He grinned at Malachi as their swords locked at the hilt. "West Point, class of '58."
"Good for you, ya bloody Yank!" Malachi retorted. He pulled away, parrying a sudden thrust, ducking another.
The riders were pounding farther and farther away, into the night.
"You're good, Reb!" his opponent called.
"Thanks, and you're in my way, Yank," Malachi replied.
"In your way? Why, you're almost dead, man!"
"No, sir, you are almost dead."
Always fight with a cool head…
It had been one of the first rules that Malachi had ever learned. His comment had provoked his opponent. It was the advantage he needed.
The Red Legs lifted his sword high for a smashing blow. Malachi thrust straight, catching the man quickly and cleanly through the heart.
He fell without a whimper.
Malachi pulled his sword clean and leaped away from his fallen foe, swinging to counter any new attack.
But he was alone.
Alone with a sea of corpses.
At least twelve of the Red Legs lay dead, strewn here and there over their camp bags, over their saddles, over then-weapons; some shot and some thrust through by swords. Only one of the raiders lay on the ground. A very young boy with a clear complexion.
He groaned. Malachi stooped beside him, carefully turning him over. Blood stained his shirt. Malachi opened it quickly. There was no way the boy could live. He'd been riddled with shot in the chest Malachi pressed the tail ends of the shirt hard against him, trying to staunch the flow of blood. The boy opened his eyes.
"I'm going to die, captain, ain't I?"
He might have said something else, but the boy already knew. Malachi nodded. "The pain will be gone, boy."
"I can't die. I got tobacco in my pocket. Ma would just kill me. That's a laugh, ain't it? But she'd be awful, awful disappointed in me."
"I'll get that tobacco out, boy," Malachi said.
The youth's eyes had already closed again. Malachi thought that the boy had heard him, though. It seemed that his lip curled into a grateful smile just as the life left his eyes.
Malachi eased the boy to the ground. Someone would come, and someone would find him.
This was border country still. He might be sent to his home.
Malachi dug the tobacco out of the boy's pocket and tossed it over one of the older Red Legs. "Your ma won't find no tobacco, boy," he said softly. Then he stood and he looked around at the sea of dead again.
The clearing was absurdly silent and peaceful now. Its inhabitants all lay quiet, tumbled atop one another as if they rested in a strange and curious sleep. He walked among them quickly, cursing to himself, but he couldn't just leave a man if he was wounded, whether he was a Reb or a Yank.
He needn't have worried. Every one of the Red Legs in the clearing was dead. Dead, and growing cold
Malachi stepped from the clearing and looked down the road. He stared up at the night sky. The silence was all around him. The sound of horses' hooves had died away in the distance.
"Damn!" he swore.
The Red Legs had taken Kristin in one direction.
The raiders had taken Shannon the opposite way.
Which the hell did he follow?
He didn't take long to decide. He would get Shannon first. He could bargain with the James boys, he was sure. If Shannon could keep quiet for about two seconds he could get her back quickly. He would go after Shannon first.
Though for the life of him, he wasn't at all sure why.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shannon could not remember a more miserable night in her life.
The raider party traveled through what remained of it. Somewhere, at the beginning, she had said something that the men really hadn't liked—though she couldn't see where they would like anything that she had to say to them—and she had been bound hand and foot and gagged and tossed over the haunches of the horse.
Then they had begun to ride, in earnest.
They knew their territory. They followed no specific route. They traveled over plains and through tangles of bracken and brush.
They talked about going home, and they talked about the friend they had left behind.
"Willie was dead, shot in the chest, there wasn't nothing that we could do. He went down fighting."
"Yeah, he went down fighting. Well, the war's over. Someone ought to find him and give his body to his ma."
"Yeah, someone ought to find him."
"God help him."
"God help us all."
For a while, Shannon listened to their words, but she couldn't believe that they would try to invoke God's aid, and then, as they kept on quietly conversing, she began to weave in and out of reality. She couldn't understand them anymore. She knew who they were. The remnants of Quantrill's Raiders. They had ridden with Quantrill. They had ridden with Bloody Bill Anderson, and with little Archie Clement.
They might well have been with the raiders on a bloody awful day outside Centralia when the bushwhackers had massacred the small contingent of green recruits sent after them. When they had dismembered the corpses and the dying, scalped them and sliced off ears and noses and privates to be stuffed down their throats…
It was how Captain Robert Ellsworth had died. And as she lay trussed and tossed over the haunches of the horse, it made her feel faint, and it made her feel ill.
The night went on and on.
Then Shannon realized that it wasn't night anymore, it was day. They had traveled miles and miles without rest, or if they had paused to rest, she had been unconscious when they had done so.
It was no longer night. It was day. The sun streamed overhead, and the songs of larks could be heard on the air. Somewhere nearby, a brook bubbled and played.
They had come so far. So very far. She wondered bleakly where Kristin was. She had been so certain that when the Red Legs had settled down and slept, she would have been able to slip in and free her sister.
But then the men had come for her.
And now Kristin was being taken one way, and she was being taken another.
And where was Malachi? He had been there. She had seen him firing and fighting, and then he had disappeared. And then she had seen him again just when she had been swept up into the arms of the bushwhacker.
He had probably followed Kristin, she thought. He had gone for his brother's wife. And she was glad of it, Shannon thought. She was so glad of it, because the men might well hurt Kristin…
What were these men going to do with her?
The gag choked her, making her feel ill all over again.
They knew her. They knew that she was old McCahy's daughter, and that her sympathy had been with the North. They surely knew that she was Cole Slater's sister-in-law, but that probably wouldn't count for much. She had been engaged to marry a Union officer, she was the sister of a Union officer, and they knew that she hated them with every breath in her body.
What would they do to her?
And what could be worse than this torture she had already endured, hanging hour after hour over the horse this way, her face slamming against the sweaty flesh and hair and flanks of the animal? She ached in every muscle of her body. It would never, never end.
Then suddenly, at last, they stopped.
Hands wound around her waist, pulling her from the horse. Had she been able to, she would have screamed at the sudden agony of the movement; it felt as if her arms were breaking.
"There you go, Yank," the man said, setting her down beneath a tree. The others were dismounting. They formed a semicircle around her, all of them staring at her.
"What are we going to do with her, Frank?"
The man who asked the question stepped forward. His name was Jesse, Shannon knew that much. And he was Frank's brother. The two of them had spoken occasionally during the endless ride.