NEW! From my next book - Gone To Texas

Prelude – In Margaret’s House

              Over that winter, which was the fifty-third year of her life, and the last winter of the war that folk had begun to call “The War Between the States”, a slow creeping paralysis at last confined Margaret Williamson to her bedroom. It was not her original bedroom, upstairs in the newer wing of a sprawling house in a park of meadows and fruit trees, which were all that was left of the farm that her father had established when the nearby town had been called Waterloo on the Colorado. Cruelly, the paralysis had advanced over the last two years, remorselessly taking control of her body and her life – she who had always appeared to be a domestic general in command of a small army, a whirlwind of activity in her vast, sprawling house; a hostess of no small repute, with many friends and the mother of sons. It was a particularly cruel twist of fate that her body should be first and worst affected, leaving her mind, her will and her memory unaffected. Margaret resisted being transformed into a helpless invalid, fighting as she had always fought, with resolute calm and by giving up as little as possible, every step of the way.  When she could no longer climb the stairs, when she could no longer command her own lower limbs, and sat most of the day in a chair with wheels, in which her maids pushed her from room to room as she saw about the business of running a boarding house, she ordered that the room next to the private family parlor be cleared out, and that her own bedroom furniture and all her private possessions, her clothes and ornaments be brought downstairs and installed there.

              “You and poor Daddy Hurst cannot be put to the bother of carrying me upstairs, morning and night,” she said to Hetty, who was her cook and long-time friend.

              “I wish you would do as the doctor advises, Marm,” Hetty answered, “And take the water cure… sure and ‘tis the best thing…”

              “Too much trouble,” Margaret answered, with indomitable cheer, intended to comfort Hetty as much as herself. “This way, I need not tire myself, and perhaps I may begin schooling Amelia in the art of keeping a large house full of guests and boarders… as well as being a political hostess.”

              Hetty mumbled a Hibernian rudery under her breath, and Margaret sighed. Blunt, practical and Irish, Hetty had about as much in common with Margaret’s daughter-in-law as a wild mustang from the Llano did with a pedigreed Kentucky racing horse.

              “She is my son’s wife,” Margaret answered, “And the mother of my grandson. So I do have some hope of her. I want so much for her to take my place… for her sake, as much as anything else.”

              “An’ them as are in Hell want ice water,” Hetty riposted. Margaret sighed again and patted Hetty’s work-worn hand.

“As I can testify, Hetty - there are so few respectable avenues for a woman of good family to provide for her children, for her family,” Margaret said, momentarily distracted. Her hand felt numb, stiff and lumpish, as she moved it. There was a new chill striking her to the heart. So had her good friend Colonel Ford warned her – he who had once practiced medicine, who had worn himself ragged attending on the wife that he loved so dearly. So might her own husband have seen to her needs and to her care… alas that he had been twenty years older than herself, and struck down by camp-fever two years ago. Margaret had mourned for him as she saw to the necessary rituals, for she had loved him – not as dearly as she had loved the husband of her youth, the father of her sons, but she had loved him well… and he would have recognized and mapped the progress of her affliction. That was his way, for he was a logical man. She took her hand from Hetty’s and surreptitiously flexed her fingers. No, it was only a momentary, fleeting thing – but so had it seemed those many months ago, when she began to feel that numbness in her feet and ankles, began to stumble and falter. So had it progressed, relentlessly over the months, independent of events… which were as catastrophic to that world outside as these small, inexorable limitations that her illness placed upon herself.

In the end, as winter turned haltingly to spring, as the fortunes of the Confederacy began to falter, it seemed that Margaret’s body, her strength – and her very will, as indomitable as the will of the men who fought for glory, for the bonny star-crossed flag of the Confederate States - all began to fail at once. Which Margaret, in that private corner of her mind, found ironic in the extreme, for she had always been a  Unionist. In her secret heart, she was an abolitionist as well – a dangerous sympathy, indeed, which practically none in her wide circle of friends had ever suspected. Margaret had much skill and long experience in keeping her true feelings veiled. The old black fortune-teller had said as much, the conjure-woman with her hands like wrinkled monkey-hands, who looked into the lines of Margaret’s hand and revealed the future mapped in them for her, sitting on a weather-bleached tree-trunk cast up on the muddy shore of the river. That very day that Margaret’s father had brought his six yoke of oxen, his heavy-laden wagon, and his family, across the great River at Nacogdoches and come to take up the land that had been promised to him by Mr. Austin and by Alois Becker’s friend, the Baron de Bastrop.

“I was just ten years old,” she remarked one chill day in February. A bitter cold wind stirred the bare grey limbs of the trees outside. The sun cast their eldritch shadows on the scrubbed pine boards at the foot of the French doors that led out to the verandah. Margaret’s daughter-in-law Amelia had wanted to draw the curtains against the icy draft that seeped around the cracks. But Margaret had demurred, saying that she wished to see the outside, not be closed away like an invalid. Amelia did not say anything in reply, but Margaret read her thoughts, as she settled Margaret against the pillows. Amelia rustled away – even her crinoline sounded disapproving, Margaret thought.

“When were you ten years old, Gran-mere?” asked her grandson. Little Horace, just four years old; although the smallest, he was yet the most tenacious of her attendants these days; like a particularly devoted and affectionate lap-dog. He laid on his stomach on the hearth-rug among his toys, heels in the air and carefully setting up a row of painted tin soldiers.

“When we first came to Texas, Horrie,” She answered. “And the conjure-woman told us our fortunes. Well, my fortune, for that day was my tenth birthday. That is why I remember so well. My brother Rudi was just eight, and my little brother was three, a little younger than you are. The conjure-woman did not tell much of my brothers’ fortunes – I thought that I was being especially favored, since I was the oldest… but later I began to think that perhaps she did truly see their futures and wished not to tell us of what she had seen.” Horrie’s eyes rounded in astonishment.

“Where did you live before then, Gran’mere?” he asked, breathless with curiosity. “and where did you meet the conjure-woman?

“We lived in the North, Horrie,” Margaret answered. “The conjure-woman… I don’t know where she came from… we met her the day that we crossed the river into Texas. Only it was part of Mexico, then.”

 Horrie’s eyes rounded even more.

“You lived in the North, with the Yankees?” He breathed, as if this were the most horrible circumstance imaginable. “Gran’mere… was your papa a Yankee?” Margaret added hastily, “It was a very, very long time ago, Horrie. Before the war was even thought of… there was no talk of Yankees and Rebs, then. We thought of all as one country, the United States.”  Margaret sighed a little, for Horrie’s father, her oldest son had fallen on the first day of battle at Gettysburg, not fifteen miles away from where she and her parents had lived, long ago. “It seems a little unreal to me… that time before. Sometimes I think I was not really born until then, that all before we crossed the river were just dreams.”

Across the River

              The river flowed smoothly, as wide as an ocean, dark with mud in the shallows, but shining silver, in those places where snags and rocks did not interrupt the water’s flow. The wagons had crossed that day, a train of wagons belonging to Mr. Sullivan of Georgia, and some other prosperous men, come to take up lands offered by the impresario, Mr. Austin. When the wagons had been all conveyed across, most of the folk in the party decided to make camp, for the traverse of the river had been muddy, exhausting work, both for the ox-teams and for their drivers.

              Margaret Becker and her younger brother Rudolph were dispatched by their mother to gather firewood along the riverbank, within sight of the camp that had begun to blossom in a wide green meadow, a scattering of canvas tents and hastily  piled brush arbors among the wagon tops and neatly piled harness and tack. “And take the baby with you,” Maria Becker added. She spoke to the children in the language they used among themselves, the German of the district settled in during the last century. She mopped perspiration off her forehead as she set down a box of dishes. Two heavy wagons full of household goods and tools had the Beckers brought with them from Pennsylvania, a pair of long freight wagons, with tall canvas covers sloping forward and aft. Alois Becker was a careful man, who had gone out to Texas two years before and returned to bring his family to his promised new holding in Mr. Austin’s land-grant, along with all that he felt needful. Six yoke of draft-oxen pulled each wagon; the front of the largest was fitted out as a tiny cabin for Alois Becker’s wife and three children. But still, unless they stayed at an inn, or with friends and kin as they had earlier upon this road – they must set up a camp at night. Maria and Margaret must cook over an open fire, under a sky that might arc overhead, sequin-spangled with stars or drizzling with rain falling from cotton-wool grey clouds. “Don’t go far from the wagons,” Maria added in warning, as Margaret lifted her littlest brother up and perched him on her hip, trying to do as her mother did so capably. But she was ten years old, and had no hips, and not the strength to carry a heavy three-year old that way for long, especially not a sturdy toddler like Carl. He smiled tranquilly up at her, as she set him down and led his faltering footsteps, following after her brother Rudi, who carried a length of canvas over his shoulder. Margaret, like her brothers, had fair hair, as pale as sun-bleached wheat-straw. She had a firm chin, a face as oval as a bird’s egg and serious blue eyes.

              “Don’t walk so fast, Rudi,” she begged, as the three children picked their way among the rocks and drift, half-sunk on the muddy shore. She yelped as her right foot sank suddenly through a tangle of short grass and squelched in the mud underneath. “Mama said to not go out of sight of the wagons. There’s plenty of wood, close enough.”

              “I want to see more, Grete,” Rudi pleaded, “We’re in Texas proper now… Papa said.” He was the adventurous one, completely fearless, charming and the apple of their father’s eye.

              “It doesn’t look any different than the other side,” Margaret answered, firmly. Rudi scowled; he might be Papa’s favorite, but Margaret was the oldest and utterly reliable when it came to remembering and minding what Papa and Mama said. Curiously, only Margaret could make him obey. Mama might try, but Rudi would then appeal to Papa, who would always let him do as he wished. “There’s plenty of wood here.”

Rudi spread out the length of canvas on a mostly-flat bank, packed tightly with tree-mast and litter brought down by the highest floodwaters. She and her brothers began to gather up armfuls of small branches, cast up far enough above the present shoreline to be well-dried, piling their finds onto the canvas. Margaret, trailing Carl by the hand ventured a little farther along the bank, where a huge dead tree stretched whitened branches against the sky; a skeleton of a tree, clawing at the sunset-apricot sky. A chorus of birds started up from the branches, cawing and cackling noisily.

              “You chillun come from a far place,” said a voice, in strangely accented English. Margaret started up short; how could she have not seen the woman, sitting as if on a throne on the tall knees of the bleached tree roots, reaching into the earth at her feet. It almost seemed as if the woman had sprung out of the earth herself, “And be goin’ to a farther place… so de loah tell me.”

              “Yes, ma’am,” Margaret answered, politely and in English, “Our father has been granted lands in Texas, and brought us here to settle.”

              “’Gwine t’be Mexicans, hey?” The woman chuckled, a rich cynical chuckle, “Swear t’be the king’s man, an’ foller after de old church, make an ‘x’ onna piece o’ paper.” She shook her head, still chuckling, “What de blanquettes won’ do for a piece o’ lan’!”  Margaret stared frankly at her; she supposed the old woman was a slave, for she her skin was brown as polished walnut wood. Margaret had hardly ever seen a person with skin so dark, before leaving Chester County in Pennsylvania so many months ago, although she had seen many since. Mama had said such people were slaves, owned like Papa owned his cattle. She also had murmured to the children in German that such things were wrong. Margaret wondered many things; if the old woman favored being a slave and where had she come from? Some of the other settlers in their train had brought slaves with them, people with dark skins, of all colors from ebony-black to brown and the color of coffee with cream in it, but Margaret didn’t think this woman was among them. She was too old. Her hands looked like stems of grass, with painfully knotted joints. She had a long cloth wrapped around her head, elaborately folded and tucked, covering every scrap of her hair.  There was a cloth-covered basket and a long stick, like a cane made from dark wood at the woman’s feet, as if she had been gathering greens and roots, or mushrooms in the damp places by the river. Carl tugged his hand out of Margaret’s; she let him go toddling towards a pile of drift at the river’s edge, were the water was muddy and shallow, no current to draw in a small and adventurous child.  Margaret shook her head solemnly at the old women’s skepticism.

              “Papa says that we will be left to our own ways and our own church, and that it is only an oath of paper, not an oath of the heart. All we need do is obey the laws of their government. Papa says the laws are very alike anyway.”

              The old woman chuckled rustily, “An’ if dey laws change, who will yore Papa obey, den?”

              “I don’t know,” Margaret answered, much puzzled, “That is a matter for Papa, I reckon. Carl!” She called after her brothers, “Rudi – don’t let Carl get into the mud!” The old woman looked at the boys and smiled in amusement, watching Carl solemnly tugging a sodden length of tree branch out of the shallows. Rudi set down an armload of bleached dry sticks, and hovered at Margaret’s elbow, clearly fascinated by the old woman’s answer.

              “Don’t you fret, girl –  de spirrets tell me, dat chile wuz born under a sign… de hangman will chase arter, but de water protec’ an’ nebber do him harm.”

              “Spirits?” Margaret asked curiously, “Like angels?”

              “No, chile,” The old woman looked amused, “De ol’ sperrits, de loah, like Baron Cemetary, an’ Erzuli ... . Open yore heart to de sperrits… dey tell you tings. Dere be no secrets, when de loah ride dis ole Nigra. My mama, she had de power, look into a pool o’ watter, a candle lit at mid-night, she know tings. An’ so do I know dese tings, Missy Margaret!”

              “How do you know my name?” Margaret asked, startled out of all countenance. She knew she had not said her name to the old woman, and if she was not one of their companions in the wagon party – and Margaret was very sure she was not, for they had been together on the road to Natchitoches for many weeks and she would have noted the presence of an old woman like this – how did she know such things about the Becker children? Even if she had ridden in a wagon all day – and who could endure the constant jolting of the wheels, over the ruts and rocks in the road – Margaret and Rudi would have noted the presence of a woman like this, around the evening campfire or at the privy pits, at any of their noonings or at hitch-up time in the morning.  The old woman chuckled,

              “Hain’t you ben listenin’, chile? De loah, de sperrits tell me! Dey also tell me you is ten year ol’ dis very day. Dey tell me more den de pas’… ”

              “Are you a witch?” Margaret asked boldly and the old woman shook her turbaned head,

              “Not de kin’ yo think, Missy Margaret. Hyer, give me yo han’s.” The old woman reached out her own hands, the long slender fingers with the joints like grass-stems knotted with age and rheumatics. Taking Margarets’ hands, she turned them palm up, and drew them towards her. Margaret did not resist, as the old woman carefully scrutinized her hands, the lines and creases across her palm. Finally, she closed her own fingers, dry and papery-feeling, only a little paler on the palms than Margaret’s own, closing Margaret’s hands and enclosing them in hers. She looked into Margaret’s wide eyes, her own eyes deep pools of ancient wisdom.

              “I see de future in yo han’s, Missy Margaret… a big ol’ house, an’ a man you gwine marry fo’ love, anodder fo’ friendship.”  Her voice went sing-song, and she closed her eyes, as if she concentrated on what she was seeing, “Yo will meet de fust husban’ befoah de moon waxes and wanes agin. Count ten and ten and ten an’ one day t’day… ten year an’ one will you be blessed, Missy Margaret. Joy an’ sorrow, will you have, an’ always frien’s… some o’dem pow’ful men…” Her voice died away and she opened her eyes and hands, relinquishing Margaret’s.

              “What else did you see?” Margaret asked. She did not altogether believe the woman saw her future… but still, this was very curious.

              “Cain’t rightly say no more, Missy Margaret… somp-times dey ain’t no good in knowin’ more. I tole you jus’ what yo have de need to know.”

              “What about me?” Rudi chimed in at last, and the old woman turned her head, acknowledging him for the first time. “What do you see of the future for me?”

It seemed to Margaret that the old woman gazed at her brother for a long, long time, squinting against the low-falling sun sun. Finally, she replied, “’Cain’t see nothin’, boy. Dere be clouds ‘round you, like smoke, dark black smoke.”

              “Is that all?” Rudi asked, disappointed. The old woman shrugged.

              “Jes’ dark smoke, like from a bonfire.”

              Margaret, looking into the old woman’s eyes, wondered momentarily if that had truly been all she saw – if there were things she saw that it were best for Rudi not to know about. Could she have seen some kind of misfortune for him, just as she saw a big house, many friends and two husbands for Margaret, but did not think she should know any more than that? Margaret thrust that thought away from her mind. Rudi was Papa’s favorite; Papa had brought them all to Texas, to make a secure future for all of them, but mostly for Rudi. The old woman made a shooing motion with her hands,

              “You chilluns best be gwin back to yo mama… be dark soon, an’ yo papa, he in a hurry…” She cackled richly again, “He in a big rush to be a Mexican… don’t he know dat America gwine follow him, no matter?”

              Margaret would have asked more, but for a sudden splash of water from the river’s edge.

              “Carl!” she cried, for her little brother had wandered into the shallows and sat down in the water; he was thoroughly wetted and daubed to the waist of his shirt in sticky black mud. “Come out of the water at once, before you catch your death of cold!” She caught up the hem of her plain homespun dress in one hand, wading out in waters up to her knees towards Carl, who was laughing with delighted unconcern, inching away from her with a mischievous look on his face. Behind her on the bank, the old witch-woman chuckled,

              “Doan you have a care foah dat chile, Missy Margaret – de watter be his savior!” But Margaret paid her no mind, although she wondered just how the old woman could be so sure. Children drowned in river water all the time; hadn’t Mama often told the story of her little cousin, swept away in the Brandywine River, when Mama was a girl?  She snatched Carl’s hand with her free hand, but he pulled against her, already looking cross and mutinous and being taken away from his delightful play in the mud. “Gather up the wood, Rudi,” she gasped, “We’ve enough of it for Mama -we’re going back to camp now.” With her ten-year old strength she wrested her little brother out of the shallows. He was wet through, and filthy with river-muck. “Oh, Carl! Mama will blame it all on me, I was supposed to look after you! Papa will give us both a licking, for sure!”

              “Mama won’t let him do anything of the sort,” Rudy panted, struggling under the weight of the canvas-rolled bundle of wood, and the old witch-woman shook her head. She gathered up her basket and her cane, and came to her feet by slow degrees.

              “I tole you, dat chile won’t come to no harm by watter, nor you neither, Missy Margaret… you gwoine back to yo Mama and yo Papa, you heah?”

              Margaret barely heard the old woman, for Carl pulled sulkily at her hand. In exasperation, she hoisted him up and carried him a little way, his soaking-wet clothes shedding water onto hers. They had come farther along the riverbank than had seemed at first, and this made Margaret cross and unhappy. Now, in addition to the baby having dirtied his clothing, Mama would be worried, and needing wood to start cooking dinner with, and Papa would be unhappy because supper might not be ready when he was hungry for it.

              “I wonder what the old woman meant,” Rudi asked, breathlessly. “About the water?”

              “I don’t know,” Margaret, and paused to hitch Carl higher.  His wet clothing was now soaking through her dress and shift to her skin, and Margaret’s heart sank. Mama would look sad, at the extra work that wet and dirty clothes would make for her. She would worry that Margaret and Carl would catch their death of cold, and send them to bed early, in the wagon. Of course, her little brother would not mind so much: he would be half-asleep before supper was even over. But Margaret would mind very much. When she was finished with helping Mama with cleaning up after supper, she might like to linger at the edge of the circle of men around the fire, talking of land, and of governments and of the wonders  to be seen in their new country. This was their first night in Texas, now that they had reached it at last. Although it did not look all that much different from the country they had traveled through; all piney woods and sloughs full of long-legged water birds and those enormous scaly lizards that the Papa said jovially were called alligators. Margaret had wanted very much to hear more of this talk, especially on this night. Overhead, it seemed as if the color was bleached out of the sky, fading from blue to something like the color of oyster shells, save where the sun set in a smear of orange and purple clouds edged with a line of silver.  Birds clamored in the tree branches above their heads, swift dark shadows, darting here and there against the pale sky. With no little relief, Margaret and Rudy crossed one last stretch of pebbly shore and saw the wheel-rutted path up to the higher ground where they had come, where the wagons had been brought. “It’s not much farther, Rudy – run along and take the wood to Mama.”

              Obediently Rudi ran ahead of her, his bare feet flashing, towards the half-circle of wagons. Margaret could already smell a drift of wood-smoke. In the dusty blue twilight, the flames from cook-fires were as pale as the sky. A chill breeze wandered across the campfire, creeping out as the going of the sun drained away all the warmth in the world. Carl fussed to be let down, but Margaret hoisted him higher against her, and sang a snatch of children’s rhyme to sooth him,

              “Sleep baby sleep… while Mama watches the sheep… you are growing too fast, Carlchen!”  Margaret sighed; back in Pennsylvania, their Opa, their grandfather had told her the story of the farmer who became enormously strong, by lifting a newborn calf every day. Eventually, so said Opa, chuckling behind his beard, the farmer could lift the full-grown cow over his head. Margaret could lift her little brother quite easily when he was a baby, so Opa solemnly insisted that she would be able to lift him just the same, when they were both grown. Margaret had agreed with him at the time, but only now was beginning to suspect that Opa had been having a gentle jest at her expense. Her arms and shoulders ached; no, there was no help for it, she would have to let him down. They were nearly to Papa’s camp anyway. Margaret’s heart lifted, for she could see Papa, hers and Rudi and Carl’s Papa, talking with some of the other men of the train, where the leaping flames of a new fire sprang up and gilded their faces and hands in the swift-falling dusk. The firelight shone on Papa’s hair, as he pushed his wide-brimmed straw planter’s hat back. Margaret could always pick out Papa, among the other men, for he was so much taller than most of them, his hair as pale as ripe wheat, and his beard like fine curls of gold wire. Back in Pennsylvania, the Quaker schoolteacher had once shown the children a book of ancient history, illustrated with engravings of heroes of old, gods and warriors and kings and such. Margaret secretly thought that some of them looked like Papa, so noble and fearless. She had wondered, looking at those pages, if any of those cloaked and helmeted men, holding their swords before them, or at their sides, were as outspoken and easily angered as Papa. To herself, Margaret thought it very likely, for they were gods and kings, not a farmer – even if Papa was the best farmer in Chester County and accounted to be a very good man when it came to doctoring cows and grafting apple trees. She set her little brother down, so that he could walk as he wished, but once his feet were set on the ground, he began fussing to be picked up again. Margaret sighed again, much exasperated. Like Papa, Carl seemed to want always what he didn’t have.

              To her relief, Mama hardly seemed to notice how wet and dirty the two of them had become. Mama was chopping onions, on a tin plate held in her lap.

              “Did we bring enough wood, Mama?” Margaret asked, and Mama smiled through tears from the onions,

              “Yes, Liebchen, just enough for the fire tonight … will you mind the baby? Your brother has gone to remind Papa to fill the water-barrel… your Papa! He is as pleased as a dog with another tail tonight! In Texas at last…”

              “Is it all that much farther to go, Mama?” Margaret asked, wistfully. “To … to San Felipe on the Brazos?”

              “Some more weeks, Liebchen,” Mama answered, with a smile. Margaret thought that Mama was pretty enough, compared to other Mamas – but not as handsome as Papa was, compared to other men. She had a round face, and her hair curled into little tendrils around her face. Mama never lost her temper, and nothing ever seemed to bother her the way things bothered Papa. Even Papa’s anger didn’t bother Mama; Margaret was most sure of this, for she was the oldest and she watched her parents. Sometimes Margaret felt like she had stepped outside of herself, and she watched Mama and Papa as if they were strangers – how they spoke to each other, how Mama soothed Papa’s bad moods – and how Mama took the edge from Papa’s temper when he had spoken hastily and in anger to  someone else. And no matter what, Papa paid mind to Mama’s soft-voiced admonitions. He would not be angry with Mama, ever – the same as he would never say harsh words to Rudy. He might on occasion speak so to Margaret, but curiously enough Papa’s anger did not so affect Margaret, ever since Papa had returned from his first trip to Texas. He had been away, away for a year or more, leaving Mama and Margaret and Rudi to manage with Opa and Oma’s help. When he returned, it seemed to Margaret that he was a stranger – still her Papa, of course – but a stranger, whom she could stand a little outside from and watch, without feeling a pain from his thoughtless words.

              Mama had set her shawl aside – her largest and warmest - so that she could step safely close to the fire. Margaret took it up and wrapped it around herself and Carl, sitting on the three-legged creepy-stool brought out from the wagon. Margaret hugged her little brother to her, wrapped in the heavy woolen folds against the evening chill, creeping up from her bare toes.  It would be so nice to have been inside walls tonight, Margaret thought – and to be warm. Now, here was Papa, with Rudi perched on his shoulders. Papa carried a water-bucket in each hand. Rudi had Papa’s hat on his own head, with the brim of it falling well over his eyes. Both he and Rudi were laughing.

              “What a day!” Papa exclaimed exuberantly as he came to the Becker’s campfire, “It smells good, Mariechen, whatever it will be! And we can do it justice tonight, can’t we, lad?” He set down the buckets and swung Rudi down off his shoulders, deftly turning the boy upside down for a few moments, whole Rudi yelped and begged to be put down.

              “Venison stewed with onions and juniper berries,” Mama answered, while Rudi squealed and begged to be put all the way down. Mama and Mrs. Sullivan had traded with some wandering Indian women who came bearing baskets of pecans and golden-dripping combs of honey, as they waited to cross the river that very morning, and so tonight they would eat well. Papa leaned down and kissed Mama on the cheek, while Rudi tugged on the hem of his rough roundabout coat.

              “Sublime, my dearest. Such a country! A garden of Eden it will be, Mariechen, just you wait.”

              “And for how long will I wait for a proper house, Alois?” Mama wrapped the corner of her apron around her hand to shield it from the heat of the fire, and stirred the sizzling onions with a long iron fork, “With a proper stove and bread-oven in it, so that I do not break my back, leaning over a fire, nor set fire to my petticoat?”

              “Not for long, Mariechen,” Papa promised with great exuberance, while Rudi begged, “Again, Papa – again!”  Laughing, Papa lifted up Rudi and holding him at the waist turned him upside down. Carl wriggled to be let down from Margaret’s lap, for he was as eager as Rudi to be played with, to romp as little boys did, as puppies did with an indulgent older dog. But Papa looked down as Carl ran towards them, saying in annoyance,

              “Margarete, the idiot child is filthy – could you not have kept him away from the mud, if he doesn’t have the wits to stay out of it himself?”

              “He was helping us with the wood, Papa,” Margaret began to plead, for Carl looked as if he had been spanked and Mama answered swiftly,

              “It is of no matter, Alois – children will become dirty, with there is naught else to play with save the dirt. Play with the boy, then.”

              But the bright interest had gone from Carl’s face, at Papa’s harsh words, and he scrambled back to shelter under Mama's shawl with Margaret.  Papa had been entirely a stranger to Carl, for he had gone to scout out their new land in Texas when Carl was still a lap-baby. When he returned last harvest-time, to make plans to bring them all to Texas, Carl had been just old enough to walk, to begin to talk. He pulled away from Papa’s attention, screwing up his little face in distaste and almost falling to all fours in his haste to hide behind Mama and Margaret. He did not cry, like other children might have, for Carl was normally of a sunny and placid nature, but he was sullen and silent around Papa. It was one of those standing-apart flashes of insight that had increasingly come to Margaret that this made Papa very unhappy. Papa had wanted little Carl to like him, to be as open and affectionate as Rudi was. But Papa was too impatient to coax Carl into the same sort of liking, as Mama had urged him to do, and so Papa ignored him and made much of Rudi. Margaret wondered now and again if she might do anything to make Papa see this; she thought not. If Mama could not make Papa see reason and favor his younger son as much as he favored the older, there was not much that Margaret herself could do. And perhaps she didn’t mind, too much – for that left her little brother to her, like her real baby-doll.

(to be Continued. With luck, to be available by December, 2011)

Atalanta and the Erlking

“Sabine!” called Mama from the bottom of the garden where she was making soap on a mild spring day. Mama did not wish to bring the smell of wood-ash lye and tallow near to the house, or the heat of the fire that it bubbled over, “Will you bring me more wood now!?”

                  “Yes, Mama,” Sabine answered hastily. She emptied the tortoise-shell kitten out of her lap and set aside the book of her Papa’s that she was reading to her little sister Auguste. Sabine and her sister and the kitten had curled up on the rustic leather and wooden settee that sat in the breezeway of Heinrich Stalp’s farm, on Grape Creek in the Pedernales Valley. Sabine was thirteen years old; the older of the Stalp’s two daughters in this year that Papa said was 1864.

“A cursed year,” Papa had said with a sigh to Mama last night after supper, when he thought that Sabine was not listening, “A war that shows no sign of ending and the hanging band stalking these hills again! They took the schoolmaster from his house, on Market Square in the middle of Friedrichsburg, as bold as brass.”

“Who?” Sabine asked, curiously, “And what is the hanging band, Papa? Is it like the Erlking in the song that the singing-club sings?”

Papa and Mama both looked startled. They were accustomed to talk of adult matters in that hour after supper, while the sunlight faded from the sky and the pale moths began to flicker around the lamps hanging in the breezeway between the two tiny rooms of the Stalp’s log house. Mama would sew and knit, while Papa mended or sharpened his tools, or cast lead bullets for his long old-fashioned flint-lock rifle.

“They are bad men, Liebchen,” Mama answered quickly. Sabine thought that Mama would have said more, but Papa gently pinched Sabine’s cheek and said,

“That’s my clever girl – they are rather like the Erlking and his minions… but they do not steal the souls of children…”

“Rather, they take away the men who will not join their army, and fight for them, and hang them from trees,” Mama knotted and snapped off a thread with an abrupt gesture, her face tense and unhappy, “Heinrich, why didn’t we join my cousins in Milwaukee, in the north….”

“Juliana, don’t frighten the children,” Papa answered soothingly, “Because the Society offered us land here and there were already many of our folk,” and he smiled with affection at his daughter, “And the girls are happy here, are they not? No, the Erlking here does not harm children, so my girls have nothing to fear.”

“What does the Erlking look like then?” little Auguste piped up.

Papa put on that face that he used when he told stories, making up marvelous adventures to amuse his daughters and the other children from the little farms scattered along Grape Creek. Now and again he held lessons for them all, in the breezeway of his house – when the work of all their farms permitted such. “He’s a tall man on a tall horse,” he answered, “And he wears a tall black hat with a narrow brim… and the way that you can tell him from among his minions is that…” and he paused enticingly, until both Auguste and Sabine chorused,

“How, Papa… how will we know the Erlking?”

“Because,” Papa lowered his voice dramatically, “He has odd eyes… one pale blue eye and the other no color at all! That is how you will know the Erlking! Now!” he swept them both into his arms for an enthusiastic embrace, “It is time for sleep, both of you. Your mama wishes to finish making soap tomorrow, and I have to finish planting maize and beans.”

Sabine had taken her little sister by the hand, leading her into the part of the house that served as their parlor and at night their parent’s bedroom. She and her sister slept on pallet-beds in the loft over the parlor. They climbed the short ladder, and Sabine helped her sister take off her dress, and then she took off her own. Each of them had only the one dress, a simple garment with a narrow skirt, sewn out of sturdy janes fabric, originally blue but worn with wear and washing to the color of a bruise, or the grey-blue of the thunderstorm clouds when they pressed close over the Pedernales Valley and the little farms in the cleft of Grape Creek. Sabine had a plain linen shift to wear underneath and a pair of drawers, Auguste only the drawers, patched out of a piece of faded calico. Sabine had once overheard Mama upbraiding Papa, blaming them for being so poor, but Papa said that it was the war that made them poor, the war which ruined the district and kept him from seeking work outside their farm. Sabine considered for a moment, thinking on that. Were they poor? She didn’t think so, for no one else along Grape Creek had any better than what they had… except for Mr. Burg, and he had so many horses! She and Auguste, Papa and Mama, they had enough to eat, Papa’s books to read, the kitten and a roof that kept out the rain, the iron patent-stove in the parlor that kept them all warm in the winter and the other children to play with, all the summer day long. She tucked her sister into bed, after hanging up their meager garments on the pegs set into the end roof-beam over their heads, and saying their bedtime prayer.

“Good night, Auguste,” she said, as the tortoise-shell  kitten hopped nimbly onto the foot of their pallet and curled up at their feet, purring so heavily that Sabine could feel the vibration of it. “Don’t fear what Papa said about the Erlking… that was just a story. Anyway, Papa and Mama are just outside – and they will always keep us safe.”

“I won’t, ‘Beena,” Auguste yawned. “Good night.”

The straw in the pallet rustled gently as Sabine and her sister found a comfortable position. The very last thing she remembered before she slept was the sound of Mama and Papa’s voices, outside in the breezeway.

Now, Sabine went to the woodpile, trailed by her little sister, where Papa had split rounds of oak tree-trunk into slabs that would fit into the stove, or onto the fire under the soap-kettle. She gathered up two armfuls and carried them to Mama. Mama smiled, as she wiped sweat off her forehead with the corner of her apron, an apron dirty with smears of ash and black soot. Soap-making was a messy, smelly business, boiling together quantities of wood-ash lye and rendered tallow. Mama always insisted on their house and their clothes being clean – or as clean as they could be, so it was a necessity.

“Thank you, Sabine – that is enough for now. I would like you to run an errand, now – two errands rather. Can you gather fresh greens for our supper? And mushrooms from that little patch in the oak-woods, if there are any to be found at this time. And then if you would take half of what you have found to Mr. Burg and his children…” Mama made a clicking sound with her tongue and sighed. “So sad, Matilde Burg taken from him and the children at such a time! Perhaps you should just ask if they would rather come sup with us? Poor little Maria is hardly old enough to even think of keeping house for her father and brother.”

“Oh, yes, Mama!” Sabine answered happily; it would be more fun to wander the creek-banks and meadows, gathering spring greens and mushrooms than helping Mama with the soap.

“Take your sister,” Mama stirred the bubbling brown soap carefully with a branch of rosemary, “And be careful. If you see any Indians, hide and run home as quickly as you may, once they have passed.”

“Why, Mama? Papa says we are at peace with them – that the Baron Meusebach made a treaty…”

“Not all of them Liebchen,” Mama answered with a sigh. Sabine took her sister by one hand and a shallow basket in the other. The tortoise-shell kitten followed them a little way, before being distracted by a butterfly.

Sabine loved the creek, water as clear and green as bottle-glass, in places so deep as to come to her waist, and in others only up to her ankles as it slipped chuckling over smooth-polished stones, as pure white and perfectly round as marbles. She made up a story for Auguste, that the creek-gravel was actually pearl-stones from the necklace of the Erlking’s daughter, telling the story to her all through the long afternoon.  They splashed through the shallows below the Stalp place, and wandered along the bank, marveling at the gaily jeweled dragon-flies with their lacy wings, hovering over the water, and tiny frogs, hardly larger than the end of Sabine’s thumb. A pair of long-tailed squirrels frisked with each other, chattering furiously, before one chased the other up the trunk of a towering cypress tree. Auguste gathered a skirt-full of pecans from the grass and matted leaves underneath a pecan tree, but they were from last year, all black and half-rotted, full of little holes bored by hungry insects. Auguste was very proud of her efforts, none the less and Sabine said cheerfully,

“Well, take them home for the pig, then.”

At the end of an hour or so, she had a full basket of field greens, mustard sprouts and dandelions and such, and half a dozen pale round mushrooms. She and Auguste had also come around the bend of Grape Creek to find two boys fishing for minnows in a one of the deeper pools. Peter Petsch was ten, his friend Gustav Burg the same. Sabine knew both of them well, for they had both come for lessons from Papa and to listen to stories. Peter had freckles and a gap between his front teeth. Gustav was the son of their neighbor Mr. Burg. Sabine felt very sorry for him, for his Mama had just died, not four days past.

“My Mama said you should come and have supper with us,” she said to Gustav, who looked at the ground and mumbled,

“Papa won’t hear of it. The brown mare is in foal and he does not want to leave her.”

“Well, then we have some greens for your supper,” Sabine answered, “Mama said for me to take them to your father. It’s easy enough to fix them. I can show you and Marie, if your Papa is still busy with the mare.” Sabine had already noted that it was mothers who did the cooking. Gustav shrugged unhappily, but came readily enough. It was getting on to late afternoon, the time that Mama began cooking the evening meal. She thought it very sad, now that Gustav and Marie would only have the supper that their poor distracted Papa could fix for them. They walked, all four children, along the creek bank towards Mr. Burg’s pastures and the fine log house that he was able to build. It was larger than Stalp’s, having four large rooms and a real upstairs, but much the same kind of furniture; some few treasured things brought from the Old Country, but mostly rustic stuff, with chair seats made of cowhide. Already it had an indefinable aura of neglect about it. Marie Burg, only a few years older than Auguste, sat on the edge of the porch aimlessly swinging her legs and Sabine made the same disapproving “tsk!” sound that Mama made. Marie’s face and dress were dirty, and her hair straggled around her face. She looked the very picture of woe and neglect. The boys vanished in the direction of the stable, around the side of the house.

“Bring me a comb, Marie,” Sabine said as she set down the basket, “And I will do up your hair properly. I guess your Papa is still busy with the mare?”

Marie sniffed, tearfully, “He is. The foal is born, but Papa is just sitting there. I have asked about supper, but he just sits there. He started to say ‘ask your mama’, but then he looked so terribly sad.”

Sabine sighed, “Wash your face, Mariechen, and let me comb your hair. Then I will show you what our Mama does with the greens.”

By the time that she had Marie’s hair woven neatly into two plaits, the boys had emerged from the barn, with Mr. Burg leading the brown mare by the halter. Sabine thought the mare was the prettiest of Mr. Burg’s horses, dainty and gentle, hardly larger than a pony. And the new foal was a darling, hardly larger than a big dog and still a little wobbly on it’s broom-staff legs. She and Marie and Auguste giggled to see it nuzzling Peter’s hair; even Mr. Burg smiled, momentarily lightening the sadness in his face.

“Take them out to the upper pasture where the other brood-mares are,” he said, handing the end of the halter to Gustav, “Let them have a little fresh air before nightfall, not so? You should all go, so that the little fellow will be used to people. That’s the trick of taming them to harness, you know – if they are already accustomed to people, than the battle is half-won!”

Peter and Gustav disputed amiably over who would lead the mare, and who would lead the foal – who, truth to tell did not need much leading. He just frisked after his mother, now and again nuzzling one of the children with affectionate curiosity as they wandered along the path towards the upper pasture, some distance from the Burg house, and the main pasture. Mr. Burg had taken care to fence them both, for he treasured his horses. Sabine’s Papa said often that he was the best hand at breeding and training both – and that when the war was over, he would be the richest man in Gillespie County. The way towards his upper pasture was on the path that Sabine and Auguste would take to walk home from Burgs’ so they accompanied the boys and Marie

“I forgot the basket,” Sabine suddenly recalled, stopping short when they were halfway up the winding footbath between the trees. “With the greens for our supper…. Go on with Marie and the boys, Auguste. I will run back and fetch it, and meet you at the pasture.” She gave Auguste’s hand to Marie, who took it willingly – after all, what was there to fear along Grape Creek?

Sabine kirtled her skirt to her knees and ran; she was fast for a girl, and her bare feet were toughened by exposure. She ran easily along the dusty track that Mr. Burg’s horses and wagons had worn through the spring grass, but her heart pounded in her ears so hard that she could barely hear anything else, not the sound of distant hoof-beats, or the distant sound of something crackling like ice breaking on Grape Creek after a hard winter freeze.

There at last was the roof of the Burg house, dark among the surrounding trees – but there were men in the farmyard, men on horseback, a lot of men and more of them in Mr. Burg’s large pasture, yelling and whooping at his horses. What was this? Sabine slowed to an uncertain walk. Who were these men, where did they come from, shouting in a language she didn’t understand. Not Indians, for they wore white men’s clothes. Some of them had calico handkerchiefs or long scarves wrapped around the lower part of their faces. Was Mr. Burg selling his horses to someone, Sabine wondered? She walked a little closer. Now she could see the basket with the greens, exactly where she had left it on the edge of the porch – and there came Mr. Burg from within his house. He no longer appeared sad, but terribly angry, shouting at these men – what were they doing with his horses? Sabine walked faster; surely Mr. Burg would sort it out, now.

Mr. Burg came down from the porch, shouting at the man nearest to him. Sabine was close enough to see that his hands were empty. Suddenly another man on a horse rode in between Mr. Burg and the house, and swiftly drawing a long-barreled pistol from the breast of his shirt, took aim and shot him three times in the back.

The sound resounded like thunderclaps and Sabine froze in her footsteps, horrified. Mr. Burg crumpled, falling like something heavy dropped to the ground and lay motionless, save for a pool of bright red blood steadily widening from underneath his body. Sabine took one or two hesitating steps farther, thinking that this could not be real, this was a nightmare. She would wake on her pallet in the dark loft over the parlor, with the tortoise-shell kitten sleeping at her feet, and Mama calling comfort from below: ‘It is only a bad dream, Liebchen, go back to sleep.’

But no, this was not a dream. Sabine watched the bright tide of blood soak into the dust at its edges, and she lifted her eyes to look at the man who had shot Mr. Burg, a tall man on a tall horse. Just as Papa had assured her, the Erlking wore a tall black hat with a narrow brim… and he did indeed have odd-colored eyes, blazing in a face as pale as deaths’ head. For the briefest of moments they crossed glances, Sabine and the deathlike Erlking, who laughed a cruel and maniacal laugh as he held her gaze with his own, transfixed in the farmyard, like an insect pinned in a case of naturalists’ specimens. He still had his pistol in his hand. As she watched with her own blood frozen for horror in her veins, he lowered it. He aimed at Mr. Burg, lying motionless on the ground at his horses’ feet.

Sabine thought that he fired once or twice more. The sound of that cruel laughter echoed in her ears as she fled, ran as fast as one of the rabbits fleeing the plough in spring, all the world a blur around her until the noise of the men in Mr. Burg’s pasture and farmyard were dim in the distance behind her. Still she pelted, bare feet flying, until she caught her toes on a tree root and nearly fell.

“Sabine!” That was Peter Petsch calling her name, Peter with his face nearly as pale as the Erlking’s. He caught her arm, kept her from falling flat, but she collapsed onto the ground anyway, nursing her bruised toes and gasping for breath.  Behind Peter, Gustav had the halters of the mare and colt both in his hands. He cried, “Sabine, they’re taking Papa’s mares… those men! And they shot the foals, all but this one! Why would the shoot the foals – it was as if they didn’t want them to follow after the mares – but they didn’t want us to have them either!?”

“What is the matter,” Peter’s eyes were worried; he was a clever lad, “Why are you running so fast, ‘Beena – what has happened at Burg’s?”

“The Erlking!” Sabine cried.  She caught her breath again, seeing Marie and Auguste, “The Erlking and his followers… Mama called them the hanging band, come to take away and hang the men who won’t fight in their army! They came to Burg’s to take the horses…. and Mr. Burg is dead. They killed him… I saw…”

Marie began to cry softly; Gustav did not cry or flinch. Only his eyes widened dark in his face, like holes in a sheet of paper.

“They could not take the horses, otherwise,” he finally acknowledged wretchedly. The mare nudged his shoulder, and he stroked her muzzle, almost without thinking. “Papa… he would not let anyone take the horses, like that. He loved the horses nearly as much as us. Who are these men, Sabine? What should we do now?”

“If it is the hanging band, they are come here for more than horses,” Peter answered gravely, “Listen!”  The five children held still, listening intently for those sounds which carried but slight upon the ear in the quiet afternoon, up from the lower land around the creek. They heard a faint crashing sound, like that of an ax in wood, and agitated voices. “That is from the Kirchner’s!” Peter added.

“We must warn them,” Sabine gasped, having recovered her breath, “Warn Papa, and all the men!”

“They have already gone to Berg’s” Peter added, “And if they are at the Kirchners, they have already been to Mr. Blanks’ and the Fellers’ as well… we can’t hope to out run them on the track… they have horses already.”

“Footpaths,” Sabine answered, and her chin lifted defiantly. “The little footpaths that only we and the deer know well! You and I, on either side of the creek! We must run to all the houses upstream from here. Gustav… you must take the mare and the foal into the nearest thicket, you and Marie and Auguste and keep them all safe from those men.” She folded her feet under her, kneeling before her sister and Marie. She made her voice sound strong, authoritative, as firm as Mama’s or Papa’s. “You must do as Gustav tells you. It is the Erlking, and he is not hunting children… but rather our Papa, and Peter’s Papa and all the others. Peter and I, we go to warn them!” She kissed her sister and scrambled to her feet.

“I’ll cross over,” Peter gasped, “My house first, then the others on that side…” he named four households, and Sabine nodded.

“Don’t let them catch sight of you,” she answered, “Not for anything – for they might guess what we are doing – and don’t waste time.”

“Don’t worry, ‘Beena,” Peter grinned, a flash of teeth in his freckled face, “I can shift myself faster through the fields and bushes than ever they can on their horses! Good luck!” And he was away, sprinting as fleet as one of the deer. Sabine looked over her shoulder, making sure that Gustav and the little girls were well on their way into a thicket with the mare and the little colt, before she kirtled her skirts above her knees again and began to run.

Thinking of the Erlking, his dreadful mismatched eyes in his face made her run all the faster. She thought of Atalanta, the huntress in one of the old tales that Papa read to her, Atalanta who was faster in a footrace than any man alive, but for three apples of gold. It was the Erlking that she must out-race, the dreadful Erlking on his tall horse – and not on the track through the Grape Creek farms, but on the little paths where a horse couldn’t follow. She could run, Sabine assured herself against a rising tide of panic at the thought of the Erlking shooting at her Papa, they way that he had shot Mr. Burg. She was almost to the Stalp farm – she could smell the faint smell of boiling soap on the wind.

“Mama!” She screamed as she burst out of the thicket of scrub trees that lined the edge of Papa’s fields, “Papa! It is the Erlking – the hanging band is come!”

She saw Mama, frozen in mid-stir over the soap kettle, Papa dropping the ax in mid-stroke as he chopped more wood. He came running to meet her, crying,

“Sabine- what is this!? Where is Auguste!”

“She’s hiding in the woods with the Bergs!” Sabine screamed, “They shot Mr. Burg and stole the horses! Papa, you must hide too! At once! It’s the hanging-band, and they are coming!”

There was only one thing more frightening than seeing Mr. Burg killed in front of her – and that was the expression on Papa’s and Mama’s face – for they believed her, instantly and they were afraid. What shelter was there in the world, if your parents were afraid, Sabine wondered? Mama dropped the rosemary branch, as Papa shouted,

“Juliana – into the woods! Sabine, you also!”

“No, Papa – I must warn the others!” Sabine answered, as she tore herself from her father’s arms and ran. She comforted herself with the thought that Papa would be able to hide himself and Mama, hide away from the house where the hanging-band would surely come looking for them. She ran, fearing at any moment to hear the pounding of the horses at her back, that the terrible Erlking would realize that she was more than just a barefoot girl in a threadbare faded dress – that she was Atalanta, the huntress and a messenger.

She ran to five more houses; each household listening to her gasped-out warning with instant belief, men and boys instantly grabbing hats and weapons, scattering from their supper-tables into the woods in all directions. After the last house her chest ached, with every breath stabbing like a knife. She rested, sitting on the edge of their porch with her head on her own knees, hardly hearing a word of what was said to her by the woman of that house. Her feet were cruelly bruised, but she hardly felt it until she began to walk. Her hair hung in a tangle, half-pulled out of her plaits by thorny branches that had scratched her face.

“You must stay here,” the woman told her, but Sabine answered firmly,

“No – don’t fear for me. I know the ways to go home where they will not dare to follow,” And so she went home the way that she had come, limping on her bruised feet yet feeling oddly triumphant. She saw nothing untoward, no strangers at all, and so she went down towards Grape Creek to soak her sore feet in the cool water. She found a long oozing scratch, the length of her shin that she had hardly noticed, so much had she concentrated on running.  There sat Peter Petsch on the rocky bank, also breathless and disheveled, and he grinned at her.

“I beat you, I’ll bet,” he said mischievously.

Sabine made a fist and punched his shoulder as she had seen the boys do, answering, “You did not – there is none faster than Atalanta!”

She went limping home, and taking her time about it, for her feet hurt sorely – finding little house entirely empty; the kettle of soap cooling over a barely smoldering fire and the branch of rosemary laying where Mama had thrown it down, covered with congealing soap. The tortoise-shell kitten came and sat on her lap, winding its’ tail with the kink at the end around her wrist and burrowing it’s little face into the breast of her dress. Sabine cuddled it to her, feeling the fragility of the kitten’s bones in her two hands. Something so little and young had to be sheltered, kept safe – and that was the duty of those who were brave and big, like Atalanta. Like Mama and Papa. There was the sound of horses on the track, many horses. Sabine lifted her head – it could be none other, with so many horses in Grape Creek on this day. They spilled into the yard, as they had been at the Burg’s – those men with scarves and kerchiefs over their faces. That tall man, the Erlking, he rode up to the very porch of the Stalp’s house, shouting at her in that language which she did not understand. Sabine stared at him levelly, holding the kitten close to her. So that was the Erlking – Papa had said they did not hunt children. Just the men who would not fight for them, so she had nothing to fear from him and his minions. As Sabine looked at them, and felt no fear, not the least scrap of it. They were only men, neither demons or spirits. Only men, hunting for other men. And because of her, they were baffled in that aim. Sabine stared at him. No, she did not fear him; she was Atalanta. He was baffled, angry.  Papa and the other men were safe, gone away into the woods and hills because she had run the best race of all – and she was not afraid either.

The Erlking shouted some more, and wheeled his horse – he and the others spilled out of the farmyard as rapidly as they had come into it. Sabine sat contented with the kitten in her lap, watching daylight fade into twilight, sensing the quiet that returned to Grape Creek. As the brilliant dark-gold sun set behind the hills beyond and shadows began to lengthen across the yard, Papa and Mama appeared. They came from the wagon track – by this, Sabine knew that the danger had truly departed. Papa carried Auguste perched on his shoulders, Mama led Marie Burg by the hand – and Gustav Berg followed after, leading the mare and her foal.

“My good, brave girl!” Papa said, as he kissed her forehead. “They are gone – all of them. They were frustrated of their intentions – which were, I think – to take and hang every man of this settlement who would not enlist to serve their despotic aims. They are baffled of that, thanks to you and young Petsch!”

“Papa!” Sabine answered, as she clung to him with desperate fervor, “Are we safe? They have truly gone?”

“For now, they have,” Papa smiled at her, “And we are safe…”

Mama made that exasperated “tsk” sound. “They took and hung Clara Feller’s husband, and Mr. Blank – and ransacked Mr. Kirshner’s house looking for money…”

“Hush, Juliana,” Papa smiled but with a warning look in Mama’s direction, “You are frightening the children...”

That night, Sabine lay in bed, on the straw pallet in the loft over the parlor, with the kitten settling in at her feet and Mama’s threadbare quilt pulled over her– oh, how her feet and shins hurt still! She had a little less room now, that Marie Burg now shared the pallet with her and Auguste.  A little light seeped into the loft, from downstairs, where Mama and Papa still sat in the breezeway under the lantern. Papa was still talking to Gustav, his voice level and comforting.

“’Beena?” Marie asked, her voice tearful and hesitant, “Do you think those men will come again?”

“No,” answered Sabine, firmly, “There is noting for you to fear, Marie. The Erlking has gone quite far away. Mama and Papa are just outside. We will keep you all quite safe from him.”

The Wild Ride of English Jack

If English Jack had another name - or even if that was his real one - only Fredi Steinmetz., the trail boss for the R-B outfit knew of it. He had turned up at their camp, just as the hands were preparing to swim the herd across the Colorado River  a little south of Austin on a fine spring morning; about eight hundred feral, long-legged, long-horned cattle, every one of them as wild as deer and worth ten times as much in Kansas than they were in Texas. It was the first year that the R-B had sent cattle north up the trail, a full year after the end of the War. Times were hard, all across the South, and none harder than in the Texas hill country. A lot rode on this venture, and none knew it more than the R-B owners and investors.

“I’d say hire him,” Fredi squinted through a gust of cook-fire smoke as he conferred with the others, “We’re short a hand since young Stoller took sick and went home.”

“We don’t know him,” Hansi Richter answered his brother-in-law with a frown. He was a big man with shoulders like a bull-buffalo, who only appeared at first glance like the rough, hardworking teamster that he had been until one noticed the shrewd look in is eyes and the authority of his bearing. “What do you lads think?”  Across the campfire, his nephews, Dolph Becker and Peter Vining exchanged glances,

“I’ve never met him, Onkel Hansi,” Dolph answered; a serious and careful young man, he was part owner in the herd. “I don’t like risking our investment – mine and Mama’s by hiring someone like him – since I don’t have any notion of why he wants to go to Kansas the hard way, eating dust with us.”

“He has a good saddle – and a right nice carbine,” Peter offered cheerfully. He and his cousin looked alike enough to be brothers, although Peter was outgoing where Dolph was reserved.  “Walnut with silver trim. He looks fit enough, and if he’s willing to work – I don’t think we can be all that picky, at this point.” Fredi dashed the last of his coffee into the cook-fire and stood up,

“All right then – Hansi. You made me the trail-boss, so it’s my decision anyway. I don’t know him, either, but I know of him. He can ride and he can fight.  The rumor is that he left England after killing a man in a duel – but there is also a tale that he stole silver from the regimental mess. Or stepped on the train of the Queen’s dress,”

“All right, then” Hansi laughed, “As long as he keeps himself out of trouble while earning wages from me!  But someday, I would like to know what the story is.”

 “Bad manners to ask, Hansi.” Fredi shrugged, “Me, I’d bet that he’s a younger son of a lord. He has disreputable tastes or filthy habits and his family pays him a remittance to keep him the hell out of England. Not that I care as long as he does what I tell him for the next three months and doesn’t bugger the cows in the middle of the trail.”

So the new hand threw his bed-roll into the back of the supply wagon that Hansi drove, drew a horse from the remuda and became one of the R-B’s hands, as they slowly moved the herd north towards Kansas and the railhead. They called him English Jack, to differentiate him from Nigra Jack, the horse-wrangler. There were thirty-three of them, aside from Daddy Hurst the cook; all young and single, clothed in motley of work clothes, canvas pants patched with buckskin, linsey-woolsey or homespun cotton work shirts. English Jack did not seem much different from them, aside from being much better spoken. At night, they slept in their clothes with their horses close to hand, penned in a rope corral. That is, unless they had night-guard; tirelessly circling the massed cattle, dark against the moon-brushed prairie, listening to the call of night birds and alert with every sense for some sudden movement, some sound out of the ordinary. They talked and sang to the cattle, to sooth and reassure them when fractious and unsettled. Most of the drovers had a vast array of slow lugubrious-sounding ballads to serenade the cows with. Fredi swore up and down that any number of gloomy German Christmas carols had the same soporific effect. English Jack recited something he claimed was the Iliad at them – in Latin.

“Damn, these are going to be some eddicated cows!” commented Dolph, when Jack enlightened him on this, one midnight when they passed going in opposite directions.

“Almost a pity to eat them, don’t you think?” English Jack answered, with a broad grin which could hardly be seen from the growth of beard on his face. “Ah, but that would negate the purpose of this exercise, wouldn’t it? Forget I ever entertained such a heretical thought!”

 “I would,” Dolph answered, as he continued his lonely circular patrol.  “If I understood what the hell you just said.” The night breeze kicked up a little, bringing with it the faint smell of rain. The distant north-west quadrant of the sky had begun to be blotted out by swiftly moving clouds, clouds that began to be illuminated from within by brief pale flashes of lightening.

“Storm on the way,” he said to English Jack, as they passed again. “With lightening,” he added. “The wind’s blowing it this way.”  Dolph listened admiring as Jack added another couple of comments. “That’s a right nice collection of cuss-words,” he said, “Wasn’t a waste of education, I’d reckon. I’m going to waken Onkel Fredi, let him know to put on some more hands. They’ll be right jumpy as that storm blows overhead.”

“Don’t take to long about it,” Jack advised. Dolph nodded, angling his pony away from the edge of the herd and towards the pale glimmer of the wagon covers. Hansi and Daddy Hurst had gone to bed long since; their last act before sleep being to pull the wagon tongues around to align on the North Star.

The remuda ponies shifted and whinnied uneasily in their grass-rope corral, sensing the storm’s approach. Dolph slid down from his saddle as he approached the camp, that eccentric circle of bedrolls spread out around the quenched cook-fire.

“Senor?” A sibilant whisper from the cook-wagon’s shadow and the faint metallic click of a Colt hammer drawn back.

“Alejandro?” Dolph whispered in Spanish, “It’s me. There’s a storm coming. I’m waking up Fredi.”

“Good,” Alejandro answered, “The horses, they are restless also. How many more riders, padron?”

“At least six,” Dolph whispered, “And if the cattle stampede, everyone!”

“Ay, ya ya!” Alejandro sounded every bit as dismayed as English Jack. So far, they had been able to head off any potential stampede, quench any panic before it started and infected the entire herd. Fredi usually spread his bedroll near the supply wagon: Dolph found him, and gently nudged his foot. Gratifyingly, Fredi shot upright after a single shake.

“Storm coming,” Dolph whispered; even more gratifying, his uncle needed no more than that and a swift glance at the sky. Very faintly, thunder grumbled in the distance, hardly louder than Hansi snoring, a few feet away. Fredi threw off his blankets, saying,

“Right. Go on back, lad, I’ll rouse…” The rest of his words were abruptly cut off by a clap of thunder that rent the air like a cannon shot, seemingly directly over their heads.

“Ah -----!” said Fredi, as other sleepers also started awake, most with similar curses. His heart sinking within him Dolph sensed a vibration in the ground under his feet almost before he heard the ominous rumble of distant hooves, and the bellowing of frightened cattle.

“Stampede!” he shouted, flinging himself towards his saddle as Fredi erupted from his own blankets. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alejandro running from the remuda, leading four horses after him, his hands full of grass-rope and leather reins.

Peter shot out of dead sleep, instantly knowing what was happening. He caught up his hat with his good hand, and leaped for the reins of his horse. He had been supposed to relieve the night-watch at midnight, so his own horse had been saddled and close-hobbled at hand. Already panicking from the racket of the thunder and the noise of stampeding cattle, the pony danced restlessly as Peter tried to free it from the grass-rope hobbles.

“Damn ye, hold still!” Peter gasped, and swore as the frantic animal dodged at arms-length. There was no time for this; he wrapped the reins around his left arm, and slashed the hobbles with his knife. He dropped the knife as he vaulted up – go back later to look for it, god if there was a later!

There was a rider ahead of him, perhaps two behind him, no time to look around and see who they were. He raked the horses’ flanks with his heels, crouching low in the saddle as the beast obediently leaped ahead, oh god oh god, oh god, rough ground, broken with small gullies and animal burrows. If his horse put a foot deep into one, it was a broken leg for the horse for sure and a broken neck for him, hitting the ground at this pace.

Regardless of that peril, he sent his mount careening parallel to the mass of cattle, a tossing sea of horns and backs as they ran, silvered by starlight and eerie greenish flickers of lightening, their hooves shaking the ground, shaking his heart in his chest. Catch up, catch up to that leading edge of the herd, catch up and turn them, turn them at a run, run them back on themselves, crashing and buffeting their horns together in a storm of dust.

Peter raked his booted heels along the horses’ flanks again. Now there was a skein of horsemen flying alongside the herd; himself and Dolph, Billy Inman and two of Alejandro’s wrangler boys, a fragile net to catch and turn the hurtling cattle, catch and turn before the panicky beasts harmed themselves, gored each other with their enormous horns, broke a leg in a prairie-dog burrow, hurled over the side of a ravine, rim-rocked themselves… oh god oh god, catch and turn them before it was too late, before Hansi and Ma’am Becker’s investment turned into so much buzzard-meat, rotting in the hot sun.

He and Dolph reached the leading edge, neck and neck, that dark and dangerous edge, a knife-edge. He could feel his mount’s ribs under his knees shuddering with every willing breath, thanking god again that he rode the tamer of his two, the paint-pony who minded the reins on his neck rather than the bit in his mouth. The paint-pony gallantly plunged into that maelstrom of frantic cattle. Peter took out his heavy Walker Colt, from the saddle holster where he preferred to leave the heavy and unwieldy revolver. Shouting, he pressed the paint-pony closer, firing shots into the air, shots that he could barely hear.

“Turn them!” Dolph shouted, “Turn them!”

“God-dammit, I’m trying!” he shouted back.

Another horse rode at his side, a horse with an empty saddle, flashing by in an instant and then out of sight in the dark tumult around them.

“Who’s horse was that!” he screamed into the dark, and Dolph shouted back,

“I don’t know, but if they’re down in this they’re dead!”    

Wetness splashed on his arms, into his face. The storm had come upon them. Peter shouted curses at the cattle, at the wind rushing past, the rain that fell chill and plastered his clothing to him as cattle and horsemen hurtled on into the darkness.

“They’re slowing!” Dolph shouted, “Press ‘em hard, damn you! Press ‘em hard!”

He fired over the cattle, fired into the air until the hammer of his Colt clicked on empty chambers. Someone at his back still had a full load, though. A fusillade of shots crackled like fireworks. He shouted again, cursing and Dolph shouted also; they pressed closer and closer. The mass of cattle, mindless and unreasoning, began yielding to their will, bent in their flight, turning to the right, turning again as they fled across the hummocky ground. A flash of lightening split the air, an eldritch and momentary light on the heaving wet backs of cattle and horses.

“Damn you all, hold them!” shouted a voice at Peter’s back, lost in the crash of thunder. The cattle were mindless with terror, nothing could affright them even further after that, just men on nimble horses, waving their hats, shouting or firing their revolvers. After an eternity of galloping into the dark, it seemed to Peter that the mass of cattle had slowed in their headlong pace. They had run into a tract of wiry scrub. God only knew how far they had come, or where they were in relation to the camp, when they finally succeeded in turning the herd back in upon themselves. The land sloped gently up hill; Peter squinted into the dark, his face lasted lashed by constant rain.

“Where are we!” Billy Inman called, out of the dark. The cattle were quiescent now, uneasy but standing bunched together as if to shelter against the rain, their sides heaving like bellows from the exertion of their run. Water ran hoof-deep around them; their horse sloshed through churned-up mud.

“I think we’re west of camp,” Peter shouted in return, “Who else is here? Call out your names, all who can hear me!”

“To me!” Dolph shouted in Spanish. “Alejandro! Marcos! To me!” Out of the dark and rain, voices answered them; Alejandro, Marcos and Diego, Billy Inman, young Frank Brown and his cousin Alonzo. Nigra Jack splashed out of the dark, leading a rider-less horse after him, having found it straying among the mass of cattle.

“Whose?” Dolph asked quietly.

“Mastah Jack, de Englishmon,” the wrangler answered, “He had dis ol’ pinto, on watch ‘dis night.”

The rain pelted down, fat water-drops as big as bullets. Peter could not see his cousin’s expression. He was already soaked to the skin. The brim of his hat hung waterlogged like a dead leaf

“I’d guess he was moving around, on the other side of the herd, when they broke,” Dolph said at last, “For I had just spoken to him, not three minutes before. They must have rolled right over him.” He did not have to say anything else about the fate of English Jack; unhorsed and on foot among eight hundred head of fear-maddened cattle. Only Billy Inman said aloud what they all knew, in the tones of a man deeply shaken and only just beginning to recover himself,

“Shit. They pro’lly stamped him as flat as a flapjack. Anyone know if he had anything on him worth going back and looking for?”

“Billy… you shut the hell up,” Dolph spat. “And we’ll sure as hell go looking for him, no matter what he had in his vest-pockets. The man deserves a decent burial.”

“In a cee-gar box, if nothing else,” Billy replied with a laugh in which humor warred with the kind of feelings that come from survived some great exertion and terror. Peter commanded,

“That’s enough, Bill. Help us get them settled down – we can’t look for him until it gets light anyway.”

It wasn’t that Billy was heartless, Peter knew as he knew anything else. They had all been in mortal terror, pounding after the herd in the dark and rain, fighting the elements, fighting for control and knowing that in a split-second they might be unhorsed and trampled, as dead as English Jack. No, Billy was as relieved to be alive as any of them – even soaked to the skin and lost somewhere on the night-darkened prairie north of the Red River.  A cold wind followed on the storm, blowing out of the northwest, chilling them all – cattle, horses and men indiscriminately. The cold bit deeper if they remained still, so Dolph, Peter and the others tried to remain in constant motion for the warmth generated thereby. It was with no small relief after many hours of this that they saw the eastern sky gradually begin to pale to a glowing primrose-yellow, and those few rags of clouds remaining after the storm turn the livid color of bruised flesh.

“How many are we missing?” Billy Inman asked, and Dolph replied,

“’Bout half. We’ll be all day, searching them out and rounding them up.” A bright thread of sunlight peeped coyly over the distant horizon. Peter, his cousin and a few of the others had ridden towards the higher ground in an attempt to see where they were and where they ought to take the herd.

“Well, I reckon they’ll have been too tired to run much farther,” Bill observed, yawning hugely. As near as Peter could discern, the herd had run several miles west and north in a long arc, traced across the rolling prairie in a line mud and trampled vegetation left in their wake.

“Can you see the wagons?” Young Alonzo Brown asked, his fifteen-year old countenance blotched equally with up thrown specks of mud and freckles, “Or any of the other hands?”

“Not to fret, ‘Lonzo,” Dolph answered, as the bright disc of the sun revealed more of itself, “I know they’re dead-east of us, somewhere along that little stream we had set up camp by. Look there…” he pointed to a tiny, threadlike spiral of grey smoke rising from beyond a far line of dark green brush. “I’m thinking that’s Daddy Hurst’ cook-fire… and I could sure use a good hot breakfast, now.”

“Me, all I care about is that it’s hot,” Peter nudged the ribs of his pony with his heels, the poor creature practically stumbling with weariness. “Let’s get these damned animals moving in a favorable direction, Coz. You ride point, I reckon – you know the way at least as well as any of us.”

Moving slowly from at least as much exhaustion as care, Peter, Billy and the others assembled the remnant of the herd and began chivvying it towards that rising wisp of smoke. It was the tedious labor of several hours to do this. Peter reflected all the while on how quickly they had come the same distance during the night, seemingly in a matter of a few minutes.

Only a trifle less cheering than the smell of hot food and the odor of coffee was the sight of a good few head of cattle, grazing peaceably in the night-pasture from which so many had run in a panic not six hours before. Either they had not all stampeded, or the other hands had been able to cut the rear-most off from the main body and force their return. Not even the sight of their drenched blankets and bedrolls, left scattered on the ground where they had been abandoned could entirely quench Peter’s feelings of relief and no little satisfaction at having retrieved something from a potential disaster.

Fredi rose from where he had been sitting by the fire, in close conversation with Hansi. He looked as wearied as they all felt, but smiled with much the same cheerful relief, until he noticed English Jack’s horse, trailing after Alejandro.

“Not a sign of him,” Dolph answered the unasked question, “We came back straight, though. As soon as I’ve had some breakfast, I’ll take two of the boys and scout along the way the stampede went. How many are we short, otherwise, Onkel?”

“About twenty head,” Fredi answered, sighing. “We can rest the herd here for a day or two, while we search… I’ll send out everyone who isn’t minding the herd to go beating the bushes”

“Remember, lads,” Hansi added, “Every one of those missing cows is worth a months’ wages, in the cattle market in the north.” Daddy Hurst brought out hot bread and coffee, lavishly sweetened with molasses, fat bacon and apple duff made with dried fruit, which they fell upon as if famished.

“It ain’t as if it’s the best cooking I ever tasted,” Billy Inman ventured, with his mouth full, “But damn if it doesn’t taste prime!”

“My grandfather used to tell us that hunger was the very best sauce,” Dolph reached out for the coffee pot and poured a full cup for himself, “But as cooks go – sorry, Daddy, I think Mama sets a finer table.”

“Yo’ mama ain’t tryin’ to keep de fire alight, when it’s coming down like Noah’s flood,” Daddy Hurst scowled, turning over another rasher of salt-bacon with a long-handled fork, “Dis ol’ nigra is all de cook you got, out there! You best ‘member dat, when you want seconds, Mistah Rudolph!”

“Ah, well, Daddy – you mayn’t cook quite as well as Mama but you are right – you’re here and she’s not.” Dolph’s face took on a melancholy cast, as he downed the rest of his coffee. “And we may have to trouble you some more – for the use of your shovel.” No one needed to ask why. Dolph rose, tipping his plate and tin cup into the dishpan.

“I’ll come with you,” Peter said and Billy Inman rose also.

“So’ll I,” he said, adding defensively, “He was a stuck-up sum-bitch… but he was a damn good at what he done. An’ he was one of us.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Peter allowed and Fredi nodded assent.

But before they could even draw fresh mounts from the remuda, a drover at the edge of the heard stood up in his stirrups, waving his hat and pointing towards something just out of sight of those in camp.

“What the???” Peter ventured, for soon appeared a hatless man on foot, coming along the line of the creek bank towards them. “It’s Jack!”  So it was, although he was much more thickly daubed with mud than any of the rest, as if he had been thrown down and rolled in it.  He sauntered casually into the circle of bedrolls like a man out for a stroll on the promenade. 

“Glory be!” Daddy Hurst exclaimed, as Dolph unobtrusively replaced the shovel to its place in the toolbox on the side of the supply wagon.

“I see you found my horse and saddle,” English Jack drawled. A broad grin split his bearded and filthy countenance. At some point his nose had bled copiously into his beard, neckerchief and shirt-front.  “Don’t tell me you chaps had given up hope on my survival!?” Billy Inman whooped and thumped his shoulders. Peter exclaimed,

“Well, we did at that, Jack. We were just setting out to see to whatever might be left after the cattle finished riding over you last night! Where the hell were you, all this time?”

“Extraordinary thing,” Jack accepted a tin plate, “Thank you, Hurst. Coffee, too – if it’s not too much trouble. I spent the night in a most uncomfortable ditch.” Between ravenous bites of bread and bacon, he added, “I see you were able to retrieve the herd… excellent! ‘Straordinary lucky, that; well done, all the way around.”

“Yes, pretty much,” Dolph said, “But what happened to you – when we found your horse and not you…”

“Assumed the worst?” Jack grinned again, “Don’t blame you in the least. They broke and ran just about the place where I was, innocently and harmlessly sitting on Bone-Head or Mush-for-Brains, or whatever my wretched horses’ stable-name is. Stupid beast panicked too… and then compounded the folly by stumbling over a badger-hole, or whatever uncouth burrowing animal makes its home out here – and throwing me clear. Interesting experience – I don’t think I’ve been taken a fall like that in years.”

“But if you were in the middle…” Billy Inman’s face was screwed up in an expression of baffled incredulity. Jack continued,

“When I came off my horse, I landed more or less astride the neck of one of the cattle, going at a fearful pace. You can imagine, I hung on for dear life – steeple chasing in a mob doesn’t have a patch on the experience. Oh, thank you, Hurst.” He took a cup of coffee from Daddy Hurst, wrapping his fingers gratefully around it. “Truly ambrosial… that’s the stuff the gods drink, Billy. Where was I?”

“Riding a cow through a stampede,” Fredi answered. He was grinning also; even if they did not quite believe English Jack’s story, it was still a damn good yarn.

“So I was,” Jack continued. “And damnably uncomfortable it was for the both of us. Fortunately – I can only assume that bearing my weight must have had something to do with it – that particular cow fell back among the herd almost immediately. In very short order I perceived that I was being carried along at a point where it might be safer to abandon such a precarious position than to continue on. So with a prayer on my lips, and recollecting every blessed bit of advice I had ever received about disembarking at a dead gallop, I threw myself sideways. To avoid the hoofs – they say the trick is to cover your head in your arms and roll as soon as you hit the ground, you know. That being effected, nothing came to mind except try and curl up someplace out of harms way and wait until morning. I found a commodious ditch,” Jack shrugged elaborately, “Save for a small torrent flowing through the bottom, it was passably comfortable… although I confess I did not sleep all that well.”

“You ain’t gonna sleep all that well tonight, either,” Billy Inman warned, “The rain wet all the blankets.”

“And we’re still short at least twenty head,” Fredi stood up with a groan, “Which we must make an attempt to find, before moving on. Still – I can’t tell you how glad I am that you survived last light, Jack. I’d have been in a hell of a pickle, otherwise.”

“Oh?” Jack looked up from his coffee, “And how was that?”

“I’d have had no idea of where to send all your things,” Fredi answered.

Father Christmas and the Provost

It was Vati’s idea to have a splendid Christmas Eve and he broached it to his family in November.   Christian Friedrich Steinmetz to everyone else but always Vati to his family; once the clockmaker of Ulm in Bavaria, Vati had come to Texas with the Verein nearly twenty years before with his sons and his three daughters.

“For the children, of course,” he said, polishing his glasses and looking most particularly like an earnest and kindly gnome, “This year past has been so dreadful, such tragedies all around  –  but it is within our capabilities to give them a single good memory of 1862!  I shall arrange for Father Christmas to make a visit, and we shall have as fine a feast as we ever did, back in Germany. Can we not do this, my dears?”

“How splendid, Vati! Oh, we shall, we shall!” his youngest daughter Rosalie kissed her father’s cheek with her usual degree of happy exuberance, “With the house full of children – even the babies will have a wonderful memory, I am sure!”  Her older sisters, Magda and Liesel exchanged fond but exasperated glances; dear, vague well-meaning Vati!  All off Gillespie County was under martial law and Duff’s Partisan Rangers had despoiled so many farmsteads, claiming they were owned by Union sympathizers. Men of the town had been arrested for refusing to take the loyalty oath, refusing service in the Confederate Army, for even speaking against secession or refusing to accept Confederate money. How could a happy Christmas make up for all that?

“For the children, then,” Magda sighed. She was thin and dark and thoughtful; widow’s weeds did not suit her in the least.  As if there were anything that would take away the memory of her husband, taken away by the hanging band and murdered early in the spring; his only crime being suspected of Union sympathies. Shortly thereafter, all of his property was confiscated by the Army.  Magda and her four children - three living and the one in her belly - had no other choice but to return to Fredericksburg, to Vati’s timber and stone house at the corner of Market Street and San Antonio Street. 

“I will make a plum pudding, and all the dishes that the children like the best!” Liesel was plump and pretty, even after bearing eight children, the youngest of them brought forth at almost the same hour as Magda’s youngest daughter. Liesel’s husband, Hansi Richter was on the hanging band’s list. A blunt and outspoken man, he refused to take the loyalty oath to the Confederacy or to join their army. He had brought his wife and their children to take refuge at Vati’s. Magda did not want to know where he was living – rough in the woods, she thought, eluding the provost marshal’s men and sneaking back to tend his derelict farm whenever he could.  Such woes this dreadful war had brought to them!  Their property confiscated or abandoned, her children orphaned, Liesel’s husband on the run, living like a wild animal in the woods; how could Christmas, even the most splendid Christmas make up for all of that?

“It will be as wonderful as it ever was!” Rosalie exclaimed, as excited as one of the smaller children herself. “You’ll see!”

“We’ll do what we can,” Magda answered with faint reproof, “I suppose the boys can fund a nice cedar tree for the parlor – not too far distant from town, I hope!”

                  Her sisters continued in a merry mood during the weeks that they made preparation for a wartime Christmas, although Magda worried over Liesel.  Better that she should be so merry over Christmas, decided Magda eventually, rather than pine away with worry over her fugitive husband.  Liesel was extreme in her moods, either on top of the tallest tower or deep in the cellar. And now it was the afternoon of Christmas Eve! The house was redolent with the scent of ginger, with the smells of baked goods and roasting meat, steaming plum-pudding in the boiler, all overlaid with the sharp green scent of cut-cedar garlands and branches.  Liesel sent the children upstairs to their rooms, all but the babies, Lottie and Grete sleeping peaceably in their cradle in the parlor. Since the older children knew very well that it was time for the Christmas tree to be set up in the parlor, they went eagerly. When the children were all safely upstairs Magda and Vati slipped out the back door.  Magda’s son Dolph and his cousin, Liesel and Hansi’s son Jacob had left the cut cedar tree standing in a bucket of water in the stable, behind the house.

“It’s a fine tree,” Vati noted, with satisfaction but it slipped from his arms as he tried to lift it and Magda said in exasperation,

“Vati, I can manage this end…we don’t want to damage the branches,”

“Oh, let me carry it,” Hansi Richter said from the stable doorway and they both turned in delighted astonishment, “I thought ‘who would be looking for bush-men on Christmas Eve?’ so I thought I’d take the risk. Besides, I wanted to surprise Lise and the children.”

“She will be surprised, indeed,” Vati beamed, while Magda said, worriedly,

“You’re sure no one saw you?”

“It’s Christmas Eve and bitter cold,” Hansi answered as he easily balanced the length of the cedar tree over his shoulder, “Everyone is inside tonight, with the shutters drawn tight… the one night I might spend safe under a roof, hey? I am sure no one saw me; Collar up to my ears, hat drawn down to them;  if anyone was looking out a window, they never got a look at my face.” He looked very wearied, but exuberant, his clothes worn but clean; somehow he had contrived to wash and barber himself, wherever he had been hiding. Magda was torn between worry and gratitude for having him there, strong and competent with shoulders like a bull-buffalo. How had he dared, when the Confederate authorities hunted him and the other draft-dodgers in the German settlements?

“Liesel will be overjoyed!”  She said, finally – it seemed the safest and most honest answer. Beaming, Hansi carried the tree into the parlor and set it upright in the corner, deep-sunk in a heavy pot of river-sand waiting there for it. His and Liesel’s eldest daughter Anna knelt on the floor, sorting out the long strands of seed-garlands and setting little candles into the holders intended for them. She did not look up until Hansi spoke.

“Hello, my sweet-dumpling!” he said, as Anna sprang to her feet and flung herself into his arms, with a brief cry of joy and surprise. “How can I celebrate Christmas, away from home, then!”
                  “Oh, Papa, we have such plans,” Anna exclaimed, “Mr. Nimitz, he is going to come dressed as Father Christmas and Mama has made a plum pudding!” Charley Nimitz kept Fredericksburg’s one hotel, a sprawling edifice on Main Street, set in a garden of roses and hop-vines. Charley was one of their oldest and dearest friends, even though he had chosen to take the Confederate loyalty – their friendship went deeper than the present uncertainty. And once he had courted Magda, remaining a friend even though she had chosen another.

“Glad I’m here in time,” Hansi said, with a broad grin, “I’d have hated to miss all the fun! Charley was always good at theatrics; remember the time he played Falstaff in love for the theatrical society? Liked to have us all rolling on the floor! I want to surprise your mother,” he added impishly, “Where is she?”

“She’s in the kitchen with Rosalie, fixing supper,” Anna answered, “And the children are all upstairs, waiting for the Christmas tree.”

“Good! I’ll surprise them all,” Hansi said and left them in the parlor to cope with the tree. In a moment they heard the kitchen door open and close and a sudden squeal of delight from Liesel, followed immediately by a sudden crash, as if a pot or plate had fallen on the floor. Magda flinched, murmuring,

“I so hope that wasn’t breakable!” as she knelt where Anna had been among the little paper cornucopias and candle-holders. In a moment, Rosalie appeared in the parlor, very pink of cheek and flustered, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Well, really,” she said and Anna asked in amusement,

“What are they doing, then, Little Rose?”  There was only a matter of a year or two between Anna and Rosalie. They were more like sisters than aunt and niece.

“They are kissing each other,” Rosalie looked even more embarrassed when Vati and Magda laughed, adding indignantly, “Really, it’s quite unseemly… they’re your parents!”

“I imagine that’s how they became my parents,” Anna murmured. Rosalie flushed even more deeply pink as Vati said,

“I don’t think Liesel will let supper spoil. Shall we start with the tree, then, my dears?”

Within five or ten minutes and long before Magda thought she might tap on the kitchen door and remind Hansi and Liesel about the tree and the children and Christmas Eve supper, there came a louder tap on the on the back door.

“It must be Charley,” Magda said, “But why he would come around through the garden…”

“I have barred all the doors,” Vati fussed, as the tapping sounded louder. He stood festooned with garlands, which he was holding for Rosalie and Anna to loop around and around the spreading cedar branches.

“I’ll see to it, Vati,” Magda said, and stepped out into the dim stair-hall to unbar the door. Upstairs, she could hear the muffled laughter of children; they could hardly wait for much longer. Her breasts ached also, telling her that Lottie could hardly wait much longer either. Charley was through the door almost as soon as it was latched, uncharacteristically grim-faced. He was a short, fair-haired man with merry features and bright blue eyes with squint-lines around them as if long-used to bright sun and long distances.

“Is he here?” he demanded, as she latched the door after him,

“Is who here?” Magda stammered. What had times come to, when she couldn’t bring herself to answer straightly to an old friend!

“No time to waste with this nonsense, Magda. Hansi. Is he here?” Charley sounded as if he were grinding his teeth. Magda saw that he carried a large bag in his arms; something bulky but light, but before she could open her mouth, the kitchen door opened, and Hansi himself put his head around it, asking quietly

“Charley… what’s happened?!”

“The provost’s men know you’re here,” Charley answered, unsurprised. “I heard them talking in the tap-room. They’re watching the street… both sides. I came along the back as soon as I heard them talk of you.” Hansi made as if to bolt towards the back door, as Liesel appeared in the square of light from the kitchen door behind him, her hands at her mouth in horror,

“You must go, then, quickly!” she cried softly. Charley blocked the door with his body.

“No,” he answered, “It’s already too late. They’ll be watching the outside in about three minutes now that they have the streets covered. You’re only chance is to sit still and bluff it out. I’m so sorry, Hansi. I advised you badly, this time.”

“How?”  Hansi asked, as Anna came out of the parlor, saying,

“Is that Mr. Nimitz? We’re ready to light the candles.” She looked at the grim faces of the men and at her aunt and mother. “What has happened, then?”

“The provost is going to come and arrest your father,” Charley answered. Liesel began to cry as he added, “Unless we can put on a very good show.”

“What show?” Magda never thought it possible to shriek in a whisper, but she did now.  Charley lifted up the bag that he held,

“Imagine - who would have the nerve to arrest Father Christmas - on Christmas Eve?” A wide, reckless grin split his face. “You have about five minutes to clean up and get into costume, Hansi.”

“But the children!” Magda began, and Charley said,

“Tell them what you need to, to go along with it. Just have them all downstairs admiring the tree and Father Christmas by the time you open the door to the provost. And,” he looked purposefully at Hansi, “For the love of god, man, get Mrs. Liesel to stop wailing, and put on a cheerful face. They’ll take one look at her and know something is off.” Magda took her sisters’ hand, and ordered,

“Go into the parlor, and nurse Grete. If you sit in the corner, they’ll hardly dare look at you, lest they see your bosoms out.”

“Well, really!” Liesel sniffed, but she obeyed and Magda closed her eyes briefly, recalling that nightmare moment when the hanging-band broke into her house and took away her husband. Please god that should not happen again. She could not bear it; being just barely strong enough to endure her own sorrows, but not her sisters’ as well. Liesel trembled, clinging desperately to her hand, as if it were a lifeline.

“Tell Opa to light the tree,” Anna’s light footsteps were already pattering on the stairs and she looked over her shoulder to Magda, “I’ll bring the children down, as soon as Papa is ready.” Anna, tiny and indomitable possessed something of her mother’s light-hearted charm but all of her father’s stubborn sense of purpose.

“Good girl,” Charley gathered up his bag, and nudged Hansi with his shoulder towards the kitchen. “She’s a clever one, your oldest, Hansi. Quick to pick up on a plan.”

Magda followed her sister into the parlor, where Vati and Rosalie disputed amiably over the best positioning of the candles. The tree stood nearly ready, a vision of plenty and riches, a red-felt blanket around the base of it, branches weighted with paper cornucopias filled with gingerbread and sweetmeats, gilded nuts and Vati’s polished metal stars.

                  “On the ends of the branches, dear child… on the ends,” Vati insisted, as Magda said,

“Vati, there’s not much time. The children will be coming downstairs.”

“So soon?” Vati blinked in amiable puzzlement. “But the clock is yet fifteen minutes from striking - surely we have a little more time?”

“No, Vati. The children are much too excited to wait any longer.” It was on the tip of Magda’s tongue to explain to Vati, but there was no time and he was as unworldly as a child. He would never be able to put on a convincing pretense to the Provosts’ men.

“Well then,” Vati sighed, “Rosalie my child, I will tidy away the scraps, while you light the candles, but be most careful.” 

Liesel took Grete out of the cradle and sat herself on the chaise. Grete fussed as Liesel unbuttoned the front of her dress and draped a corner of Grete’s blanket over her shoulder. She had stopped crying, but her face was still streaked with tears.  Magda’s heart sank. Liesel trembled still, like a poplar-leaf in a breeze. Her sisters’ nerves were all but shattered; she would never be able to put on a pretense of normality. She bent over the cradle to check on Lottie, who was stirring but not fussy. The serene blue eyes which so resembled her fathers’ examined the parlor ceiling overhead with mild curiosity and Magda thought the baby nearly smiled, recognizing her mother.

“I’ll be back in a little moment, sweetness,” Magda whispered to her daughter, and turned to Liesel. “Lise, darling - I’m going to see if Charley and Hansi need any help, but I’ll bring you a handkerchief; you need to wipe away your tears. I’ll sit with you, all the time the provost is here, but you must pull yourself together!” Liesel nodded mutely, mechanically undoing the ribbon that held her shift closed, and lifting Grete’s head to her bared breast. She had gone from her high-tower mood, into the blackest corner of her dark-cellar, all in the space of ten minutes.  “Try to be calm,” Magda urged, helplessly, “Think of what the baby is taking in… do you want her to be colicky and screaming all night?” She fled into the kitchen, where all the dinner preparations had been swept aside, to make way for Charley’s theatrics. Charley was saying to Hansi,

“Sorry, this is going to hurt like hell, when you take it off, but there’s no time for a barber…” he looked over his shoulder at Magda. “Good… can you take away our coats and hang them up? We’ve got to look as if we’ve been here for a while.” He was industriously attaching wads of white wool to Hansi’s chin, upper lip and eyebrows with spirit gum, to make a long white beard, mustache and eyebrows. “Hold still, man…” he added as Hansi tried to smile reassuringly at Magda. He had already taken off his own overcoat, and put on Father Christmases’ long mantel, a voluminous green wrap trimmed in white fur which came down to cover his boots. Charley shrugged out of his own coat, even as he continued dabbing with the spirit-gum brush. Magda took it off his shoulders, and gathered up Hansi’s from where it lay discarded on the kitchen table, next to Father Christmases’ green-velvet peaked cap, and wide leather belt.

“One more thing,” Charley added, urgently as he looked very straightly at Magda, “There’s no sign upstairs of a man having lived here, other than your father, I mean. No shaving kit, no men’s clothing, nothing of the sort? They might want to search the house.”

“No,” Magda shook her head. “Vati sleeps in his workroom now.”

“Good,” Charley nodded his head. “Are they ready in the parlor?”

“Almost,” Magda’s nerves were drawn as tight as fiddle-strings; more so as Charley seemed quite exhilarated, as if he was having the time of his life.  “We still have my husband’s revolvers,” she said, through dry lips, past the pain in her throat whenever she thought of him and Charley snapped,

“For the love of god, leave them where they are. It would only make matters worse, Mrs. Magda.” He opened a little jar and smudged the barest bit of lamp-black under Hansi’s eyes, then stood back and looked critically at his handiwork.  “Good,” he said again. “Now, with the hat, and do up the belt. Let me do the talking. I’ll let them in, when they knock on the door.” Hansi wrapped the velvet robe around him and fastened the belt around his waist, as Charley arranged the vast woolen beard to best effect on Hansi’s breast. The hat had more wool batting sewn under the brim, obscuring practically everything but Hansi’s nose.

“It looks very good, you can hardly see a bit of his face,” Magda said, and Charley answered,

“You’re not still here? Go bring the children downstairs, now!” She hurried away, with her arm full of coats to hang on the pegs in the hallway, and as the door fell behind her, she could hear Charley saying, “If they ask, I’ll tell them that you’re Hermann Leibgott, who used to work for me. He’s taken the oath and he’s away with the frontier battalion anyway…”  She didn’t hear Hansi’s reply, if he made one, for she also thought she could hear noises from the street just outside, of men’s footsteps and voices and horses’ hoofs. She ran up the stairs and along the landing to the room that she and Liesel shared. A handkerchief, a handkerchief… a plain one of Liesel’s, dabbed with a splash of rose-flower water from the blue-glass bottle of it which Liesel so treasured. She caught it up and went to find the children.

They were all gathered in Rosalie and Anna’s bedroom, crammed tightly together on the two beds with their backs towards the door, listening gravely to Anna. She stood with her hands on the foot rail of her bed, and her knuckles were white with the strength of her grip, but her voice was quiet and level.

“…so you see, you must pretend as hard as you can, for Opa,” Anna was saying as Magda came to the door. “He took a very great trouble to arrange this with Mr. Nimitz, so you must not seem to recognize the man dressed as Father Christmas. It’s all a pretend… and Opa would be so pleased, if you are all fooled.” Her eyes went to Magda, and it seemed that Anna’s voice quavered just the slightest, as she added. “It’s important. It would mean so much to Opa. Are they ready, downstairs, Auntie?”

“Yes,” Magda said, and Anna smiled, that wonderful merry smile that lit up her eyes and showed the dimples in her cheeks. She lifted her arms, sweeping them toward the children as if shooing them like chickens towards the door, saying,

“Well, then go! The Christmas tree is ready and Father Christmas is lingering downstairs to see how well you like it… go, go!” The children needed no urging; they tumbled off the bed, and jostled each other through the doorway and down the stairs, where Charley stood in the hallway with his hand on the parlor door.

“Ready?” he asked the children, and grinned cheerfully at the chorus of impatient assurances that they were most ready and eager. “Well, then, I guess you all have been good children!” He opened the parlor door, looking over their heads and nodding towards Magda and Anna, just as someone outside pounded heavily on the front door. Magda’s heart fairly jumped into her throat at the sound of it. “Places ladies, places please,” Charley murmured, encouragingly as they followed the children. “Let tonight’s performance begin!”

“Smile, Auntie,” Anna whispered to her as Charley patted her shoulder and called to Vati,

“Someone’s at the door… don’t worry, I’ll answer it.” Magda wondered how on earth Charley managed to sound so casual, so cheerful, as if there were nothing on earth to worry about. Hansi was right; he was a very good actor. Inside the parlor, the tree shimmered with the light of a hundred tiny candles, like golden stars against the dark, pine-scented branches, a fairy tree in Vati’s parlor. For this one evening, Magda and Rosalie had decided to splurge on using their precious stock of wax candles. The parlor was filled to overflowing with their gentle, golden glow and the chorus of awed exclamations from the children, not least as they caught sight of Hansi standing motionless a little beyond the tree.

“It really is Father Christmas!” breathed Magda’s daughter Hannah in wondering delight, echoed by her cousin Christian. Willi, the youngest of Liesel’s children save for the baby sat abruptly down in the middle of the parlor rag rug, awed to silence by the sight of the tall and motionless figure. Hansi loomed impossibly tall, impressively white-bearded, the candle-light adding a rich burnish to his fur-trimmed velvet robes.

“Who are these children,” He boomed and Willi began to sob, while his older siblings and cousins chorused their names.

“It’s Father Christmas, Willi!” Vati cried, and lifted his grandson into his arms, “See! There’s nothing to be frightened of!” But Willi turned his face into Vati’s shoulder and continued wailing as Hansi continued,

“Who has been most particularly good this year?”

Magda slipped around behind the ecstatic children; she was almost sure that she could hear voices in the hallway, Charley speaking English, a harsh voice answering him in the same language, hardly heard above the merry clamor. She sat next to Liesel and taking the handkerchief from her sleeve, she dabbed at Liesel’s reddened eyes with it.

“They are at the door,” she whispered, hardly daring to move her lips, “Charley is talking to them. When they look into the parlor, Lise… they must see only happy faces, happy children!”

“And who is this pretty maid?” Hansi boomed exuberantly as he drew Anna to stand before him. The children chorused,

“Anna! Her name is Anna, Father Christmas!” and Anna curtseyed, laughing with apparent openness.

“Well, then, since my assistant Ruprecht has been so delayed upon the journey we must make -  he went back for another load of trees, you know -  then I must ask Miss Anna to help me reward the good children here, and to punish the bad!” And Father Christmas scowled so fiercely that Willi sobbed even more and Vati pleaded with him,

“Willi, Willi… it is Father Christmas, nothing for you to fear!”

“They are doing very well, Liesel.  I verily believe they do think him to be Father Christmas!” Magda tucked away the scented handkerchief and took Lottie to her lap. She hesitated to nurse her, reluctant to unbutton her bodice while there were strangers in the house.

“Sit down,” Commanded Father Christmas and the children obeyed with eager anticipation. From across the room, Magda met Dolph’s eyes; he was half smiling, obviously enjoying the reaction of the younger children. He and his cousin Jacob, they were too old to indulge in this fantastical charade of Father Christmas bringing gifts to children. They were rather of the age to join with the adults in encouraging the younger ones to believe. Her son watched intently, as if he were storing up every tiny detail in memory, too taken up with it to pay much mind to a half-heard knock on the door. Charley appeared in the doorway, saying casually as if it were of no account at all,

“Mr. Steinmetz, there’s an officer here… from the provost. They say they’re looking for a deserter, and searching every house. D’you mind if I let them in to search? It shouldn’t take but a moment?”

“We’re sheltering no deserters,” Vati said, and Magda noted the exact moment of realization. Vati paled and his voice hesitated. He gaped for a moment like a fish, as he looked wildly around the room, holding Willi to him before he added, “Rosalie, my dear…”

“I’ll show them around, Vati,” Rosalie sprang up from where she sat among the children, as if she were given a cue and Hansi said very loudly,

“Well, they must be very bad children, for I haven’t brought them any presents at all!”  The children laughed with gleeful pleasure. Still watching her oldest son from across the parlor, Magda saw that he started up from his seat but she caught his eyes with hers and made a small gesture with her hand. He realized what was happening, Magda knew, for now he looked tense and unhappy under his pretense of Christmas cheer. She held Lottie to her shoulder, carefully lowering her head to shield her face from the candle-light and grateful that she and Liesel had withdrawn to a corner of the parlor.

“The officer… he is watching us, from the hallway,” she whispered to Liesel. “I think Charley knows him… they are talking like friends.” Liesel nodded, her head also down.

“I brought a gift for Marie, who has been the best of little girls!” Hansi announced, as Anna’s younger sister Marie arose from where she sat on the rug with her brothers and Hannah. He lifted her up and kissed her cheek, while she squealed and laughed. As he set her down in a swirl of skirts and petticoats, Anna handed her a little parcel wrapped in tissue. One by one, the children were called up to Father Christmas, to receive their presents, the little toys and sweets so lovingly constructed by their mothers and grandfather during the last few weeks.  Magda kept her eyes lowered, as aware as she would be of a thorn in her foot, of the baleful eyes of the provost officer. He stood in the hallway with Charley, but he looked into the parlor now and again, as if he were mildly curious. Gradually Magda’s heart ceased to hammer quite so loudly. She tried to listen to what he said to Charley and what Charley said to him in reply, but over the cheerful clamor of children’s voices, she made out nothing more than that they spoke in English and Charley sounded genial,  quite unworried. Now, she heard Rosalie’s voice, all happy chatter and she came down the stairs, with heavy footsteps following after her. When Magda glanced upward, she caught a glimpse of Rosalie and two soldiers bashfully following after as she opened the door into the kitchen. Grete had finished feeding. Liesel laid her back in the cradle, moving as slowly as if she were in a dream. She clutched at Magda’s arm like a lifeline which kept her from slipping into deep water.

“I think the two of them are more smitten with our little Rose than they are interested in looking for deserters,” Magda whispered to her sister. That at least brought a momentary strained smile to Liesel’s face, until it vanished as if it had never been.

“Dear god, Magda… he is looking at Hansi,” she gasped.  Magda stole another glance at the doorway; yes – the provost officer stood full in the doorway with his eyes on Hansi as Hansi announced,

“Well, then, I know of a little chap named Wilhelm, who is too small to be anything but the best-behaved of little boys.”

“Go to Father Christmas,” Vati urged helplessly as Willi buried his face even further into Vati’s shoulder. Vati tried to set him on the floor but Willi clung to his legs.

“He brought a present for you, Willi,” Anna called, wooingly. She picked up her little brother and carried him to Father Christmas, but Willi screwed up his face and howled.

“Not such a good boy, then,” Hansi remarked as he made a great show of looking in the pockets and in the breast of his robe for one last present. Anna brought Willi to the chaise in the corner where Liesel and Magda sat with the babies.

“That may have been good,” she breathed, as she set him down. He promptly burrowed underneath the chaise, sheltering behind their skirts, “Acting as though Father Christmas is a stranger!”  The provost officer had indeed moved away from the door, as if he were fast loosing interest. He spoke to his two soldiers as Hansi called,

“One last present, have I, for a very good little girl named Rose.” Rosalie pealed with delighted laughter, as she stepped back into the parlor,

“Father Christmas has brought a present for me?” she asked and Hansi made a show of looking her up and down in mock astonishment.

“Little Rose is not such a little rose any more,” he said, to more happy amusement from the children. He drew a last small package out of the sleeve of his robe and held it out for her, adding, “I have brought this present all the way from the East,” as he held it teasingly over her head. Rosalie stood a-tiptoe for it, begging fruitlessly.

“Oh, please Father Christmas, may I have it?” and Hansi kissed her cheek and gave it to her, seeming hardly aware that out in the hallway, Charley was seeing the provost officer and his men out into the street while a much puzzled Vati wrung his hands, lingering in the doorway. Magda wasn’t aware that she held her breath, until the door closed to with a thud. Beside her, Liesel closed her eyes and sagged against the back of the chaise. There was some ado with fastening the bar that secured the door, Charley’s voice and Vati’s out in the hall.  Charley returned to the parlor with a broad grin on his face, saying with quiet jubilation,

“Well done, all! But go on with the merriment, for a while, in case they are listening at the windows.” And then he, Anna and Hansi all looked at each other and  roared with unashamed laughter, as if the three of them had just shared the most exhilarating and enjoyable experience.  Vati and Rosalie looked from one to another, completely baffled. The children laughed, but only because the adults were doing so.

“Have you all gone mad?” Vati asked, in no little distress. “Who were they searching for - is that why Hansi dressed as Father Christmas, then?”

“They were looking for me,” Hansi finally answered “No deserter, but me, Vati! Unless by refusing to serve their wretched army, I am a deserter…” he made a motion to divest himself of the robe, but Charley cautioned,

“No, you’d best stay, at least for a while. Behave absolutely as if normal.” He slapped Hansi on the shoulder. The two of them laughed again as Hansi pulled at his wool beard and complained,

“I’ll have a devil of a time eating, in this god-be-damned thing!”

“An artist gives all to his art,” Charley said, heartlessly as Rosalie gasped, and whirled around,

“Oh, my - the pudding!” She dashed out of the room.  Liesel began to weep as if a dam had suddenly burst.

“God save us, there she goes again,” Charley said, “But better now than five minutes ago.” He and Hansi exchanged one of those looks that men give to each other when indulging their wives. Hansi knelt at the foot of the chaise, arranging his robes around him with great difficulty and took her hand in his,

“It’s all right, now, Lise! We took no more hurt from this than their muddy footsteps on the stairs - stop crying, then!” Liesel clung to him as if she were about to drown. Finally Hansi rose to feet and led her, half carrying her out of the room. The smaller children were looking from one to another and towards Vati, Magda and Anna, puzzled and no little distressed.

“What is the matter with Aunt Liesel?” Hannah asked, anxiously. Anna answered with brisk affection,

“She had an awful fright, Hanneleh - those men were actually looking for Papa, but we thought to hide him right under their noses. You all did wonderfully well at helping. I don’t think any of them suspected a thing. You should cheer for Captain Nimitz, for it was all his clever idea.”

“Hidden in plain sight,” Vati’s face finally brightened. The baffled expression lifted like a storm-cloud clearing from the sun as he understood plainly at last.

“How terribly clever you are, Charley -  to have thought of such a ruse on the spur of the moment! I couldn’t for the life of me work out why Hansi was dressed in that costume, and not yourself! Now you say it was because they were looking for Hansi? On Christmas Eve? We are forever in your debt, Captain Nimitz!”

“Nothing to it,” Charley answered, with modest self-deprecation. “I’d heard talk in the taproom. When I was on my way here I saw Captain Satterlee and a squad of men heading down towards Market Square. I just put two and two together…”

“I would have come up with six or three,” Vati acknowledged cheerfully, “Such a fortunate escape wasn’t it, children, thanks to Mr. Nimitz’s quick thinking!”

“I’m sure you all would have come up with a good plan,” Charley answered, cheerfully and Vati shook his head,

“Not in enough time to do any good! It’s a blessing that you were here.” he settled his glasses on his nose, and looked around at the children. Now that the excitement was over and Hansi had gone from they room, they had turned their attention back to their presents. Magda finally unfastened the front of her dress to nurse Lottie, as now she could do with only friends and family within the house.

“Thank you, Charley - for your kindness, and your quick thinking.” She said, “We are forever in your debt, Hansi and Liesel and I and the children, too.”

“Think nothing of it, Mrs.  Magda.” Charley beamed impartially upon them all, “It was not only my pleasure but the most fun I have had on a Christmas Eve in simply ages!”