Both the Haywoods looked at Malachi again. Malachi barely saw Shannon move, but suddenly she was behind the chair and she was aiming her Colt at the two of them.

"Drop the shotgun," she said.

Mr. Haywood frowned. "Now, come on, little girl. You put that thing down. Those Colts can be mighty dangerous."

"You ever seen close hand what a shotgun does to a man?" she inquired sweetly.

Malachi was afraid of the outcome.

"Can she shoot that thing?" Haywood asked him.

"Better'n General Grant himself, I'm willing to bet," Malachi replied sagely.

He still didn't think it wise to wait. He leaped from the bed.

Shannon watched in amazement as he swooped down on Mr. Haywood, bare as birth, and procured the shotgun. Mrs. Haywood gasped in astonishment, but didn't look away from the swaggering male body. Malachi bowed in response to her gasp. "Ma'am, excuse me." He tossed the shotgun to Shannon, reached for his pants and quickly limped into them.

"Oh, my goodness!" Mrs. Haywood gasped again. Her eyes closed and she promptly passed out.

"Oh, no!" Shannon wailed. Wrapping the sheet around herself, she hurried over to the fallen woman. Malachi stopped her, grabbing the Colt from her fingers. Shannon dropped down by Mrs. Haywood. "Malachi, Mr. Haywood, I need some water."

Mr. Haywood moved suddenly, as if rousing himself from shock. "Water. Water." He hurried to the washstand and brought over the pitcher. Nervous and disoriented, he poured the water over his wife's face. She came to, sputtering and coughing. She looked up at her husband. "Mr. Haywood!" she said reproachfully.

"Are you all right?" Shannon murmured.

"We've got to get out of here, Shannon!" Malachi warned her gruffly.

She ignored him. "Mrs. Haywood, I swear to you, I was telling you the truth. You've got to understand the whole story. Mr. Fitz had a brother who led a unit of jayhawkers, Mrs. Haywood—"

"I never could abide jayhawkers," Mr. Haywood said. "Never could abide them! Why, they were just as bad as the bushwhackers themselves."

Shannon nodded. "They killed Cole Slater's wife, Mrs. Haywood. She was expecting a child. She was innocent, and they came and they killed her, and they burned down the ranch… And, well, Cole ran into Henry Fitz toward the end of the war. It was a fair fight—even the Yanks there knew it. Cole killed him."

"So now Hayden Fitz wants the whole lot of you Slaters, is that it?" Mr. Haywood asked Malachi.

Malachi nodded. "But that doesn't matter. I want Hayden Fitz. He has Shannon's sister, Cole's new wife, in his jail. He's going to use her, another innocent woman, to lure my brother out of hiding. I'm sorry, Mr. Haywood, but I ain't going to be hunted down and murdered by the likes of Fitz. And I'm mighty sorry, 'cause you and your wife are fine people, but I'm going to have to tie you up so that Shannon and I can get out of here."

"Shannon?" Mr. Haywood looked her way, then sank down on the bed. He looked to his wife. "What do you say, mother?"

"I never could abide those jayhawkers. Killing women and innocent children. And that poor dear girl, locked in a jail cell. It ain't decent!"

"Ain't decent at all."

Malachi looked uneasily from Shannon, kneeling by Mrs. Haywood, to Mr. Haywood, calmly sitting on the bed.

"What—"

"You don't need to tie us up, Captain Slater."

"I'm sorry, but—"

"You're going to need us, I think. We're not going to turn you in. If what you tell us is true, we'll try to help you."

"Why?"

"Why?" Mrs. Haywood stood up, strangely noble despite the water that dripped from her nightcap over her bosom. "Why? 'Cause somewhere, Captain Slater, the healing has to start. Somewhere, it has to quit being North and South, and somewhere, we have to stand against the men going against the very rules of God!"

"Malachi!" Shannon urged him. "We need them, if they will help us. We need this base. We need…we need the information that we're supposed to get in the next few days."

Malachi thought furiously. Iris said that these were good folks. And Iris said that she could get to Fitz, and she could probably help him with information that he could never get on his own.

"Malachi! We have to trust them."

Slowly, he lowered the Colt. Then he tossed it onto the bed.

"Shannon, I pray you aren't going to get us both killed," he said savagely.

"Hmph." Mr. Haywood stood, as stout and proud as his wife. He went over and picked up his shotgun. He didn't wave it at Malachi, but he held it in his hand, shaking it.

"So you ain't a bushwhacker and you don't deserve to hang for that! But you aren't this young lady's husband, either, and you should be strung up for seducing an innocent, and that's a fact."

Shannon was surprised to see the flush that touched Malachi's cheeks. "That's none of your business, Mr. Haywood," he said.

"It is our business, captain," Martha Haywood warned him severely. "You were living in sin, right beneath our roof. What do you say, Papa?" she asked her husband.

"I say that he hangs."

"What?" Malachi exploded. He made a dive for the Colt. Mrs. Haywood moved faster. She grabbed the gun and aimed his way. "Now, captain, where are your manners? I never did meet a more gallant boy than a cavalry officer, and a Southern gentleman at that. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Ashamed! Where have the values gone?" Mr. Haywood said fiercely. "Pride and gallantry and good Christian ethics. The war is over now, son."

"Sir—" Malachi took a step forward. A shot exploded in the room, and he stood dead still. Mrs. Haywood knew what she was doing with a Colt, too, so it seemed. The ball went straight by Malachi's head, nearly grazing his ear.

"Shannon," he said through his teeth, keeping his eyes warily upon Mrs. Haywood. "Shannon, I am going to wring your neck!"

"No, captain, you're not. You're going to marry that girl, that's what you're going to do."

"I'm not going to be coerced into any marriage!" Malachi swore.

"Well, son, you can marry her or hang," Mr. Haywood guaranteed him. "Mrs. Haywood, would you like to go for the preacher? A Saturday morning wedding seems just right to me."

"No!" Shannon called out.

Malachi looked at her, startled. She was wrapped in the sheet, her hair a wild tangle around her delicate features and beautiful sloping shoulders.

Her eyes were filled with flashing blue anger. "Don't bother, Mrs. Haywood. I won't marry him."

"Well, well, dear, I'm afraid that you'll have to marry him," Mrs. Haywood insisted. "Right is right."

"That's right, young lady. You marry him, or we'll hang him."

Shannon smiled very sweetly, glaring straight at him. "I will not marry him. Mr. Haywood, you'll have to go right ahead. Hang him."

"Shannon!" Malachi swore. He swung around to stare at her in a fury. He was unaware of Mr. Haywood moving around behind him. He really did want to throttle her. His fingers were just itching to get around her neck.

His fury did him in.

He didn't see Mr. Haywood, and he certainly didn't see the water pitcher.

He didn't see anything at all. He simply felt the savage pain when the pitcher burst as Mr. Haywood cracked it hard over his skull.

He was still staring at Shannon, still seeing her standing there in white with her hair a golden, glowing halo streaming angelically all around her…when he fell to the floor.

And blackness consumed him.



CHAPTER NINE

Two hours later Shannon found herself in the store, standing on a stool, while Martha Haywood fixed the hem of the soft cream gown that Shannon wore.

It was a beautiful, if dated, bridal gown.

It had been Martha Haywood's own. A lace bodice was cut high to the throat with a delicate fichu collar over an undergown of soft pure satin. Ribands of blue silk were woven through the tight waistline, and the lace spilled out over the full wide skirt. Tiny faux pearls had been lovingly sewn into much of the lace.

"Mrs. Haywood, you don't understand," Shannon said urgently. She dropped down at last, catching the woman's nimble hands upon the hem. "Mrs. Haywood, you and your husband can't keep threatening Malachi. I don't want to marry him. And I don't believe you. You can't hang him if I refuse to marry him."

"We can, and we will," Mrs. Haywood said complacently.

"But I don't want to marry him. Please!"

Mrs. Haywood stared at her with her deep brown eyes. "Why? Why don't you want to marry him? You seem to be with him by choice."

"I am with him by choice. No…I mean, yes! But it's more circumstance than choice."

"That still doesn't explain why you don't want to marry him."

"Because…because he doesn't love me. I mean, I don't love him. It's just all—"

"Love comes," Mrs. Haywood told her. "If it isn't there already," she muttered. "The way you two came in here, the way we found you together… You explain yourself to me, young woman."

"You just crawled into bed with him just like that…because of circumstances?" Martha Haywood's tone sent rivers of shame sweeping into Shannon. She felt as if she was trying to explain things to a doting and righteous aunt.

"You must have felt something for him. But then again, I'm not arguing that. Did you hear what you told me? You said that he didn't love you. So maybe you do love him. And maybe you're just afraid that he doesn't love you."

Shannon shook her head vehemently. "I promise you that he does not love me. And I do not love him. I was in love, once, during the war. I was engaged to marry a Yankee captain. He was killed…outside Centralia."