The Return Read online

  “Is he in the shop?” Faxon Gingerich said, not bothering to look at Tessa as he spoke.

  “No. My father hasn’t returned from the frontier yet,” Tessa said. “My mother’s expecting him back any day.”

  After bishop Jacob Hertzler had been injured in a fall two years ago—the only Amish bishop in all the New World—her father had traveled by horseback to the frontier twice a year to act on his behalf: marrying, burying, baptizing. The trip usually took him two weeks, but he’d been gone for three.

  Faxon’s glance shifted to the stone house before resting on Tessa, the wind tugging at his beard. “Do you know which direction your father headed?”

  “Up the Schuylkill River.”

  Faxon stared at her, his face settling into deep lines.

  Tessa felt the first ominous tickle start up her spine. “Have you news? Has something happened?”

  Faxon’s bushy eyebrows promptly descended in a frown, no doubt thinking she didn’t know her place. It was a common complaint fired at Tessa. Who did she think she was, asking bold questions of an elder?

  Worried about her father, that’s what she was. Tessa stared back at him, her head held high, erect. “Is my father in danger?” Tessa looked from Faxon the Saxon to rumpled Martin and caught their concern. Something had happened.

  Faxon ignored her question. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s gone to a neighbor’s to take a meal. They had a new baby. You know how she loves babies.” Everybody knew that, everybody except for Faxon the Saxon. He wouldn’t know that about Anna Bauer because he wouldn’t care. He did not hold much regard for any Amish person apart from Bairn Bauer, for whom he had a grudging admiration.

  Faxon swung a leg over his horse to dismount. “Has he made progress on the wagon?”

  “Some. It’s not finished though.”

  He stood, feet planted, and she knew exactly what he wanted. To see the wagon. Faxon Gingerich had come to her father last summer with a request for him to build a better hauling wagon. Faxon made frequent trips to Philadelphia to sell and trade products and was fed up with wagon wheels stuck in mud. The provincial government was abysmally slow to cobble roads, so he had decided there must be a better design for a wagon. He just couldn’t figure one out.

  Tessa wasn’t sure her father would want her to show the unfinished project, but she was proud of his ingenuity, and she could tell Faxon would not be dissuaded from seeing it. “I’ll show it to you if you like. I’ll try to explain the design.”

  Rumpled Martin jumped off his horse, and she was startled to see that they were now about the same height. He noticed that she had noticed and gave her a big goofy grin. Appalling.

  She led the way to her father’s carpentry shop in silence. Hand tools hung neatly along the walls, but most of the shop was taken up with the enormous wooden wagon, eighteen feet from stern to bow. She opened the door and held it for Faxon, enjoying the sight of seeing his bearded jaw drop so low it hit his chest. It was not a common sight to see Faxon the Saxon look nonplussed, and Tessa relished the moment. Savored it.

  She inhaled the scent of wood shavings, linseed oil, and wax. Smells associated with her father. Worry circled her mind like bees around flowers. Where was he?

  Faxon’s gaze roamed slowly over the wagon; he peered into it, then below it. Its base sat on wooden blocks, as her father hadn’t made wheels yet. “A rounded base? What could he be thinking?”

  He had immediately honed in on the most noteworthy improvement that Tessa’s father had made—the one that set it apart from all other wagons. “It’s like the keel of a ship. My father used to be a sailor. He said that the curved bottom would keep barrels and goods from shifting and tipping and rolling around.”

  “If he can pull that off, it will be a miracle,” Faxon muttered. He and his awful son walked around the wagon, crawled under it, bent low to examine each part of it, murmuring to each other in maddeningly low voices.

  “My father said this wagon will be able to haul as much as six tons of freight.”

  Faxon Gingerich shot up from a bent position so fast that his long, wiry beard bounced against his round belly. “How much?”

  “Six tons. Assuming, of course, that you’ve plenty of horsepower to pull that kind of weight.”

  With that piece of information, everything changed. Faxon’s countenance lightened, he continued inspecting the wagon but without the constant frown.

  “It’s not meant for people to ride in it,” Tessa said. “Strictly a freight wagon. The teamster walks along the left side.”

  The frown was back. “No place for a teamster to sit?”

  “There’s a board for him to sit if he grows weary.” Tessa bent down and slid out a wooden board.

  “How many oxen would be needed to pull six tons of freight?”

  “Quite a few. At least six.”

  Faxon’s forehead puckered.

  “Or horses could be used too.”

  “Not possible,” Faxon said. “They’re not strong enough. Has to be oxen.”

  “My uncle Felix has bred a type of horse that can pull the kind of heavy freight that the Conestoga wagon can carry.”

  Now Faxon’s bushy eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “The Conestoga wagon?”

  “That’s what my father calls it. To honor your valley. He said you gave him the idea for it. Credit goes to you.”

  Faxon the Saxon’s chest puffed out and he very nearly smiled. It often puzzled Tessa how personal significance was needed for men to see things clearly. Their secret pride.

  “Looks nearly finished to me. Just missing wheels.”

  “Wheels, yes, but there’s still quite a bit of hardware to be made,” Tessa said. “Plus pitch will be needed make the seams watertight. And my mother and Maria Müller will sew canvas cloth to cover the wagon bows, front to back.”

  Rumpled Martin regarded her thoughtfully. “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  Sarcasm. He may be taller now but he was just as rude. She ignored him and spoke only to his father. “You can find out more about it after my father returns.”

  Faxon’s pleased look instantly faded. He exchanged a look with rumpled Martin, whose misgiving showed plain on his face. A dark cloud descended in the carpentry shop. Something had happened along the frontier. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  Faxon’s face flattened and he went stone still for a full minute. “Trouble has come to our brethren in the north. There’s been another Indian attack on families who settled along the Schuylkill River.”

  Tessa felt an unsettling weakness in the base of her stomach. These stories had become too common. “Did you recognize any names?”

  “Just one. Zook. William and Martha Zook. The parents were found dead, the children were taken captive.”

  Tessa’s heart started to pound. “Betsy Zook?”

  “A girl said to be about your age. Smaller than you, though.” His eyes skimmed her from head to toe. “Much, much shorter. Blonde hair.”

  Tessa gave a slight jerk of her chin. That’s her, that’s Betsy. The Zooks had immigrated to Berks County from Germany just about a year and a half ago. Tessa had met Betsy when the Amish churches gathered for spring and fall communion. Betsy was a beautiful girl, beloved by all, kind to the core. Tessa disliked her.

  Betsy was everything Tessa wasn’t. She was petite while Tessa was tall. She was curvy while Tessa was a table—flat with long thin arms and legs. She was perpetually kind while Tessa had touchy feelings.

  But Tessa’s dislike had nothing to do with Betsy. It had to do with Hans Bauer. From the moment they met, Hans fancied Betsy Zook.

  A sick feeling roiled in Tessa’s middle. So often, she had wished Betsy’s family would just move away, go west. Go east. Go somewhere. She had even prayed for it! Especially so, after she learned that Hans had gone to visit Betsy, numerous times.

  But she had never wished for Betsy to be a victim of an Indian attack, to be taken captive.

  Fax
on Gingerich swept a glance over the large stone house her father had built, strong and sturdy. “Your father did well to bring you all down here, so many years ago, although your grandfather wanted to stay north. The frontier has become a devil’s playground.”

  Faxon and Martin walked back to the horses and mounted them.

  “I will pray your father returns safely and soundly,” Faxon said, before turning his horse around and starting down the lane.

  “Don’t worry, Tessa,” rumpled Martin said. “I’m sure he’ll be home soon.” He gave her a reassuring smile before cantering off to join his father.

  Until that moment, it had never occurred to Tessa that her father might not return at all.

  Lancaster Town, Pennsylvania

  The news of the Indian attacks had spread all over Lancaster Town. Felix Bauer had finished his business at the trading post, pleased that he had been able to trade his brother Hans’s newly forged iron tools for a winter’s pile of skins from Will Sock, a Conestoga Indian. He could use those skins to make harnesses for this new breed of horses. The size of that young colt in his pasture—sixteen hands? Seventeen? And still growing. It was a freak of nature.

  And that put it right up Felix’s alley. He was fascinated by anything and everything that jolted a person’s staid expectations. Just last month, he’d found a three-legged bear hiding in a cave. Most folks would have turned tail and run, but not Felix Bauer. He set a trap, caught the three-legged bear, brought it to a frolic to show everyone because there was often doubt and speculation about his weird sightings, rumors to squelch that he was prone to exaggeration. Then he carried it, caged, in a wagon up into the mountains and let it go. Hans said he was crazy. He should’ve shot the three-legged bear for its pelt, but Felix saw it differently. He’d thought the bear’d had a hard enough life, and if it could survive on three legs, it deserved a chance to live.

  Anyway, there Felix was, pleased as could be over his last trade of the day, ready to head home with a wagon full of deerskins, but he couldn’t find Hans, which meant he couldn’t find his nine-year-old twin boys, either. They followed Hans like two puppies, but Felix wasn’t confident of his ability to mind children. A few weeks ago, after the last visit to Lancaster Town, he found the three of them in the front of a crowd, examining the heads of two renegade Indians stuck on a pole. It was not uncommon to display gruesome sights in the center of town to warn others of misdeeds, but Felix couldn’t believe that Hans would allow his boys to gawk at two human heads, so recently killed.

  Felix heard the boys before he saw them. Rifle shots, then a loud cheer. He shook his head. Hans must be involved in a shooting match.

  Shooting matches were often held for a prize: a fat turkey, a jug of whisky, or a rifle. The target was usually the fairly large head of a handmade nail, and the range was about sixty yards. There were tales of men who could hit the nail head squarely with two bullets out of three. It dawned on him that was probably where the expression came from: to hit the nail on the head.

  Well, Felix sighed, at least he knew where they were.

  He stopped at the town well to fill a water bucket for his horse and listened to the excited talk about a recent Indian attack coming from a clump of men.

  Felix drew water up from the well and filled his bucket. Half listening, half preoccupied with how hungry he was—the scent of baking bread floated over from a nearby oven—and then he wondered if he should buy the boys something to eat now or wait until they reached home. These Indian attacks were usually half rumor, half truth, and he didn’t want to bother ferreting out the difference.

  All eyes were fixed on one man who seemed to be the source of information, a stout fellow with a head too small for his round middle. “On Monday,” this news bearer said, “an unsuspecting farmer was tomahawked right in his cornfield. It was a warning sign, so the neighbors all forted together. They figured they’d be safer that way, but it must have acted like a honey pot for the Indians. Back they came in the dead of night. They surrounded the farmhouse, howling their eerie death halloos.”

  The gathered men exchanged anxious looks. The death halloo was a horrifying shriek, a sound that filled the air and lingered. It was the sound made by a warrior, a scalp yell, after killing his victim.

  “Where’d you hear this?” one fellow asked.

  “I just come from there. One boy escaped the raid by hiding in a hollow tree. He waited in the tree until daybreak until he was sure no Indian was left. Then he ran for help.” The news bearer shook his head. “Poor little bugger. Only six or seven years old and he saw his parents killed. He said his brother and sister were taken away.”

  Felix winced at the news. It was a troubling time for the frontier settlers, stirred up by seven years of war between the French and the British. Indian attacks came unexpectedly and created great fear among the vulnerable farming families. The raids were increasing as squatters moved onto Indian hunting grounds—land reserved for their use by William Penn himself—yet the squatters refused to leave. In retaliation, the Indians burned houses, brutally killed men, women, and children, scalping them, leaving their bodies for wild animals to feast on.

  Felix pushed himself into the circle of men. “Where did this happen?”

  “Up the Schuylkill River.”

  A chill danced up his spine. That’s where his brother Bairn had been traveling. Felix was suddenly aware that his two boys had eased up beside him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hans slip next to him, a questioning look on his face.

  “What’s happened, Felix?” Hans said.

  Felix glanced at his sons. Switching from their dialect to English so his sons would not understand, he said, “There was another Indian attack up north.”

  “Anywhere close to where Bairn went?” Hans asked.

  Felix looked into Hans’s face and saw that he was as shocked as he was by the gravity of the situation. He gave a brief nod and turned to the news bearer. “Do you know any names of the families? Or what church they were part of?”

  “No. All I know is it was their own fault. They were pacifists. Pathetic.” The news bearer appraised Felix’s garb curiously, his large-brimmed felt hat, his handwoven brown overcoat, his moustacheless beard, and realized he must be one of those pathetic pacifists. “They wouldn’t fight back. Just stayed frightened to death in their house until the savages put them to death and stole their children. It’s their own fault.”

  Felix reached for his sons’ hands and gripped them tightly, as if he could protect them from all the troubles of the world.

  Hans jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow. “This is just what John Elder warns us about, Felix.”

  Felix didn’t raise his head to look at Hans. John Elder, a neighbor in nearby Paxton, was a Scots-Irish preacher known as the Fighting Parson because he kept a rifle in his pulpit and encouraged his parishioners to bring their rifles to church. John Elder was an avowed Indian hater and stirred up trouble even when there was none. Felix considered John Elder to be a fool; Hans considered him a prophet.

  The news bearer opened his saddlebag and pulled out a large family Bible, a Froschauer Bible. He held it out to Felix. “You’re one of ’em, ain’t you? I found it in the cellar.”

  “You were looting?” Hans said, bitterness in his voice. “Plundering the homes of those poor beleaguered people?”

  The man scowled. “I was burying the dead.”

  And afterward, Felix thought, helped himself to what was left from the raid.

  “Take it. I don’t want it. It’s giving me nothin’ but bad luck.”

  “You stole a Bible,” Hans said. “The most cherished possession a family had in their keeping. They brought it all the way over from Europe. And you stole it.”

  “You’d rather it be left for the Indians to desecrate?” The stout man jammed it in Hans’s hands. “I don’t want it. I can’t understand a word in it. Take it.”

  Still gripping his boys’ hands, Felix started toward the horse and wagon. After
the boys scrambled in the back and found a spot to settle on top of the skins, he untied the reins, expecting Hans to have already climbed on the wagon seat. But Hans hadn’t budged from the water well.

  Felix retied the reins to the hitching post and walked over to him. “We’d best get home.”

  Hans looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. “I know this Bible. I’ve held this Bible in my hands. I’ve heard Betsy’s father read from it.”

  “It can’t be, Hans. Bibles look alike.” Felix took it out of Hans’s hands and opened it to the center. There was the family history, recorded in a spidery handwriting. He ran a finger down the page until he came to Betsy Zook’s name, entered on the day of her birth: Elizabeth Ann Zook, b. July 28, 1746.

  Hans saw it, bent over, and wretched, right on the well.

  2

  Beacon Hollow

  For two nights in a row, Anna Bauer had startled awake, woken from a disturbing nightmare. In her dream, she saw her husband, Bairn, tied between two trees while savage warriors built a fire at his feet. She could do nothing to save him, but stood watching while he begged for mercy. She bolted up in bed, heart beating like a drum, praying that God had not sent the dream to prepare her, to fortify her for what was to come, so it was not entirely a surprise to her when Maria Müller first arrived to relay the news of the attack on the Schuylkill settlers.

  One by one, neighboring women arrived at Beacon Hollow to gather in Anna’s kitchen, intending to bring succor. Instead, they heightened the drama with a mixture of facts and fears. They sat at the large wooden table that Bairn had built, sharing news that had trickled in from Lancaster Town.

  April sunshine fell through the window and illuminated Anna’s hands. The beauty of it should have calmed her, but it served as a stark reminder of how far from peace she felt. She hooked the teakettle on the trammel in the fireplace and noticed that her hands were shaking. Her last words to Bairn, before he’d left to go on the circuit, were a warning. Be careful, she had said, grasping on to him as if she could hold him back. She knew Bairn’s life was in God’s hands, that he was as safe on the frontier as he was in his carpenter’s shop. She knew that, but she had felt an uncommon anxiety as he set off to go north. He would be utterly vulnerable.