(Slater Bros #1)







PART  1

The Stranger

CHAPTER ONE

Summer,

The Kansas /Missouri border

The hoofbeats were the warning. The relentless, pounding hoofbeats. The sound of them sparked a sense of primal fear deep inside Kristin. Strangely, before she'd first felt the staccato rhythm through the ground, she hadn't contemplated such a danger. The day had been too ordinary, and perhaps she had been too naive. She had expected a storm, but not of the magnitude that was to come.

It began with the stillness in the air. As she came along the path through the orchards from the river, Kristin paused. The breeze had dropped. The day had gone dead still. The sudden calm gave her a strange feeling, and she searched the sky. Overhead, she saw blue, a beautiful blue. No clouds marred that endless blue.

It was the calm before the storm, she thought. Here, on the Missouri side of the Kansas-Missouri border, storms were frequent and vicious. Blue skies turned to smoke, and vicious twisters whirled out of nowhere.

Then she heard the hoofbeats.

She looked out across the plain that stretched away from the house. A tumbleweed caught by a sudden gust of wind blew across a patch of parched earth.

Bushwhackers.

The word came unbidden to her mind, and raw fear swept through her, fear and denial. Please, God, no…

Pa! Matthew, Shannon…

Kristin began to run. Her heart began to race, thundering along with the sound of the hoofbeats.

Pa was already dead, she reminded herself. They'd already come to kill him. They'd come, on a cloudless day, and they'd dragged him out in front of the house. He had drowned in a pool of his own blood while she had stood there screaming. There had been nothing, nothing she could do.

Matthew was safe. He'd gone off to join up with the Union Army near the Mississippi. He had said she would be safe. After all, they'd already killed Pa in his own front yard, killed him and left him bleeding.

Bleeding. They called it "bleeding Kansas," and though they were on the Missouri side of the border here, the blood ran thick and deep. The War Between the States had boiled down to a barbarian savagery here. Men did not just fall in battle here, they were cruelly, viciously executed — seized, judged and murdered. Kristin had few illusions; one side was almost as bad as the other. The dream of freedom, the dream of endless land and a life of dignity and bounty had drowned in rivers of blood. The dream was dead, and yet it seemed that was all she had left to fight for. Her father had died for it, and they thought she would flee, but she wouldn't. She couldn't. She had to fight. There was nothing else to do.

Shannon.

Cold dread caught in her throat. Shannon was up at the house. Young, frightened, vulnerable.

Her feet slapped against the dry earth as the hoofbeats came closer. How many of them were there? Maybe twenty, like the day they had come to kill Pa? Maybe not so many. Maybe they knew that Matthew had gone off to fight in the war and that no one remained behind but the girls, the foreman, a maid and a few young hands. She almost felt like laughing. They'd tried to take Samson and Delilah the last time they had come. They didn't understand that the two were free, able to make their decisions. Pa wasn't a fanatical abolitionist; he had just liked Samson, plain and simple, so he had freed them on the occasion of their marriage. Little Daniel had been born free, and they'd all come here together in search of the dream…

Kristin stumbled and fell, gasping for breath. The riders were just behind the trees to her left. She heard screams and shouts, and she knew they were slaughtering whatever cattle they could lay their hands on. This wasn't war.

This was carnage.

She staggered to her feet, smoothing back stray tendrils of hair still damp from her early-morning swim in the river.

They could hold the attackers off. She would be prepared this time. She wouldn't assume that some of these men would be old friends and acquaintances. She wouldn't assume that they were human, that they knew anything about morals or ethics or simple decency. She didn't think she would ever trust in such things again.

Suddenly, while Kristin was still several hundred yards from the house, the horsemen burst through the trees.

"Samson!" she screamed. "Samson! Get me Pa's six-shooter. Samson!"

Samson, a tall, dignified black man, burst through the front door. He glanced at Kristin, then at the horsemen racing through the corn, trampling the tender green stalks.

"Run, Miz Kristin, run!"

She could hardly breathe, could hardly speak. "Pa's Colt, get me the Colt! Tell Shannon to get to the cellar!"

"Samson, what is it?"

Samson turned to see Shannon standing behind him in the hallway.

"Bushwhackers," he said grimly. "Where's Delilah?"

"Out back, feeding the chickens."

She was in the barn. His wife was in the barn. God, he prayed silently, give her the good sense to stay there!

"Shannon," he told her, "you get yourself in the cellar."

She turned away, and Samson hurried back to the hallway, then paused. He thought he'd heard something around back. When the sound wasn't repeated, he looked out the front door again. He could see the riders, and he could see Kristin running.

There were about twenty men, Samson reckoned. Just an offshoot of a bigger raiding party, probably. Some of Quantrill's raiders.

Quantrill himself was a damned butcher. He sanctioned the horror, and the death. Once upon a time he'd been friends with Gabriel McCahy, Kristin and Shannon's father, but one of his henchmen, a man named Zeke Moreau, had wanted Kristin. She hadn't wanted anything to do with him, though. She was in love with Adam Smith. But Adam was dead now, too. Dead like her pa, dead like hundreds of men.

Now Zeke Moreau was coming back. He was coming for Kristin. Samson was sure of it.

"Samson!"

Her eyes met his, desperate, pleading.

Those might be God-fearing gentlemen out there, but if they captured a black man after he had leveled a Colt at them, even in his own defense, they would skin him alive.

It didn't matter. Gabriel McCahy had been the most decent man Samson had ever met. He would lose his skin over old Gabe's daughter if he had to.

He swung around, ready to rush into the house and get the guns. Then he paused, his eyes going wide and his throat closing up, hot and dry.

Zeke Moreau was already in the house. He was standing in the hallway, on the polished oak floor, and he had a double-barreled shotgun leveled right at Samson.

A slight sound caught Samson's attention. He turned swiftly to see that another man was holding Delilah, one arm around her waist, a hand tight against her mouth.

"Watch it, Samson," Zeke said. "Be quiet now, or I'll hang you, boy. Hang you 'til you're dead. Then I'll see that your woman and your kid wind up on the auction block down Savannah way."

Zeke Moreau smiled slowly. He was dark-haired, with a dark, curling mustache, and Samson thought he would look more at home on a riverboat with a deck of cards than he did now, standing there in chaps and a vest, holding a shotgun. He was a good-looking man, except for his eyes. Cold, pale eyes, just like Kristin had always said.

Samson smiled back. "You murdered Gabriel, didn't you?"

Zeke rested his shotgun against his thigh. Samson was a big man, a good six-foot-six, and he was all muscle. But Zeke knew Samson wasn't going to move. Not while Delilah was being held.

"Now, Zeke, Gabe was my friend. He had some bad acquaintances, and he shot off his mouth too much, but I was mighty sorry to hear what happened to him. And it hurt me, hurt me bad, to hear about young Matthew running off to join up with them Yanks."

"Samson!"

He spun around at the sound of Kristin's voice. Just as she reached the steps, her voice rose in a sudden scream.

The horsemen had reached the steps, too, and Kristin was trapped. She was choking in a cloud of dust as they circled her, chasing her back into the center of their trap every time she tried to elude them.

As Samson watched, she cried out and ran again. An Appaloosa ridden by a yellow-toothed scavenger in a railroad man's frock coat cut her off completely. She turned again, and the man rode closer, reaching down to sweep her up. She clawed at him, and Samson saw the blood run down the man's cheek. Kristin cursed and swore, fighting like a tigress. The Appaloosa reared and shrieked as its rider wrenched hard on the reins. The man struck out with a whip, and Kristin fell. As Samson watched, the Appaloosa reared again and again, its hooves just missing Kristin's face.

She didn't move, didn't flinch. She just stared up at the man, hatred in her eyes.

Samson charged toward the door, but Zeke stepped up behind him, slamming his head hard with the butt of his shotgun.

Kristin cried out as she saw him fall through the doorway, blood trickling down his forehead.

Then she saw Zeke. He stepped over Samson's body and onto the porch. A man came from behind, holding Delilah. She screamed, and the man laughed, then threw her down on top of Samson. Sobbing, she held her husband.

The horses around Kristin went still, and the men fell silent.

Kristin got to her feet and stared at the man. She even managed a semblance of a smile.

"Why, Mr. Moreau, what a pleasure." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Zeke Moreau let out a long sigh. "Dear, dear Kristin. It just never seems to cross that little mind of yours that you're in deep trouble, girl."

"Trouble, Zeke? I'm not in any trouble. Trouble is something that's hard to handle. You're just a fly to be swatted away, nothing more."

"Look around, Kristin. You know, you've always been a real sassy piece of baggage. The boys and me, we think it's about time you paid for that. You are in trouble, honey. Deep trouble." He started walking toward her.

Kristin held her ground. She'd never known what it was like to hate before. Not the way she hated Zeke. Her hatred for him was fierce and intense and desperate. She stared at him and suddenly she knew why he had come, knew why he was moving slowly, why he was smiling. This was vengeance, and he meant to savor it.

She didn't give a damn. She wasn't even really frightened. She knew that she would scratch and claw and fight just as long as she was still breathing, as long as her heart was still beating. He couldn't understand that she had already won. She had won because she hated him so much that he couldn't really touch her.

Zeke kept walking toward her, his smile still in place. "Fight me, Kristin," he said softly. "I like it that way."

"You disgust me," she hissed. She didn't tell him that he would pay, didn't threaten revenge. There was no law to make him pay, and whatever revenge she dealt out would have to be now.

"You know, once upon a time, I wanted to marry you. Yeah, I wanted to head out to the wild, wild west and make you my wife. I wanted to hit the gold fields out in California, and then I wanted to build you a fine house on a hill and make you into a real lady."

"I am a real lady, Zeke. But you're just dirt — and no amount of gold could make you anything but."

She raised her chin slightly. There was a hard core of fear inside her, she realized. This man didn't want her to die. He wanted her to pay. He wanted her to cry out in fear, wanted her to beg for mercy, and she was afraid that he could make her do it.

Zeke would never, never be prosecuted. No matter what he did to her.

He smiled and lunged toward her, and his men hooted and called from the backs of their mounts.

Kristin screamed. Then she grabbed a handful of the loose Missouri dirt, cast it into Zeke's eyes and turned to run.

The Appaloosa came at her again, with its dead-eyed rider. She tried to escape, but the animal reared, and she had to fall and roll to avoid its hooves.

She heard Zeke swearing and turned to see that he was almost upon her again. The dirt clung to his face, clumps of it caught in his mustache.

She leaped up and spun toward him. The catcalls and whistles from the mounted men were growing louder and more raucous.

Escape was impossible. Zeke caught hold of her arms. She slammed her fists against his chest and managed to free herself. In a frenzy, she brought up her knee with a vengeance. Zeke let out a shrill cry of pain; his hold on her eased, and she broke free.