'Howdy, there,' Fitz began, drawing in on his reins. The rest of the party stopped along with him. His hat was tilted low over his thickly-bearded face, and his eyes seemed to disappear into folds of flesh. 'I'll be damned!' he said suddenly. Then he laughed. 'Come all the way to Kansas to die, boy?'
And he reached for his revolver.
Cole had been fast before the war. He had been fast in the West. He was faster now.
Fitz had been the inspiration that had taught him how to draw faster than sound, faster than light. He had always known that someday, somehow, he would meet up with this man.
And he did now, guns blazing. Holding the reins in his teeth, he tightened his thighs around the bay and rode into the group.
He watched Fitz fall. He saw the blood stain his shirt crimson, and he watched him fall. The rest of it was a blur. He heard men and horses screaming as he galloped through their midst. A bullet struck his saddle, and then the bay went down beneath him. Cole tasted the dust roused by the multitude of horses. He jumped away from the fallen bay, grabbed his rifles and fired again. The gunfire seemed to go on forever.
Then there was silence. He spun around, a cocked rifle in either hand.
Three men remained alive. They stared at him and raised their hands. Their faces meant nothing to him.
He hurried away from his fallen horse and leaped into the saddle of a large, powerful-looking buckskin. Warily eyeing the three men, he nudged the horse forward. The buckskin had been a good choice. It surged forward, and Cole could feel the animal's strength and sense its speed. He raced forward, his heart pounding, adrenaline pumping furiously through his system.
He was alive.
But as he raced toward the town he saw the soldiers. Rows of blue uniforms. Navy-blue. On both sides of the road. He slowed his horse to a walk. There was nowhere to go. It was over. They would build a gallows in the middle of town, and they would hang him as a bushwhacker.
Suddenly Kurt Taylor was riding toward Cole. 'Hear there's been some shooting up at the end of town, stranger. You might want to hurry along and let the army do the picking up.'
Cole couldn't breathe. Taylor lifted a brow and grinned at him. Cole looked down at his hands where they rested on the pommel. They were shaking.
He saluted Taylor.
Taylor saluted back. 'Someone ought to tell Cole Slater that the man who killed his wife is dead. And someone also ought to warn him that he's an outlaw in these parts. Someone ought to warn him that he'd best spend his time way, way deep in Dixie. I know that the man isn't any criminal, but there aren't many who served with him like I did. The rest think he ought to wear a rope around his neck.'
'Thank you kindly, sir,' Cole said at last. 'If I meet up with him, I'll tell him.'
He rode on, straight through the ranks of blue uniforms. He kept riding. He didn't look back, not even when he heard a cheer and realized that the Union soldiers were saluting him, that Kurt Taylor had won him a few friends.
His thigh was bleeding, he realized. He had been shot after all, and he hadn't even known it. It didn't matter much. He had to keep riding. He wanted to get home. Night was falling. It was a good time to ride.
A little farther down the road he became aware that he was being followed. He quickly left the road and dismounted, whispering to the buckskin, encouraging it to follow him into the brush.
He was being followed by a single horseman. He hid behind an oak tree and listened to the hoofbeats. He waited until the rider was right by his side. Then he sprang up and knocked the man to the ground.
'Damn you, Cole Slater! Get off me.'
'Taylor!'
Cole stood and dragged Taylor to his feet.
'You son of a bitch!' Taylor laughed, and then he clapped Cole hard on the shoulders. 'You damned son of a bitch! Hasn't anybody told you that the South is going to lose the war?'
'It wouldn't matter what they told me,' Cole said. 'I can't much help what I am.' He paused a moment, and then he grinned, because Kurt really had been one damned good friend. 'Thank you. Thank you for what you did back there. I've seen so many men tearing one another to shreds. The truth meant more to you than the color of a uniform. I won't forget that, Kurt. Ever.'
'I didn't do anything that God wouldn't call right,' Kurt said. 'You got him, Cole. You got that mangy bastard. 'Course, you do know they'll shoot you on sight now and ask questions later.'
'Yes, I know that.'
'You're heading south, I hope?'
'East, and then south.'
'Don't stay around the border too long,' Taylor warned him. 'Even to see your boy. Major Emery said that if I ever came across you I was to warn you —'
'What?' Cole snapped, his hands on Taylor's shoulders.
'I'm trying to tell you. Major Emery said —'
'The hell with Emery! What boy?'
Taylor cocked his head, frowning. 'Why, yours, of course. Born last February. A fine boy, I understand. Captain Ellsworth gets out there now and again, and he reported to the major that both mother and child were doing fine. Don't rightly recall what they named him, but Ellsworth says he's big and healthy and has a head of hair to put many a fine lass to shame. Cole, let go, you're about to snap my damned shoulder blade. Oh, hell! You mean you didn't know? Listen to me now. Don't you go running off half-cocked after everything that happened here today. You move slow, and you move careful, you hear me. Slater? Most of the Union boys would shoot me if they knew I let you slip through my fingers. Cole?'
'I'll move careful,' Cole said.
Yes, he'd move careful. He'd move damned careful. Just to make sure he lived long enough to tan Kristin's sweet hide.
Why in God's name hadn't she told him?
It was hot and humid on the Fourth of July, 1864. Scarcely a breeze had stirred all day.
It had been a difficult day for Kristin. She had learned long ago to keep her mind off her worries, to try not to think too much, to concentrate on her tasks. Anything was better than worrying. If she worried all the time she would drive herself mad.
But the fourth was a particularly difficult day.
There were celebrations going on everywhere. Union soldiers letting off volleys of rifle fire, ranchers setting off fireworks. Every gunshot reminded Kristin that her husband could meet her brother on the field of battle at any time, that they were still at war, that the nation celebrating its birthday was still bitterly divided.
There was smoke in the air, and the noise was making the baby restless. She'd had him with her down in the parlor, and Delilah's Daniel, almost three years old now, had been laughing and entertaining the baby with silly faces. But then Cole Gabriel Slater had decided enough was enough, and he had jammed one of his pudgy little fists into his mouth and started to cry.
'Oh, I've had it with the entire day anyway!' Kristin declared to everyone in the room and to no one in particular. She picked up the baby and started up the stairs. Delilah, sewing, stared after her. Shannon, running her fingers idly over the spinet, paused. Samson rolled his eyes. 'Hot days, yes, Lordy, hot days,' he mumbled. He stood up. 'The hands will be back in soon enough. I'll carry that stew on out to the bunk-house.'
Upstairs, Kristin lay down with her fretful baby and opened her blouse so that he could nurse. She started, then smiled, as he latched on to her nipple with a surprising power. Then, as always, an incredibly sweet feeling swept through her, and she pulled his little body still closer to her. His eyes met hers. In the last month they had turned a silver-gray, just like Cole's. His hair was hers, though, a thatch of it, blond, almost white. He was a beautiful baby, incredibly beautiful. He had been born on the tenth of February. Stroking his soft cheek, she felt her smile deepen as she remembered the day. It had been snowing, and it had been bitterly cold, and she had been dragging hay down for the horses when she had felt the first pain and panicked. It would have been impossible for Dr. Cavanaugh to come out from town, and it would have been impossible for her to reach town. Pete had been terribly upset, and that had calmed her somehow, and Delilah had assured her that it would be hours before the baby actually came.
