Later, Billy would realize that was when the devil took him over. In the mindless clarity, he walked forward, pulling the Dragoon from his belt.
The redhead. He’s the dangerous one.
“Hey,” a brown-haired man in a straw hat said, pointing at Billy.
The others turned, two of them reaching for pistols.
“Ya’ll got the Hancock girl? Say she’s a good fuck?” Billy was laughing, feeling the craziness of the moment. “Bet she is.”
Billy cocked the big Dragoon and shot the redhead through the center of his chest. Cocking and triggering, he shot the dirty-faced man, and then the blond. A black-eyed bearded man shot wildly with his pistol. Billy calmly laid the Dragoon’s front sight to cover the shooter’s nose and triggered. The man vanished in the billow of smoke.
The last man, sallow-faced, brown eyes wide, had leaped to his feet, tugging on his pistol. The Remington revolver’s hammer had caught in his shirt, fouling his attempt to free it. Finally, he tore it loose.
Billy shot him in the lights. Sallow-face staggered. The Remington wavered. His mouth worked—rage in his eyes as he worked the hammer back.
Billy cocked the Dragoon, smiled. The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder.
The sallow-faced man smiled his victory, taking his time, letting Billy see his death coming.
Even as the Remington discharged, Billy dropped the Colt. Threw himself right, and down as he shifted the Sharps.
The sallow-faced man blinked, seemingly fixed on the expanding puff of black powder smoke, then glanced down in time to see the Sharps’s black muzzle as Billy shot him in the chest.
Like an undercut tree, the sallow-faced man tilted, leaned, and toppled backward.
Like all good hunters, Billy took stock of his kills. The redheaded man was stone dead, as was the face-shot bearded man. The two others might have been mortally wounded, but Billy took no chances. Used the Bowie to cut their throats, left them choking and blowing blood in red misty sprays.
Sarah. Where’s Sarah?
Behind the packs and saddles a young boy had risen, his arms spread. Face pale with horror, his eyes were wide with disbelief. Pants wadded down around his ankles, his penis jutted hard, proud, and glistened wetly above the damp brown thatch of pubic hair. His shirt hung open exposing a thin white belly and protruding navel.
Billy started forward, the Bowie dripping blood from its tip.
The boy turned to run, tripped on his pants, and fell flat, trying desperately to jerk them up. “No, no, no,” he kept pleading as he tried again to leap to his feet, still tangled.
Billy launched himself, his body slamming down on the boy, driving the air from his lungs. His face inches from the boy’s, he stuck the Bowie in low, watched the youth’s eyes widen at the sting burning its way deep inside his guts.
“Was my sister good?” he gritted through clenched teeth, his powerful arm sliding the sharp knife up through muscle, intestine, and liver.
The boy’s limbs quivered, his head jerking this way and that. Terror-wide brown eyes fixed on Billy’s.
Billy rose to his feet, leaving the boy’s guts to spill out the long slit in his side.
“God! Dear God!” the boy cried, reaching down with frantically trembling hands to clutch at his bloody intestines.
Billy sucked a deep breath. A crazy joy began to dance through his chest. A feeling of ecstasy like nothing he’d ever experienced. His entire body might have become electric. Never had he felt so alive, so powerful and joyful.
And then he stopped short, blinked.
For a second the sight didn’t make sense, didn’t register.
Sarah lay on her back, spread-eagled. Short lengths of chain ran from the shackles on her wrists and ankles to stakes driven into the ground. The torn remains of her dress and camisole lay in shreds beneath her. Her long pale blond hair had been spread out over the grass as if arranged. A cloth gag had been stuffed in her mouth.
As he met her desperate, half-crazed stare, Billy’s breath stopped in his throat. His heart was banging like a wild thing. Knees buckling, he sank slowly to the ground.
This wasn’t the heavenly dream. Wasn’t the purity that had been his sister.
Distantly—as though he were gone from his body—he stared at her. Each bruise on her white skin, the bite marks around her nipples, the bloody fluids on the inside of her thighs and around her swollen … Around …
She saw, read his shock, and jerked her head away, as if to hide herself.
Billy struggled for breath. Felt himself float. How long? An eternity?
Sarah’s pleas, shouted against the gag, her jerking sobs, finally broke through the screaming in his mind.
He crawled forward on all fours, fingers fumbling as he pulled the pins from the shackles—watched her curl into a ball as she was freed. He untied the knotted rag from around her head. Pulled the wad of cloth from her mouth.
“Billy?” Her voice sounded small. Wounded.
He pulled her into his arms. She wept, huge racking sobs that shook her like a broken bird.
“Sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m so … so sorry. My fault. I…”
Sarah hoarsely said, “Got to go. Dewley’s coming with the rest of them. They’s twenty-one in all. So that’s fifteen that went to Fayetteville to sell the wagon and what they took.”
“Can you ride? I mean, after what they done to your…”
“I think so.”
He helped her to her feet, aware of every inch of her naked body. “Got to get you something to wear.”
“Tucker’s pants, for one,” she said unsteadily, her eyes drifting, half mad in her head. “He’s my size.”
“Who’s Tucker?”
Her head sort of wobbled as she jerked it toward the dying boy. The kid was breathing fast, kept swallowing hard. His glittering gaze kept fixing on Billy’s when he
