Dark Stranger

But now she was in his arms. There were no questions, no answers. She was in his arms, whispering his name. He began to shake. Her hair spilled over his hands like raw silk. She pressed against him, and she was so feminine and sweet that he nearly lost his breath. He breathed deeply, and her scent filled him, and it made his heart pound and his loins quicken.

"Kristin —"

She caught his face in her hands and kissed him. She kissed him as if she had starved for him, she kissed him deeply, passionately, like a woman. She kissed him with the fullness of her mouth and with the fullness of her body. Her tongue was wickedly sensual, touching all of him, plunging deep into his mouth. When his tongue invaded her mouth in turn, she moaned and fell against him, suddenly weak. After a long time he lifted his head to stare down into her eyes, eyes as blue as sapphires beneath the moon.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Waiting."

"You couldn't have known I was coming."

"I'm always waiting," she told him, and she smiled. It was just the slightest curve of her mouth, a rueful admission that left him feeling as if the earth trembled beneath his feet. He swept her hard against him again, heedless of whether she felt the emotion that racked him.

"I heard about Kansas City. I tried to come for you. Malachi and Jamie knocked me flat. Then I heard about the building, and I heard they let you go at the same time —"

"Hush!" She pressed a finger to his lips. She smiled again, and it was a dazzling smile. She was so soft, all of her. Her arms wound around him. Her thighs molded to his, naked beneath the gown. Her breasts pressed against his chest, against the gray wool of his uniform. "It's all right. We're home. Shannon and I are home, and you've come home now, too."

It wasn't his home. He could have told her that. But he didn't want to. Not tonight. She might not understand.

He wove his fingers into her hair, savoring the feel of her. Then he swept her up into his arms and stumbled up the steps, somehow keeping his eyes locked with hers.

It seemed to take forever to reach their room, and it was not until much later that he wondered if his poor horse had managed to wander to the trough and into the barn. If not, the animal had known much worse nights upon the road.

For the moment, all that he knew was the woman in his arms and the sweetness of his homecoming.

When they were alone in their room he set her down. With trembling fingers, he undid the buttons of her nightgown and let it float to the floor. He stared at her. He wanted this moment to be etched in his memory forever, and he wanted the memory to be as incredible as the reality. Her eyes luminous. Her smile welcoming. Her breasts full and round and firm, more entrancing even than he had remembered. Her legs long and beautifully shaped.

Then he touched her.

And he wanted, too, to remember the feel of her skin against his fingertips, and so he touched her again and again, marveling at the softness of her. And he kissed her, for he had to remember the taste of her. He kissed her lips, and he kissed her forehead, and he found the pulse at the base of her throat. He kissed her breasts, and the desire inside him grew. He savored the taste of her shoulders, of the little hollows there. He turned her around and kissed her back, trailing his fingers down the beautiful line of her spine and over the curve of her buttocks. He had to touch and taste and feel all of her. He went on and on, drinking deeply of her, until the whole of his body shook and trembled, until she cried out his name with such anguish and passion that he came to his feet, crushed her in his arms and lifted her again, bearing her to the bed.

Whispering to him, telling him how much she wanted him, how she needed him, how she desired him, she feverishly helped him out of his clothes, desperate to touch him as he had touched her. Soft as a feather, gentle as a breeze, sensual as the earth, she touched and petted and loved him. Then, at last, they came together, a man and a woman meeting in a breathless fusion.

All that night she felt she was riding the wind, an endless, sweet, wild wind that swept away the horrors of the world and left her drifting on the clouds of heaven. Anticipation had sown its seeds, and their first time together was erratic and wild and thunderous for them both. Barely had they climaxed before he touched her again, and again the clamor of need rose quickly in them. They were slower this time, easier, for the first desperate hunger had been appeased.

And still the night lay ahead of them.

She never knew just how many times they loved that night, never knew when she slept and dreamed, never knew when she awakened to find that he was holding her again. She only knew that it was heaven, and that however long she lived, however old she grew, she would never, never forget it, or the crystalline beauty of the desire that surged between them.

It was morning before they spoke.

Dazed and still delighted, Kristin lay in his arms, wondering lazily how to tell him about the child. She wondered if he could tell by the subtle changes in her body. He hadn't said anything. She smiled. His need for her had been too great for him to have noticed anything. She thought to speak then, but he was speaking already. He was talking about the war, and his tone was cold.

"Stonewall Jackson was the greatest loss. Lee might have taken Gettysburg if he hadn't lost Stonewall. It was the first battle he had to go into without Jackson. God, how I shall miss that man!"

"Sh…" she murmured. She drew a finger across the planes of his face, and she felt the tightness there, and the pain. It was a strong face, she thought, a striking face. And it was so hard now.

"And Morgan… God help Morgan. He has to escape." He shook his head. Then he turned to her and took her in his arms, whispering, "How can I say these things to you? You've been through so much already, you've witnessed so much. That horror in Kansas City…"

"The deaths were terrible," Kristin admitted. She drew away, smiling at him. "But Major Emery was very kind."

Suddenly Cole was stiff as steel, and every bit as cold. "Emery?"

She didn't understand the abrupt change in him. "Yes. He said that you had been with him, before the war. He —"

He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. "He what?" She didn't answer, and he turned, setting his hands firmly on her shoulders. "He what?"

"Stop it! You're hurting me!" Kristin pulled away from him. "He told me about — he told me about your wife."

Cole smiled suddenly. It was a bitter smile. "I see," he said softly.

"What do you see?" she demanded.

"Nothing, Kristin, nothing at all." He tossed the covers aside and stood and wandered around the room, picking up his clothes.

"Cole!"

He stepped into his gray trousers and pulled on his shirt. Still ignoring her, he sat and pulled on his boots. She frowned when she realized that he was putting his uniform back on — something he wouldn't be doing if he was staying.

"Cole, you can't be leaving already?"

He stood up, buckling on his scabbard. He nodded gravely. Then he walked to her and stroked her chin. "I only had five days. It took me three to find my way through the Federal troops. I have to pray I can make it back more quickly." He bent down and touched her lips lightly with his own. "You are so very beautiful, Kristin," he murmured to her. But he was still distant from her. Very distant.

"Cole —" She choked on his name. Her heart was aching. There were so many things that needed to be said, and none of them mattered. She had said or done something to offend him and she didn't even know what it was. "Cole, I don't understand —"

"Kristin, I don't want your pity."

"What?"

"Pity, Kristin. I don't want it. It's worthless stuff, and it isn't good for anyone. I wondered what last night was all about. You were barely civil to me when I left in May. Hate me, Kristin. Hate me all you want. But for God's sake, Kristin, don't pity me!"

Incredulous, she stiffened, staring at him, fighting the tears that stung her eyes.

"I've thought about having you and Shannon move to London until this thing is over with. I had a little power with Quantrill, but I'm afraid my influence with the Yankees is at a low ebb. This is a dangerous place —"

"Go!" Kristin said.

"Kristin —"

"Go back to your bleeding Confederacy!" Kristin said heatedly. "I've already met with the Yankees, thanks, and they were damned civil."

"Kristin —"

"I'm all right here! I swear it. We are fine."

He hesitated, then swept his frock coat over his shoulders and picked up his plumed hat.

"Kristin —"

"Cole, damn you, get out of here! You don't want my pity, you want my hatred! Well, then, you've got it! Go!"

"Damn you, Kristin!"

He came back to the bed and took her in his arms. The covers fell away, and she pressed against the wool of his uniform, felt the hot, determined yearning of his kiss. She wanted to fight him. She wanted to tell him that she really did hate him. But he was going away again, going away to the war. And she was afraid of the war. The war killed people.

And so she kissed him back. She wound her arms around him and kissed him back every bit as passionately as he did her. And she felt his fingers move over her breast, and she savored every sensation.

Then he lifted his lips from hers, and their eyes met, and he very slowly and carefully let her fall back to the bed.

They didn't speak again. He kissed her forehead lightly, and then he left her.

PART 4

The Outlaw and The Cavalier

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

June, 1864

He never should have come to Kansas.

Cole knew he should never have come to Kansas. A scouting mission in Kentucky was one thing. He could slip into Virginia or even Maryland easily enough. Even in Ohio he might be all right. In the East they were slower to hang a man as a spy. In the East they didn't shoot a man down where he stood, not often, not that Cole had heard about anyway.

He should never have come to Kansas.

But the war effort was going badly, very badly. First General Lee had lost Stonewall Jackson. Then Jeb Stuart had been shot, and they had carried him back to Richmond, and he had died there. Countless men had died, some of them brilliant men, some of them men who were perhaps not so brilliant but who were blessed with an endless supply of courage and a fine bravado, even in the face of death.

Jeb was the greatest loss, though. Cole could remember their days at West Point, and he could remember the pranks they had pulled when they had been assigned out west together. The only comfort in Jeb's death was the fact that his little daughter had died just weeks before. They said

that when he lay dying he had talked of holding her again in heaven. They had buried him in Hollywood Cemetery. Cole had been with Kristin when they had buried him, but he had visited the grave when he'd come to Richmond, and he still found it impossible to believe that James Ewell Brown Stuart, his friend, the dashing cavalier, could be dead. He had visited Flora, Jeb's wife, and they'd laughed about some of their days back in Kansas, but then Flora had begun to cry, and he had thought it best to leave. Flora had just lost her husband, a Confederate general. Her father, a Union general, was still fighting.

The war had never been fair.

Cole had to head out again, this time to the Indian Nation, to confer with the Cherokees and Choctaws who had been persuaded to fight for the Confederacy. The Union armies were closing in on Richmond, and Lee was hard-pressed to protect the capital without Jackson to harass the Federals as they made their way through the Shenandoah Valley.

When he had left Virginia Cole had gone to Tennessee, and from Tennessee he had been ordered to rejoin his brother's unit. The noose was closing tighter and tighter around the neck of the Confederacy. John Hunt Morgan had managed to escape his captors, and he needed information about the Union troops being sent into Kentucky and Tennessee from Kansas City. Cole had taken the assignment in the little town outside the big city for only one reason — he would be close to Kristin. He had to see her. It had been so long, and they had parted so bitterly. He'd received a few letters from her, terse, quick notes telling him that they were all fine, telling him that the Union was in firm control of the part of Missouri where the ranch sat, that he was better off away and that he should take care.

Jamie and Malachi had received warmer letters. Much warmer letters. But still, even to his brothers, Kristin had said very little. Every letter was the same. She related some silly little anecdote that was sure to make them laugh, and then she closed, telling them she was praying for them all. She thought there might be a wedding as soon as the war was over or maybe even before. Shannon was corresponding regularly with a Captain Ellsworth, and Kristin said she, too, thought he was a charming gentleman. He was a Yankee, but she was sure the family would forget that once the war was over. They would all have to, she added forcefully, if there was to be a future.

Cole wasn't sure there could be. There was that one part of his past that he couldn't forget, and he never would be able to forget it, not unless he could finish it off, bury it completely. Not until the redlegs who had razed his place and killed his wife were dead could he ever really rest. No matter how sweet the temptation.

Sitting at a corner table in the saloon, his feet propped and his hat pulled low, he sipped a whiskey and listened to the conversation at the bar. He learned quickly that Lieutenant Billingsley would be transferring eight hundred troops from Kansas to Tupelo and then on to Kentucky by the following week. The saloon was crowded with Union soldiers, green recruits by the looks of them — he didn't think many of the boys even had to shave as yet — but they had one or two older soldiers with them. No one had paid Cole much heed. He was dressed in denim and cotton, with a cattleman's chaps and silver spurs in place and a cowhide vest. He didn't look much like a man who gave a damn about the war one way or the other. One man had asked him what he was doing out of uniform, and he'd quickly invented a story about being sent home, full of shrapnel, after the battle of Shiloh. After that, someone had sent over a bottle of whiskey and he'd set his hat low over his forehead and he'd listened. Now that he had his information, it was time to go. He wanted to reach his wife.

His wife.

He could even say it out loud now. And only once in a while did the bitterness assail him. His wife… His wife had been slain, but he had married a little spitfire of a blonde, and she was his woman now. His wife.

He tensed, remembering that she knew, knew everything about him, about his past. Damn Emery! He'd had no right to spill out the past like that for her. Now he would never know…

Know what? he asked himself.

What her feelings were, what her feelings really were. Hell, it was a damnable time for a marriage. He could still count on his fingers the times he had seen her… Kristin. He'd been impatient with her, and he'd been furious with her, but he'd always admired her courage, no matter what, and from the beginning he'd been determined to protect her.

Then he'd discovered that he needed her.

Like air. Like water. Like the very earth. He needed her. When he'd been away from her he'd still had the nightmares, but time had slowly taken them away. When visions of a woman came to haunt him while he slept, it was Kristin's delicate features he saw, her soft, slow smile, her wide, luminous eyes.

He'd never denied that he cared for her.

He just hadn't wanted to admit how much.

He didn't want a wife feeling sorry for him. He didn't want her holding on, afraid to hurt a traumatized soldier. The whole thing made him seethe inside. He'd swear that he'd be quit of her as soon as the war was over, and then he'd panic, and he'd pray that everything was all right, and he would wish with all his heart that he could just get back to that little patch of Missouri on the border where he could reach out and just touch her face, her hand…

And if he did, he wondered glumly, what good could it do him? He could never stop. Not until one of them lay dead. Him or Fitz. Maybe Fitz hadn't fired the shot that had killed his wife, but he had ordered the raid on Cole's place, and he had led it. In the few months that he had ridden with Quantrill, Cole had managed to meet up with a number of the men who had been in on the raid.

But he'd never found Henry Fitz.

His thoughts suddenly shifted. He didn't know what it was that told him he was in danger, but suddenly he knew that he was. Maybe it was in the thud of a new pair of shiny Union boots on the floor, maybe it was something in the air. And maybe he had lived with the danger for so damned long that he could smell it.

He should never have come to Kansas.

It wasn't that he wasn't armed. He was. And the poor green boys in the saloon were carrying muzzle-loading rifles. He could probably kill the dozen or so of them in the room before they could even load their weapons.

He didn't want to kill them. He'd always hated that kind of warfare. Hell, that was why Quantrill had been able to run circles around the Federals for years. Quantrill's men were so well armed that they could gun down an entire company before they could get off a single shot.

He prepared to leave, praying that the newcomer wasn't someone he knew. But when he saw the man's face beneath the brim of his hat, his heart sank.

The man was his own age, and he wore a lieutenant's insignia. He had dark hair and a long, dark beard, and the lines that furrowed his face said that he should have been older than thirty-two.

It's been a long hard war for all of us. Cole thought bleakly.

The Union officer's name was Kurt Taylor, and he had ridden escort and trails out in the Indian country with Cole when he had been with Stuart. Another West Pointer. They'd fought the Sioux side by side many times.

But now they were on opposite sides.

When Cole stood, Taylor saw him. The men stared straight at one another.

Cole hesitated. He wasn't going to fire, not unless he had to. He didn't cotton to killing children, and that was about what it would be. He looked at the boys standing at the bar. Hell, most of them wouldn't even have started school when the trouble had started in Kansas.

Do something, Taylor, Cole thought. Say something. But the man didn't move. The two of them just stood there staring at one another, and it was as if the world stood still.

Then, miraculously, Taylor lifted his hat.

"Howdy," he said, and walked on by.

Taylor had recognized him. Cole knew it. He had seen the flash of recognition in his eyes. But Taylor wasn't going to turn him in.

Taylor walked up to the bar. The soldiers saluted him, and he told them to be at ease. They returned to their conversations, but they were no longer as relaxed as they had been. They were in the presence of a commissioned officer now.

But Kurt Taylor ignored the men, just as he was ignoring Cole. He ordered himself a brandy, swallowed it down quickly and ordered himself another. Then he turned around, leaned his elbows on the bar and looked out over the room.

"You know, boys," he said, "war itself, soldiering, never did bother me. Joining the army seemed to be a right noble position in life. We had to defend American settlers from the Indians. We had to keep an eye on Mexico, and then suddenly we had our folks moving into Texas. Next thing you know, our great nation is divided, and we're at war with our Southern cousins. And even that's all right, 'cause we all know a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." He paused and drained his second brandy. He didn't look at Cole, but Cole knew damned well that Taylor was talking straight to him.

"Bushwhackers!" Kurt Taylor spit on the floor. Then he added, "And bloody murdering jayhawkers. I tell you, one is just as bad as the next, and if he claims to wear my colors, well, he's a liar. Those jayhawkers we've got up here, hell, they turned half of Kansas and Missouri against the Union. Folks that didn't own no slaves, that didn't care one way or another about the war, we lost them to the Confederacy because they so abhorred the murder that was being done. Quantrill's boys started up after Lane and Jennison began their goddamn raiding."

"Pardon me —" one young man began.

"No, sir! I do not pardon you!" Kurt Taylor snapped. "Murder is murder. And I hear tell that one of the worst of our Kansas murderers is right here, right here in this town. His name is Henry Fitz. He thought he could make himself a political career out of killing Missourians. He forgot there were decent folk in Kansas who would never condone the killing of women and children, whether it was done by bushwhackers or jayhawkers." He stared straight at Cole, and then he turned his back on him.

He knew Cole wouldn't shoot him.

He knew Cole wouldn't shoot a man in the back.

Cole was trembling, and his fingers were itching. He didn't even want to draw his gun. He wanted to find Fitz and wrap his fingers around the bastard's throat and choke the life out of him.

"Give me another brandy there, barkeep. Boys, you watch your step while Fitz is around. He's down Main Street at the McKinley barn with his troops. I'd say there's about a dozen of those marauders. Yep, I think you ought to steer clear of the area."

He tossed back another brandy, and then he turned and looked at Cole again.

And then he walked out of the saloon.

Cole left a few minutes after Taylor did. He wondered if his old comrade in arms had put on the performance he had so that Cole would get out of town or so that he would stay in it.

He came out on the steps and looked up at the noonday sun, and he smiled. He came out to the hitching post and mounted his horse, a bay he had borrowed from Malachi because he had been afraid his own stallion was too well known here.

Taylor had even told him where to find Fitz. Straight down Main Street.

Cole started the bay at a walk. Within seconds he had urged the horse to a trot, and then to a canter, and then to a gallop. The barbershop whizzed by him, then the savings bank, the newspaper office and Ed Foley's Mercantile. He passed rows of neat houses with white picket fences and summer gardens, and then he was on the stretch of road leading to the farms beyond the town limits.

He must have headed out in the right direction, because suddenly there was a line of troops coming toward him. Redlegs, so called for the color of their leggings. Raiders. Murderers. Jim Lane had led them once. Now Senator Jim Lane was in Washington, and even Doc Jennison, who had taken command of them after Lane, had gone on to new pursuits. But Henry Fitz was still leading his band, and still striking terror into the hearts of innocent men, women and children.

Cole slowed the bay to a walk as the men approached. Henry Fitz sat atop a piebald, dead center. He had narrowed his dark little eyes, and he was staring down the road at Cole.

Cole kept moving. He had to do this. He had to kill Fitz. And if he died, too…

Would Kristin care? he found himself wondering. He had never doubted her gratitude, but he wondered now what she would feel if she heard that he had been gunned down on a Kansas road. Would she shed any tears for him? Would she miss him? Would she revile him for dying a senseless death, for leaving her alone?

He closed his eyes for a moment. He had to do this. If they were to have any kind of a future together, he had to do this. Now.

For a moment he remembered the flames, remembered them clearly. He remembered the crackling of the fire and he remembered the acrid smell of the smoke. And he remembered her, running, running to him. He remembered reaching out and touching her, and he remembered the way she had looked into his eyes and smiled and died. And he remembered the blood that had stained his hands…

I loved you! his heart cried out. I loved you, Elizabeth! With all my heart and with all my soul.

And in that moment he knew at last that he loved Kristin, too. He had to bury the past, because he longed for a future with her. He had been afraid to love again. He had not wanted to destroy Elizabeth's memory by loving again. Yet he knew now that if Elizabeth could speak to him she would tell him to love Kristin, to love her deeply and well, in memory of all they had once shared.

He brought the bay to a halt and watched the road. The redlegs were trotting along easily, none of them expecting trouble from a lone man atop a single bay horse. But in the center of the group, the frown upon Henry Fitz's face was deepening. Another five feet — ten — and he would recognize Cole.

"Howdy, there," Fitz began, drawing in on his reins. The rest of the party stopped along with him. His hat was tilted low over his thickly-bearded face, and his eyes seemed to disappear into folds of flesh. "I'll be damned!" he said suddenly. Then he laughed. "Come all the way to Kansas to die, boy?"

And he reached for his revolver.

Cole had been fast before the war. He had been fast in the West. He was faster now.

Fitz had been the inspiration that had taught him how to draw faster than sound, faster than light. He had always known that someday, somehow, he would meet up with this man.

And he did now, guns blazing. Holding the reins in his teeth, he tightened his thighs around the bay and rode into the group.

He watched Fitz fall. He saw the blood stain his shirt crimson, and he watched him fall. The rest of it was a blur. He heard men and horses screaming as he galloped through their midst. A bullet struck his saddle, and then the bay went down beneath him. Cole tasted the dust roused by the multitude of horses. He jumped away from the fallen bay, grabbed his rifles and fired again. The gunfire seemed to go on forever.

Then there was silence. He spun around, a cocked rifle in either hand.

Three men remained alive. They stared at him and raised their hands. Their faces meant nothing to him.

He hurried away from his fallen horse and leaped into the saddle of a large, powerful-looking buckskin. Warily eyeing the three men, he nudged the horse forward. The buckskin had been a good choice. It surged forward, and Cole could feel the animal's strength and sense its speed. He raced forward, his heart pounding, adrenaline pumping furiously through his system.

He was alive.

But as he raced toward the town he saw the soldiers. Rows of blue uniforms. Navy-blue. On both sides of the road. He slowed his horse to a walk. There was nowhere to go. It was over. They would build a gallows in the middle of town, and they would hang him as a bushwhacker.

Suddenly Kurt Taylor was riding toward Cole. "Hear there's been some shooting up at the end of town, stranger. You might want to hurry along and let the army do the picking up."

Cole couldn't breathe. Taylor lifted a brow and grinned at him. Cole looked down at his hands where they rested on the pommel. They were shaking.

He saluted Taylor.

Taylor saluted back. "Someone ought to tell Cole Slater that the man who killed his wife is dead. And someone also ought to warn him that he's an outlaw in these parts. Someone ought to warn him that he'd best spend his time way, way deep in Dixie. I know that the man isn't any criminal, but there aren't many who served with him like I did. The rest think he ought to wear a rope around his neck."

"Thank you kindly, sir," Cole said at last. "If I meet up with him, I'll tell him."

He rode on, straight through the ranks of blue uniforms. He kept riding. He didn't look back, not even when he heard a cheer and realized that the Union soldiers were saluting him, that Kurt Taylor had won him a few friends.

His thigh was bleeding, he realized. He had been shot after all, and he hadn't even known it. It didn't matter much. He had to keep riding. He wanted to get home. Night was falling. It was a good time to ride.

A little farther down the road he became aware that he was being followed. He quickly left the road and dismounted, whispering to the buckskin, encouraging it to follow him into the brush.

He was being followed by a single horseman. He hid behind an oak tree and listened to the hoofbeats. He waited until the rider was right by his side. Then he sprang up and knocked the man to the ground.

"Damn you, Cole Slater! Get off me."

"Taylor!"

Cole stood and dragged Taylor to his feet.

"You son of a bitch!" Taylor laughed, and then he clapped Cole hard on the shoulders. "You damned son of a bitch! Hasn't anybody told you that the South is going to lose the war?"

"It wouldn't matter what they told me," Cole said. "I can't much help what I am." He paused a moment, and then he grinned, because Kurt really had been one damned good friend. "Thank you. Thank you for what you did back there. I've seen so many men tearing one another to shreds. The truth meant more to you than the color of a uniform. I won't forget that, Kurt. Ever."

"I didn't do anything that God wouldn't call right," Kurt said. "You got him, Cole. You got that mangy bastard. 'Course, you do know they'll shoot you on sight now and ask questions later."

"Yes, I know that."

"You're heading south, I hope?"

"East, and then south."

"Don't stay around the border too long," Taylor warned him. "Even to see your boy. Major Emery said that if I ever came across you I was to warn you —"

"What?" Cole snapped, his hands on Taylor's shoulders.

"I'm trying to tell you. Major Emery said —"

"The hell with Emery! What boy?"

Taylor cocked his head, frowning. "Why, yours, of course. Born last February. A fine boy, I understand. Captain Ellsworth gets out there now and again, and he reported to the major that both mother and child were doing fine. Don't rightly recall what they named him, but Ellsworth says he's big and healthy and has a head of hair to put many a fine lass to shame. Cole, let go, you're about to snap my damned shoulder blade. Oh, hell! You mean you didn't know? Listen to me now. Don't you go running off half-cocked after everything that happened here today. You move slow, and you move careful, you hear me. Slater? Most of the Union boys would shoot me if they knew I let you slip through my fingers. Cole?"

"I'll move careful," Cole said.

Yes, he'd move careful. He'd move damned careful. Just to make sure he lived long enough to tan Kristin's sweet hide.

Why in God's name hadn't she told him?

It was hot and humid on the Fourth of July, 1864. Scarcely a breeze had stirred all day.

It had been a difficult day for Kristin. She had learned long ago to keep her mind off her worries, to try not to think too much, to concentrate on her tasks. Anything was better than worrying. If she worried all the time she would drive herself mad.

But the fourth was a particularly difficult day.

There were celebrations going on everywhere. Union soldiers letting off volleys of rifle fire, ranchers setting off fireworks. Every gunshot reminded Kristin that her husband could meet her brother on the field of battle at any time, that they were still at war, that the nation celebrating its birthday was still bitterly divided.

There was smoke in the air, and the noise was making the baby restless. She'd had him with her down in the parlor, and Delilah's Daniel, almost three years old now, had been laughing and entertaining the baby with silly faces. But then Cole Gabriel Slater had decided enough was enough, and he had jammed one of his pudgy little fists into his mouth and started to cry.

"Oh, I've had it with the entire day anyway!" Kristin declared to everyone in the room and to no one in particular. She picked up the baby and started up the stairs. Delilah, sewing, stared after her. Shannon, running her fingers idly over the spinet, paused. Samson rolled his eyes. "Hot days, yes, Lordy, hot days," he mumbled. He stood up. "The hands will be back in soon enough. I'll carry that stew on out to the bunk-house."

Upstairs, Kristin lay down with her fretful baby and opened her blouse so that he could nurse. She started, then smiled, as he latched on to her nipple with a surprising power. Then, as always, an incredibly sweet feeling swept through her, and she pulled his little body still closer to her. His eyes met hers. In the last month they had turned a silver-gray, just like Cole's. His hair was hers, though, a thatch of it, blond, almost white. He was a beautiful baby, incredibly beautiful. He had been born on the tenth of February. Stroking his soft cheek, she felt her smile deepen as she remembered the day. It had been snowing, and it had been bitterly cold, and she had been dragging hay down for the horses when she had felt the first pain and panicked. It would have been impossible for Dr. Cavanaugh to come out from town, and it would have been impossible for her to reach town. Pete had been terribly upset, and that had calmed her somehow, and Delilah had assured her that it would be hours before the baby actually came.

Hours!

It had been awful, and it had been agony, and she had decided that it was extremely unfair that men should be the ones to go off to war to get shot at when women were the ones stuck with having babies. She had ranted and raved, and she had assured both Delilah and Shannon in no uncertain terms that she despised Cole Slater — and every other living soul who wore britches, as a matter of fact — and that if she lived she would never do this again.

Delilah smirked and assured her that she was going to live and that she would probably have half a dozen more children. Shannon waltzed around in a daydream, saying that she wouldn't be complaining one whit if she were the one about to have the baby — if the baby belonged to Captain Ellsworth.

The pain subsided for a moment, and Kristin had smiled up at her sister, who was pushing back her soaked hair. It was "colder than a witch's teat," as Pete had said, but she was drenched with sweat.

"You really love him, don't you, your Captain Ellsworth?"

Shannon nodded, her eyes on fire. "Oh, Kristin! He saved my life. He caught me when I fell. He was such a wonderful hero. Oh, Kristin! Don't you feel that about Cole?"

She hesitated, and she remembered how happy she had been to see him. And she remembered how they had made love, how tender he had been with her, how passionate. With a certain awe she remembered the way his eyes had fallen upon her, how cherished that look had made her feel. And she remembered the ecstasy…

But then she remembered his anger and his impatience, and how he had grown cold and distant when she had mentioned his past. He was in love with another woman, and though that woman lay dead, she was a rival Kristin could not best.

"Cole was a hero!" Shannon whispered. "Kristin, how can you forget that? He rode in here and he saved our lives! And if you think you're having a difficult labor, well, then… that is God's way of telling you you had no right to keep the information about this baby from your husband!"

I meant to tell him… Kristin almost said it. But if she did she would have to explain how he had acted when she had mentioned his past, and she would have to think about the fact that he didn't love her, right in the middle of having his child. She shrugged instead. "What can he do? There is a war on."

A vicious pain seized her again, and she assured Shannon that Cole was a rodent, and Shannon laughed. And then, miraculously — for it had been hours and hours, and it was nearly dawn — Delilah told Kristin that the baby's head was showing and that it was time for her to push.

When he lay in her arms, red and squalling, Kristin knew that she had never imagined such a love as swelled within her.

And she prayed with all her heart that her son's father was alive, that he would come home to them all. She vowed that she would ask no questions he could not answer, that she would not ask for anything he could not give.

Lying with the baby, nursing him as she did now, was the greatest pleasure of her life. Kristin forgot the world outside, and she forgot the war, and she even forgot that his father probably did not know he existed. She loved his grave little eyes, and she loved the way his mouth tugged on her breast. She counted his fingers endlessly, and his toes, and she thought that he was gaining weight wonderfully and that he was very long — even Delilah said he would grow to be very tall — and that his face was adorable. He had a little dimple in his chin, and Kristin wondered if Cole had a dimple like it. She had seen all of his body, but she had never seen his naked chin. He had always had a beard.

Delilah had warned her to let Gabe, as they called him, nurse only so long at one breast. If she didn't he would ignore the other, and she would experience grave discomfort. Consequently she gently loosened his grasp on her left breast, laughing at his howl of outrage.

"Heavens! You're more demanding than that father of yours!" she told her baby, cradling him against her shoulder and patting his back. Then, suddenly, she realized that she was not alone. She had been so engrossed with her son that the door had opened and closed without her noticing it.

A peculiar sensation made its way up her spine, and suddenly she was breathless. She dared to look at the door, and found him standing there.

Her hero.

He was in full-dress uniform, tattered gray and gold, his sword hanging dangerously from its scabbard. He was leaner than she remembered him, and his face was ashen, and his eyes… his eyes burned through her, seared into her.

"Cole!" she whispered. She wondered how long he had been standing there, and suddenly she was blushing, and it didn't matter that he was the child's father, she felt awkward and vulnerable and exposed.

He pushed away from the door and strode toward her, and despite herself she shrank away from him. He reached for the baby, and she clung to her child. Then she heard him speak, his voice low and hoarse.

"My God, Kristin, give him to me."

"Cole —"

She had to release the baby for Cole meant to take him. She nervously pulled her dress together but he had no eyes for her. He was looking at the baby. She wanted to shriek his name, wanted to run to him. It had been so long since she had seen him last, and even that had seemed like a dream. But she couldn't run to him, couldn't throw her arms around him. He was cold and forbidding. He was a stranger to her now.

He ignored her completely, setting the squalling child down on his back at the foot of the bed, freeing him from all his swaddling so that he could look at the whole of him. Kristin could have told him that Gabe was perfect in every way, but she kept silent. She knew he had to discover it for himself. Suddenly she was more than a little afraid of her husband. Should she have written to him? What good would it have done? Cole shouldn't be here even now. There were far too many Union troops around. Was that the real reason? she wondered. She had hesitated once because he had made her angry, because she had realized that he did not love her. But she hadn't written, she knew, because she had been afraid that he would be determined to come home, and that that determination would make him careless.

For a moment Gabe quieted and stared up at his father. He studied Cole's face as gravely and as purposefully as Cole studied him. His little body was perfectly still.

Then he had had enough of his father. His mother was the one he wanted. He lifted up his chubby little legs and screwed up his face and kicked out and howled in outrage all at once. The cry brought a surge to Kristin's breasts that soaked the bodice of the gown she held so tightly against her. Cole covered his son again, then picked him up and set him against his chest. Kristin reached out her arms.

"Please, Cole, give him back to me. He's… he's hungry."

Cole hesitated, staring at her hard. Then he handed the baby to her. Kristin lowered her head and wished he would go away, but then she remembered that he had just come, and that if he went away again he might be killed this time. Color spilled over her cheeks, and she remembered just how they had gotten the baby, and she touched the baby's cheek with her finger and let her bodice fall open and led his little mouth to her breast. He latched on with an awful, pigletlike sound, and she found that she couldn't look up at all, even though she knew that Cole was still in the room and that his eyes were still on her.

The room was silent except for the baby's slurping. Then even that stopped, and Kristin realized he had fallen asleep. She lifted him to her shoulder and tried to get him to burp, but he was sleeping too soundly. Biting her lip, she rose and set him in the cradle that Samson had brought down from the attic. All the while she felt Cole's eyes on her.

Still, he didn't touch her, and he didn't speak to her. He stood by the cradle and stared down at the child. He was going to touch him again. Kristin bit her lips to keep from protesting. She watched in silence as Cole's long fingers tenderly touched the tiny cheek. She tried to button her bodice, then realized that she was drenched and that it was a foolish gesture. Flushing, she hurried to change her gown, but it didn't matter. Cole didn't seem to have noticed. She wondered if she should tiptoe away and leave him alone, but the moment she started for the door he was on his feet, and she realized that he had noted her every movement.

"Where do you think you're going?" His voice was low, but there was real anger in it, and real menace.

"I thought you might be hungry." He was silent. His gaze fell over her. Then he took a step toward her, and she almost screamed when his fingers gripped her arms and he shook her. "Damn you, Kristin! Damn you a thousand times over! You knew! You knew — and you didn't tell me! What right did you have to keep him from me?"

She tried to free herself, but she could not. She looked in his eyes, and she hated what she saw there, the uncompromising hardness.

"What rights have you got!" she choked out. "You ride in whenever you choose… You may feel you have obligations, but that is all you have! I—

"I ride in when I can get here!" he snapped, shaking her again. Her head fell back, and her eyes, glazed suddenly with tears, stared into his. "Lady, there is a war being fought out there! You know that. Of all women, you know that. I have done everything that is humanly possible, I have given you everything —"

"No! No, you have not given me everything! You have never given me the least little part of your —"

"I could have been killed. I don't know how many times I could have been killed on some stinking battlefield, and I wouldn't even have known I had a son!"

"Let me go!"

"No!"

"Please!" He was so close to her, and he felt so good. He was so warm, and she could feel the hardness of his body, and the touch of his hands. She wanted to touch his face and soothe away the lines around his eyes, and she wanted to fill the emptiness in his heart. She wanted to see his eyes alight with passion again. As she thought of the passion they had known together, her breasts seemed to fill again, but it was not for her child this time, it was for him. She needed to be held, to be touched.

To be loved.

"Please!" she repeated softly. She was so glad to see him, and their time together should be a precious respite against the war that raged on around them.

"Cole, I wanted to tell you when you were here, but all of a sudden we were fighting, because Major Emery had committed the horrible sin of telling me that you had been hurt. Mr. Cole Slater had been hurt, cut open and left bleeding, and he just couldn't bear that! Well, you are human, Cole, and you're supposed to bleed! And I should hurt for you, too, because damn it, what happened was awful!"

"Kristin, stop —"

"No! No, I will not stop! What have you got now? One week, one day? One lousy hour? Not long, I'll warrant. There are too many Federals around. So you stop, and you listen to me! I am grateful to you, Cole, eternally grateful. And I've been glad of this bargain of ours, heartily glad. You have fulfilled every promise you ever made me. But don't you dare yell at me now! I didn't write because I didn't want you getting killed, because I was afraid of your temper."

"My temper! I would never —"

"Yes, you would! You would have taken foolish chances to get here. You would have been afraid because of what happened to you with —"

She broke off, remembering that Emery had said that his wife had been pregnant when she had been killed.

"Oh, God, Cole, I'm sorry. I just realized that you would probably rather that she… that I "

"What the hell are you saying?" he asked hoarsely.

Kristin shook her head miserably. "Your wife, your first wife… You were expecting a child. I'm sorry, you must be thinking of her, that you would prefer —"

"That she had lived? That you had died? My God, Kristin, don't you ever say such a thing, don't you even think it, do you hear me?" He caught her against him. He threaded his fingers roughly through her hair, and suddenly he lowered his head and buried his face in the fragrant strands. "Don't you ever, ever think that!" he repeated. Then he looked at her again, and he smiled. It was a weary smile, and she saw how much the past few years had aged him, and her heart ached.

"He is a beautiful boy. He is the most wonderful child I've ever seen. And he is mine. Thank you. Thank you so very much."

"Oh, Cole!" she whispered. She was dangerously close to tears. He saw it and his tone changed.

"I'd still like to tan your hide for keeping the truth from me!"

"Cole, I really didn't mean to. I was afraid. I'm always afraid, it seems."

"I know, I know." He held her against him.

"Cole, you must be starved. Let me go down and have Delilah —"

"No, not now."

"Cole, you must need —"

He stepped away from her.

"I need my wife," he said. "I very, very badly need my wife."

He bent his head and kissed her, and then he lifted her into his arms and they fell upon the bed together.

"We have a son, Kristin," he said, and she laughed. "We have a son, and he's beautiful, and… and so are you."

It was a long, long time before either of them thought of any other kind of sustenance.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The days that followed were glorious for Kristin. It wasn't that anything had been settled between them. It was just that for a time they seemed to have achieved a private peace, and it was wonderful.

They did not stray far from the house. Cole explained how hard it had been to elude the patrols to reach her. But Kristin knew her own land, and she knew where they could safely travel. They picnicked on the banks of the river with the baby, and while he slept they splashed in the deliriously cool water. Kristin was first shocked and then ridiculously excited to dare to strip away her clothes in the broad daylight and make love in the water.

In the evening they sat beneath the moon and felt the cool breezes play over them. Kristin listened while Cole and Samson talked about what was left of the herd, and it seemed that everything that was said began with the words "When the war is over…"

At night, lying curled against her husband's body, Kristin asked him if he thought the war would ever end. He hesitated a long time, stroking her hair.

"It's ending now, Kristin. We're being broken down bit by bit, like a beautiful animal chewed to bits by fleas. We never had the power. We never had the industry. We never had the men. It's going to end. If the Confederacy holds out another year I'll be surprised. Well, we went a long way on courage and tactics. But that Lincoln is a stubborn cuss. Tenacious. He's held on to his Union, so it seems."

He sounded tired, but not bitter. Kristin stroked his chest. "Can't you just stay here now? If you know you're losing…"

"I can't stay, Kristin. You know that."

"I don't know anything of the kind! You've done your best for the Confederacy! You can't —"

"Kristin, Kristin!" He caught her hands. "I'm an outlaw as long as the war is on. If I stay here, I'll be in terrible danger. If some glory-seeking commander hears about it, he might just waltz in and string me up. If I'm going to die, I'd rather it be fighting than dangling from the end of a rope!"

"Cole, stop it —"

"And it isn't over, Kristin. I'm in the game and I have to stay with it. If I don't go back, Malachi will come here and shoot me for a traitor."

"He would not!"

"Well, someone would," he said.

"Cole —"

"Kristin, I have to go back."

"Cole —"

He rolled over and swept her into his arms and kissed her and then looked into her eyes. "When I ride now, I will think of my son. Thank you for Gabe, Kristin. Thank you." He nuzzled her lips and kissed her forehead and her throat and the valley between her breasts. She tried to keep talking, to keep arguing, but he nuzzled his way down the length of her torso, and she grew breathless and couldn't speak. When he had finished she couldn't remember what she had wanted to say, only that it was terribly important that she hold him as long as she could.

The next day Kristin was overjoyed when Matthew arrived unexpectedly. He quickly warned her that both he and Cole could be shot if they were caught together. Still, for a few hours, it was a wonderful homecoming. Matthew admired his nephew, and Shannon clung to her brother, and Delilah managed a fine feast. Then Cole and Matthew shut themselves up in the library together. Kristin finally had to force her way in.

"You're discussing me, I know it, and I will know what is going on!" she insisted.

"Cole has to leave," Matthew told her. "Right away. Tonight."

"Why?"

Matthew looked unhappily at Cole. Cole shrugged and gave her the explanation. "Matthew is putting the ranch under the protection of a Federal troop."

"But —"

"I can't be here, Kristin. And Quantrill's group has split up."

"What?"

"During the spring," Matthew explained, "Quantrill and his men got into some heavy feuding in Texas. Bill Anderson has some men under him, and George Todd has a group, too. Quantrill still has his followers. Bill attacked some Federals during the summer, and Archie Clements scalped the men he murdered. The situation is frightening, and no one knows where Zeke Moreau is, or who he's with. So you see, Kristin, Cole has to get out of here. And you have to be protected."

Tears stung her eyes, and she gritted her teeth to keep from spilling them. She turned away from the men.

"I fixed the tear in your frock coat, Cole. And Delilah has been washing everything. The two of you, sometimes your clothes smell as if you'd been sleeping with skunks for a year. I'll see that you're packed up and have Shannon wrap up a supply of jerky."

She stumbled into the hallway. Cole found her there and swept her into his arms and took her upstairs to their room. She cried the whole time they made love, her tears spilling over his shoulders and his chest and dampening his cheeks.

Then he kissed her and held the baby tightly. She insisted on coming down with him, and when he was mounted he leaned down to kiss her again. Holding their child close to her breast,

Kristin waved as he left.

That night some Union soldiers moved into the bunkhouse. Kristin supposed it was necessary. But it was still hard.

The bushwhacker situation grew much worse. On the thirtieth of September Kristin was surprised when she came out on the porch to see that Major Emery was riding toward her. She stood and smiled, ready to greet him, but her smile died when she saw his face. She went pale herself, and the world spun, and she was afraid that she was going to faint.

"Oh, my God, it's Cole —"

"No, no, Mrs. Slater," he assured her hastily, taking Gabe from her. "He's a fine boy, ma'am. A fine boy." He looked around uncomfortably. "I don't think your sister should know the whole of this, ma'am, but… Captain Ellsworth is dead."

"Oh, no!"

"That damned Bill Anderson! Since his sister died they say he froths at the mouth every time he fights. Fights — bah!" He spat into the dirt. "He tore up Centralia. He made twenty-five unarmed soldiers strip, and then he shot twenty-three of them dead. The troops that went out after him fared worse. It was a massacre. At least a hundred killed. Stripped, scalped, dismembered, their bodies mutilated as they died —"

"Oh, God! Oh, God!"

They both heard the scream. Kristin turned around to see that Shannon was standing in the doorway. She had heard every word. She knew.

"Oh, God! No!" she shrieked. Major Emery took a step toward her, barely managing to catch her as she pitched forward in a dead faint.

"Could you take her to her room for me, please?" Kristin whispered.

Major Emery nodded and carried Shannon upstairs. "We've a company surgeon out in your bunkhouse. I'll send him over and see that he gives her something."

The doctor didn't come soon enough. Shannon awoke, and she started to cry. She cried so hard that Kristin was afraid she would hurt herself. Then she was silent, and the silence was even worse. Kristin stayed with her, holding her hand, but she knew that she hadn't reached her sister, and she wondered if anyone ever would again.

Fall came, and with it more tragedy for the South. General Sherman was marching to the sea through Georgia and the Carolinas, and the reports of his scorched-earth policy were chilling. In the west, the Union bottleneck was almost complete.

On the twenty-first of October George Todd died when a sniper caught him in the neck. Five days later Bill Anderson was killed in the northwestern corner of Missouri.

Kristin was alarmed to see how eagerly Shannon received the news of their deaths.

Thanksgiving came and went. It was a very quiet affair. Kristin was Matthew McCahy's sister, but she was also Cole Slater's wife, and so it didn't seem right to invite any of the Union men in for a fancy supper.

Matthew made it back for Christmas Day, and Kristin was delighted to see him. She asked if he had heard anything, and he told her that the last he had heard, Cole Slater was still at large. John Hunt Morgan, the dashing cavalry commander, had been killed late in the year, and Matthew hadn't heard anything about where Cole or Malachi or Jamie had been assigned.

She cried that night, cried because no news was good news. It seemed so long since she had lost her father, and she could hardly remember Adam's face. She didn't want to lose anyone else. She could hardly stand to see Shannon's pale face anymore. She hadn't seen her sister smile since Captain Ellsworth had been killed. Not once.

After Christmas dinner, Kristin sat before the fire in the parlor with her brother and her sister. She began to play a Christmas carol on the spinet, but Shannon broke down and ran upstairs to her room. Kristin sat staring silently at her hands for a long time.

Finally Matthew spoke.

"Kristin, nothing's going to get better, not for a long, long time, you know."

"They say it's almost over. They say the war is almost over."

"The war, but not the hatred. I doubt they'll fix that for a hundred years, Kristin. It isn't going to be easy. The healing will be slow and hard."

"I know," Kristin whispered.

"You just make sure, Kristin, that if Cole comes around you get him out of here fast. He isn't going to be safe anywhere near this place, not until some kind of a peace is made, and then only if amnesty is given."

Kristin's fingers trembled. She nodded. "He won't come back. Not until… not until it's over."

Matthew kissed her and went upstairs. Kristin stared at the fire until it had burned very low in the grate.

In February Gabriel had his first birthday. The news that month was good for the Union, grim for the Confederacy. Sherman had devastated the South. Robert E. Lee was struggling in Virginia, and Jefferson Davis and the Confederate cabinet had abandoned Richmond half a dozen times.

By March, everyone was talking about the campaign for Petersburg. Grant had been pounding away at the Virginia city since the previous summer, and the fighting had been fierce. The Union had tried to dig a tunnel under the Confederate lines. Mines had exploded, and many Confederates had been killed, but then they had rallied and shot down the Union soldiers who had filled in the crater. The soldiers shuddered when they spoke of it.

Kristin had become accustomed to the men who had made their headquarters on her land. They were mostly farmers and ranchers, and more and more she heard them speak wistfully of the time when the war would be over, when they could go home. The Confederate general Kirby-Smith was still raising hell in the West, and the Southern forces were still fighting valiantly in the East, but the death throes had already set in for a nation that had never had a chance to truly breathe the air of independence. Major Emery came one day and sat with them on the porch while the first warmth of spring touched them. Morosely he told Kristin that the death estimates for the country were nearing the half-million mark. "Bullet, sword and disease!" He shook his head. "So many mothers' sons!"

When he left her that afternoon, Kristin had no idea that she would never see him again alive.

April came. General Lee's forces were gathering around Richmond for a desperate defense of the capital. Gabe was learning to walk, and Kristin had agreed with Samson and Pete that he might be allowed to try sitting on top of a horse.

Kristin came outside one April afternoon, and she knew instantly that something was wrong. There was a peculiar stillness in the air.

There should have been noise. There should have been laughter. The dozen or so Union troops billeted on the ranch should have been out and about, grooming their horses, hurrying here and there in their smart blue uniforms with their correspondence and their missives.

Pete was nowhere in sight, and neither was Samson.

"Samson?" Kristin called out.

Then she heard the barn door creak as if the breeze had moved it, but there wasn't any breeze. She looked toward it, and she saw a hand. Its fingers were curled and crumpled, and it was attached to a bloodstained blue-clad arm. Kristin felt a scream rising in her throat, but she didn't dare release it. She wrenched Gabe into her arms and ran for the house as fast as she could.

"Shannon!" she screamed. In the hall she found a gun belt with the two Colt six-shooters Cole had insisted she keep loaded and ready. With trembling fingers she wound the belt around her waist and reached for the Spencer repeating rifle Matthew had brought at Christmas.

"Shannon!" she called again.

Her sister came running down the steps, her eyes wide, her face pale.

"Something is wrong. Take Gabe —"

"No! Give me the rifle!"

"Shannon, please —"

"I'm a better shot than you are, damn it!"

"Maybe, yes! But I'm not as desperate and reckless as you are!" Kristin snapped. "Shannon, for God's sake, you are the best shot! So for the love of God take Gabriel and get upstairs and try to pick them off if they come for me."

"Who?"

She didn't know how she could be certain, but she was.

"Zeke is back. He's out there somewhere. Shannon, please, don't let them get my baby!"

With that she pushed Gabriel into her sister's arms and started out the door again. Shannon watched her. Gabriel began to cry, and she pulled him close and hurried up the stairs.

"Holy Mary!" Private Watson muttered. "Will you look at that? Fool Yankee, he's all alone and coming right at us!"

Cole looked up from where he sat polishing the butt of his rifle. His eyes narrowed as he watched the trotting horse. Judging by the way the man riding it sat, he was injured, and injured pretty badly.

"Should we shoot him?" someone murmured uncertainly.

"Somebody already done shot him," came the wry answer.

"Leave him be, boys," Cole said, rising curiously. Cole had been promoted to Colonel, which made him the highest-ranking officer in the group. Malachi was now a major and Jamie a captain. The three of them were with a small company of men simply because small companies were all that was left in their sector of the West. They had decided to find Kirby-Smith, wherever he was, and join forces with him, but for the last month they had kept a field headquarters in this abandoned farmhouse deep inside an overgrown orchard.

"I know that man," Cole muttered suddenly. He hurried forward, his brothers and his ragged troops at his heels.

He reached the horse, and the Yankee fell right into his arms. Cole eased him down to the ground, wresting his own scarf from around his neck to soak up the blood pouring from the wound beneath the man's shoulder blade.

"Matthew McCahy, what the hell happened to you, boy?" he said gruffly. He looked at Captain Roger Turnbill, the company surgeon, and then he looked down at Matthew and wondered how the hell his brother-in-law had found him. Then he decided it didn't matter, not until Matthew was looked after.

"Let's get inside the house," Captain Turnbill said.

The men started to lift him. Matthew opened his eyes, huge blue eyes that reminded Cole painfully of his wife, so very close by, so endlessly far away. Matthew reached up and clutched the lapel of Cole's frock coat.

"Cole, listen to me —"

"You know this blue belly well, Colonel?" Captain Turnbill asked.

"He's my wife's brother. I know him well enough."

"Then let's get him inside. He's bleeding like a stuck pig."

"Matthew —" Cole gripped the hand that clutched him so tightly. "Matthew, the captain is going to help you. I swear it." Cole wondered if Matthew was delirious, or if he was merely wary of the Confederate surgeon. Doctors on both sides had been known to boast that they had killed more of the enemy than all the artillery shells in the service.

"Cole! For God's sake, listen to me!" Matthew rasped out. His fingers held Cole's like a vise. "It's Zeke —"

"What?"

Matthew swallowed painfully. "We met up with him southeast of here, in a little two-bit place called James Fork. We were a small detachment, thirty of us, heading over to Tennessee. I went down, I was knocked out and they took me for dead. I heard him talking over me. Said he couldn't wait to get to the McCahy place and tell Kristin McCahy that he'd managed to murder her brother now, too. They spent the night at James Fork. I waited till they were drunk and I found a horse, and here I am —"

Cole was ashen and tense. He didn't realize how hard he was gripping Matthew's shoulders until Captain Turnbill said softly, "Ease off, Colonel."

"How did you find us?" Jamie asked carefully. He was the only one who seemed to be capable of rational thought at the moment.

Matthew smiled. "Your location isn't exactly a secret, gentlemen. Kurt Taylor was out here with a scouting party a few weeks ago. Some of the higher-ups know where you are… They're just hoping the war will be over before they have to come in and clean you out." His smile faded, and he choked and coughed and then groaned in pain.

"Get him up and in the house!" Turnbill ordered. A half-dozen men quickly obeyed him, Jamie Slater tensely and carefully taking Matthew's head and his wounded shoulder.

"Slater! You've got to get there. You and your men, you've got a chance. Riding straight west —"

Cole followed after him. "There's a dozen Yankees on the ranch," he said tensely. "I know it."

'So does Zeke Moreau," Matthew gasped out.

Then he was suddenly silent.

"Is he dead?" Malachi asked tonelessly.

Turnbill shook his head. "Passed out from loss of blood. It's amazing that he made it here."

Cole didn't follow any farther. He paused in the yard in front of the farmhouse and looked around at the men who remained with him. Besides his brothers and the doctor, he had one sergeant, two corporals and twenty-two privates. They had survived a hell of a lot. How could he ask them to die at this point?

"I've got to leave you, boys," he said. The soldiers who hadn't helped carry Matthew into the house ranged silently around him. "This is a private battle, and some of you might say it's being waged against one of your own —"

"Hell, Quantrill and his kind were never one of my own," Bo Jenkins, a shopkeeper in peacetime, said. "My kind of Southerner ain't never shot down a man in cold blood."

"Glad to hear it, Private," Cole said quietly. "But still, I can't rightly ask you to come along and get killed —"

"Hell, Colonel, how's this any different from all the other times?" Jenkins said.

His brother John stepped up beside him. "Seems like we've been following you a long time, sir. We'll keep on doing that. I mean, what the hell, Colonel? You think we all want to live forever?"

Cole felt a smile tug at his lips. "Then let's get ready. We've got to ride fast. We've got to ride like the wind."

Armed and ready, Kristin came out of the house and moved quickly toward the barn, toward the bloody hand lying in the spring sunshine.

She paused at the gaping doorway and flattened herself against the wall. Then she kicked open the door and stepped inside, both her Colts cocked and ready to fire.

She heard nothing, saw nothing. She blinked in the dim light, then she saw that at least five men in Yankee blue lay on the ground and in the hay. Their killer or killers had interrupted them in the middle of a poker game. The cards were still sitting on a bale of hay in the center of the barn.

Someone had been holding a full house.

Kristin swallowed painfully.

"Drop 'em," came a sneering voice from behind her. It was one of Zeke's men. She didn't know his name, but she recognized the voice from its jeering tone. She had heard the man's raucous laughter when her father had died.

She froze, aware that she hadn't a chance in hell of turning quickly enough to kill the man. She wondered whether she shouldn't turn anyway and die quickly. Zeke surely no longer desired her. All he wanted was revenge.

Suddenly there was an explosion right over her shoulder. She screamed, stunned, wondering if she'd been hit. She hadn't. She stared toward the center of the barn, and there lay one of the Yankee soldiers she had thought were all dead. Blood was pouring from his temple, but he was smiling at her, and his pistol was smoking. She whirled around. The man behind her lay dead, very dead. There was a black hole burned right into his chest.

She slammed the Colts back into the gun belt and ran over to the Yankee who had saved her life, falling down on her knees beside him. "Bless you! What can I —"

"Lady, you can save yourself!" the man whispered, and he winced. "If all goes well, then you come back for me. Damn it to hell, but I can't help you no more now. My leg is all busted up. You go careful. He's in the house."

Chills swept up her spine. "He's… where?"

"Moreau, their leader. He's up in the house."

He was in the house, with her sister and her child. Kristin raced for the doorway. She found Samson and Pete slumped against the far wall of the barn. Pete was dead, his eyes wide open and staring. Samson was still breathing, a thin stream of blood trickled from his forehead.

She paused for a split second to tear apart her skirt and dab at the wound. She lowered him to the ground and pressed the hastily made bandage against his forehead. Then she raced into the yard, across the paddock and toward the house, easing the Colts from the belt once again.

Suddenly there was a shot. She stopped where she stood, feeling the dust rise around her feet where a bullet had bitten into the earth. She looked up, way up, to her bedroom window.

Zeke was standing there, a handful of Shannon's hair caught in his filthy fingers.

"Drop the guns, Mrs. Slater," Zeke drawled. "Drop 'em right now, else I'll let this pretty gold stuff in my fingers run red with McCahy blood."

Kristin stared up at him in despair. She heard a shuffling around her, and she knew that his men were emerging from the bunkhouse, from the far side of the house, from behind the watering trough. She looked around, and the faces spun before her. How many of them were there?

Twenty? Thirty? It was hard to tell.

"Drop 'em in the dust, Kristin, slow and careful!" Zeke laughed then, fingering Shannon's hair. "She sure did come along nicely, Kristin. Why, I think she's even prettier than you are. Hard to tell, though. You're both nasty as rattlers."

Shannon cursed and bit Zeke's hand savagely. Zeke swore in turn and cuffed her hard. Suddenly Gabe began to cry. Kristin cried out involuntarily and bit her lip.

Shannon screamed as Zeke tore at her hair. Zeke, shouting insanely, addressed Kristin again.

"Drop the guns or else I'll kill the kid first. Slow. I'll blow off his legs one by one, and then his arms and then, if he's still alive, I'll cut off his ears!"

Kristin set the Colts on the ground. She heard Zeke's wild laughter, and then he and Shannon disappeared from the window. The shuffling around her began again. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the soft jeers and the horrible smell as the men moved closer and closer.

The door to the house burst open, and Zeke appeared, shoving Shannon before him. Shannon was white, but Kristin was, perhaps ridiculously, glad to see that her sister's hatred seemed to outweigh her fear. There would be plenty of time for fear.

Zeke, keeping his punishing grip on Shannon's hair, forced her into the center of the circle. He came close to Kristin, and he smiled. "I'm going to tell you about the afternoon, Kristin. Just so you can anticipate it all. Every sweet moment. See Harry over there? The guy with the peg leg and the rotten teeth? He's had a real hankering for you, so he gets to go first. I'm going for little sister here. Fresh meat. Then, well… hell, we've learned to share and share alike. We are going to make sure you stay alive, though. At least until we've had a chance to fire the house and the barn. You should get to hear the horses scream. That's a real fine sound. Then — maybe — Harry will scalp you. He learned the art real well from little Archie Clements himself. But we'll see how the afternoon goes. We may not have time for everything. There's lots of Yankees in these parts. Did you know that, Mrs. Slater? Sure you did. Your brother's a turncoat Yankee, ain't he? But don't worry about him none. I killed him last night."

Kristin's knees sagged, and she fell into the dirt. Matthew! It couldn't be. No!

Zeke started to laugh.

Something inside her snapped. She catapulted from the ground, flying at him in a fury. Shannon screamed but quickly rallied, and together they fell on him, biting him, tearing at him with their nails. Zeke screamed but none of his men moved to help him at first. And they couldn't shoot. They might kill him.

Then they heard it. The unmistakable sound of hoofbeats pounding the Missouri earth, pounding like thunder, coming closer and closer.

"Take cover!" one of the bushwhackers shouted.

Zeke let out a terrible growl and threw Shannon down hard in the dirt. He slammed the back of his hand against Kristin's cheek, and when she reeled, stunned by the blow, he caught her by the hair and dragged her up the steps to the porch and behind the oak rocker.

The hoofbeats came closer, thundering like a thousand drums. "Bastard!" Zeke muttered. "How could they know…"

It was only then, as Zeke aimed his gun through the slits in the back of the rocker, that Kristin got her first glimpse of the riders.

They were dressed in gray, and they might have been a sorry sight had they not ridden with such grace and style. A rebel yell suddenly rose up in the air, and the horses tore around the front of the house. Dust flew everywhere. Gunfire erupted, and Kristin bit back a scream.

Cole was leading them, whirling his horse around, his head held high. Malachi was there, too, and Jamie.

The Union army had failed endlessly against the bushwhackers because the bushwhackers were so well armed and so fast. But now they were fighting a man who knew their ways. A man who was faster. A man with a company of soldiers who were every bit as well armed as they were, a company of soldiers who were

determined to salvage something of honor and chivalry from a war they were destined to lose. They fought their own kind, for their own kind had defied the very code of the South that so many had fought to preserve.

Kristin couldn't see for the clouds of dust the horses and the gunfire had churned up. All she knew was that Zeke was dragging her viciously along the porch.

She fought him. He swore he would turn around and shoot her, but she didn't really care. He had murdered Matthew, and he had murdered her father, and he was probably going to murder her. All she dared hope for was that Delilah had hidden somewhere, and that she had found Gabe. She wanted her son to live. She wanted something good to rise from the dust and ashes of this war. She wanted her child, Cole's child, to live, to remember, to start over.

"Damn you!" Zeke screamed. He twisted her arm cruelly behind her back, and she cried out in pain. He pushed her to the front door and then into the house. He pushed her toward the stairs, and the pain in her arm was so piercing that she had to stumble up the steps.

"Maybe we do have a little time. Maybe they'll all stay real busy out there for a long, long time. I wouldn't mind having you on Cole Slater's bed while he chokes on his own blood down below."

Suddenly the front door flew open and Cole was standing in the doorway. Zeke whirled, and Kristin stumbled and almost fell, but Zeke caught her and held her in front of him.

Framed by the doorway, the sunlight behind him, Cole was frightening and yet strangely beautiful. In his left hand he held his cavalry saber, and with his right he aimed his Colt.

"Put it down nice and easy, Slater, nice and easy," Zeke said. He pulled Kristin close against him, so close that she could breathe in the reek of his breath and feel the sweat of his body.

"You get your filthy hands off my wife, Zeke."

"You know, Slater, I started in with Quantrill late. That's why I didn't remember you the first time we met here. But now I remember you real well. And I've thought about this moment. I've dreamed about it. So you put the gun down. See how I've got this beautiful silver barrel aimed right at her throat? Think about how her blood will pour out where the artery's cut…"

Suddenly they heard a cry. It was Gabriel, crying in fear and rage. Delilah must have him in a closet close by, Kristin thought.

Her stomach twisted, and she saw that Cole had gone white. She sensed that Zeke was smiling. Now Cole was forced to think not only about her but about his son.

"That's a real fine boy you got there, Slater," Zeke drawled. He moved the barrel of the gun against Kristin's cheek. "A real fine wife, a real fine boy. You want to see them live, you'll set that gun down, slow and easy. No fast moves."

"No fast moves," Cole echoed tonelessly.

Gabe was still crying. Kristin bit into her lip.

As soon as Cole set the gun down, Zeke would shoot him, and there was so much she had to tell him. Gabe was walking now, could say so many words. She had taught him to say papa. He had the most wonderful laugh in the whole world, and his eyes were so very much like his father's…

"Cole, no!" she cried out.

He smiled at her. "I have to do this, Kristin."

Zeke laughed. "Yeah, he has to."

Cole was looking at her. A curious smile touched his lips. "I never got a chance to tell you that I loved you, Kristin. I do, you know. With all my heart."

"Oh, God, Cole!"

"I love you. I love you. Duck, Kristin."

"What?" she gasped,

He didn't drop his Colt. He aimed it right over her head. She screamed, and the world exploded.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kristin fell, and it was as if the earth had opened up beneath her feet. All she knew was that Cole had fired.

And that Zeke had not.

Zeke's body was tumbling down the stairs after hers. Kristin came to a halt at the landing, and something fell hard on top of her. She stared up at Zeke, at his wide, staring eyes, at his forehead, where flesh and bone had been ripped away. She pushed away from him, desperate to get him away from her.

"Kristin, Kristin!"

Strong arms were around her, pulling her up from beneath him. She couldn't tear her eyes away from him. His face was still frozen in a sneer, even in death.

"Kristin!"

Cole turned her into his arms. "Kristin!" She looked up and saw his face, his eyes. Concern furrowed his brow as he eased his knuckles over her cheek. "Are you hurt?" he asked anxiously.

She shook her head. She couldn't speak. She stared at him blankly, and then she shrieked out his name and threw herself against him and started to cry. He stroked her hair and murmured comfortingly to her. Then he held her away from him and studied her anxiously. She struggled desperately for control.

"Oh, Cole! How did you know to come? They slaughtered all the Yankees… Oh, no, a few of them might still be alive. You have to help them. Him. One of them saved me." Tears flooded her eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep from crying. "Cole! He killed Matthew! He found my brother and he killed him."

"Hush, Kristin, hush," Cole murmured. He pulled her against his body again and smoothed back her hair. Then he tilted her chin and sought her eyes. He had to make sure she understood. "Kristin, Matthew is fine. Well, I'm sorry, I suppose he's not fine. He's injured, but he's alive, Kristin. I would never have known —" He was suddenly unable to speak. It was all over, and now he was suddenly paralyzed by the fear. His hands trembled as he held her. "Kristin, Matthew's company was attacked. Zeke left him for dead, but he wasn't dead, and he got away in the night. Thank God, the Yanks knew where I had my men all along, and Matthew knew the area so well that he came straight to me."

Her eyes were wide with hope, with a joy she dared not feel. "Oh, Cole! Please, don't tell me that unless —"

"It's the truth, Kristin, I swear it."

"But they didn't come after you? The Yankees, they let you be?"

"I have a few friends in the right places," Cole said with a wry smile. "It gives me hope. Maybe, when this thing is over, some of the hatreds will be patched up. Some of them won't be. But, oh, God, I want it to end. I want it to be over!"

He pulled her against him again and she felt the beating of his heart. The rough wool of his frock coat tickled her cheek, and she had never been so glad of anything in her life. She wanted to look at him again. She wanted to study his features, and she wanted to see him smile, because he was young again when he smiled. She wanted to see the silver light in his eyes when he held her, and most of all she wanted to hear him speak again. She wanted to hear him say he loved her.

Of course, this wasn't really the right time. There was a dead man at her feet, and though the guns had gone silent outside the house, dead men littered the earth there, too, and — please God — a few living men, too. She had to go back to the barn for the young Yankee who had saved her life, and she had to find her son.

"Kristin —" Cole began, but he was interrupted by an outraged cry.

"Miz Kristin! Mister Cole! Why, thank the Lord," Delilah called. She was at the top of the stairs with Gabe, who was struggling fiercely to free himself from her grasp. Cole stared at his son with the awe of a parent who has not seen his child in a long, long time. Gabe might have been a grown man the way Cole was staring at him.

Kristin's eyes twinkled. "He walks now. And he talks. I taught him how to say papa."

Delilah hurried down the stairs. She saw Zeke's body, but she didn't pause. She spat on it and stepped over it, and then she set Gabriel down. He tottered for a moment. Kristin watched Cole as he went down on his knees and reached out for the boy. Gabe waddled carefully over to inspect the stranger.

"Say papa!" Kristin urged him.

Gabriel wasn't interested in saying anything. He turned away from the stranger who was his father and buried his face in his mother's skirts. He reached out his arms, and Kristin laughed and picked him up. Then, suddenly, she crushed him against her, so hard that he cried out in protest. "Oh, Gabriel!" she murmured, holding him tight.

Cole came to his feet and rescued his screaming son. He lifted Gabriel very high and silver eyes gazed into silver eyes. "I'm your papa, little man!" He laughed. "And you'd best get used to the idea."

Gabriel couldn't possibly have understood what Cole had said to him, of course, but he smiled anyway, as if he had decided to accept the stranger in gold and gray. Cole lowered him at last and set him on his hip, smiling at Kristin.

Suddenly there was an awful commotion at the door.

"Put me down, you piece of trash!" Shannon shrieked.

Malachi — Shannon thrown over his shoulder — came through the doorway, his face dark and thunderous. "I don't mind bushwhackers, and I don't mind the damn Yankees, but Cole, I will be damned if I'll be responsible for this brat!"

"Put me down!" Shannon screamed.

He did. He dumped her in front of Cole, and she was thrashing and flailing, trying to get her balance. She rolled over and came face-to-face with Zeke Moreau's body.

"Oh!" she gasped, and fell silent at last.

Kristin looked at Malachi and arched a brow.

He sighed with great patience. "Kristin, I didn't know what the hell was happening in here. I didn't want her barging in to get shot, or to cause you or Cole to get shot. Mainly. It would be her own damn fault if she did get shot, but since she is your sister, I thought I'd try to save her sweet, darling, precious little life!"

For once Shannon didn't reply. She was still staring at Zeke's face. She began to tremble uncontrollably, and then she burst into tears.

Kristin started toward her sister, but Cole pulled her back. Malachi was kneeling beside Shannon, and he pulled her up and away from the body.

"It's over! It's all over!" he told her roughly, "Don't go falling apart now."

Shannon stiffened momentarily, and then she hiccuped. Malachi gave her his handkerchief, and she dried her face, nodding an acknowledgment. Then she jammed it back into his hand.

"I never fell apart, you backwoods bastard!"

"Well, good. Get your derriere out there and start helping!"

"Helping?"

"There are injured men out there. Unless you're too damned prissy to help the men who were willing to die to save your miserable life."

"Miserable?"

"Go!"

"I am going, Malachi Slater! I'm going because those are fine men out there — even the rebels! I'm going for them, and I'm going because I choose to go, and I'll never, never do anything because you tell me to, do you understand?"

With an elegant toss of her golden curls, she swept past him. It was a splendid exit except for one thing. Malachi smacked her rump soundly as she went past. She yelped in outrage and slapped him hard across the face. He caught her by the elbow and turned her toward him, his face dark with rage.

"Malachi! Please! She is my sister," Kristin reminded him sweetly.

Slowly, his eyes narrowed, he released Shannon. "Why, thank you, kind sir!" she said. Then she kicked him hard in the shin and raced out the door.

Kristin began to smirk, and then Cole laughed, and the baby giggled. Delilah laughed along with them, but then her laughter faded, and she gasped, "Samson! My man! Oh, Mister Slater —"

"The barn," Kristin said quickly, her eyes on Cole. "He was breathing —"

Cole ran out the door, Delilah hard on his heels. Kristin followed but when she stepped out on the porch she stood there stunned, her son in her arms, staring at the scene of destruction.

There were bodies everywhere. Men in gray were collecting them, dragging them away. A weary-looking young man nodded to her in grim acknowledgment as he passed her. She swallowed and caught his arm. "Thank you. Thank you for coming here."

He smiled and tipped his hat. "I'd go anywhere Colonel Slater invited me, ma'am. I'm right glad we got here in time."

He had work to do, and he went back to it. Dazed, Kristin stepped down into the yard.

Then someone called out, asking for water. She hurried over to the trough and found one of Cole's boys behind it, clutching his shoulder and trying to stand.

"Here, here!" she whispered, ladling up some water. Gabe gurgled. He seemed to think they were playing.

"Thank you, ma'am," the soldier said. Then he winced, and she saw that he had a ball lodged in his flesh.

"Help me over here!" she called. Another soldier lifted the wounded man, and within minutes she had him in the house and on the couch and she had Cole's men scurrying around, boiling water, ripping up sheets for bandages, setting up the parlor as a temporary infirmary.

Gabriel refused to sleep, so she set up a little playpen in the parlor and busied herself with the injured. Shannon was at her side and Delilah, too, now that she knew that Samson was all right. He had been knocked cold, and he had a blinding headache, but otherwise he was none the worse for wear.

Samson was out on burial detail now. Zeke Moreau's body had been removed from the house.

There had been a scene when that had happened. Shannon had followed them out. She had stood on the porch and begged the men, "Please… please! Don't bury that man's body anywhere on this property!"

"Miss McCahy —"

"Please! Let the vultures eat him, let the wolves finish him, but I beg you, don't bury him near here!"

And so some of the men had set out with a wagon, and they were taking Zeke and the bodies of the other bushwhackers far, far away. Pete was dead, and he was family, and three of Cole's men had fallen, and there were the Yankees that the bushwhackers had killed. They were being laid to rest with infinite tenderness in the family plot, beside Kristin's mother and father.

By nightfall, most of the traces of the gun battle had been cleared away. Delilah managed to produce a hearty stew in abundance to feed everyone.

At ten they heard the sound of a wagon creaking along. Cole had just finished eating, and he was sipping a brandy on the porch. Gabriel was in bed, and Kristin was sitting at Cole's feet, listening to a sad tune being played on a harmonica somewhere nearby.

She felt Cole stiffen. Then she realized that he had sentries posted, for there was something like a Rebel yell in the darkness, and then the wagon came through.

"Cole?" Kristin murmured.

"It's a surprise," he said, squeezing her shoulder. She followed him down the steps and out to the yard. There was something lumpy in the back of the wagon, something that cried out plaintively, "Kristin, Shannon?"

"Matthew!" She screamed her brother's name and flew to the wagon. She kissed him, and she held him so tightly that he muttered, "Kristin, I survived being shot, you're going to kill me here in my home at last with kindness!"

"Oh, Matthew!"

Then Shannon was flying down the steps. The three McCahys greeted one another, and the men looked on, and then the harmonica player started up again, with "Lorena", this time bringing tears to eyes that had nearly run dry in all the years of bloodshed.

Matthew was brought in and put to bed in his own room. Once he was tucked in, he caught his sister's hand, and Kristin smiled and kissed him on the forehead again and told him to rest.

"Kristin!" He pulled her back. "Kristin, there'll be a bunch of Yankees here soon. They'll find out that Major Emery and his men were slaughtered, and they'll know that Cole and his men came in for the cleanup, and they'll be damned glad. But there's still a war on. They'll have to take them prisoner, or else they'll have to fight, and a lot of men will die needlessly. They're true heroes — to both sides, probably — but that won't make any difference. Kristin, are you understanding me?"

No, she wasn't. Or perhaps she was and she wanted to deny it. She couldn't have her husband taken away from her so soon.

"Kristin, Cole is considered an outlaw. Worse than ever before."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"He'll have to explain that to you himself. But be prepared. They need to sneak away now, tonight."

She felt weak, as if she had been drowning and she had reached and reached for a rope and it had been viciously wrenched away.

"Thank you, Matthew," she told her brother.

She blew out the lamp and left him. She hesitated, leaning against the door.

When she came back downstairs, she quickly discovered that everything that Matthew had said was true. The Confederate surgeon who had so carefully tended to her brother was checking the men she had sutured and bandaged — and preparing them for travel. He smiled at her when he saw her.

"Your brother is going to be just fine. Keep the wound clean. Never use the same sponge twice when you're cleaning out a wound. I'm becoming more and more convinced that rot travels that way. Seems we have been doing better with sanitation than the blue bellies." He paused, and she thought that he, too, looked weary. "He's a fine young man, your brother. You take care of him."

"Thank you, Captain Turnbill," said Kristin. He was about to turn away, but she stopped him with a hand set lightly upon his arm. "Captain, are you sure these men are fit to travel?"

"The worst wounded are the Yankees we found in the bunkhouse and the barn, and they don't have to travel anywhere. My men have one broken arm, a broken leg, some shot in the shoulder and two concussions. They'll be all right." He paused, looking at her unhappily. "Mrs. Slater, they'll be a lot better off traveling now than they would be in a Yankee prison camp. I'm not a man to say that all Yanks are butchers, but there's not much good to be said about prison camps, whether they're Yankee camps or Confederate camps."

The able-bodied men were walking past her, making ready to leave. Kristin couldn't see her husband anywhere.

Malachi came around behind her and squeezed her shoulders. He turned her around. "Hope Cole won't mind," he said, and he hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Hell, I don't care if Cole does mind!" he said, and he kissed her again. She didn't know there was a tear on her cheek until he wiped it away.

"Oh, Malachi…"

"It's all right. We won't be far away."

"Not far away at all."

It was Jamie who spoke. He was right behind Malachi, and he took her from his brother and kissed her cheek, too. "You take care of yourself, little sister, you hear? Take good care of that nephew of mine, too."

She nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds.

"Cole —"

"Cole is right here," her husband said. Tears blurred her vision. He took her in his arms. "Hey!" he whispered, his lips nuzzling her throat. "Stop that! You can't send my brothers away with tears in your eyes."

"Your brothers…"

She whirled around in his arms. Cole looked over her head. Malachi tipped his hat and grinned, and Cole grinned back. The two of them went out, and the house slowly fell silent. "I'm not leaving tonight, Kristin."

"What?" she whispered.

There was a bit of a commotion outside. Shannon was saying goodbye nicely to Jamie, and not so nicely to Malachi. Cole grinned, and Kristin grinned back, her eyes searching his. Then the door slammed, and Shannon whispered, "Oh, excuse me!"

Neither of them turned around. They heard Shannon tiptoe into the parlor to stay with the Union injured.

He was beautiful, Kristin thought. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He was leaner than he had been that first day she had seen him. Strands of gray were creeping into his hair and into his beard, but somehow they were beautiful, too. They went well with the silver light in his eyes, with the handsome, dignified planes of his face.

"Oh!" she whispered heatedly. "You have to leave! Matthew says they consider you an outlaw —"

"They won't know I'm here, Kristin. My men are gone. They've taken my horse. They've learned how to disappear with the night. And for now I'm staying with my wife."

"Oh!"

"If she'll have me."

"Oh!" She touched his cheek, tenderly moving her fingertips over the coarse beard there. "Oh, she will have you!" she breathed.

He caught her hand and kissed her fingertips. Silently he led her up the stairs and through the doorway to their bedroom. Then he leaned against the door, and she smiled as she watched him.

"I never thought I would be here with you now!" he whispered.

"But you are," she said.

"Yes, I am."

Kristin walked over to him. She lifted off his hat and tossed it on the floor, and she unbuckled his scabbard and his gun belt and cast his weapons aside. Studiously, she unbuttoned his frock coat and his uniform shirt, and when his shoulders and chest were bare she felt the sweet thrill of anticipation invade her. Her fingers grew awkward, and she found that she was trembling. She whispered his name, and she pressed her lips to his chest and to the pulse at the base of his throat. He caught her lips and kissed her hungrily, tasting and tasting her mouth, trembling with ever-greater ardor. She was breathless when he released her and turned her around to work at the tiny buttons of her dress. He was shaking as badly as she, but was more practiced, and more determined, and she was startled when the dress fell quickly away from her, and then her chemise, and then her petticoats. He lifted her up with her stockings and shoes still on and carried her quickly to the bed, pausing with a rueful laugh to check on Gabriel, who was sleeping sweetly in the little bed in the corner.

Then he tossed her on the bed and fell upon her, and she threaded her fingers joyously through his hair. He groaned and kissed her again, and then he kissed her breasts, staring at them, savoring them, easing his tongue over each nipple, then his teeth, then the fullness of his mouth.

"Oh, Cole!" Her head tossed from side to side, and lightning swept through her, embedding a

sweet, swirling heat at the apex of her thighs, a dizzying need for him. He filled it, touching her with a light and tender stroke and then with a demanding one, watching her eyes, watching her body, feeling the thunder of the desire that grew and grew within him.

He kissed her belly, and he stroked her thighs, and he played his touch over the golden triangle at their juncture, and then he delved within it. He made an incredibly sensual act of taking off her shoes, peeling away her garters and hose. Then he rose boldly above her. He drew a steady pattern with the searing tip of his tongue from her throat down the valley between her breasts to her navel and into the very heart of her fire. And she cried out for him, and he came to her.

Then he hovered, just above her, and she opened her eyes wide, waiting, pleading, wondering why he denied her. A great sound of agony escaped him, and he buried his head against her breasts.

"I do love you, Kristin. I do love you."

"Oh, Cole!" she said, clinging to him. "Please…"

He pushed away from her, and stared at her. "Well?"

And then it dawned on her what he wanted, and she pressed hard against him, arching to meet his need. "Cole, I have loved you for ages! I love you so very much. I could never admit it, I was so afraid, I knew you didn't love me."

"I just didn't dare admit it," he said softly.

"Say it again!" she demanded.

"I love you. I love you, Kristin McCahy Slater, and I swear that I will do so until the end of time."

"Oh, Cole!" She buried her face against his chest. It was hot and sleek and damp with perspiration. And he chose that moment to plunge deep, deep within her, and even as he did he was whispering again, the sweet words over and over again.

He loved her.

Later that night — much later, for making love took on a sweet new dimension when the words were spoken, and they were tempted to explore that dimension again and again — Cole held her in his arms and told her everything. First he told her about the day the jayhawkers had come, and how they had burned down his home and killed his wife. She heard the agony in his voice, but she didn't stop him, because it was important that he say everything, that he lay his soul bare for her, as she had hers. He needed to trust her in that way, and, Kristin thought, he needed the healing power of words. His heart needed the cleansing.

She listened, and she was not afraid of the past, merely saddened. Then she listened as he told her what had happened in Kansas, how his old friend Kurt Taylor had been there and how he had purposely alerted Cole to the fact that Henry Fitz was in town with his jayhawkers.

"I killed him, Kristin. I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what danger I was riding into, but I had to face him." His arms tightened around her. "If we were to have a future, I just had to do it. Can you understand that?"

She didn't really have to answer him. She planted little kisses over his chest, and he groaned, and his hands rode roughly over her hair, and then they were in one another's arms once again. They were still so desperate, so hungry, so determined to have all that they could of one another, to cherish, to hold, to keep always for their dreams.

It was near dawn before they dozed off. Kristin was startled when she awoke almost before she had slept. Day was breaking, bright and fresh as a rainbow. Pink light fell upon her.

She heard the sounds of hoofbeats below.

With a soft gasp, she rose and raced to the window.

Down by the well she saw a single Union officer. She glanced at Cole, and he seemed to be asleep. He seemed at peace, the lines of strain erased from his features at last.

Kristin struggled into her gown and left the room without stockings or shoes, closing the door behind her. She padded silently down the stairs and hurried out to the well.

She couldn't imagine how she looked to the man, her face pale, her blue eyes wide, her hair in complete and lovely disarray around her fine-boned, very worried face.

He smiled at her and looked her up and down.

He suddenly envied Cole Slater very much.

"Good morning, ma'am. This the McCahy ranch?"

"It is. My brother, a Union officer, is inside, recovering from wounds."

And your husband, a Southern officer, is inside, too, I'd wager, he thought, but he was silent.

"This is sweet, clear water. Thank you."

"You're very welcome to it."

"Zeke Moreau came here and gunned down most of the men?"

Kristin swallowed and nodded.

"There's a detachment of medics coming for the injured later today."

"That's fine. We're doing our best."

"I'm sure you are."

"Would you like to come in?"

He shook his head. "No thanks. I'm not here officially." He spoke softly. "I came here to tell you that the war is over. Well, all but the shouting. I'm sure it will take a while for all the troops to surrender. Kirby-Smith is a tenacious soul. Proud man, fine fighter, but —"

"The… the war is over?" Kristin breathed.

"Yes, ma'am, like I said, all but the shouting. Two mornings ago, on April twelfth, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at a little place called Appomattox Courthouse. Word has it that President Lincoln is determined that this great nation must unite in peace and brotherhood as quickly as possible, and he seems determined that there be brotherhood between North and South again."

She was shaking. She had to sit down. He saw her lips and her limbs tremble, and he came around to her and helped her over to the porch. He gave her a sip of water, and she nodded her thanks.

"The war… is really over?"

"Really over." He smiled. "I hear tell that Colonel Slater and his men came in here yesterday. Yep, I hear tell they cut down Zeke Moreau and his bloody bushwhackers. That must have been a fine piece of work, yes, ma'am. I'd have liked to have been here. No doubt the Union commanders — and the law — will hear about it." He smiled at her again. " 'Course, Slater's men are gone, I take it?"

Kristin nodded. "Yes… they're gone."

"You his wife?"

"I'm his wife."

"Someone ought to tell him that the war is over. 'Course, they should warn him that he needs to take care. Some people still don't take kindly to a few of his exploits. Once with Quantrill, you know, and then there was Kansas…" He shrugged. "If you should happen to see him, Mrs. Slater, you might warn him to lie low for a while. Ride on to Texas, maybe. Fitz had a brother, and he's sure to make an outcry. But tell him that he has to remember — the war is over. It will all come right. You hear? Tell him Kurt Taylor said so."

Kristin nodded.

"Thanks for the water. That's mighty good water."

"You're welcome, sir. Mighty welcome."

Kristin stood and waited. She waited until the Union officer in his blue uniform had disappeared on the dusty Missouri horizon.

Then she turned and screamed, "Cole! Cole!"

She tore up the stairs. He was up. He had been watching her and the officer from the window. Kristin threw herself at him, sending him flying across the room.

"It's over, it's over! The war is over! Lee has surrendered! Oh, there are still troops that haven't surrendered yet, but they're saying it's over! Oh, Cole!" She caught his face between her hands, and she kissed him. She kissed his throat and his shoulders, and she was so alive and vibrant that even though he had been worried and wary he had to laugh.

"Kristin, Kristin, it can't be that easy —"

"No, it isn't that easy," she said solemnly, and she told him what the man had said. "His name was Kurt Taylor, and he said you should head for Texas."

"I will," Cole said.

Kristin corrected him. "We will."

"We will?" he asked her, arching a brow. "I do seem to recall that there was once a woman who would not leave this ranch. She sold her honor to a disreputable rebel in order to stay right here on this property."

Kristin smiled at him. She had never felt so de-liciously alive and sensual and vibrant and aware of all the world around her. It was spring — and the war was over. Over.

"It isn't my ranch. I was just holding on to it for Matthew, and Matthew is here now. You see, it's time to move on, anyway. And I consider that my honor was sold for a fair price. It was rather useless, you see, while my son — he's just magnificent. And —"

"And?"

"Well, there is this other minor thing. I fell desperately in love with that disreputable rebel. Even when I wanted to hang him myself, I was very much in love."

"Very much?"

"Incredibly, inestimably, most desperately in love."

"Really?" He laced his fingers through hers and bent his head and kissed her. She felt a shudder rake through him, and she sought his eyes.

"Cole?"

"We really have a future."

"Yes!"

"We can watch Gabriel grow, and we can have more children. And I can hold them when they are little tiny infants —"

"And you can change their little bottoms, too," Kristin informed him sweetly.

He smiled, and he kissed her again, and she let out a sweet, shuddering sigh. "Cole?"

"My love?"

She smiled, slowly, lazily, sensuously. "If you go to Texas, I will follow you wherever you may lead. But for the moment…"

"Yes?"

"We've never made love in peacetime before. Never," she told him with very wide eyes. "We've never made love in peacetime, whispering that we love one another!"

He threw back his head and laughed, and his eyes sizzled, silver and mercury, into hers, and she thought that he would always be her cavalier, the tall, dark stranger with the plumed hat who had stepped into her life like a hero, taking her from darkness into light. They weren't clear of the darkness yet. There would be pain. There would be time to mourn Pete, who had always been her friend, always at her side. There would be time to mourn Major Emery, who had been their friend, too, noble and caring, until the very end.

For now, though, they had one another.

Cole grinned wickedly. "Then," he said, "we must make love at peace, and whisper that we love one another. Kristin!"

"Yes?"

He came close against her lips, his mouth a breath away from hers.

"I love you!" he whispered fervently. "I love you, I love you, I love you!"

And though they were at peace they soared into the sweetest tempest, and through it all they never ceased to whisper the words.

The sun entered their room, and a new day had truly dawned.

Cole stroked his wife's beautiful hair, luxuriating in the sweet satisfaction she brought him. He stared at the ceiling, at the new light of day.

It would take the country a long time to heal, he knew. A long, long time. A long time to unite.

But she had brought healing to him, and his heart was united with hers now. "A new age," he murmured.

"What?"

"I said I love you!" Cole lied, and he turned to her again.

The war wouldn't end as easily as Kristin thought. Life was never as easy as that. But they did have a future.

And Texas could wait just a little while longer.