Kristin came outside one April afternoon, and she knew instantly that something was wrong. There was a peculiar stillness in the air.
There should have been noise. There should have been laughter. The dozen or so Union troops billeted on the ranch should have been out and about, grooming their horses, hurrying here and there in their smart blue uniforms with their correspondence and their missives.
Pete was nowhere in sight, and neither was Samson.
'Samson?' Kristin called out.
Then she heard the barn door creak as if the breeze had moved it, but there wasn't any breeze. She looked toward it, and she saw a hand. Its fingers were curled and crumpled, and it was attached to a bloodstained blue- clad arm. Kristin felt a scream rising in her throat, but she didn't dare release it. She wrenched Gabe into her arms and ran for the house as fast as she could.
'Shannon!' she screamed. In the hall she found a gun belt with the two Colt six-shooters Cole had insisted she keep loaded and ready. With trembling fingers she wound the belt around her waist and reached for the Spencer repeating rifle Matthew had brought at Christmas.
'Shannon!' she called again.
Her sister came running down the steps, her eyes wide, her face pale.
'Something is wrong. Take Gabe —'
'No! Give me the rifle!'
'Shannon, please —'
'I'm a better shot than you are, damn it!'
'Maybe, yes! But I'm not as desperate and reckless as you are!' Kristin snapped. 'Shannon, for God's sake, you are the best shot! So for the love of God take Gabriel and get upstairs and try to pick them off if they come for me.'
'Who?'
She didn't know how she could be certain, but she was.
'Zeke is back. He's out there somewhere. Shannon, please, don't let them get my baby!'
With that she pushed Gabriel into her sister's arms and started out the door again. Shannon watched her. Gabriel began to cry, and she pulled him close and hurried up the stairs.
'Holy Mary!' Private Watson muttered. 'Will you look at that? Fool Yankee, he's all alone and coming right at us!'
Cole looked up from where he sat polishing the butt of his rifle. His eyes narrowed as he watched the trotting horse. Judging by the way the man riding it sat, he was injured, and injured pretty badly.
'Should we shoot him?' someone murmured uncertainly.
'Somebody already done shot him,' came the wry answer.
'Leave him be, boys,' Cole said, rising curiously. Cole had been promoted to Colonel, which made him the highest-ranking officer in the group. Malachi was now a major and Jamie a captain. The three of them were with a small company of men simply because small companies were all that was left in their sector of the West. They had decided to find Kirby-Smith, wherever he was, and join forces with him, but for the last month they had kept a field headquarters in this abandoned farmhouse deep inside an overgrown orchard.
'I know that man,' Cole muttered suddenly. He hurried forward, his brothers and his ragged troops at his heels.
He reached the horse, and the Yankee fell right into his arms. Cole eased him down to the ground, wresting his own scarf from around his neck to soak up the blood pouring from the wound beneath the man's shoulder blade.
'Matthew McCahy, what the hell happened to you, boy?' he said gruffly. He looked at Captain Roger Turnbill, the company surgeon, and then he looked down at Matthew and wondered how the hell his brother-in-law had found him. Then he decided it didn't matter, not until Matthew was looked after.
'Let's get inside the house,' Captain Turnbill said.
The men started to lift him. Matthew opened his eyes, huge blue eyes that reminded Cole painfully of his wife, so very close by, so endlessly far away. Matthew reached up and clutched the lapel of Cole's frock coat.
'Cole, listen to me —'
'You know this blue belly well, Colonel?' Captain Turnbill asked.
'He's my wife's brother. I know him well enough.'
'Then let's get him inside. He's bleeding like a stuck pig.'
'Matthew —' Cole gripped the hand that clutched him so tightly. 'Matthew, the captain is going to help you. I swear it.' Cole wondered if Matthew was delirious, or if he was merely wary of the Confederate surgeon. Doctors on both sides had been known to boast that they had killed more of the enemy than all the artillery shells in the service.
'Cole! For God's sake, listen to me!' Matthew rasped out. His fingers held Cole's like a vise. 'It's Zeke —'
'What?'
Matthew swallowed painfully. 'We met up with him southeast of here, in a little two-bit place called James Fork. We were a small detachment, thirty of us, heading over to Tennessee. I went down, I was knocked out and they took me for dead. I heard him talking over me. Said he couldn't wait to get to the McCahy place and tell Kristin McCahy that he'd managed to murder her brother now, too. They spent the night at James Fork. I waited till they were drunk and I found a horse, and here I am —'
Cole was ashen and tense. He didn't realize how hard he was gripping Matthew's shoulders until Captain Turnbill said softly, 'Ease off, Colonel.'
'How did you find us?' Jamie asked carefully. He was the only one who seemed to be capable of rational thought at the moment.
Matthew smiled. 'Your location isn't exactly a secret, gentlemen. Kurt Taylor was out here with a scouting party a few weeks ago. Some of the higher-ups know where you are… They're just hoping the war will be over before they have to come in and clean you out.' His smile faded, and he choked and coughed and then groaned in pain.
'Get him up and in the house!' Turnbill ordered. A half-dozen men quickly obeyed him, Jamie Slater tensely and carefully taking Matthew's head and his wounded shoulder.
'Slater! You've got to get there. You and your men, you've got a chance. Riding straight west —'
Cole followed after him. 'There's a dozen Yankees on the ranch,' he said tensely. 'I know it.'
'So does Zeke Moreau,' Matthew gasped out.
Then he was suddenly silent.
'Is he dead?' Malachi asked tonelessly.
Turnbill shook his head. 'Passed out from loss of blood. It's amazing that he made it here.'
Cole didn't follow any farther. He paused in the yard in front of the farmhouse and looked around at the men who remained with him. Besides his brothers and the doctor, he had one sergeant, two corporals and twenty-two privates. They had survived a hell of a lot. How could he ask them to die at this point?
'I've got to leave you, boys,' he said. The soldiers who hadn't helped carry Matthew into the house ranged silently around him. 'This is a private battle, and some of you might say it's being waged against one of your own —'
'Hell, Quantrill and his kind were never one of my own,' Bo Jenkins, a shopkeeper in peacetime, said. 'My kind of Southerner ain't never shot down a man in cold blood.'
'Glad to hear it, Private,' Cole said quietly. 'But still, I can't rightly ask you to come along and get killed —'
'Hell, Colonel, how's this any different from all the other times?' Jenkins said.
His brother John stepped up beside him. 'Seems like we've been following you a long time, sir. We'll keep on doing that. I mean, what the hell, Colonel? You think we all want to live forever?'
Cole felt a smile tug at his lips. 'Then let's get ready. We've got to ride fast. We've got to ride like the wind.'
Armed and ready, Kristin came out of the house and moved quickly toward the barn, toward the bloody hand lying in the spring sunshine.
