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"Delilah will love him. Matthew will come home, and he will raise him like his own."

"Shannon, I love you."

"Courage!" Shannon whispered. She was going to start to cry. Courage was easy in the midst of safety. But as they walked up the steps of the scaffold and beneath the dangling nooses, it was much harder to find.

Fitz sat in front of the scaffold on his horse. "Have you any last words, ladies?" he asked them.

Shannon looked over the crowd. The people weren't smiling or cheerful; they looked troubled. "Yes!" she called out "We're innocent! Your hatred and your vengeance have made a mockery of justice, Hayden Fitz. And if you do not pay, sir, in this lifetime, I am certain that you will pay in the next, in the bowels of hell forever!"

Fitz's cold eyes narrowed. "Hang them!" he ordered.

The ropes were fitted over their heads and around their necks.

Shannon bit back tears as she felt the rope chafe the tender flesh of her neck. In a second, it would be pulled taut. She would dangle and choke. If God were merciful, her neck would snap. And if he were not merciful, she would die slowly of suffocation. Her tongue would swell and protrude and she would die hideously…

Hayden Fitz lifted his hand. The executioner walked over to the lever that would snap open the trapdoor.

Hayden Fitz read off the charges, and the order that Kristin and Shannon Slater be hanged by the necks until dead.

He lifted his hand…

And let it fall.

The executioner flipped the lever, and the floor gave beneath them.

Suddenly, the street was alive with explosions.

Shannon was falling, but the rope did not tighten around her neck. Someone had cut it. She kept falling, and crashed hard upon the ground. Cindy was there, slitting the rope that bound her wrists. Shannon twisted around in the dust.

"Get up! Get out of here!" Cindy cried.

"Kristin—"

"I'm freeing Kristin. Get up, go! Both of you!"

Kristin did not ask questions. She grabbed Shannon's hand and the two of them crawled out from beneath the scaffold. Shannon peered through the rain of gunfire. The streets had gone mad. People were screaming and running.

And a group of horsemen was bearing down on them.

She raised her hand over her eyes to shade them from the sun.

Malachi rode straight at her on his bay mare, his cavalry sword glinting in the sun, a Rebel cry upon his lips. He wore his plumed hat, and his full gray and gold Confederate cavalry dress.

He was coming for her, fighting his way down the street.

Any man fool enough to block his way was cut down. As he neared her, she saw his teal-blue eyes blazing.

"Shannon! Get ready!" he yelled, striking down the last of Fitz's men to stand between them. He was a golden hero, riding to save her.

The bay was rearing over her. He reached down and swept her up onto the saddle before him, and they thundered down the street together.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The morning had burst into madness as they fled the town. There were explosions of gunfire. Women were screaming; men were shouting. Held tight against Malachi on his bay, Shannon was dimly aware of a number of horses riding beside them. Her hair kept whipping against her face, blinding her, but she managed to see at last. Cole was to her left with Kristin, her brother Matthew was to her right, and numerous men she'd never seen before were riding behind her. Some of them were in tattered remnants of uniforms, both blue and gray. Some were dressed as ranchers.

They all rode grimly, not stopping until they were miles from the town. Then Malachi reined in, shouting over Shannon's head to Cole. "We'll kill the horses if we keep this up. Think we've come far enough?''

Cole shrugged, his arms tight around his wife, and looked back along the trail they had just taken. "Here's Jamie," he said.

Jamie Slater, on a huge dapple gray stallion, raced up be-hind them. He waved his hat in the air, a look of triumph on his face.

"Fitz is dead. And there isn't the first sign of pursuit. I think we can take it easier now."

"Not too easy!" A woman called. Shannon gasped as she saw Iris on a dark roan, riding up behind Jamie. "Fitz may not have been tremendously popular, but someone may seek to avenge him."

"Iris!" Shannon gasped when the redhead looked her way.

She was, as always, impeccably dressed, and her hair was unrumpled. She looked unscathed by her imprisonment, except for the large blue circle beneath her right eye.

"I'm all right, honey," Iris said softly. "Thanks to Jamie. He pulled me away from Fitz."

"Jamie, bless you!" Kristin said.

"Always willing to oblige," Jamie drawled softly.

Shannon leaped down from in front of Malachi and ran over to Jamie, who also hopped down off his horse to meet her. "Hey, brat!" He laughed, sweeping her up in a fast hug. Matthew and Kristin dismounted as well, and they all hugged one another with laughter and relief.

"Shannon, get back over here!" Malachi commanded sharply. She glanced at him and saw that his features had become as threatening as a winter storm. She stiffened. Cole wasn't yelling that way. She stared at Malachi, defiant and hurt at once. Safe in the warmth of his arms, she had felt that the war between them was over. But now it seemed that nothing had changed. Did he still hate her?

"We do have to keep moving," he said.

Kristin turned and hurried back to Cole. He lifted her up before him. Jamie and Matthew mounted up again.

Shannon turned to the strangers who surrounded them. "I don't know who you are, but thank you, all of you. With all my heart, I thank you."

"We all thank you," Kristin echoed.

Malachi looked around at the curious assortment of men with them. "Shannon is right—thank you all." He pointed to the right. "These are Sam Greenhow, Frank Bujold, Len-nie Peterson and Ronnie Cordon—all friends of Jamie's from General Edmund Kirby-Smith's command down in Texas. And those boys there—'' he pointed to the left ''—are from Haywood."

"Howdy," said one of the Confederates to Shannon, and he tipped his hat to Kristin. "I don't mean to be telling you all your business, but you were right, Malachi. You should keep moving. You need to put some mean space between you and Sparks."

Malachi nodded. He and Cole and Matthew thanked the men. Then Malachi called to Shannon again. "Shannon, get over here."

She didn't like his tone, but she could acknowledge he was right. She lifted her head and walked back to Malachi. He reached down for her, encircling her waist with his arm and pulling her up before him. They waved to the men who had risked their lives to right against the corrupt rule in Sparks.

A silence fell as their curious little party started off: Cole and Kristin, Matthew, Jamie, Iris and Malachi and Shannon. Jamie rode in the lead, taking them south.

Shannon waited as the morning wore on, wanting to speak, not knowing what to say. She stared at Malachi's hand where it rested on her knee, and thought of how she had come to love that hand, how the texture of the bronze skin, the tiny tufts of gold hair on his long fingers now meant everything in the world to her.

She thought of the warmth of the man behind her, and she thought of the danger they had faced together time and time again. When she remembered the past she wanted to cry out all her pent-up fears and sorrows, but her recollections also made her think gravely of the future, too. Life was precious. It was dear, and could be so swiftly stolen away.

She and Malachi had life. This morning, they both had life. They had the sun over their heads, and the radiance of the blue sky, and they rode with people near and dear to them. God had been good to them that morning.

But Malachi was still as stiff and cold as steel. Shannon thought that perhaps he had decided that now he had carried out all obligations to her. He was angry, that much she knew. Maybe he was anxious, too, to be free.