She’d never told him. She never would.
But for a month afterward, she had savaged herself. Hated herself for ever having been born.
“What’s the matter with you?” Billy had asked over a steaming cup of chicory root. “Get over it. Or are you just doing this to keep reminding me?”
“Reminding you?” she’d cried in disbelief, then, bursting into tears, she’d run out into the night to stumble up the slippery, snow-covered slope until she could stare up at the winter-white moon and pray to God to kill her.
But He hadn’t.
She still lived. Hungry. Desperate. And loathing herself.
Not that Billy, with his dreams, was any better. She’d never seen her brother scared. But when the dream came upon him in the middle of the night, he’d cry. Whispering, “No, Maw! Please don’t! I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me!”
Once she’d shaken him awake, asking, “Billy, what is it?”
And before he could come to his senses, he’d hoarsely admitted, “Maw. She’s climbing out of the grave. Her eyes are like fire, and she’s pointing at me.”
And then he’d taken to shaking as if his soul were frozen.
The crack of a hoof on rock carried up the canyon.
Sarah froze, head turning as she listened. Rider coming. Then she scrambled for the cabin door, reached inside, and wrapped her fingers around the revolver’s polished grip. Tossing a brown blanket—stained green with grass—over her shoulders, she hurried to the currant thicket and crouched down behind the stems. Covered so, she was as near to invisible as a whippoorwill on the forest floor.
One hand on the grip, the other around the cold cylinder, she cradled the Colt she’d taken from Dewley’s body. The gun that he’d shot Maw with. Capped, and all six loaded, she need only cock, aim, and fire.
Dewley. Her jaw clamped, the eerie memory of his demon-blue eyes stared out from inside her. Billy had been right. She had slaughtered enough pigs in her time. Killing a man wasn’t that much different.
That she’d done so should have given her peace. Instead she wondered if she hadn’t just released his dastardly soul—freed it from his body to possess a previously unknown corner of her own.
Along with everything else in her shattered world, her relationship with Billy was just as wounded. They barely talked—each locked sullenly in his or her head. The looks he gave her were bitter, filled with guilt. As if, by whatever fool reasoning, he considered her abduction and rape to be his fault.
As if it all went back to Paw saying, “You take care of your mother and sister.”
Worst of all, however, were the nightmares that brought Billy screaming upright in his blanket. Several times, she’d seen him reflexively grab his privates. Seen the shame in his eyes the next morning when he wouldn’t even so much as look at her.
She’d heard that men sometimes ejaculated in the night. Did he blame himself for that, too? As if his dream emission condemned him to the likes of Dewley and his rapists?
“And how, Sarah, do you go about discussing that with your brother?”
Her entire world was in shambles, and she could see no way out.
A hint of movement down the creek trail.
Her heart began to hammer.
A horse and rider appeared; another followed down in the trees.
Should have run!
Too late now. She’d have to let them get …
“Sis? We’re coming in!”
She puffed out a relieved breath as Billy’s voice carried on the cold air. But who had he brought? And why here? This was to be their secret. Their refuge.
Inviolate.
She stood—pistol still at the ready—as Danny Goodman led the way, his bone-rack of a blood-bay horse looking exhausted and sweaty. Danny—a worn butternut cape about his shoulders, a misshapen felt hat on his head—wore high boots in need of polish; a Burnside carbine rested in a saddle scabbard made from old boot tops. A ground cloth and lumpy blanket were tied to his cantle.
“Miss Sarah,” Danny greeted, touching a gloved finger to the brim of his hat. Then he wearily stepped out of the saddle, bracing himself on the horse as if unwilling to trust his legs.
Billy, on a gray—another walking pile of bones—swung easily off, patting the horse. Both animals had immediately and greedily started cropping the spring grass in the small clearing.
“Billy?” Her anger was rising. “Why’d you bring Danny here?”
He gave her his hot gaze—the one that said, “I’m the man, and I’m responsible!” That look always incensed her.
Aloud, almost apologetically, he said, “Danny’s in trouble. He needed a place to hole up.”
“That’s not our problem!”
“Miss Sarah,” Danny said with a smile, eyes averted. “I understand. Just give me a moment, and I’ll be on my way.”
“No you won’t,” Billy declared adamantly, ground-reining the horse—not that the gray beast looked like it had the energy, or the inclination, to leave with fresh grass on the ground.
Billy stepped up, jaw set, a finger pointing her way. “We don’t turn away friends in need, and Danny’s my friend. It ain’t Christian, and it ain’t our way. Paw taught us better than that.”
Danny’s fatigued eyes fixed on the 1860 Army Colt she held. “Miss Sarah, you all want to shoot me, go right ahead. Given the way I feel right now, being dead might be a tolerable improvement.”
She lowered the pistol.
“Billy, you promised…” She couldn’t finish, walking around the currants, stepping wide around the horses, and leaning in the door to slip the revolver back into its holster.
Then she turned, rubbing the backs of her arms as she asked, “Where’d you get the horse?”
“It’s Danny’s spare. Ride one, switch to the other when the first is tuckered.” He reached up and unbuckled the bridle and bit, the horse barely letting him as it cropped for grass.
“You on the run, Danny Goodman?”
He grinned in her direction, his eyes on the ground at her feet. “Been up to Missouri and into Kansas some. Living the life of the partisan
