TC45

Coming as they did from a religious background, they thought such a display could be nothing other than the power of God made manifest.

“This is a sign!” Joshua exclaimed. He recognized the Windgate from the translation of the White Scroll he had made with the help of his spouse Miriam. It was the same weapon wielded by Sarah when sha first encountered father Michael. Not merely the same kind, but literally the same artifact. “God has brought us all together,” he declared, “White man and Red man alike, in this land of His choosing, flowing with milk and honey.”

At Lange’s words all the people looked around in the fading light and took in the barren, mostly treeless grasslands.

Lange cleared his throat and tried to recover. “Here at the source of the New River we all shall remain, and prosper with God’s blessings!”

The Stiffnecks couldn’t just take the weapon outright, as it was holy, a divine gift made by El herself, so it could never be defiled by base theft. Obviously the People led by Wanica and the remnant of the Five Corners Free Congregation would have to be permanent and equal (but separate) partners. The Church’s doctrine of mandatory cousin-marriage would salve some of the settlers’ horror at any race-mixing.

The day after the funeral there followed a good old-fashioned mass conversion of the entire Kuwapi people, followed by their assembly-line baptism in the cold waters of the river. They were each plunged into the stream three times using total immersion, since they had never been single dunkers. So a new congregation was born, the Headwater Fellowship, with a White Wing and a Red Wing, “Two lungs by which the united people of the Creator draw new breath,” Lange pronounced.

Gary Bergin and his wife Marge begin pulling up dead stumps of burnt trees to establish a farm on the right bank of the New River, aided by their five children.

Alfred Porter, his wife Caroline established their farm a little to the north of the river ford. Water was plentiful there, diverted by a ditch from higher up the slope, and with their three children they grew a wide variety of green stuff as though they had an extended backyard garden.

Thomas Henry, his wife Melanie, and their four younger children choose a spot for their homestead nearer to the encampment of the People. At first they raised oxen, begotten from the animals that accompanied them on the pilgrimage, but they also planted rows of apple and pear trees.

Their eldest son Lee Henry together with his new bride Tamara raised a few sheep purchased from another drive of livestock that used the ford soon after the Stiffnecks arrived. The following summer yet another cattle drive also used the ford and all the Henrys bought dairy cows at twenty dollars a head. Their animals grazed in the shade of the family’s fruit trees.

David and Ann Krause, with their crowd of children settled to the south of the river ford and took to raising horses, having received back most of the animals they loaned to make the pilgrimage.

The 6th Cavalry Regiment came up from Texas looking for the bloodthirsty native warriors who wiped out a whole company of their men, according to the sworn testimony of Lieutenant Welles and five other soldiers. They found only a docile tribe of newly-Christianized converts helping white settlers grow some crops. When pressed, the farmers said they knew there was an empty fort a few miles downstream, but they did not know how it came to be abandoned, and there was no evidence to give lie to their testimony.