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.