"I thought she meant to poke a hole right through old Malachi there," he said solemnly. He had cloudlike blue-gray eyes and tawny hair. He smiled again. It was an engaging smile, and Kristin almost smiled, too, in spite of herself.
"I take it you're another Slater? Or are you a friend of the family?"
He stuck out his hand. "Jamie, ma'am."
Malachi let out something that sounded like a growl. "Damned brat bit me!" he thundered.
"Shannon!" Kristin implored.
She might have bitten Malachi, but the bite didn't keep him from maintaining his hold upon her, his arms around her waist. Her toes were barely touching the ground.
"Ah, Malachi." Jamie shook his head sorrowfully and said to Kristin, "He met Grant at Shiloh but he can't handle a little wisp of a girl."
"I'm not —" Shannon began.
"You are a foolish little brat!" Malachi said, releasing her at last and shoving her towards Kristin. She would have swung at him again, but Kristin caught her sister's arms. "Shannon, please!"
But Shannon was still staring at Malachi, seething. "I am not a brat, Reb. You attacked my sister —"
"And you attacked my brother," Jamie said pleasantly. "We're all even. And if Cole were here he'd say the entire lot of us were a pack of fools playing around with firearms. But then, Cole isn't here, and that's why Malachi and I are. Maybe we ought to try and start over."
"Cole sent you, too?" Kristin asked Jamie.
"Yes, ma'am, he did."
"I see," Kristin said stiffly.
Jamie grinned broadly. "No, ma'am, I doubt if you see at all. He had some business to attend to."
"I told her," Malachi said.
"My brother is a cavalry officer," Shannon snapped at Malachi, ignoring everything else. "And if he knew you were on his property he'd skewer you right through!"
He shook his head, looking as if he were about to explode. Then he exhaled in an exaggerated display of patience. "I thought I was supposed to be looking out for Quantrill, not a two-bit piece of baggage!" He shoved his hat down hard over his forehead and started walking toward the house. Kristin, amused, stared after him. Shannon, amazed, placed her hands on her hips.
"Where do you think you're going?" she called.
Malachi stopped and swung around. "In. For coffee and breakfast. And if you don't like it, little girl, that's just too damned bad. You take it up with Cole the next time you see him. He asked me to be here, and I'm here, and I won't be leaving, not until he gets back. Until that time, you do us both a favor. You stay clear of me. Way clear." He paused, then swore softly again. "Hell, I could still be out there with the Yankees. It'd be a hell of a lot less nerve-racking than a morning here!" Once again he turned. Kristin saw that Delilah was on the steps, watching them. She was grinning broadly.
"You must be Mr. Malachi."
Delilah's voice floated down to Kristin, and Kristin arched a brow at her. She and Shannon hadn't known that Cole's brothers were coming, but Delilah had. Cole had told Delilah what he was up to, and he hadn't said a word to them.
She gritted her teeth, damning Cole a thousand times over. What was this business he had to attend to? They had made a deal. Zeke was still out there somewhere. She didn't need a pair of baby-sitters. She needed to have Zeke taken care of.
And she needed to have Cole talk to her, to tell her about his life, not just walk away from her when the sun came up.
"You come on in," Delilah was saying to Malachi. "Breakfast's on the table, boys. Breakfast's on the table."
Kristin felt Jamie watching her. She turned to him, and she flushed, surprised by the knowing assessment she saw in his eyes. He had been reading her mind, or else he had been wondering about her relationship with his brother. No, he seemed to know what their relationship was already. She could read that in the look he was giving her.
Then he smiled, as if he had already decided that he liked her, and so she smiled, too. She liked Jamie. And she liked Malachi. She even liked the war he was waging with Shannon. She had felt like laughing as she'd watched them and she hadn't felt like laughing in a long time.
"I'm awful hungry, too," Jamie said. He offered her his arm. "Shall we go in for breakfast?"
Kristin hesitated, then took his arm, and they started toward the house. She paused, turning back to her sister. "Shannon?"
"I'll skip breakfast," Shannon said heatedly, her bright blue eyes still on Malachi's retreating back. "I don't rightly feel like sitting down with —" She paused when she saw that Jamie was studying her intently. "I'm not hungry." She spun around and stomped off to the barn. Kristin looked at Jamie again.
"Just where is Cole? I don't need looking after like this, you know. Cole and I had a — an agreement."
She studied his eyes, trying hard not to flush.
"You talk to Cole about his whereabouts later," Jamie said flatly. Neither of the Slaters was going to say a thing about Cole's absence, she realized. "And we're here 'cause of your agreement. We know Quantrill and his boys. We're just here to see that you're safe. Do you really mind? Terribly?"
"No, I, uh… of course not. You're both very welcome," she said, forcing herself to smile. They were welcome, they really were. It was just that…
It was just that she wondered where the hell Cole had gone. She wondered if it had to do with another woman, and she wondered if she could bear it if it did.
Don't fall in love with him! she warned herself again. But he was gone, and she was aching, and it was too late. He wasn't involved and she was, and it was gnawing away at her. She forced her smile to remain in place. "Jamie, you are very welcome. Come on. Delilah makes an incredible breakfast."
He rode southeast the first day. The farther east he went in Missouri, the more closemouthed and careful people were about Quantrill and his gang.
It was natural, he supposed. It had all turned into such a hideous, ugly thing. The ugliness had taken hold way back in the 1850s when John Brown had come into Missouri with his followers and killed slaveholders. Cole didn't really know what to think of John Brown. He had seen the man at his trial, and he had thought then that old John Brown spoke like a fanatic. But he had also thought that he spoke from conviction, too, when he said that only a bloodbath could cleanse the country of the sin of slavery.
John Brown and his followers had gone on to raid the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Robert E. Lee — then an officer of the United States Army — had been sent in to capture John Brown. Jeb Stuart had been with the forces sent to Harper's Ferry, too.
Cole had been with them himself, riding right alongside Jeb. They had captured John Brown and taken him to Charlestown to stand trial. There hadn't been any Confederacy then. And Cole hadn't known what was to come.
In the North they had quickly begun to sing, "John Brown's body lies a-molderin' in the grave," conveniently forgetting that even if the man had been a God-fearing murderer, he had still been a murderer.
And in Missouri men had learned to retaliate.
Quantrill and his raiders were worshipped by the people here, people who had known nothing but death and destruction from the Kansas jayhawkers. Cole had to be careful. When he stopped at a farmhouse, he quickly made his presence known. He asked for a sip of water from a well, then asked if anyone knew where he might find Quantrill or any of his boys. He was polite, and he smiled, and he used his best country accent, and he kept it filled with respect.
In return he was pointed more and more toward the south. Finally, in a small town almost fifty miles south of Osceola, he heard that Quantrill was at the local saloon.
No one was afraid there. Quantrill's boys were in charge. The South had a good grip on its own here. At a farmhouse outside the town, Cole was invited in for a meal, and the farmer assured him that he could find Quantrill at the saloon at about six that evening.