Texas, Central Hill Country, 1888
Rena Dmitriev paused from gathering wild grapes when she heard hoof beats thundering toward her home. Visitors? No one came to call on this isolated place, and why the rush? She rose and grabbed her fruit pail and hurried down the sandy ravine toward the house.
A gunshot almost paralyzed her with fear. Chickens squawked then more shots sounded. An anguished moo from her milk cow stopped her. Her animals? Who would shoot her animals?
Only those with the worst of intentions would kill someone else’s animals. What would happen to a man like Abram? She dropped her bucket and ran as fast as her heavy skirts allowed.
Abram cried, “Pfeiffersburg!”
She halted, frozen, and her chest hitched. Her legs trembled and she needed to sit down. No, she must move. Staying here offered no refuge.
Abram and she had chosen Pfeiffersburg as their warning word. Before their families were killed and he rescued her, they’d lived in separate sections of Pfeiffersburg in Bavaria. If Abram shouted that alert, he signaled trouble had arrived too serious for her to help.
Quickly, she must follow his strict instructions for such an occasion and hide without making a sound. She crept to the ravine’s crevice where Abram had artfully concealed a tunnel. Edging her way through the musty, narrow passage, she reached the secret place he had built. He had shaped a dead tree stump so it looked as if it had been cut down from the middle of the plum thicket behind their home.
In reality, he’d hollowed the dead wood and set it firmly with small, concealed holes that offered a view of the house and yard. The stump stuck above the tunnel three feet, with a small platform beneath the dirt floor for her to stand on. At her right, a small shelf held a few provisions.
From that ledge, she grabbed the box containing a spare revolver. Her shaking fingers removed the gun, but couldn’t use it. What she saw forced her to hold back a scream. Four rough-looking men battered Abram. She held her breath until her chest threatened to explode. Almost four times her age of twenty one, her elderly husband’s frail health couldn’t withstand this treatment.
To remain quiet, she gulped down breaths. Her entire body shook while her heartbeat raced. She wanted to help Abram as he had helped her, but knew her efforts would be futile and only result in her own death. Peering from each clever hole, she surveyed the yard.
Already the barn burned. Slaughtered chickens lay strewn across the ground. Blood from the head of her lovely milk cow stained the ground red. The stench of blood mingled with smoke. Why? Why would these men kill a poor cow and chickens? Why attack poor Abram?
Rena forced herself to study the villains and memorized each horrid man’s features. So confident were they, they’d made no attempt to cover their faces. With another gasp, she realized that meant they intended to leave no one who might identify them.
Poor Abram barely lived, but still the men tortured him.
The largest man with long black hair hit her husband. “Where’s your woman?”
Abram’s gasping words were barely audible, “Pfeiffersburg! I told you, she vent to help her sister.”
A man with red hair kicked Abram’s ribs. “Why do you keep yelling that word?”
He’d grown so weak, Abram’s gasps barely reached her. “Ve are from Pfeiffersburg. I vish I vere dere now.”
The large man grabbed Abram up by his shirt and shook him. “You tell me where she’s hiding or I’ll skin you alive. Fresh laundry means she’s here somewhere. Tell me now, old man.”
