...I implore you, kind sir, most Reverend man of God and physical healing, do your utmost to tell me what happened to my Abigail. Yes, she is a high-spirited girl, and quarrelsome with those older than she, but her father and I miss her greatly. Our hearts are broke. I know the men of The Pioneer Club will take mercy on a high-spirited girl. She is only fifteen years old...
*
And another, a fragment with no salutation and no signature, found among papers and books at an estate sale in another county.
And you call yourselves Christians! So my daughter committed the sin of lying with a man who may have had a dollop of indian blood inside him. And for that you take her away to your secret place, you take her from her home. And you call yourselves Christians...
*
And finally, a letter he found in his campus mailbox, placed there by someone who must have known about his research, someone who wanted to help while still remaining anonymous. It was dated August of 1825 and addressed to Hiram Fields, the first mayor of New Cambridge and founder of the university:
...I beg you to use your considerable influence and standing in the community to help us find our daughter. The women's college claims no knowledge or responsibility for her whereabouts. And she was last seen on your campus, in the escort of a young man she was keeping company with. I find the reports of the poor treatment of young women in our town alarming, and I wish to understand why you find it impossible to respond to my simple inquiries. A father's inquiries. I know what you men do at those meetings. You will, of course, recall that I used to be a member in good standing of that august organization. If my own beloved Nancy has fallen victim to one of your machinations...
Ludwig understood that, by their very nature, new settlements, especially ones carved out of the wilderness, were insecure and tenuous propositions. And in order for a new community to survive in a new land it was imperative to have as many members rowing in the same direction as was humanly possible. Most new communities started optimistically, building churches and schools and stores, but eventually, faced with life's harsh realities, they began to build jails and graveyards and gallows.
But why did New Cambridge and Union Township seem to have so much trouble? And why was the trouble only with women?
A newsbreak came on the radio. Ludwig stopped looking at the map and turned the volume up as high as it would go, then leaned in close.
"We have breaking news on the disappearance of Fields University student Jacqueline Foley..."
They found her, Ludwig thought. She came strolling back into her dorm and said to everybody, What were you all worried about?
"Captain Dan Berding of the New Cambridge Police informed the media that Ms. Foley's bicycle, a blue Cannondale, has been located on State Route 17, five miles east of New Cambridge and some fifteen miles from the area where she ordinarily rode. Police have now shifted their efforts to the area east of town and are treating the case as an abduction. We will continue to follow this story as new information comes in..."
Ludwig shook his head.
No, he thought, that's not right. That doesn't fit the data at all.
He looked at the map. He knew in his gut that The Pioneer Club met west of town, out in the same general area where the Foley girl rode. If her bike was found on the east side of town, on the highway going away from New Cambridge, it implied either one of two things. Either she changed her route and was riding somewhere else when she was taken. Or they took her off her regular route and then drove the other direction.
But what did all of this mean to him, a professor of Folklore at a Midwestern university, living alone with his books and his theories? He didn't want to make the amateur researcher mistake and cherry pick the data so that it fit the theory he desperately wanted to prove—that The Pioneer Club really existed at one time and that they were responsible for the deaths and disappearances of a number of young women who had run afoul of the power structure in New Cambridge. And, more importantly, that the location of The Pioneer Club meetings possessed a force, something beyond the understanding of any rational human mind and something that existed far outside the purview of any academic researcher, a force that emboldened the members of The Pioneer Club to act in the most horrific ways.
And he had a new theory now, a natural outgrowth of everything he had already been working on: that finding the location of that secret meeting place, the clearing in the woods west of New Cambridge that he knew had to be out there, would lead directly to the location of the missing Foley girl.
It sounded crazy, even as he ran the words through his own mind, but something told him, something deep in his gut, that it had to be true.
It had to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE