She didn't want to let Cole go. She couldn't explain anything to him, couldn't tell him that she didn't hate him, that she loved him, but she didn't want to let him go.

She hugged him fiercely, and she kissed him passionately, until they were both breathless and they both had to step away. His eyes searched hers, and then he mounted up.

Shannon and Kristin stood together and watched as the two men clasped hands.

Then one rode west, the other east. Cole to Kansas, Matthew deeper into Missouri.

Shannon let out a long, gasping sob.

"They're gone again!" Kristin said, and pulled her sister closer to her. "Come on. We'll weed out the garden. It's hot, and it'll be a miserable task, and we won't think about the men at all."

"We'll think about them," Shannon said. She was close to tears again, Kristin thought. Shannon, who was always so fierce, so feisty. And Kristin knew that if Shannon cried again, she would sob all day, too.

"Let's get to work."

They had barely set to work when they heard the sounds of hooves again. Kristin spun around hopefully, thinking that either her brother or her husband had returned.

Shannon called out a warning.

It was Zeke, Kristin thought instantly.

But it was not. It was a company of Union soldiers. At its head was a captain. His uniform was just like Matthew's. They stopped in front of the house, but they did not dismount.

"Kristin Slater!" the captain called out.

He was about Matthew's age, too, Kristin thought.

"Yes?" she said, stepping forward.

He swallowed uncomfortably. "You're under arrest."

"What?" she said, astonished.

His Adam's apple bobbed. "Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. You and your sister are under arrest, by order of General Halleck. I'm right sorry, but we're rounding up all the womenfolk giving aid and succor to Quantrill and his boys."

"Aid and succor!" Kristin shrieked.

She might have been all right if she hadn't begun to laugh. But she did begin to laugh, and before she knew it, she was hysterical.

"Take her, boys."

"Now, you just wait!" Delilah cried from the porch.

The captain shook his head. "Take Mrs. Slater, and the young one, too."

One of the soldiers got down from his horse and tugged at Kristin's arm. She tore it fiercely from his grasp.

The young man ruefully addressed his captain. "Sir…"

"My brother is in the Union Army!" Kristin raged. "My father was killed by bushwhackers, and now you're arresting me… for helping Quantrill? No!"

The soldier reached for her again, and she hit him in the stomach. Shannon started to scream, and Delilah came running down the steps with her rolling pin.

"God help us, if the Rebs ain't enough, Halleck has to pit us against the womenfolk!" the young captain complained. He dismounted and walked over to Kristin. "Hold her, men."

Two of them caught her arms. She stared at him.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said sincerely.

Then he struck her hard across the chin, and she fell meekly into his arms.



CHAPTER TWELVE

"Y'all have just the blondest hair! And I do mean the blondest!" Josephine Anderson said as she pulled Shannon's locks into a set of high curls on top of her head. She was a pretty young woman herself, with plump cheeks and a flashing smile and a tendency to blush easily. She never smiled when their Yankee captors were around, though. Josephine was a hard-core Confederate. She and her sister Mary had been brought in a week after Kristin and Shannon, and they all shared a corner of a big room on the second floor of a building in Kansas City. Josephine and Mary were both very sweet, and Kristin liked them well enough, despite their fanaticism. They had both wanted her and Shannon to meet their brother Billy — who turned out to be none other than Bill Anderson, the Bill Anderson who had stopped by the house to make sure that Kristin knew about Cole's position with Quantrill's raiders.

That was all right. At the very beginning, Kristin had sweetly told the girls that she did know their Billy. She also told them what had happened to her father — and that she wished that she were anything other than what she was: a citizen of a country whose people tore one another to shreds.

Josephine and Mary had turned away from her in amazement, but then the next day they had been friendly. They respected her right to have a passionate stand — even if it was a strange one.

And when Cole's name was mentioned, Mary acted just the way Shannon did. "Ooh! You're really married to him?" she gushed.

It seemed that Cole had been to dinner once at their house with Bill when he had first started out with Quantrill. But they didn't know very much about him, only that there was some deep secret in his past.

"He can be real quiet like, you know!" Mary said.

"But, oh, those eyes!" Josephine rolled her own.

"It's such a pity he left Quantrill!" Mary told her fiercely. "Why, he'd have cleaned out half of Kansas by now; I just know it."

Kristin assured them that Cole was still with the Confederate Army — in the cavalry, like his brothers. Then Shannon went on to tell them about their brother Matthew and how he had gone off to join up with the Union Army after their father's death.

Mary and Josephine thought that was a terrible tragedy, but they understood that, too. "I'm surprised he didn't become a jayhawker, because that's how it goes, you know! They say that old John Brown was attacked way back in '55, that one of his sons was killed. So he killed some Missourians, and some Missourians went up and killed some more Kansans. But you two — why, I feel right sorry for you! Missourians, with a brother in blue and your husband in gray. It's a shame, a damned shame, that's all."

It was a good thing they were able to come to an understanding. All summer long, General Ewing, the local Union commander, had women picked up so that their men couldn't come to them for food or supplies. There were a great many of them living at very close quarters. The authorities holding them weren't cruel, and the women weren't hurt in any way. A number of the young officers were remarkably patient, in fact, for the women could be extraordinarily abusive when they spoke to their captors. But though the men behaved decently toward their prisoners, the living conditions were horrid. The building itself was in terrible shape, with weak and rotting timbers, the food was barely adequate, and the bedding was full of insects.

Kristin wanted desperately to go home. At first she had been angry. She had fought and argued endlessly with various commanders, and they had all apologized and looked uncomfortable and shuffled their feet, but none of them had been willing to let her go. And finally she had become resigned.

She grew more and more wretched. She had often been sick in the first weeks of her captivity and she had thought it must be the food. She was still queasy much of the time, but, though she hadn't told anyone, she knew why now. She was pregnant. Sometime in February of the following year she was going to have Cole's baby. She had been stunned at first, but then she had taunted herself endlessly. Why should she be surprised, after all? Children were the result of a man being with a woman.

She wasn't sure how she felt. Sometimes she lay there and railed against a God that could let her have a baby in a world where its blood relations were destined to be its mortal enemies, in a world where murder and bloodshed were the order of the day.

Then there were nights when she touched her still-flat belly and dreamed, and wondered what the baby would look like. And then, even if she was furious with Cole, even if she had convinced herself that he was as evil as Zeke, she knew she loved him. And she did want his child. A little boy with his shimmering silver eyes. Or a girl. Or maybe the child would be light, with her hair and eyes. Whoever the child took after, it was destined to be beautiful, she was certain. Cole's baby. She longed to hold it in her arms. She dreamed about seeing him again, about telling him.

And then there were times when she sank into depression. Cole probably wouldn't be the least bit pleased. He probably intended to divorce her as soon as the war was over, she thought bitterly. She was imprisoned for being the wife of a man who intended to divorce her.

Then not even that mattered. She wanted the baby. She wanted the baby to hold and to love, and she wanted it to be born to peace. The war could not go on forever. She didn't care who won. She just wanted it to be over. She wanted her baby to be able to run laughing through the cornfields, to look up at the sun and feel its warmth. She wanted peace for her child.

And most of all, she wanted it to be born at home. She did not want to bear her baby here, in this awful, crowded place of degradation.

Kristin looked up from the letter she was writing to her brother asking if there was anything he could do to get the authorities to free Shannon and herself. The three other women in the room looked as if they were preparing for a ball.

Josephine stepped back. "Oh, Shannon, that just looks lovely, really lovely."

"Why, thank you, ma'am," Shannon said sweetly. Then she sighed. "I wish I could see it better."

Mary dug under her pillow and found her little hand mirror. "Here, Shannon."

Suddenly the room fell silent. One of the young Federal officers, a Captain Ellsworth, had come in. The women looked at him suspiciously.

His dark brown eyes fell on Kristin. "Mrs. Slater, would you come with me, please?"