew something.
He was afraid. He was taking a lot of time lining up his shot, so I
threw a knife at the spies and then, without pausing I threw my
hunting knife and hit him with the blunt end, knocking him
unconscious. I bound him up, and now… here we are.”

There was silence in the room as everyone
considered the evidence against Rollo. No one moved, and it seemed
that there was scarcely any breathing for a full minute. Piggy
looked up, and then back around the room. “Based on all of my
suspicions, on his blatant violations of militia protocol, and the
importance of the issue, I acted. And here is the deal… if he is
innocent, we will know when we get him back to the Ranch and find
out if Phillip is alive and unharmed. We have no need to hear his
case until we get back to the Ranch. Either Phillip has been
attacked, or I am wrong. I am willing to stake my reputation and
future that I am right.”

Rob Fosse nodded his head in agreement. “It
obviously is a critically important issue. I pray to God that you
are wrong, Piggy.”

“As do I.”

Timothy stood up and began to pace a little
around the room. “I trust you Piggy. I can’t say that I ever
trusted Rollo. I respected his position and his experience, but he
always did seem a bit shady to me. I’m with Rob. I hope you are
wrong, but I think you have done the right thing.”

As the others around the room, including
Jonathan began to nod their heads, an ear-splitting crash shook the
room as the door splintered inward and the bound and gagged Troy
tumbled to the ground at Piggy’s feet. Piggy already had a knife
drawn, and Ruth had instinctively drawn her bow, only to be stopped
by her father, who gave her a silent look of disapproval. Piggy
reached down and lifted up the obviously distraught young man, who
was grunting and yelling into his gag. Piggy pulled down the gag
and Troy sputtered for breath before yelling, “He’s escaped! He’s
escaped!” Blood trickled down from a scratch on his head where it
had made contact with the heavy wooden door. “He knocked the boy
unconscious, and he took off on one of the horses. I tried to stop
him, but I couldn’t yell. He rode off to the northwest!”

The militia members began to ready
themselves for pursuit, when Rob called them all to a halt.

“He’s gone. He’s no good to us now. We have
our answer. If he were innocent, he’d have been pleased to go back
and prove that Phillip was unharmed. He knew what awaited him back
there. This is absolute proof that what Piggy said was true. Let
him go and live with his conscience. We have a lot to do. I pray
that Phillip and everyone else is alive and well back at the ranch,
but we need to prepare ourselves for the worst.”

Piggy looked at Rob and nodded. “You are the
ranking militia leader here. We are at your command.” Ruth grabbed
Timothy’s hand and rushed out shouting “Marbus!” and the others
followed them into the courtyard.

Young Marbus Claim was just then beginning
to stir. He had been knocked unconscious with a blow from a rock
behind his left ear. Blood trickled down onto his tunic and the boy
was extremely groggy and disoriented. Piggy tended to him and Ruth
got him some water to drink as the other militia men huddled with
Jonathan Wall, discussing their options. In time, Piggy rejoined
the council and pronounced that Marbus had a slight concussion, but
should be alright in time.

Jonathan prevailed on Rob Fosse to loose
Troy from his bonds and the young man was grateful, while still
understanding that once he was back at the ranch he would be put on
trial for the death of the militia man Morell, and for the attack
on Raymond Stone.

The party headed back towards Bethany
slowly, taking into account their injured and the heat of the day.
At Big Lake they rested again, not heading out on that second day
until late in the evening, as the cooler air invaded the desert.
Timothy spent a good portion of the trip talking at length with
Ruth. She was very worried that her brother might be dead, and she
did not know what would become of all of them if Phillip had been
killed. The worst part, she said, was not knowing. Timothy agreed,
and he found himself entertaining thoughts of being a Vallenses. He
wondered how he would act, and what he might do if he had been
raised among the Vallenses. Both Ruth and Jonathan seemed to
believe that David’s fate, if indeed he had suffered violence, was
a natural and expected result of his adoption of violence as a
means, and of his uniting with the militia. This was a puzzle that
Timothy was far from solving. The puzzle of the Vallenses, their
relationship with the militia, and the use of violence towards good
and noble ends, was perhaps too much for a young orphan to try to
figure out. The two men he admired most—Jonathan of the Vallenses
and Phillip of the militia—were on complete opposite ends of the
spectrum on the issue of violence.
Maybe,
he thought
, it
is something that each man must figure out for himself.

As they traveled eastward the ground began
to ascend slowly upwards towards a low mesa formation that
overlooked several miles of lowland plain about 40 miles due west
of Harmony, and the party moved very slowly upwards—not willing to
push themselves, their tired horses, or their injured men too hard.
As they crested the top of the rise, Timothy was the first to see
the sight across the plain, and the impact of it took his breath
away so that he could only gasp at the vision.

Spread across the valley, shimmering in the
late summer Texas sun, arrayed as a single beast with banners, was
the 6,000 man Aztlani army newly arrived from El Paso. Timothy
blinked, hoping that what he saw was a mirage, while the heat
rising from the valley in the distance and the many enemy flags
unfurled and whipping in the wind gave the scene a frighteningly
surreal quality. One thousand horses stomped impatiently in the
dried and rocky dirt creating small billows of dust that made the
army look as if it floated ethereally on an evil earthen cloud.

Timothy and Ruth looked at one another and
their wordless communication resounded outward to everyone in the
party.
What hath evil wrought?

Piggy alone was able to summon the words
that no one else was willing to voice…

“Looks like we’re not too late for the
party.”

The Wall Ranch was churning with activity.
More and more refugees from the Piney Woods and parts east were
arriving at the ranch daily, pushed as they were from behind by the
threatening advance of the army of the Duke of Louisiana.
Everything seemed to be a continuous swirl of motion with some
refugees arriving even as others were loaded up and headed further
westward towards Harmony.

A few days earlier the wheels of constant
movement had slowed down just long enough to allow for the burial
of David Wall over in the peach orchard next to his mother
Elizabeth. Most everyone took the day off—it being the Sabbath—to
attend an impromptu wake, and so many people came by to visit Betsy
Miller and her husband Paul that the line of those hoping to extend
condolences stretched well over a mile down the Bethany road.
Eventually, Ana, Wally, and Mr. Byler the cobbler had been forced
to ride down the line of well-wishers to bid them all go home. They
explained that Betsy and all of the Walls understood and accepted
their love and appreciated their condolences, but that the day long
wake was much too tiring, and the pain of loss was still too fresh
for it all to go on much longer. Still, although the flow of guests
through the Miller’s tent was staunched, very few people actually
went home.

Long hours after Ana and John Johnson closed
off all access to the tent where the Miller family was living, the
line of Vallensian friends continued to pass slowly by on the road,
continuing until well after midnight and into the early morning.
The grieving friends stopped to look and pray before traveling back
to their homes, or returning by lantern light to their own tents
pitched among the throng of refugees.

Ana felt like she had been forced to bury
more than her beloved David. Maybe she had to bury the insular
feeling of safety and security she had come to expect since the day
she had arrived at the ranch. The Walls were the only
real
family she had known in her life, and she had lived with them
almost three times longer than she had been married to Hamish.

When she first met David he was just a
little boy, five-years-old, bursting with energy, and in possession
of an infinitely curious mind—one almost impossible to satisfy. Now
he was dead…
and maybe his father is too.
She banished the
thought from her mind. She could not even begin to think that
Jonathan might be dead. And Ruth was gone with the posse. She
smoothed her apron and dress with her hands, nervously.
God,
keep the rest of the Wall family safe!

Down in the wheat field—now cleared of all
of the wheat shocks—the militia leaders were forming up units of
new recruits formed primarily out of the ranks of the newly arrived
East Texas Vallenses. Seeing the Vallensian units lined up in ranks
was a strange and discordant vision to Ana. The Vallensian elders
had ruled unanimously to re-establish Jonathan’s recent decree that
any Vallensian adult male who wanted to join the militia could do
so, provided he understood that he would be unceremoniously removed
from the close fellowship of the Vallenses’ Church. Of the
Vallenses from Central Texas, only a few hundred decided that the
time had come to fight; but of the newly arrived East Texas
Vallenses, most of whom had never known Jonathan personally, almost
5,000 men had immediately signed up to join Phillip and the Ghost
militia as they marched west towards the onrushing battle. These
Vallenses, though they were strong, smart, and shot well, were
decidedly not battle hardened militia troops. These were pacifist
farmers and tradesmen who had finally concluded, to the
satisfaction of their own consciences, that they had no more cheeks
left to turn. So, a strange reality had settled in among the free
people of Central Texas; thousands of formally peaceful farmers
were now drilling day and night for war, while tens of thousands
more—those who would not fight—were again packing their belongings
and heading into the unknown future that they believed God had
ordained for them. All of them were now headed towards Harmony.

Ana knew that both categories of Vallenses
were doing what they believed they must do, and that both were
praying for God to help them and support their endeavors. But she
could not help but think that everything might be different if
Jonathan were here to lead them.

As she watched the newly formed Vallensian
units learn to march in the wheat field, she saw old friends and
acquaintances drilling among them, while others were watching from
along the sides of the field. The
oldling
Lew Tibault the
papermaker was watching from the high weeds along the side of the
road. Lew was too old to fight, but his seventeen year old
apprentice (and adopted son) Doug was there in the ranks, marching
in place and trying to keep time in his head. Lew often said that
Doug was a better papermaker than he had ever hoped, and that the
boy seemed to have been born with the talent and wit to make paper.
Now, young Doug was going to war with the sword and probably a gun
as well. Over there, marching silently, was Maurice Stannis and his
boys Lance and Walter. Few people had doubted that the Stannis men
would eventually go to war. Grayson Smith, one of the heroes of the
Battle of Bethany, and his friend Davidson Cooper were both there
among the Vallensian militia contingent.

Ana hoped and prayed, with all of her heart
and mind, that the trouble could be averted, and that something
would happen to make it all stop. But the refugees from East Texas
kept pouring in, pushed ahead of an incessant and insatiable enemy
army from the East; and, on top of this, everyone knew that the
Aztlani army was closing in on the ruins of San Angelo. There was
no stopping the battle. This, she knew.

When she had finally made it across the
violent clearing that was Interstate 20, Ana disappeared into the
darkness again, continuing her long walk southward. As she walked
she soon found herself in some very rugged terrain. The trees grew
thickly and mesquite thorns grabbed at her clothing and she only
made progress with great difficulty.