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The first time I ever saw him he frightened me, oh so, the way he appeared out of nowhere, distant and faint through the frozen white of that January morning. He moved straight and tall through that bitter cold, toward me, but still far out upon the ice of the river, like he had risen up and out of the frozen Susquehanna herself. You see, at the time, he could have been my savior or my killer, as he strode, still distant and silent to me where I was hid.

I, myself, stayed crouched and huddled, hiding within the dark hollow of this long since fallen tree I scrambled into. And I watched him, through the frosty mists of my own breathing, as he closed toward me in my hiding place, and toward my other two problems that were somewhere else in those woods that cold, scary morning.

And as I listened for, and stayed hid from that Mr. Horace Wills and his scary friend, I watched the man on the river through a knothole against my shoulder. He was still a good ways off, beneath a tilted big brimmed hat. He looked to be wrapped tight in a straight coat and cape. He also carried a cane or a walking stick that struck silently upon the ice to the cadence of his frosty breaths and steady stride.

You see, I was awfully frightened that cold winter morning, all alone save myself, amongst those riverbank trees, with two men behind me, and another before me.

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I was returning home that early morning, to Montoursville, a good ride downriver from Williamsport, where I had spent the better part of the week tending to Mrs. Deacon’s ailing aunt, Mrs. Snyder. I still thank the angels that my little Emma wasn’t with me. Mrs. Deacon, you see, was my employer at the time, and had been upwards of seven years. She and Mr. Deacon had taken Emma and me in when Emma was but three. I was their maid of sorts, their house-girl, but more about that by and by.

That morning I rounded the wooded Sand Hill section of road on one of the Deacons’ older bays, when an hour or so past sunup, and just west of the Loyalsock Creek, I come upon none other than Horace Wills, riding alongside a man on a mule, a big stupid looking soul. Across the cold distance I figured them strangers, but as we neared one another, Horace’s wild red hair and homely face did slowly come to me. And I began to fear some to his slow riding presence, and to that face of his, with his harelip, so peculiar, unlike any other. He had also aged a good deal, but so had I, I suppose. It’d been nearly three years since I last saw him, and that was at a distance. And of course over eleven years had passed since that one awful time of mine. Now here we were, he and I, all alone, save that brutish looking man riding with him on our frozen road to Montoursville.

Well, the three of us come upon one another, with quiet nods. I believed that he and his friend had been drinking. They looked so, and anyway I could smell it in the stillness of that frozen air of just after dawn.

I tried to keep my face down, but Horace Wills recognized me. "Well, look who it is, out here all alone in this cold," his harelip smiled. Then he pulled up his horse, leaned a bit and said, "Clara Waltz, it’s been a long time."

"Good morning, sir," I greeted him as best I could, not saying a word to his friend on the mule as I rode on, never pausing the Deacons' old bay.

Then Horace spoke again, from behind me, but I paid him no mind, at least not out loud as I feared being alone with the two of them. My thoughts ran though, as I prayed the distance between us would grow. For some reason my mind swam with Mr. Horace Wills, his barroom and little hotel up in Williamsport, then that stretch of time when he was gone, off traveling somewhere with the circus, before returning to struggle, as they say, with a little show of his own that he traveled with as far south as Sunbury, and up as far north as Elmira and as west as Lock Haven. You see, he and some other men, five in all, two mere children, like myself back then, took their way with me one night all those years ago. From it, life gave me little Emma, just as it gave to me, then took from me, little Ellie, her sister, some sad days later. You see, they were born as twins.

But back to that quiet, frozen road. Mr. Wills called out to me again after a couple of hundred yards had gone between us. I heard laughter as well, followed by more comments. I tried to pay them no mind, but oh me oh my, when I turned and saw old Horace turn his own horse about, I dug the bay hard in her ribs, prompting her into a gallop, hard, toward Montoursville, trusting her not to fall upon the frozen road as she blew her frosty breaths. But when I looked back, hoping to be alone, I saw Mr. Wills was riding hard too, with that big man on his mule not far behind.

The old bay’s stride sounded out loud upon the planks of the bridge crossing the Loyalsock Creek. Filling with fear, I teared up, with them same tears to freeze just as quickly upon my cheeks in the wind of the ride. Across the bridge, I turned her hard right, downstream, to head for the aloneness of the canals and the river. I don’t rightly understand why I took this direction, but I did it. I suppose I just didn’t want any of those men, and their ways, near my Emma, nor near the nice Deacons who allowed their home to be ours as well. Anyway, shortly I crossed the railroad tracks, keeping the bay hard at it.

A ways past the tracks I pulled up on her, slowing her a bit, trying to gather my thoughts some, hoping Mr. Wills and his friend had given up on this business. I couldn’t feel the cold then either as I worked at straightening my overdress, beneath my jacket and cape, while allowing the bay to walk through a stretch of farm fields and broken forest. Then with no one about, save myself, I heard Horace’s whoop and a holler, with a distant lone gallop. I feared again, figuring they aimed to have quite a sport of me.

Digging into the old bay, I ran her again, just a bit, to the back of the fields. Then I worked her down into the forests that skirted the river, just above the canals.

In only half a mile or so, I felt her tiring beneath me within those trees. I dismounted the bay and listened. Then I walked her. Opposite the fields, the frozen river laid white and frozen before the rise of the mountain beyond. All was quiet, save for the frosty breathings and stick crackling clomping of the bay. Then I heard Mr. Wills again, off in the distance behind us, calling my name.

"Clara! Clara! I just wants to talk to you!"

I slapped at the bay, but she wouldn’t trot off far. I heard another of his hollers, then a distant laugh. Near panicky, I cried for the bay to get so I could hide myself. Then I found a thick switch and lashed her good, to find her own way home. Near as quick, I half fell and stumbled down into the thicker riverbank trees.

Through the winter quiet, I thrashed my way through the debris of the great flood of the year before, the flood of ’89 that broke the logging booms of Lock Haven and Williamsport, sending the cut timber and floodwaters south on the Susquehanna, destroying the bridges, factories and homes of Muncy, Montgomery, Milton and Selingsgrove and beyond. You see, the events of this cold morning were in January of 1890, when in my fear I fell and grasped and climbed my way about the debris not salvaged by the lumbering men, listening for Horace Wills, and for his scary friend, hearing one or the other once or twice.

In short time, I suppose minutes, I stumbled upon this hollowed out, fallen big tree and crawled in, backwards, collecting about me my overskirt and bustle as I went. Breathing too hard, and trying not to, I then found the knothole, through which I first saw that third man, the one out walking upon the frozen water.

I tried to calm some, saying short prayers to myself, but my heart leapt again as I heard Mr. Wills, closing through the trees. "Miss Waltz! Come on now, Clara, I seen you cut your horse loose!"

I looked out of the knothole. The man on the river moved through light wisps of blown up snow.

"I just wants to talk with you a bit!" Horace called out. "No need for all this runnin’ and such!"

Then Horace called out again, several times, seeming to find his way nearer to my fallen tree as the man upon the river made his own way toward the both of us. It must have been only minutes, but it seemed forever before I finally saw Mr. Wills, still upon his horse. He was working her through the gnarled riverbank growth, blinking into and out of my line of sight through the bare trees. Then I heard his voice. "You can’t hide in here forever, Clara."

I curled farther back into my woody darkness, trying to still my frosty breathing. Then I startled again. I may have gasped. Through the knothole I saw the third man, nearly upon the embankment, certain to rise just before my fallen tree.

The events to unfold next I can only guess to most of, so I’ll relate only those that I saw through the larger opening before me, or through the knothole to my side.

Mr. Wills quieted, pulling up on his horse, I suspected upon seeing the man from the river, which come to be so because he asked in that direction, "Good morning, good man! Have you seen a young woman amongst these trees?"

The man replied something, but I couldn’t make it out as he too came within my forward view. He was wrapped in a cape beneath his big brimmed hat. His cane was a thick, straight stick. He approached Mr. Wills, who remained in his saddle.

I watched hard at their figures, which were broken up by a scattering of thinner trees. They talked, but I couldn’t make any of it out. Once or twice Horace Wills even laughed at this thinner man who appeared as old or even older than he. Then, to save my own soul, what I did see next was the man with the walking stick reach behind himself. And making as though he was scratching at his own back or something, he slowly withdrew a long knife from beneath his tattered cape. Then my own breath left me as I watched him, in a sudden slashing, rip open a God awful wound across Mr. Will’s horse’s throat. Oh, I swear my own breath did leave me.

I thought I saw the knife fly off as Mr. Will’s horse reared up in terror. Horace himself fell from her as the red of the poor animal’s blood appeared immediately. Then the two men fought so amongst the trees and the bare thicket, upon the frozen ground and into and out of my lines of sight. Horace’s horse tried to whinny, I think, but made only horrid sounds as she thrashed heavily about, once running blindly into one of the larger trees, smearing its bark with her own blood as she left my vision.

I don’t know which was worse, but the men’s fighting scared me more. I don’t know what I should have expected, but there were no words between them, only sounds and grunts and hard breathing and sticks snapping and branches whipping as they twice came into my sight, rolling and holding to one another, and crashing about in those woods. I heard Horace’s horse, then I saw her again. This time her gait hobbled and leaned as more blood streamed from her flaring nostrils and working mouth. Then I heard the sound of ice breaking down at the river’s edge, which I couldn’t see. Then Horace’s horse must have circled behind me once more, because she then struggled so, walking sideways, before my opening again, where she collapsed in my full view, dying upon that frozen ground with one big red bubble of breath stretching out from her one nostril.

And as I noticed the steam rising from Horace’s horse, I became fearfully aware that all else was quiet too. Oh me oh my, how I feared for myself and my little Emma.

Then there was walking that I couldn’t see, a slow, stick crackling, woodsy sound that frightfully appeared before me as that third man, the one from out upon the ice of the river. He approached the dead horse, and with his chest heaving he looked down at her. Then he leaned against a near tree, breathing hard, pushing out frosty breaths. I might have made a sound of my own, but he must not have heard it in my hiding. I took notice that his hands shook some. And his age showed too, perhaps of fifty to sixty years as he straightened his big brimmed hat. I held my breath then, staying as quiet as I could as I watched him look for, then find his knife. He wiped the long blade with shaking hands, and before I knew it, his lean figure then flickered slowly away amongst those quiet again, riverbank trees.

I stayed hid of course, and it wasn’t long before I heard another man’s voice, childlike but deep, calling out for Horace. I swear I couldn’t feel the cold at all as Horace’s large friend hobbled his way into my fearful view. He was dismounted, leading his mule through the riverbank brush straight ahead, before my large opening. And oh Lord, how I got a good look at him as I stilled my breathing once more. I saw his unshaven, swollen face and that heavy blanket which I took before to be an awkward cape. I heard him cussing his mule, and I nearly cried out, as he did, upon discovering Horace’s dead horse.

He made an awful sound, not a word at all as he dropped his mule’s rope reins and looked about, as fearful as myself I recall. Then he stilled himself, looking down toward the river’s edge, then upstream, then toward my own fallen tree as I froze fast. Then he left my view. His heavy steps circled my fallen tree. Then they stilled. He called out, "Orace! Misser Orace!" in his deep voice.

My smaller knothole did me no good, but it’d be over shortly as his steps became those of heavy stumbling, up through the thicket behind me, to come before my larger hole and my tearful view once more. He looked stupid to me, and fearful and confused as he gathered up his rope reins, still making his sounds to none at all. He looked once more to Horace’s steaming horse, but not at all toward the frozen riverbank. Then he too made his way off through the bare trees, trying to be quicker, falling twice. My knothole served me here, for I recall he began to cry as he tugged and jerked, and cussed at his mule.

I stayed hid for quite some time, and I truly can’t say for just how long. But when I got up the resolve to crawl out of my woody darkness, Horace’s horse was still steaming, but just barely so.

I looked about ever so quietly, then ventured to the river myself, and then, oh Lord, I saw Mr. Horace Wills himself. He laid down at the river’s edge, as dead as his horse, stuck into a hole in the ice. And he appeared oddly uncomfortable, with his head and shoulders gone beneath the ice, with only his left arm bent back, up and out of the hole, dead and motionless, like his crossed legs. I suppose that was how he perished at the hands of that man, struggling to pull himself out, just to breathe at the end.

I feared calling for the bay, and figured her long gone anyway. I had to make something up, with her returning to the farm without me and all. Dogs would do. Spooked by dogs, I decided. I made my way up and out of those riverside trees, to cross the farmlands and the wooded fence rows, that laid silent and cold between the river and the railroad tracks and the town beyond.

I remember the cold coming back to me, and some quarter of the way I suddenly vomited, so fast it scared me. I was thinking at the time of how it seemed to be so much easier for that man to kill Horace’s horse. Oh, how he struggled with Horace himself. There was no blood though, not with Mr. Wills, not that I saw. That man from the river must have, at the end, just let the river do it.

All alone, save myself, I started to weep as well. And oh, how I wept and had myself such a good crying. You see, it’d been a long time indeed since I had allowed myself such a good weeping. And there was a stray cow somewhere too, for I heard her lowing at one point, somewhere off in the cold, as though she was caught or something, and as all alone as me.

That night, after I had my little Emma asleep, tucked into our bed in our corner room, my reflections took me to poor little Ellie of so long ago, and of how she pained so in her brief time. Then I thought again of that morning’s events, at the river’s edge. This took me to turning up our lamp a quarter turn more than usual, to read of killing in my Bible. You see, I took to Jesus’ counsel, and the Good Book in general, while still just a girl, sometime after that one night those eleven or so years before. And it was good for me too, taking up the good counsel.

Anyway, beneath our heaviest quilts, I came across several Scriptures, but only one that stayed with me to ponder. I found it in Numbers 35:16-18. Jehovah was going on to Moses upon the desert plains about the new laws of Israel. It went something like: "Now if it was an instrument of iron by which he could die he is a murderer...a small stone by which he could die...he is a murderer...if it was a small instrument of wood by which he could die...he is a murderer. Without fail the murderer should be put to death."

Well, I didn’t see any such instruments, save that man’s knife put to Horace’s horse, and that flew off. I do recall watching him find it, though, to wipe it, and then sheathe it. But I thought more over why these things even have to happen, and then those thoughts became wonderings of who between those two fighting men was even the worse murderer.

In time, I turned down our lamp to the cold night outside. Then I snuffed it entirely and smelled deep of Emma’s hair as I snuggled in with her. And I do believe I even tried to cry, for it somehow felt good earlier that day.

But I just couldn’t do it. Not again. Not for the likes of Horace Wills.

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To more truly relate the events of that late winter, which all started with that icy killing, and of those that followed both gaily and darkly against the blossoming spring that followed, I must back up. I must do so to be as honest as I’m capable of being. First, my name, of course, is Clara Waltz, and my age was, when these events did happen, thirty years as of the autumn before.

To not wander with this, I was born some sixty miles north of our Susquehanna Valley, across the forested mountains, in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. My father moved us, my mother, myself and my older sister, into our Cogan Station home, north of Williamsport when I was two, to remember that area as my only childhood home.

Cogan Station wasn’t much more than a little railroad depot along the Northern Central Line, which ran northbound from Williamsport, up through Elmira, New York, via our stop, with others at Ralston and Troy. It’s probably not much more than that today, and it might even be less. My mother passed away several years prior to these events I intend to relate. After mother died, my older sister married a Berwick man. They with their children still live down there along the North Branch of the Susquehanna. I’ve never been there. Back when these events did happen, my father, still living at the time, and still in Cogan Station, wouldn’t take company with Emma and myself. I used to miss him, but then no more.

You see, the world was changing then, and oh so fast. Of course it still is, but it was different for us back then, for us so far from the great cities of New York and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Us far from the great names that I’d see news of in the Gazette, or overhear from the company of men who visited with Mr. Deacon, names like Edison, John Rockefeller, Carnegie and the Vanderbilts, places and names that I heard such talk of back then, as I served the Deacons and their guests such spreads of meals as we could put to a table.

And of course, there was my world. And I was pleased with it, my world of tending to the wash, the meals, busying myself about the nice smells of the Deacon pantry and the work of Mrs. Deacon’s fine big kitchen. And as always, I suppose, the men and the women kept separate worlds, and, I suppose, as other proper domestic help, I too kept a third one, a much smaller one of mine and Emma’s own, seeing after things, in servitude and in fairness.

Ours was about the rooms of that nice big house that needed to be kept after so. And the great stove in the kitchen, and the other in the parlor that Emma and I kept stoked from mid-October through late March, with all the coal and ashes that needed sifting and toted in and out. And of course the wash. There was always washing to attend to, from the men’s soiled farming wash, right up to Mrs. Deacon’s finest things, all crocheted or macramé. And the soapmaking too, for once every month I boiled down of a couple of dozen cakes for about the house and the farm in general.

But enough concerning my own little world back then. Mind you, with the lumbering we had our own greatness of sorts right there in our own valley, even proclaimed for a spell as the lumbering capital of the nation.

Back in the seasons of these events some even said Williamsport would regain her greatness, certain to happen, as others claimed that the mighty forests were razed and our city in that valley would tire on her laurels over time. Anyway, I’m certain I’ll tell more of the stately mansions along Third and Fourth Streets, of the toils and songs of the large crews of men who felled the mighty trees, and of the wealth in general that flourished throughout that valley as the timber floated to the river, down the creeks of Pine Creek, Lycoming Creek and the Loyalsock, to gather in the mighty booms, to be collected and sorted, to be cut and sold. And oh me oh my, how I’ve gone and wandered with this reflection.

To commence most properly, I must tell of my ordeal of eleven years before that season of killing, when I was at an age to reflect and think over my future prospects, but instead chose to be a foolish girl. You see, I took to frequenting a barroom not far from my home, along the road north that led to Ralston, through Trout Run. This ordeal, you see, would shape itself into the very colors and shadows of my life ever since, and I suppose it began with Joseph Logan.

Joseph Logan grew up in a hollow off Lycoming Creek, downstream from my own home. And I tell you, did I ever have a soft spot in my heart for him ever since I was twelve or thirteen, just graduated out of that grammar school of ours. Nothing ever came of it of course, or nothing good, save my Emma. Anyway, at sixteen or seventeen himself, Joseph took to the circus life, with his brother, Charles, and that Mr. Horace Wills one time when the big show come around. Charles, who I little knew, had already been with the show seven or eight years by then, and would remain with it until the season of these events, long after Joseph would give that life up. Anyway, late in the summer of my eighteenth year, when their circus show was set to pull out of Williamsport by rail after a five-day stop, I ran into Joseph, among the others at the same barroom I related to earlier.

I will not spare myself with this. I shouldn’t have been in such a place as that, me being still a child and all. And of course I drank too, of their liquors and ale, and oh how I still fancied Joseph, he at nineteen and all worldly with his travels and his tales. To be honest before the Lord, I did indeed consent to lay with him that night, out in that closed up supply shed. But I never, not ever, asked for, nor ever wanted in any way that swinging lantern that came in before the others, casting the evil shadows of their laughter that kept up through my struggle with the five of them in all.

And in the end all five did have at me, or take me in their way—one of them twice. I suppose that’s why I couldn’t cry for Horace Wills but once.

Anyway, the five were Joseph and his brother, Charles, Mr. Horace Wills and Mr. Stacy Kremer, the son of a farmer from Linden at the time, and, as I was to learn much later, the fifth was another circus man, a Mr. Rudolph Burr. As I hope a soul could imagine, my labor was about my conception, and for long after.

Joseph, in time, returned to Williamsport. Emma was four or so by then. By the time of our season of killing, he’d be living in Newberry, and married and all with children. I understood he worked in a sawmill. There must have been ten or fifteen or so still in operation at the time.

Well, I had the most terrible of times following that awful night. It was a time of confusion for me, a time when the days and the nights of the end of that summer and those of the beginning of that autumn blurred into one another. It was a time when I somehow became lost within myself, unable to properly confess my thoughts and feelings to the very few who’d listen to me in their own ways. You see, I did have a few female friends and acquaintances, but they too drifted off from me, I suppose just as those men and boys so easily did.

And I tried to tell my tale too, and shortly after that terrible night, but I was scorned as a whore as I couldn’t even sort for myself between guilt and what may indeed invite such a thing. As I said, those blurry weeks that followed can only come back to me now as distant sad splashes of recall. I’ll try again here, for this larger tale, but the order will never be correct, I’m sure.

I know I wept a great deal. I also recall throwing away my undergarments, a new whalebone bodice, and of course my knickerbocker drawers that had been torn from my bottom. I remember trying to repair and tidy them both up, after those men and boys left me in that shed, all alone, save my own trembling, drunken tears, without even that swinging lantern to dress myself by. It was a season of living with a silent judgment, while having to fear seeing at least one of them again. I wanted to do something terrible to them, and I didn’t want to be touched and I feared any crowd of people. My own father, whom I tried to hide it all from, somehow heard of that business. He must have, for he ceased speaking to me some two weeks later.

Somewhere in that autumn I heard talk of myself inviting, even enjoying the whole ordeal, and in those same weeks my confusion turned to sorrow for this thing that, Lord be my witness, just wasn’t my fault. And by the time the leaves began turning, for I do recall the reds and the oranges, I even pondered my own maidenness after being approached by a man and a woman from a brothel, by any other name, down along a riverfront street in Williamsport. The woman, at first kindly, assured me that some of the other girls also had children of their own, for you see, by then I was already swelling with child. Growing slowly with my children of Emma and Ellie.

As for my maidenness, I certainly was sad some, and it did hurt a bit, but I suppose that may matter more for men. Of course I remained without men, in that way, until the summer that followed the winter of the killings, which started that early morning at the Susquehanna’s edge.

I lived quietly with my silent father across that winter, friendless, save the Good Book that I slowly embraced. By early December I began attending Sunday worship up Lycoming Creek. The kindly Pastor English welcomed me into his services through his silent acknowledgement of my presence. His congregation of our neighbors grew accustomed, I suppose, to my attendance, but remained distant nevertheless to me and my circumstances. None, of course, knew of my receiving a letter from my one attacker, Stacy Kremer. In that single correspondence he pleaded:

"...please, please forgive me, Miss Waltz. I meant only to be playing cards that night. It is urgent for me to have you understand that I am not an evil man, but moreoever..."

and then his letter most shocked me with:

"...I am the promising son of a proper Linden farmer, Miss Waltz, and I would make for a proper suitor if you would allow me to court you, if you could find it in your..."

Of course I never responded. He was a criminal to me. I swear I did see him though, two times about our Cogan Station area.

Anyway, it was sometime that winter that I did change in how I viewed my circumstances and myself. You see, my Bible became my solace as I, in time, came to fancy myself as a widow of sorts. You see, just as with a widow’s plight, I didn’t ask for what had happened to me. My own foolishness could have brought me the children I was carrying, but not the scorn and the humiliation that accompanied my loneliness everywhere. To comfort me and guide me, I found in 1 Timothy, where Paul spoke to Timothy, that genuine child of faith, 5:3, "Honor widows who are actually widows," and 5:4, "But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let these learn first to practice Godly devotion to their own households..." Then in 5:6, "But the widow who goes in for sensual gratification is dead though she is living." And in 5:8, "Certainly if anyone does not provide for those who are his own...he has disowned the faith..."

You see, I had to find a path for myself, and I could see one here where Paul went on, from 5:11 to 13, about widows and their sexual tendencies, and how they could get gossipy and meddlesome and unoccupied in general. I knew I could be some of those things mentioned, but I also yearned in my lonesomeness to resist the undesirable others, for I especially quieted myself to 5:14, "Therefore, I desire the younger widows to marry, to bear children, to manage a household..." You see, these Scriptures whispered to me about forgiveness and a new start somehow. I just needed a path from my storm.

And of course I also grew in my motherly way. Such a strange aloneness it was, bringing someone else into it as I swelled with child in my aloneness at my Sunday worships, about my father’s house, and while attending to household errands my father never acknowledged. And into that warming spring, my aloneness and swelling continued amongst those beautiful hills and mountains of my girlhood home, and by the first of May, my sister kindly journeyed up from her own home in Berwick to be with me for the birthing of my babies. She brought her eldest of two. This was the first I had seen of my little niece.

Then in mid-May I began to labor one warm evening, and by chilly morning, a midwife from up in Steam Valley was at my side with my sister. And with a light frost upon the ground outside, and with my father gone off to somewhere for the duration, I pained and cried my way through the first, then worked more easily through the second. Both of them girls, Ellie and Emma.

Then the darkness descended once again upon that time of my life, to carry on as such for my memory. And once again I can only relate certain images and feelings of those days that followed, and once more certainly not in any proper order.

Both of my babies at first took healthy to my bosom, but then, oh, the third or fourth day I suppose, little Ellie ceased suckling.

For our efforts the midwife returned and wet-nursed her, but to no proper end. And then came that slow sorrow, for Ellie found it difficult to breathe through her clear nose, and a day later her tiny lips and nose blued over from her weakening heart. The doctor came and speculated Infant Blood Infection. A fever then swept through her as her little belly swelled and her skin paled further. She grew sleepy and vomited, but I failed to see how, for she hardly ate, from myself or from the midwife in her brief time. Her little messes yellowed through, and then the saddest of my days came the day she took to little fits, the same day her little life stilled forever.

I was held and comforted by my sister and the midwife. I was reminded that I had sisters of sorts in that regard. Not far up the creek, Laura Wellington lost two of her seven. My own mother, her first I learned. Even Pastor English’s good wife lost at least one. But these did me little good for mine was a different unfairness. You see, it was my conception that was so painful to I who could bear it. In my mind the babies were to be left unharmed, and I silently questioned if my little Emma was to become my burden or a solace, for I just didn’t know. But of course across her years, she became nothing but blessings, never a yoke about my shoulders, but a lone kiss to my life that sorely needed one. Indeed, she became the part of my life left better as her poor sister was cursed to a pillar of salt to my own Sodom and Gomorrah.

But oh me oh my, back to that winter of 1890, back to the Deacons’ fine home amidst their wintry farm in the beginning of that season of killing. I suppose witnessing that icy murdering prodded me into thinking all over again; being of course that it was Mr. Horace Wills that got killed. And I pitied myself over how I had to endure, until I found in Judges 19:22-29, this story about this fearful traveling man who holed up with his concubine in a stranger’s house, being surrounded by evil men who desired the man himself. In his fear he tried to offer the virgin daughter of the homeowner, but it was his concubine whom he eventually sacrificed. In any event, after the evil men had their ways with her, she was found unconscious the following dawn, only to be taken home to be cut into twelve pieces, to be spread about every territory of Israel. The Scripture stated that she had died prior to her butchering, but I wondered that winter night, what if the girl had survived? How would she have endured? And of course I gave thanks in prayer that my lot wasn’t as horrid as hers.

Nevertheless, with my new burden of having witnessed a killing, I pitied myself for having no true company in life, save my Emma and my own lonely thoughts. But I could have, I must relate, for by that winter Stacy Kremer had approached me with his intentions two more times, each three or four years apart. By the second of his offerings, he boasted having left his father’s farm, having bought one himself somewhere along the line between Muncy and Montgomery, just below where the river turns hard south, on the other side of the mountain from me, thank goodness.

But I did have the Deacons, especially Mrs. Deacon, or Elizabeth, as she insisted I call her, which I would at times, but never before company, and they kept a lot of company. Her husband, Mr. Henry Deacon, was quite prosperous, you see. He was something of a gentleman farmer, owning a great deal of land. We lived on the home farm, they called it, which his hired men farmed right there at the edge of Montoursville. And he owned more land which he leased out for timber rights up the Loyalsock Creek and some other places unknown to me. As I said before, I was of domestic employ, and Mr. Deacon was a man of business, of which I knew nothing. But back to my world of loneliness, the Deacons were blessed with three children, and that did help. Their eldest was Sarah, who turned ten that winter, nearly a year behind my Emma, but of course of another station in life. Their son, Joshua was but seven, and a rascal. And Ellen was their infant. I came to be acquainted with, and employed by this fine family through the thoughtful efforts of Pastor English back up in Cogan Station, for he was friends with the Reverend John Ashhurst there in Montoursville, of the Deacons’ church up in town on Loyalsock Avenue. I knew Pastor English at least acknowledged me back then, but I didn’t know that he worked on an answer to my problem. He was a good man for this. I remained lonely, but I was indeed thankful for Emma and I to have what home we had within Mr. and Mrs. Deacon’s own.

But to be true to this, after that riverbank killing I felt alone all over again, for of course it was Horace Wills who was killed. Sometimes I couldn’t rid those thoughts and images from my mind, both those of the murdering and those of all those years before. And then other times I’d ponder quite intentionally over what I had seen from within that log. I thought about death, then read of it from my Bible. Then I found wisdoms regarding fear and anger, and I studied those, I suppose regarding my own, as well as what might have been that man’s, who came from across the frozen river several weeks before. I recall finding something in the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, about being slow to anger, and impatience and foolishness. But I especially remember Proverbs 22:24-25, which read: "Do not have companionship with anyone given to anger, and with a man given to fits of rage you must not enter in, that you may not get familiar with his paths..." For you see, I didn’t know it then, but another fearful thing was laying for me just about that time.

It was late February, near a month since that riverside killing, when Mr. Benjamin Mason and his wife, Sarah, came down from Williamsport to dine with the Deacons. The two men were longtime business associates, and often enjoyed meeting as such on Sundays. The Masons came, as most of the Deacons’ guests did, taking the afternoon train on the Catawissa Branch. There was also a good long stretch of conversation to overhear while tending to the two men while preparing their dinner as well.

As was usual, I could listen in on a good deal of opinion, some quarrel and an awful lot of convincing. Although friends, the two men disagreed on a good deal.

"It’s no time to panic, Henry. These things run in cycles,” declared Mr. Mason, from Mr. Deacon’s own chair. “Cycles that take years, not seasons."

Mr. Deacon was fast. "The Populists took eight state legislatures last November, Ben, and the mere mentioning of Mary Clemons Lease boils my blood," he answered as he cleaned his pipe, as I myself became aware of someone moving about outside on the porch.

I had sent Emma out back to shake out the big tablecloth, so I stole a look from where I was, in the parlor, and oh my Lord was I nearly struck down, for I knew it was him.

I didn’t have to look hard, or study him, or anything as my own heart startled, pounding away with first, the whereabouts of my Emma, and then the full weight of the knowledge of Horace Wills’ killer being upon the farm, just through that window, so near to me again.

Those moments of first seeing him again come to me now as a blur, because that’s how they happened to me then. My breath left me. The men talked on. One of them laughed. Emma must have come in through the back, because I heard her asking something of someone in the kitchen. I tried to calm myself with that knowledge, as I looked toward, then away from the passing shadows of that man, busying himself about something upon the porch.

I purposely tried to pick up on the conversations in the parlor and in the kitchen, trying hard to settle myself, listening not for their words, but for anyone’s awareness of my new fears.

There were none. I moved away from the windows, alone with my knowledge of that killing man. I tried to speak to Mr. Mason, to say anything at all, but Mr. Deacon was quicker, with concerns of his own.

"No, Ben, I only hired one, to work the home farm here. I’m not pleased with the wintering of the stock. Not at all."

Mr. Mason answered him with something I can’t recall, but save me, in moments more Mr. Deacon answered Mr. Mason with, "Hired him three days ago. Seems to be a quiet fellow."

And as I was clearing Mr. Mason’s tea table, trying to not shake, I was took with, "In fact, Ben, the new man’s upon the front veranda as we speak."

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