'You'll hit…Malachi.'
Shannon shook her head. She had to clear it. She crawled past the tree before falling to the ground. She couldn't quite reach Malachi's Colt.
Iris reached for it and swept it along the dirt to Shannon. For a brief moment their fingers touched. Shannon bit her lip, then smiled swiftly, encouragingly. Her fingers curled around the butt of the gun.
The men were still locked in deadly combat. Justin was on top of Malachi; Malachi was straining to hold the man's arm far above him, to escape the deadly silver blade of the razor-edged knife. Shannon blinked against the darkness and against her trembling fear and the nauseating aftereffects of the drug.
She aimed carefully, and then she fired.
She was a crack shot, and she proved it that night. She hit Justin right in the hand. His knife went flying as he screamed in pain, his fingers shattered.
Malachi pushed him away and reached for the knife. Stunned, he came up on the balls of his feet and looked at Shannon. He smiled slowly, smoothing back a lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes.
'Thanks…darlin',' he murmured.
He stood, dusting off his pants. Justin Waller was rolling on the ground screaming.
'Bitch! I'll kill you, I swear, I'll kill you—'
'You aren't killing anyone else, Waller,' Malachi said softly. 'We're taking you back to Haywood, and they'll see that you hang.'
'There ain't no wanted posters out on me, Slater.'
'They're going to hang you for murder. Reba died this morning,' Malachi said.
Justin let out a howl. 'Your wife wanted it, Slater. She was smooth as silk to touch. She was better than that blond whore back in town. She screamed and cried and asked me far more and more.'
Malachi stood still.
'But then, you can't imagine that whore. She wanted to live so badly. She begged me to stop.'
'I'm not going to kill you, Justin,' Malachi said. He walked over to where the man lay. 'I'm not going to kill you. The war is over. I'm done killing. They'll hang you, and you aren't going to say anything to make me kill you now and cheat the hangman.'
'You shoulda seen her scream.'
Malachi ignored him. He started walking toward Shannon
'I'm going to kill you, Slater!' Justin raged. He stumbled to his feet and came running toward them. Cupping his bleeding hand beneath his good arm, he stumbled toward them and fell upon his rifle where it lay by the tree. Malachi started to spring for him.
Then a shot rang out. Justin Waller fell down dead.
Malachi and Shannon stared at one another, then turned and looked at Iris. She had a little ivory-handled pistol in her hand. A small waft of powder floated from it.
She looked from the dead man to Malachi. 'You couldn't kill him, Malachi. I had to.'
Malachi nodded at her. He walked over and retrieved his hat from where it had fallen in the dust, then he came back to Shannon.
'Can you ride with me?' he asked her.
She nodded.
'What about him?' Iris asked, referring to Waller.
'We'll put him on his horse and bring him back to Haywood. They can do what they want with him there. If they happened to know that he was at Centralia, they might butcher him up and feed him to the crows. I don't know. We're done here. We've got to get moving.'
Iris nodded. Malachi brushed Shannon's forehead with a kiss, then nodded to Iris. Iris came forward and slipped her arm around Shannon while Malachi picked up the dead man, throwing him over his shoulder.
Shannon looked at Iris sickly. 'He—he killed a woman?'
'A friend of mine,' Iris said.
'The blond woman?'
Iris nodded. 'Come on, honey. Let's get out of these woods. It's been a long day, and it's going to be a longer night.'
Arm in arm with Iris, Shannon made her way through the bracken and trees. Malachi walked ahead of them.
They came to where a trail showed in the moonlight. The bay and her black gelding were there. Malachi tossed Justin's body over the bay and looked at the women. 'I'm going to give the woods a look for his horse. Will you be all right?'
'Of course, sugar—er, uh, I mean, sure, Malachi,' Iris said.
'I'm fine,' Shannon added. She wasn't fine at all. She was sick to death and cold and shivering, but Justin was dead, and the danger was over. And Malachi had cared enough about her to come for her.
She had loved Robert Ellsworth. She had loved him very much.
But that didn't stop her from loving Malachi now. No matter what his relationship had been with Iris.
She couldn't even hate Iris anymore.
Malachi walked into the bushes and disappeared. Shannon must have weaved in the night breeze, because Iris quickly made a clucking sound. 'Let's sit. It's all right here, I'm sure. We'd hear a rattler if there was one around anywhere.'
'Iris,' Shannon said softly, sitting down beside the redhead.
'What? I'm sure that there's really nothing to worry about—'
'Iris, I'm really sorry about the whiskey.'
Iris inhaled sharply and her eyes fell on Shannon. 'It's all right.' She grimaced ruefully. 'Most ladies do feel that way about whores.'
'Oh, Iris, trust me! I didn't act like a lady!' She smiled, and then she laughed, and she realized she was glad because she had wondered if she would ever laugh again. Then she was afraid, because perhaps her laughter sounded hysterical. 'Too bad you couldn't have met my pa, Iris. He would have explained in no uncertain terms that a lady wouldn't do things like that.' She hesitated, then she smiled. 'Pa would have said that you were quite a lady, Iris. Thank you for coming for me. You don't owe me anything. Even if you—even if you do sleep with my husband.'
Iris squeezed her hand in return. 'I didn't sleep with your husband. Well, not now, anyway. I had a thing on him once, years ago, in Springfield. It was before the war. It was—it doesn't matter what it was. It's over.'
'You know that we're not really married,' Shannon said softly.
'You are really married now, if I understand things right.'
Shannon flushed. 'He had to marry me or hang.'
Iris shook her head, and her sage green eyes glittered knowingly. 'You don't know your man very well, Mrs. Slater. No one ever forced Malachi to do anything that he wasn't willing to do already, deep down inside.' She brought her finger to her lips. 'Sh! He's coming back. And men are funny. They just hate to have women talk about them.'
Shannon smiled. Malachi thrashed his way through the bushes with Justin Waller's buckskin horse.
'Shannon, can you ride with me?'
'Yes.'
'Iris? You'll be all right on Shannon's black?'
'Yes, Malachi.'
The two of them were meek, Malachi thought. Damned meek, for a pair of hellcats.
He walked over to Shannon and reached down to her, wishing that his hands would quit shaking. It had been the longest day of his life. He'd had to wait and watch and steel himself to be patient lest Waller killed them both. He had barely managed to keep still when Waller had started shooting at the tree and the ground.
He pulled Shannon to her feet. The once beautiful satin nightdress was mud-stained and torn. 'We'll get you into a warm bath and dressed as soon as we get to the Haywoods',' he said gruffly.
She smiled tremulously and stumbled against him. Her eyes shone with their own crystal-blue radiance, and he couldn't look away from them. They had never been so softly blue upon him. They carried a look of innocence and knowledge, older than the hills, and they had never carried such tenderness.
