TCD

D0

Jashen voiced well-wishes to Mark and his fellow travelers. Lange pointed to the prominent butte a few miles upriver to the west and asked her, "Is that Green Dome?"

"Yes," he said, "but my father calls it the Island in the Sky."

"Then we have reached our destination!" Lange said triumphantly. He gave thanks to God not a single member of his flock had been. lost to disease or misadventure.

Jashen said, "We must hasten to see if my father is well. I bid you to continue upstream until Green Dome lies at your feet. When we meet again we shall make you more than welcome."

The Kuwapi hunters led by Jashen had left one soldier alive, tied to a tree, with one hand free to scoop up river water to drink, and the knot was too far away to unravel. There were five soldiers on the sick list who didn't make the raid but were supposed to hold the fort. They had delivered up the ten Kuwapi women they held as slaves and Jashen was entreated.

Back at the river ford Smalley and Morrison moved closer to Chief Wanica while four soldiers orbited the scene at a stately trot. "God damn it Chief," Smalley said, "you know better than to start acting like the Northern Raiders."

"What are you going to do to him?" Morrison asked.

"Take him in for cattle rustling. That'll have to do. The boy can go free. The rest of these red fellows too. They were just following orders and they got families to feed. Now they can pick themselves a new chief."

Wanica, from the English taught to him by Jashen, understood perfectly what Smalley wanted to do to him, and he decided not to go peacefully. He had the Golden Gift in his hand and pointed it right at the captain. The black shaft leaped out with its hideous sound and sliced off the head of Smalley's horse. Then Smalley himself was rendered in two. That black line remained there, drinking in light and air, while five more orbiting horses and men ran right into it, including Paul Morrison.

After that Wanica used the Golden Gift to get rid of the bodies of the men and the horses he had slain. He knew the killing range of the Golden Gift was not much longer than a spear. Against a troop of whites armed with firesticks he would be helples. Little did he know his son Jashen had already solved the problem for him. D1

The pilgrims of Five Corners Free Congregation arrived at the lower slopes of Green Dome at dusk, their journey at an end. There they saw four fallen warriors of the People, Left Hand, Half Yellow Face, Kill Eagle, and Hairy Moccasin lying on a bier of branches taken from woody shrubs. And it was on this solemn occasion when the Kuwapi People and the settlers of Mark Lange's group were first gathered all together.

In full view of everyone Chief Wanica, with words of reverence for Wakan Tanka, struck off the Golden Gift and made the bodies of his dead men disappear. The Whites were struck speechless. Coming as they did from a religious background, such a display could be nothing other than the power of God made manifest.

"This is a sign!" Mark exclaimed. He recognized the Golden Gift from the translation of the White Scroll he had made with the help of Leliel and Jashen. It was the same weapon wielded by Prince Melchizedek when he first encountered father Abraham. Not merely the same kind, but literally the same artifact.

"God has brought us all together," Lange 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. "Here at Green Dome we all shall remain, and prosper with God's blessings!"

Lange couldn't just take the weapon outright, as it was holy, a divine gift made by Bat-El himself, 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 the settlers' horror at any race-mixing.

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 Squaw River. They were each plunged into the stream three times using total immersion, since Lange was at heart still a Dunker. So a new congregation was born, the Church of Green Dome, with a White Wing and a Red Wing, "Two lungs by which the united people of the Creator draw new breath," Lange declared.

That night Wanica's people returned to their encampment at the 4,650 foot level of Green Dome, on a wide bench on the eastern side of the hill. In the morning, aided by the Whites, they began to turn it into a permanent village. D2

Gary Bergin and his wife Marge chose the valley of Squaw River due south of Green Dome and begin pulling up dead stumps of burnt trees to establish a farm, aided by their children Dale, Owen, Linda, Grace. Baby Megan was still far too young.

Alfred Porter, his wife Caroline, and their three children George, Ida, and Rachel 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 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 Kenneth, Jane, Faith, and Susan choose a spot for their homestead at elevation 4,400 feet, a little below the village of the People. At first they grew oxen, taken 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 a cattle drive also used the ford and the Henrys bought dairy cows. Their animals grazed in the shade of their family's fruit trees.

David and Ann Krause, with their crowd of children Edwin, Linda, Gail, Robert, Carl, Helen, and Tom settled to the south of the river ford took to raising horses, having received back most of the horses they loaned to make the pilgrimage.

The 6th Cavalry Regiment came up from Texas looking for the bloodthirsty warriors who wiped out a whole company of their men and 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 nearby, but did not know how it came to be abandoned, and there was no evidence to give lie to their testimony. The bodies of the men and horses which fell along the river were now totally gone. So the Army broke up the fort and left, marking the whole thing down as one of the spookier mysteries of the high plains.

The white settlers who did not take up the plow instead platted out the town of Headwater on both sides of the river crossing. In the beginning these were Harry and Hester Hilling with their four children, Brandon, Oscar, Roy, and Nancy, who built and ran a general store. Ivar and Anna Zinter operated a blacksmith shop. Like the Zinters, Mark Lange and his wife Joanna were childless, but not for much longer. In a few years a boy named Clark was born to the Langes, closely followed by David, who was born to the Zinters. D3

Mark built a tabernacle on the summit of Green Dome, which was just under 5,000 above sea level, but only about 900 feet above the plains. From there one could see nearly forty miles out over the grasslands, in every direction. The tabernacle was built over the cairn of the Artifact, commemorating the very place where Wanica and Jashen came face-to-face with God.

The Green Dome Tabernacle was the gathering place for all the people, Red and White, every Sunday. With each homily Prophet Lang and Apostle Wanica established the wall of Church doctrine steadily, like laying bricks. One of the doctrines, which was really a concession to the Kuwapi people, was that everyone, both male and female, must wear their hair long and tied into a pony tail. After a time, the members of the Green Dome Church were called Ponies by outsiders, and later even the Stiffnecks called themselves that. The Kuwapi were also introduced to the Western concept of surnames. Jashen remembered his original given name of Shy Bear and chose the last name of Shybear.

In 1869 the rumor of gold was heard tell along the Squaw River and Headwater swelled with the influx of prospectors hungry for the shiny yellow stuff. Some got rich, but most of the Sixty-Niners struck out. Some of these stayed in Headwater as converts to the Church. After the rail line connected Headwater to the new Union Pacific line running across the country it was easy for cousins of the new converts to make their way west to new lives as wives of the former prospectors and even the children of the original settlers. The tabernacle on Green Dome was expanded into a much larger wooden and whitewashed edifice called the Green Dome Temple. When it was complete Prophet Mark Lange was fifty-three years of age. Secondary tabernacles were established throughout the United States but all Green Dome funerals still took place at the original site.

Chief Wanica died at the age of 84. He lay in state in the Temple sanctuary for fourteen days. Many Greendomites scattered across the country journeyed by train or even by the newfangled horseless carriages to pay their last respects. When the Prophet Lange committed the Chief's body directly into the hands of Bat-El it was a sight that few but the oldest members present had ever seen, for the Church grew far beyond the dreams of her founders. During the Last Rites Lange announced that Wanica’s son Jashen Shybear was the new Apostle. For most of the attendees it was a ceremony they would not otherwise witness until they were well into middle-age when their parents died, and of course everyone prayed they would never have to attend. But the Green Dome Church had grown so large that every day except Sundays the Temple was booked for farewell Rites. D4

But not everything was so grim. During the fair held in honor of the Prophet's sixty-fifth birthday a barnstormer came to town, offering rides in his biplane. Absolutely fearless, Mark Lange stepped up to be the first to fly, to the delight of everyone present. Few religious leaders have been so beloved. A newspaper reporter named Rupert Keller, however, considered Greendomism to be a dangerous cult, on the same order as Mormons, Satanists, or even the deeply-despised Roman Catholics. Keller said they were sun-worshipers who rejected the truth of the Bible and married their close kin. And truth be told, Keller was absolutely right.

Two years later the Great War broke out in Europe and the pacifist Church of Green Dome, with its German roots, sought to keep America out of the conflict. Mark Lange traveled to the German embassy in Washington DC to express his concerns over possible U-Boat attacks on passenger ships traveling in British waters. The Ambassador assured him only warships and freighters were fair game, but at the behest of Lange he posted a warning in fifty American newspapers. And Lange, for his part, expressed his belief in the assurances of the ambassador by booking passage on the British express liner Luisitania, which was due to depart New York for Liverpool in a week. He wanted to visit the Church of Green Dome mission field in Great Britain.

When the ship was in the frigid waters south of Ireland she took a torpedo from the German submarine U-20, which triggered a secondary explosion shortly afterwards. The liner listed sharply to her side, drowning her starboard lifeboats. Frantically, the lifeboats on her port side were laden with passengers and released but there were not enough for everyone and no chance of raising the floundering ones on the other side. Women and children were saved first, and then old men. Prophet Mark Lange was placed in the last lifeboat, but before it was lowered to the sea he spied his nemesis Rupert Keller standing on the deck of the doomed ship, contemplating death. Lange bounded out of his place and offered his seat to the unrelentingly hostile reporter. "Happy birthday, son," he said with a gentle smile.

Lange was not joyful, since all living things seek to avoid death by their very nature, but he was encouraged by his memory of Kemen and the promise of Lord Yeshua that he would see it once more. He spread his encouragement around to the rest of the doomed passengers on board. In this way he made their passing a little bit easier. There was enough time for six of the forty-eight lifeboats to get away before the ship took everyone aboard down to the frigid and murky depths of the ocean.

The sinking spurred the American public to enter the war. D5

Mark Lange’s very kind offer of a seat on the last remaining lifeboat on the doomed Luisitania was wasted on Rupert Keller. Returning to New York he wrote an account of the disaster which had the Prophet kicking little girls off a lifeboat to save himself and his gold, resulting in the sinking of the lifeboat, the death of Lange, and the death of everyone else with him. Indeed, Keller said the presence of the gold must have been the reason the ship was torpedoed by the Central Powers in the first place. Lange had not an ounce of gold, but no matter.

Keller’s widely published lies did their intended damage. Many former supporters soured on the religion, and the growth of the Green Dome Church slowed to a crawl. Shortly after that, by popular referendum, Nebraska joined a dozen others in banning marriages between first cousins and the first serious persecutions of Greendomites began. That is not to say the Church of Green Dome did not continue to conduct marriages between first cousins. They merely performed them on the Wyoming side of the Tri-State marker, nigh at hand, to make it legal.

Upon the death of Lange the Apostle Jashen became the second Prophet. And for years Jashen could find no suitable candidate among the whites to replace him as Apostle. Something had been lost with the passing of Mark Lange, a principle of unity that bound the two sides. The members of the White Wing began to tie up their ponytails into buns as a subtle act of separation from the native faithful. Ultimately they refused to worship with the Red Wing at all and met seperately in the Temple on Wednesday nights, led by one Klaus Hansen who bubbled up to lead them.

Erik Zinter was one of the merry but homesick doughboys who went into battle in 1918 whooping with all the enthusiasm of a football team pouring out onto the field just before kickoff. They came with six hundred aircraft plus one hundred forty-four tanks under Col. George Patton. Three thousand pieces of field artillery unleashed by the Allied side and countless bombs dropped from the air tore the battlefield into a pock-marked pigsty filled with mud.

The Germans withdrew but they fought a rear-guard action with a ferocious bite. Erik took two rounds from a Bergmann Maschinenpistole 18/1 that shattered the bone in his upper left arm and he developed gas gangrene in the field hospital lying just out of range of enemy fire. The amputation was performed in less-than-ideal circumstances. Afterward Erik rode a train to Paris with a hundred other casualties. The same train then carried soldiers fresh off the boat back to the Western Front, which had become a vast machine for mangling and killing men. D6

In Paris Erik met a Red Cross nurse whose name-tag bore a surname he recognized. While she changed his dressings Erik learned that Clara was of the Hursts who had stayed behind in Pennsylvania when the wagon train went west so she knew very little about his Church. But after talking about their respective family trees for a whole they discovered they shared the same great-grandmother. They were second cousins. That and her all American girl next door good looks interested Erik.

For her part Clara was pleased how Erik maintained a good attitude despite his misfortune. He didn't feel sorry for himself, even after losing an arm. There was pain but right on through it Erik maintained a wicked sense of humor. They could not talk for long but Clara passed along to him the address of her parents in Pennsylvania after he declared he wanted to stay in touch with her when they went home. Their pen pal relationship blossomed into something they thought was love.

In 1922 Erik drove halfway across the country in his Model T. It took a full month. He used the Yellowstone Auto Trail and aside from two big auto repairs his outlays averaged five dollars a day. Part of this money came from his veterans' "bonus' of sixty dollars but some employers went out of their way to give returning veterans seniority in hiring. Erik accepted a job in Headwater painting houses using his remaining arm, and spent three years laying some of this money aside for the wedding.

In Clara's hometown Erik sold his tin lizzie to make up for what he still needed to pay for the nuptials. Pennsylvania was the first anti-cousin marriage state, but only first cousins couldn't get hitched, not second ones. And they were so obviously in love both of Clara's parents gave their blessing.

But Erik's parents back in Headwater were a harder sell. After the train ride west he became the black sheep of the family for passing over a perfectly good (but horsefaced) local first cousin for a beautiful second cousin from back east. One aunt said, "Why, any heathen could do as much!"

Kimberly Zinter was born to Erik and Clara in 1925. Kim knew her two best friends Sofie Krause and Dory Twofeathers from as early she could remember, as far back as the economically frothy days of 1928 when they shared the same nursery while even their mothers found work. By 1932 the Depression really started to bite. Clara was fired first, but soon even Erik was jobless. Builders found applicants with two good arms suddenly willing to paint. Still, Erik retained the good spirits that had endeared him to Clara in that Paris hospital. D7

There were rich seams of bituminous coal inside Green Dome hill and under Headwater itself but the geology of the area was so folded and jumbled there will never be an economical way to reach it by drilling a straight shaft. The coal was exposed only in certain spots, and most of these were inaccessible.

During the Great Depression Erik Zinter created twisting passageways through the bulk of Green Dome, though at the time no one knew how he managed the feat, and he absolutely refused to speak of it. By day other men followed in his wake to reinforce the tunnels with timber and remove the coal. In the heart of the Great Depression, Headwater experienced a boom. Great heaps of black gold from the mines began to pile up on docks in Chicago and San Francisco.

Suddenly the unemployed, unemployable Erik Zinter had a brand new brick red Ford Model B, his first automobile since selling his Model T, and he also completely paid off his modest home. There was enough money left over to send Kim to the Green Dome parochial school to be with her friends.

In 1937 Sofie, and Dory were in that wonderful last year of their tweens when their bodies were gathering power for the big changes soon to come. They talked about boys in abstract terms that had little to do with the little barbarians that were actual boys. At slumber parties the girls practiced necking with each other so long as it was understood that one of the neckers had to be a boy in theory.

Sofie Krause "at great personal sacrifice" played the role of beau nine times out of ten, especially when Doriel was up. At their private school the tight group of girlfriends passed flowery love letters to each other. Girl-love at age twelve is of such a high order that it knows no jealousy. Share and share alike, everything from lunch to masterpieces of amorous soliloquy.

Doriel Shybear had black eyes and long jet black hair tied in the obligatory Church pony tail but with the cutest bangs ever. The first of the three to start growing knockers, Dory was already, at just age twelve, a full six feet tall. Sha was going to be a giantess. Dory aimed for straight Bs to please har father Jashen, the Prophet of the Church, while not appearing too bookish. Dory heard voices. When she was younger, it was a fun game, but over time Dory came to dislike being a telephone switchboard. Eventually, Dory insisted the Voices keep it limited to important calls. She enforced this by threatening to keep the Voices up at night with voices of her own. D8

Sofie Krause was a tomboy who kept her ash-blond hair short with no Church-mandated pony tail. When she grew older she was the only girl on the football team. Like Kim and Dory, Sofie was required to wear woolen skirts to class rather than trousers, which always annoyed her. One Halloween morning Dory came dressed as a pirate's wench. Sha had ripped har dress into long strips so har pinup-model legs could poke out when sha walked. When Sofie saw that she felt a sweet electric shock and knew she had graduated to full-service tribade.

Kimberly Zinter had auburn hair halfway between mahogany and carrot-top. She had light green eyes and a pretty face but she was a little chubby, or perhaps just Rubenesque. Kim was compelled to wear her hair in a ponytail at all times, of course, like her mother and father and elders and all other good little Greendomites, male or female. Kim was an infidel. She didn't really believe any of that stuff about Chief Wanica and the Golden Gift written in the Green Book, which was testimony to how tightly her father Erik was capable of keeping Jashen’s secret. But she wasn't ready to let down her father so she gritted her teeth, wore the damned ponytail in a bun, and when she ventured outside of Headwater she tried to ignore the comments at the edge of her hearing like, "Oh hey, there goes another Bunner, look at her hair.'

For science class the teacher paired everyone off as lab partners. Kim ended up with Sofie, and Dory ended up with her brother Gabriel. But Sofie kicked Gabriel out of hez seat with "no offense pally" and sent hem shambling towards Kim, an adjustment in the teacher's choice.

As time went on Gabriel went so far as to hold Kim’s hand skating at Lake 13 when it was frozen over. By the time they were fourteen Sofie and Dory were asking if Kim and Gabriel had pitched woo and what it was like. "We did indeed pitch woo," Kim said. "He feels like a rubber wet suit stretched over a suit of armor. Soft on the surface but with a hard core underneath. I like it."

In the summer the same Lake 13 used for ice skating was used for skinny-dipping and since bathing suits for kids were unknown in the 1930s. So there was no more keeping the Shybear family secret. Kim and Sofie learned that Gabriel was both a boy and a girl at the same time. The four of them stood naked in a square, ten yards out into Lake 13 up to their thighs in cool water with no body modesty at all because they were good friends and nobody else was there. The boy part of Gabriel was doing what fourteen year old boy parts typically do around girls. D9

Kim asked about the one ball. "The other ball is inside me, Kim, it's a real ovary. I could get pregnant." Kim glanced at hez small breasts and nipples, which didn't look like they were just for decoration either. "Gabriel is what we call an jen," Dory said. “A nephil." Kim and Sofie were stunned to silence.

When Gabriel saw their unbelief che said, "Recall your scripture. Genesis six four. There were giants in the earth in those days. When the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men they bore children to them. The same became the mighty men of old, men of renown."

Dory said, "We're saying he has a copy of mom's Z chromosome."

"What about you?" Sophie asked, looking at Dory. "You're Gabriel's sister so why didn't you end up with a dangler too?"

"I'm not a nephil, I'm one of the elyonim. I'm an angel. That's why I'm even taller than Gabriel. And I've got a pair of nasty bits too, they just happen to match.” Dory showed them what she meant, then looked askance at both of her friends. "None of this should be new to you, right Kim. Right, Sofie? Don't you believe what’s written in the Book of Green Dome?"

"Of course I believe all that stuff in the Green Book and the Bible," Kim answered, annoyed at the insinuation she was an apostate. "Kemen, miracles, the resurrection, everyone believes it happened, back then. But nobody believes it happens now."

Sofie said, "Kim is absolutely right. Everybody knows it, but nobody is ready to lose face and ever admit what they all know."

"If you were just talking about the Bible you'd have a point," Gabriel said. "Half the Green Book is corrections to the stories in the Bible. More than half. But the new claims in the Book of Green Dome? Everything in there really happened, exactly as written. It's like no other holy text ever put together."

Kim and Sophie accepted this rebuke and nodded their heads silently. They were unprepared to call their friends liars, and unwilling in any event. Besides, the hard evidence was literally there for them to see standing between the legs of Gabriel.

When Kim asked if Gabriel was the very one who spoke to the Mother of Christ Dory and Gabriel locked eyes briefly, and Dory chose to answer. "I hate to say it, but there are certain things we can't tell you, at least not now. I think later you'll understand why we couldn't talk."