Billy’s heart skipped. Two riders? Here?
Surely they wouldn’t have come cross-country along the White River breaks. Anyone with a lick of sense would follow the Huntsville Road. Or, if they were desperate to avoid notice, would have taken any of the ridge trails that wound up to higher, flatter country. The only reason riders would cut across the ridges was if they were circling to come in behind …
“Damn and hell.”
Swiftly, silently, he hurried down the trail, his eyes taking in the brushy spots, the shadowed overhangs beneath the weathered gray limestone, any place a person could hide and watch the trail.
The horses’ hooves had chipped little crescents from the damp ground. The back hooves printed more than three quarters of the front. These weren’t made by skulkers, but men in a hurry to cover ground. Men who had pushed their mounts at a fast walk.
Billy could just see the springhouse at the mouth of the canyon. The door was open. Something he, Sarah, and Maw never did in the constant effort to keep pests out. Slowing, he slipped into the trees, familiar with every stealthy approach to the house.
He eased into the thick rosebushes, saw the wagon wheel. But out in the yard, the wagon itself was gone. The old broken wheel still lay in the dirt beside the tire tracks where the iron rims had cut the soil. Whoever had taken the wagon had brought their own wheel, which meant they had been here before, had planned their raid.
In the center of the yard lay Fly, his belly torn open, entrails trailed behind him as if he’d crawled to his death.
A slow-burning rage began to glow in Billy’s gut. Any bastard who’d do that to Fly …
A man lay facedown in front of the porch, his arms out, legs spread. Blood had dried black on his flour-sack shirt, his boots were missing. But who was he? Who’d shot him? And why?
And more worrisome, where were Maw and Sarah?
On the front porch, the warning bucket was missing.
He tried to think it through as fear began to eat inside him. They’d been raided. Pro-Union jayhawkers would have burned the place after looting it. Maw would have told partisan Rebel guerillas that she had sons in the Confederate army, and while they might have conscripted the wagon with its load of vegetables, they wouldn’t have had to shoot one of their own men in the yard. Nor would they have killed Fly.
Billy shifted, easing back, circling before slipping up behind the newly harvested corn rows until he could see the front of the house. The door was open, sheets, clothing, a couple of Maw’s chests lying open and spilled on the ground before the steps.
The anger and panic burned hotter.
From here he could see where the wagon had been drawn up before the porch, and how it had followed the horses out of the yard and down the lane.
Billy faded back into the brush, made his way along the wooded slope to the rear of the house. As he eased out of the trees, he cut the trapper’s cabin trail, seeing where a man in boots had led Old Clyde and Swat toward the yard. They’d been hidden a quarter mile up the canyon. So, they’d known to look for the horses, too.
A quick dash took him to the pines behind the house, and from there he wiggled his way under the boughs until he could see the back door. Open. He could see clear through the hallway, and out the gaping front door.
He watched for long minutes. Nothing moved.
A rasping moan came from inside.
Billy tightened his grip on the rifle, worked his jaw to sharpen his hearing. He could feel the stillness, the aloneness, in a way he’d never felt while at home.
He sprinted for the back wall, stuck his ear against it and listened. But for the hammering of his heart he could hear nothing.
On moccasin feet he slipped in the door, rifle at the ready. All the cabinets were open, the clothes, normally on the pegs, were jumbled on the floor. He glanced into Maw’s room to see everything in disarray, even the mattress slit open and shredded. What kind of lunatic would ruin an old woman’s mattress?
Maw lay curled on her side in the front room. A smeared streak of blood marked where she’d crawled in from the porch.
“Maw!” Billy cried, rushing to her side.
He winced at the dark blood matting her blouse. High. Had to be a liver and stomach shot. “Who shot you?”
“Colonel Dewley.” She swallowed hard, the action pumping blood out through the wound to re-wet the front of her dress. “Took her.”
“Sarah?”
“They took her!” Maw said through gritted teeth. “Leaped on him. Clawed at him.”
“What happened then?”
She blinked, eyes flicking back and forth as if her vision were blurred. “Went at him … he shot me.”
Stunned disbelief left him reeling. “Where did he take her?”
“Don’t know.”
Maw’s body tensed, the rasping in her throat louder now.
“They’s a dead man out there, Maw. Who is he?”
“One of Dewley’s. Tried to stop it. Said he’d be damned to be part of molesting a white woman. Dewley shot him down. Asked if anyone else objected.”
“Think, Maw. Where would they have taken her?”
“Get her back, son. Keep her safe. Your responsibility to … see…”
Maw tensed, eyes opening wide to flutter in her head. They slowed. Fixed. Her breath made a bubbling sound in her throat, her body going limp.
“Maw?”
Billy laid his finger on her neck, feeling no pulse. He swallowed a knot of grief and forced himself to touch her still, blue eye. She didn’t blink.
Billy gathered her into his lap, hugging her frail body to his, feeling her blood as it soaked into his worn trousers.
By the time he’d
