Malachi stepped from the clearing and looked down the road. He stared up at the night sky. The silence was all around him. The sound of horses' hooves had died away in the distance.

"Damn!" he swore.

The Red Legs had taken Kristin in one direction.

The raiders had taken Shannon the opposite way.

Which the hell did he follow?

He didn't take long to decide. He would get Shannon first. He could bargain with the James boys, he was sure. If Shannon could keep quiet for about two seconds he could get her back quickly. He would go after Shannon first.

Though for the life of him, he wasn't at all sure why.

CHAPTER FIVE

Shannon could not remember a more miserable night in her life.

The raider party traveled through what remained of it. Somewhere, at the beginning, she had said something that the men really hadn't liked—though she couldn't see where they would like anything that she had to say to them—and she had been bound hand and foot and gagged and tossed over the haunches of the horse.

Then they had begun to ride, in earnest.

They knew their territory. They followed no specific route. They traveled over plains and through tangles of bracken and brush.

They talked about going home, and they talked about the friend they had left behind.

"Willie was dead, shot in the chest, there wasn't nothing that we could do. He went down fighting."

"Yeah, he went down fighting. Well, the war's over. Someone ought to find him and give his body to his ma."

"Yeah, someone ought to find him."

"God help him."

"God help us all."

For a while, Shannon listened to their words, but she couldn't believe that they would try to invoke God's aid, and then, as they kept on quietly conversing, she began to weave in and out of reality. She couldn't understand them anymore. She knew who they were. The remnants of Quantrill's Raiders. They had ridden with Quantrill. They had ridden with Bloody Bill Anderson, and with little Archie Clement.

They might well have been with the raiders on a bloody awful day outside Centralia when the bushwhackers had massacred the small contingent of green recruits sent after them. When they had dismembered the corpses and the dying, scalped them and sliced off ears and noses and privates to be stuffed down their throats…

It was how Captain Robert Ellsworth had died. And as she lay trussed and tossed over the haunches of the horse, it made her feel faint, and it made her feel ill.

The night went on and on.

Then Shannon realized that it wasn't night anymore, it was day. They had traveled miles and miles without rest, or if they had paused to rest, she had been unconscious when they had done so.

It was no longer night. It was day. The sun streamed overhead, and the songs of larks could be heard on the air. Somewhere nearby, a brook bubbled and played.

They had come so far. So very far. She wondered bleakly where Kristin was. She had been so certain that when the Red Legs had settled down and slept, she would have been able to slip in and free her sister.

But then the men had come for her.

And now Kristin was being taken one way, and she was being taken another.

And where was Malachi? He had been there. She had seen him firing and fighting, and then he had disappeared. And then she had seen him again just when she had been swept up into the arms of the bushwhacker.

He had probably followed Kristin, she thought. He had gone for his brother's wife. And she was glad of it, Shannon thought. She was so glad of it, because the men might well hurt Kristin…

What were these men going to do with her?

The gag choked her, making her feel ill all over again.

They knew her. They knew that she was old McCahy's daughter, and that her sympathy had been with the North. They surely knew that she was Cole Slater's sister-in-law, but that probably wouldn't count for much. She had been engaged to marry a Union officer, she was the sister of a Union officer, and they knew that she hated them with every breath in her body.

What would they do to her?

And what could be worse than this torture she had already endured, hanging hour after hour over the horse this way, her face slamming against the sweaty flesh and hair and flanks of the animal? She ached in every muscle of her body. It would never, never end.

Then suddenly, at last, they stopped.

Hands wound around her waist, pulling her from the horse. Had she been able to, she would have screamed at the sudden agony of the movement; it felt as if her arms were breaking.

"There you go, Yank," the man said, setting her down beneath a tree. The others were dismounting. They formed a semicircle around her, all of them staring at her.

"What are we going to do with her, Frank?"

The man who asked the question stepped forward. His name was Jesse, Shannon knew that much. And he was Frank's brother. The two of them had spoken occasionally during the endless ride.

Neither of them was much older than she, but they both carried a curious coldness in their eyes. Perhaps they had ceased to feel; perhaps they had even lost a sense of humanity in all the violence of their particular war. She didn't know. And at that moment, she was so worn and exhausted, she wasn't even sure that she cared.

"I wonder what the Red Legs wanted with her," Jesse mused.

"Same thing any man would want with her, I reckon," someone spoke up from the rear. Shannon blinked, trying to see him. He was tall and dark-haired with a pencil-slim mustache, and he smiled at her in such a way that she felt entirely naked.

She closed her eyes. At that particular moment, she just wanted to die. Bushwhackers. The same men who had brutalized Robert might be about to touch her. Death would be infinitely better.

"Better loosen up that gag," the one named Jesse said. "We're losing her, I think. She's going to pass out on us."

Frank stepped forward, slipping the gag from her mourn. Shannon fought a sudden wave of nausea. He leaned over her and slit the ropes tying her wrists and ankles. Her blood started to flow again, but she could still barely move. She rubbed her wrists, backing against the tree, staring at the lot of them. There were five of them left. Jesse and Frank, Jesse with a round young face and dark, attractive eyes, Frank taller and leaner, older. There was the dark-haired man who taunted, and two smaller, light-haired men. Maybe they were brothers, too, she didn't know.

"What's your name?" Jesse asked.

She stared at him in furious silence. They seemed to know everything else. They ought to know her name.

"Shannon. Shannon McCahy," the tall, dark-haired one said. "She was picked up with her sister when the Federals decided to put all the families away. She was there when the house fell apart, when Bill's sister and those other girls were killed and wounded."

"Then she's a Southerner—" Jesse began.

Frank snorted and spit on the ground. "She ain't no Southerner, Jesse. You heard her. She's Yank through and through. Just like her blue-belly pa with the yellow streak down his back—"

Movement came back to her. She felt no pain. Like a bolt of lightning, Shannon flew at the man in a rage. She did so with such force that he went flying to the ground. "You murderers!" she hissed."You hideous rodents… murderers!'' Pummeling the startled man who couldn't seem to fight her fury, Shannon then saw the gun in his belt. She grabbed it and aimed it straight at his nose. The others had been about to seize her. She swung around with Frank's Colt, aiming it right at Jesse. He lifted his hands and backed away.

"We didn't kill your pa, little girl," Jesse said softly. "We weren't there. Zeke Moreau had his own splinter group. You know that."

She gritted her teeth, thinking about Robert, trembling inwardly at the depth of the hate that seared her. She could have pulled the trigger. She would have happily maimed or wounded or killed any one of them. When she thought about Centralia…

Jesse knelt in front of her, speaking earnestly. "You're just seeing one side of it, you know. One side. They came in— the jayhawkers, the Red Legs—they came in and ripped us all up really bad, too, you know. We all got farms burned down or kin slain. It always did work two ways—"

"Two ways!" Shannon exclaimed. "Two ways!" She was choking. "I never heard of anything as bad as Centralia. Ever. In the town, unarmed men were stripped and shot down. And outside the town, the things you people did to the Union men shouldn't have been done to the lowest of creatures, much less human beings—"

"You obviously haven't seen much of the handiwork done by your friends, the Red Legs," the tall, dark man said dryly.

"You ain't gonna change her mind," Frank said from the ground.

The dark-haired man moved closer, a wary eye on the Colt. "My name is Justin Waller, Miss McCahy. And I was there, at Centralia—"

"Bastard!" Shannon hissed.

"Justin—" Jesse warned sharply, but Shannon already had the gun aimed straight between Justin Waller's eyes. She pulled the trigger.

And she heard the click of an empty chamber.

"Son of a bitch!" Justin swore. He reached for Shannon.

She couldn't escape him quickly enough and he dragged her to her feet. She screamed as he twisted her arm hard behind her back.

"Justin—" Jesse began.

"That bitch meant to kill me!"

"Don't hurt her. We don't know what we're doing with her yet."

"I know what I'm gonna do with her," Justin growled savagely. His free hand played over her throat and the rise of her breasts, which had been left bare when the Red Legs had ripped her shirt. The little pink flowers and white linen of her corset were absurdly delicate against the tattered fragments of the man's ranch shirt.

Shannon recoiled, kicking out desperately. Justin pulled harder upon her arm and she choked back another scream of pain. He pressed her to her knees. "Get me some rope, Jesse. I'm too damned tired to truly enjoy what I intend to do with this little beauty. And she can't be trusted an inch."

Jesse lifted a length of rope from his saddle pommel, but he stared at Justin contemplatively as he walked toward him. "We ain't decided about her yet, Justin."

"We ain't decided what?" Justin had his knee in Shannon's back as he looped the rope around her wrists.

She gritted her teeth against the pain.

"She's kin to Cole Slater," Jesse said softly. "And I never did cotton to the idea of rape and murder, Justin."

"You rode with Quantrill."

"Quantrill didn't murder women."

"All right, Jesse. All right. I ain't gonna murder her."

"You're right, you ain't. I'm in control here."

"War's over, Jesse."

"I'm still in control here, you understand that."

Justin jerked hard on the rope, then shoved Shannon flat on the ground. She tasted dirt as he grasped her ankles and began looping a knot around them.

"Maybe we oughta just let her go," one of the light-haired men said. "Hell, Justin, we ain't supposed to rape our own kind—"

"She ain't our own kind. And if we just let her go, she'll have the law down on us so fast our heads will spin. That is, if she doesn't get hold of another gun. She shot at me, you fools. She meant to kill me. And you all say what you want, she's going to pay for that."

He jerked hard on the last of his knots. He reached for Shannon's shoulders and dragged her face up close to his. "Bitch, when I wake up, we're going to have some real, real fun."

Shannon spit at him.

Swearing, he wiped his face and tossed her down hard beneath the tree. He stared at the four others, who were looking his way. "And you all can watch, join in or turn the other way, I just don't give a damn."

Shannon watched Jesse James set his jaw hard. "I'm in control here, Justin. We agreed. Don't you forget that."

Justin ignored Jesse and went to his horse. He loosened his saddle and pulled it off and threw it beneath the tree next to Shannon. He fumbled through his saddlebags for a canteen. Looking furiously at the other men, he walked down a grassy slope to the fresh-running spring water of a stream.

"Water," Frank James muttered, following Justin.

Jesse remained, staring at Shannon. She didn't know what he was thinking. "Lots of people lost in this war," he told her quietly. "Hell, ma'am, I do not like half the things I learned to do, but I doubt that I'll ever forget them. We all want to remember the weddings and the christenings and the flowers in the fields on a Sunday. Hell, I never really wanted to get so damned good at killing. I just did." He paused. "You shouldn'ta shot at Justin. It was a mistake."