Rides a Hero sb-2

by Heather Graham

  "Castrate us!" Roger chortled as she dropped the gun.

  "Why, honey, we're all going to make you glad that you didn't—"

  The man with the knife moved. Just enough.

  Damn her, damn her, damn her, Malachi thought. They were probably all dead now. But he couldn't wait any longer.

  He rose and he fired. He got the guard right between the eyes. The man fell.

  Shannon reached down for the gun she had dropped. Confusion reigned as men rushed toward her, as men looked around, anxious to discover who had fired the shot.

  Malachi kept shooting. He didn't have any choice. He tried to aim and focus and to keep a good eye on Shannon, too. Men fell, and men screamed, and dust flew. But there were too many of them, just too many of them.

  Shannon had been holding her own. But in the midst of the melee, Bear stumbled to his feet. He staggered toward Shannon from the rear while another man approached her from the front. She aimed forward…

  And Bear took a firm swipe against her arm, sending the gun flying. She turned to fight, and he punched her hard in the mouth. Her eyes closed and she slumped to the ground.

  "Get him! Get that varmint in the woods!" Bear ordered.

  "Varmint?" Malachi stood up, staring at Bear. "Excuse me, you jayhawking jackals. Captain Malachi Slater, late of Hunt's magnificent cavalry, and still, my friends, a Southern gentleman. Shall we?"

  "It's a damned Reb!" one of the guards shouted.

  "It's more than that. It's a damned Reb Slater!" Bear roared. "Kill him!"

  Well, this is it, Malachi thought. Shannon had wanted him to die for honor, and he would just have to go down that way. He stood, firing again and again as the Red Legs raced toward him, trying to fire, but failing. He ran out of bullets as a pair of them charged over the rocks, but he had his saber with him, and he drew that. He charged in turn, and managed to kill the first two men, but more of them were coming for him, more and more…

  He was engaged with one fighter when he noticed a carbine aimed his way. He wasn't even going to have time to ask forgiveness of his sins, he thought. No time to mourn…

  A blast sounded.

  It was the Yank holding the carbine who fell, and not Malachi. Amazed, he looked around.

  Hoofbeats! He had heard the hoofbeats! And now the riders were upon them.

  "It's a pack of Red Legs!" shouted a man leaping into the scene on a dapple gray stallion. "Red Legs! Bloody, bleeding, murderin', connivin' Red Legs!"

  "Reg Legs!" came another shout.

  And they all let out with a sound near and dear to Malachi at that moment.

  A Rebel cry went up. Savage, sweet, beautiful to his ears.

  He watched as the six horsemen charged the scene. They were in plumed hats and railroad coats, no uniforms, and yet he thought he knew who they were. He was sure that he recognized the young man on the dapple gray mare.

  He did. These boys had been with Quantrill. He knew two of them. Frank and Jesse James. Jesse had been a bare kid when he had tasted his first blood, but then lots of boys had become men quickly in the war.

  Now this little group was probably headed home, toward southern Missouri. They still seemed young. Even with the war over. But then, Quantrill had depended on young blood, youthful, eager, savage raiders.

  Quantrill was dead now. Bloody Bill Anderson was dead, and Little Archie Clement was dead. Archie who had loved to scalp his enemies. Archie had been with the bushwhackers who had so savagely mowed down the contingent of Union officers sent to catch them, the contingent that had included Shannon's fiance"…

  Well, Malachi didn't think much of bushwhackers, but these boys had come just in time. Maybe Shannon would accept rescue. Maybe she would keep her mouth closed. But he had to get to her.

  He could barely see through the tangle of fighting men and horses, bushwhackers and jayhawkers. He rose, staring over the wavering light of the fires.

  He heard a high-pitched scream, and his heart thudded painfully.

  He looked between a pair of horses as they danced, a deadly dance for their riders. In the gap he could see Bear. The man was cutting Kristin loose from the tree and throwing her over his shoulder.

  Roger Holstein broke away from the battle and joined Bear. Wills, with his bloody toe, ran after them, too.

  "Damn it, no!" Malachi swore. Where was Shannon? He couldn't see her. Did the bushwhackers have her, too?

  No, they didn't, not that group, anyway. Bear and Holstein and Wills had mounted and pulled away. They were heading fast for the trail, heading west.

  "Damn it, no!" Malachi raged again, pushing his way through the warring bushwhackers and jayhawkers, racing toward the Union horses. Bear was gone with Kristin, long gone before he could reach them.

  "Malachi!"

  It was Shannon. He whirled around in time to see one of the James brothers racing along beside her and sweeping her up onto his mount.

  "Hey, you got yourself a girl, Frank!" One of the other riders laughed.

  "Not just a girl, Jessie! D'you know who this is?"

  "Who?"

  "That Yankee-lovin' McCahy brat! Had herself hitched up to one for a while, before we did him in—ouch!" he screamed, looking down at the girl thrown over his saddle, then up at his brother again. "She bites."

  "Yellow-bellied bushwhackers!" Shannon screamed. But Malachi sensed something different in her screams, in the sound of her voice.

  He heard the pain.

  She knew now that these men had been there the day when Robert Ellsworth had been killed, and she would never ask for their mercy.

  "Shannon!" he thundered her name over the clash of steel and the explosion of gunfire.

  "Let's go!" Frank shouted. He fired a number of shots into the air.

  Malachi had swung around, racing toward Frank, when one of the Red Legs jumped in front of him, his sword drawn.

  He didn't have time for a fight!

  The mounted bushwhackers were gathering together. They had come, they had done their damage. Now they were riding away.

  The Red Legs with the sword lunged toward Malachi.

  "Ah, hell!" Malachi swore, engaging in the battle. The fellow wasn't a bad swordsman. In fact, he did damned well.

  He grinned at Malachi as their swords locked at the hilt. "West Point, class of '58."

  "Good for you, ya bloody Yank!" Malachi retorted. He pulled away, parrying a sudden thrust, ducking another.

  The riders were pounding farther and farther away, into the night.

  "You're good, Reb!" his opponent called.

  "Thanks, and you're in my way, Yank," Malachi replied.

  "In your way? Why, you're almost dead, man!"

  "No, sir, you are almost dead."

  Always fight with a cool head…

  It had been one of the first rules that Malachi had ever learned. His comment had provoked his opponent. It was the advantage he needed.

  The Red Legs lifted his sword high for a smashing blow. Malachi thrust straight, catching the man quickly and cleanly through the heart.

  He fell without a whimper.

  Malachi pulled his sword clean and leaped away from his fallen foe, swinging to counter any new attack.

  But he was alone.

  Alone with a sea of corpses.

  At least twelve of the Red Legs lay dead, strewn here and there over their camp bags, over their saddles, over then-weapons; some shot and some thrust through by swords. Only one of the raiders lay on the ground. A very young boy with a clear complexion.

  He groaned. Malachi stooped beside him, carefully turning him over. Blood stained his shirt. Malachi opened it quickly. There was no way the boy could live. He'd been riddled with shot in the chest Malachi pressed the tail ends of the shirt hard against him, trying to staunch the flow of blood. The boy opened his eyes.

  "I'm going to die, captain, ain't I?"

  He might have said something else, but the boy already knew. Malachi nodded. "The pain will be gone, boy."


  "I can't die. I got tobacco in my pocket. Ma would just kill me. That's a laugh, ain't it? But she'd be awful, awful disappointed in me."

  "I'll get that tobacco out, boy," Malachi said.

  The youth's eyes had already closed again. Malachi thought that the boy had heard him, though. It seemed that his lip curled into a grateful smile just as the life left his eyes.

  Malachi eased the boy to the ground. Someone would come, and someone would find him.

  This was border country still. He might be sent to his home.

  Malachi dug the tobacco out of the boy's pocket and tossed it over one of the older Red Legs. "Your ma won't find no tobacco, boy," he said softly. Then he stood and he looked around at the sea of dead again.

  The clearing was absurdly silent and peaceful now. Its inhabitants all lay quiet, tumbled atop one another as if they rested in a strange and curious sleep. He walked among them quickly, cursing to himself, but he couldn't just leave a man if he was wounded, whether he was a Reb or a Yank.

  He needn't have worried. Every one of the Red Legs in the clearing was dead. Dead, and growing cold

  Malachi stepped from the clearing and looked down the road. He stared up at the night sky. The silence was all around him. The sound of horses' hooves had died away in the distance.

  "Damn!" he swore.

  The Red Legs had taken Kristin in one direction.

  The raiders had taken Shannon the opposite way.

  Which the hell did he follow?

  He didn't take long to decide. He would get Shannon first. He could bargain with the James boys, he was sure. If Shannon could keep quiet for about two seconds he could get her back quickly. He would go after Shannon first.

  Though for the life of him, he wasn't at all sure why.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shannon could not remember a more miserable night in her life.

  The raider party traveled through what remained of it. Somewhere, at the beginning, she had said something that the men really hadn't liked—though she couldn't see where they would like anything that she had to say to them—and she had been bound hand and foot and gagged and tossed over the haunches of the horse.

  Then they had begun to ride, in earnest.

  They knew their territory. They followed no specific route. They traveled over plains and through tangles of bracken and brush.

  They talked about going home, and they talked about the friend they had left behind.

  "Willie was dead, shot in the chest, there wasn't nothing that we could do. He went down fighting."

  "Yeah, he went down fighting. Well, the war's over. Someone ought to find him and give his body to his ma."

  "Yeah, someone ought to find him."

  "God help him."

  "God help us all."

  For a while, Shannon listened to their words, but she couldn't believe that they would try to invoke God's aid, and then, as they kept on quietly conversing, she began to weave in and out of reality. She couldn't understand them anymore. She knew who they were. The remnants of Quantrill's Raiders. They had ridden with Quantrill. They had ridden with Bloody Bill Anderson, and with little Archie Clement.

  They might well have been with the raiders on a bloody awful day outside Centralia when the bushwhackers had massacred the small contingent of green recruits sent after them. When they had dismembered the corpses and the dying, scalped them and sliced off ears and noses and privates to be stuffed down their throats…

  It was how Captain Robert Ellsworth had died. And as she lay trussed and tossed over the haunches of the horse, it made her feel faint, and it made her feel ill.

  The night went on and on.

  Then Shannon realized that it wasn't night anymore, it was day. They had traveled miles and miles without rest, or if they had paused to rest, she had been unconscious when they had done so.

  It was no longer night. It was day. The sun streamed overhead, and the songs of larks could be heard on the air. Somewhere nearby, a brook bubbled and played.

  They had come so far. So very far. She wondered bleakly where Kristin was. She had been so certain that when the Red Legs had settled down and slept, she would have been able to slip in and free her sister.

  But then the men had come for her.

  And now Kristin was being taken one way, and she was being taken another.

  And where was Malachi? He had been there. She had seen him firing and fighting, and then he had disappeared. And then she had seen him again just when she had been swept up into the arms of the bushwhacker.

  He had probably followed Kristin, she thought. He had gone for his brother's wife. And she was glad of it, Shannon thought. She was so glad of it, because the men might well hurt Kristin…

  What were these men going to do with her?

  The gag choked her, making her feel ill all over again.

  They knew her. They knew that she was old McCahy's daughter, and that her sympathy had been with the North. They surely knew that she was Cole Slater's sister-in-law, but that probably wouldn't count for much. She had been engaged to marry a Union officer, she was the sister of a Union officer, and they knew that she hated them with every breath in her body.

  What would they do to her?

  And what could be worse than this torture she had already endured, hanging hour after hour over the horse this way, her face slamming against the sweaty flesh and hair and flanks of the animal? She ached in every muscle of her body. It would never, never end.

  Then suddenly, at last, they stopped.

  Hands wound around her waist, pulling her from the horse. Had she been able to, she would have screamed at the sudden agony of the movement; it felt as if her arms were breaking.

  "There you go, Yank," the man said, setting her down beneath a tree. The others were dismounting. They formed a semicircle around her, all of them staring at her.

  "What are we going to do with her, Frank?"

  The man who asked the question stepped forward. His name was Jesse, Shannon knew that much. And he was Frank's brother. The two of them had spoken occasionally during the endless ride.

  Neither of them was much older than she, but they both carried a curious coldness in their eyes. Perhaps they had ceased to feel; perhaps they had even lost a sense of humanity in all the violence of their particular war. She didn't know. And at that moment, she was so worn and exhausted, she wasn't even sure that she cared.

  "I wonder what the Red Legs wanted with her," Jesse mused.

  "Same thing any man would want with her, I reckon," someone spoke up from the rear. Shannon blinked, trying to see him. He was tall and dark-haired with a pencil-slim mustache, and he smiled at her in such a way that she felt entirely naked.

  She closed her eyes. At that particular moment, she just wanted to die. Bushwhackers. The same men who had brutalized Robert might be about to touch her. Death would be infinitely better.

  "Better loosen up that gag," the one named Jesse said. "We're losing her, I think. She's going to pass out on us."

  Frank stepped forward, slipping the gag from her mourn. Shannon fought a sudden wave of nausea. He leaned over her and slit the ropes tying her wrists and ankles. Her blood started to flow again, but she could still barely move. She rubbed her wrists, backing against the tree, staring at the lot of them. There were five of them left. Jesse and Frank, Jesse with a round young face and dark, attractive eyes, Frank taller and leaner, older. There was the dark-haired man who taunted, and two smaller, light-haired men. Maybe they were brothers, too, she didn't know.

  "What's your name?" Jesse asked.

  She stared at him in furious silence. They seemed to know everything else. They ought to know her name.

  "Shannon. Shannon McCahy," the tall, dark-haired one said. "She was picked up with her sister when the Federals decided to put all the families away. She was there when the house fell apart, when Bill's sister and those other girls were killed and wounded."

  "Then she's a Southerner—" Jesse began.

 
Frank snorted and spit on the ground. "She ain't no Southerner, Jesse. You heard her. She's Yank through and through. Just like her blue-belly pa with the yellow streak down his back—"

  Movement came back to her. She felt no pain. Like a bolt of lightning, Shannon flew at the man in a rage. She did so with such force that he went flying to the ground. "You murderers!" she hissed."You hideous rodents… murderers!'' Pummeling the startled man who couldn't seem to fight her fury, Shannon then saw the gun in his belt. She grabbed it and aimed it straight at his nose. The others had been about to seize her. She swung around with Frank's Colt, aiming it right at Jesse. He lifted his hands and backed away.

  "We didn't kill your pa, little girl," Jesse said softly. "We weren't there. Zeke Moreau had his own splinter group. You know that."

  She gritted her teeth, thinking about Robert, trembling inwardly at the depth of the hate that seared her. She could have pulled the trigger. She would have happily maimed or wounded or killed any one of them. When she thought about Centralia…

  Jesse knelt in front of her, speaking earnestly. "You're just seeing one side of it, you know. One side. They came in— the jayhawkers, the Red Legs—they came in and ripped us all up really bad, too, you know. We all got farms burned down or kin slain. It always did work two ways—"

  "Two ways!" Shannon exclaimed. "Two ways!" She was choking. "I never heard of anything as bad as Centralia. Ever. In the town, unarmed men were stripped and shot down. And outside the town, the things you people did to the Union men shouldn't have been done to the lowest of creatures, much less human beings—"

  "You obviously haven't seen much of the handiwork done by your friends, the Red Legs," the tall, dark man said dryly.

  "You ain't gonna change her mind," Frank said from the ground.

  The dark-haired man moved closer, a wary eye on the Colt. "My name is Justin Waller, Miss McCahy. And I was there, at Centralia—"

  "Bastard!" Shannon hissed.

  "Justin—" Jesse warned sharply, but Shannon already had the gun aimed straight between Justin Waller's eyes. She pulled the trigger.

  And she heard the click of an empty chamber.