Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 (10 page)

“Kill them. Kill them all!”
a white-haired rider bellowed as he swung a Navy cutlass over his head.

Spence’s hand tightened around the revolver’s grip, his
body stiffening with disbelief.

“Christ
Almighty! That looks like—”
Luther Maddox
. The Dark Angel. The man who eight years ago gunned down his father and two brothers in cold blood. The man who Mercy Hibbert had surreptitiously summoned here in order to kill him.

Well, we’ll just see who’s gonna kill who this night.

Raising his revolver, Spence carefully cocked it, targeting Maddox’s left temple. As he took a deep breath, he savored the knowledge that he’d finally be able to avenge the murders that had haunted him for so long.

“Look! They have Gabriel!” Mercy exclaimed, grabbing at
Spence’s arm before he could take the shot.

In stunned disbelief, Spence watched as the man he’d been hunting for eight long years spurred his horse into a gallop, disappearing from sight. Enraged, he turned to
ward Mercy, mindless of the bullets flying every which way.

“Goddamn you, Mercy Hibbert! After all these years, I
just lost him,” Spence shouted before raising his arms to fire both pistols at the same time.

Within moments, he’d emptied
both of his weapons. Reaching inside his vest, Spence grabbed the two spare gun cylinders that he always carried in his pocket. With an economy of motion, he replaced the empty cylinders on both pistols with the loaded spares. A bushwhacker trick, it was faster than loading a spent pistol.

Mercy, her body visibly trembling, pointed to one of the jayhawkers who held Gabriel astride his horse, a restraining arm lashed around the boy’s waist.

“
Please!
I’m begging you, Spencer! You have to save him! He’s just a young boy!” Again, Mercy grabbed at his firing arm.

“You want me to risk my ass to save your family?”
Spence pulled himself free of her. “Forget it, sweetheart. It doesn’t work that way. You got nobody but yourself to blame for all of this.”

Mercy’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I did not cause this . . .
you did!
”

Before Spence could stop her,
Mercy darted toward the rider who held Gabriel captive, her wealth of long blond hair making her an easy target for jayhawker and bushwhacker alike.

Swearing under his breath, Spence raised his right arm, took aim, and fired. Dispassionately, he watched his target howl in pain before unceremoniously tossing young Gabriel to the ground. A second later, a gang of bushwhackers galloped across the farmyard
. Riding in the lead was Bloody Ned, his horse’s reins clenched in his mouth, a smoking pistol in each hand.

A dazed look on his face, little Gabriel scrambled to his feet, fearfully realizing that he was caught in the middle of a vicious gun battle. Although that didn’t seem to deter Mercy who, with what could only be called a fool’s courage, ran toward the boy
. Flinging her arms around him, she hurled Gabriel to the ground, protectively covering his body with her own.

About to go to Mercy’s aid, Spenc
e heard someone yell his name.

Spinning on his heel, he saw Dewey galloping toward him, a saddled horse in tow.
His brother stopped just long enough for Spence to swing himself onto the second horse.

By now, most of the jayhawkers had dispersed, although a few still held their ground, their pistols blazing with deadly fury. Signaling for Dewey to wait for him,
he rode over to where Mercy and Gabriel lay huddled on the ground. As she gazed up at him, Spence could see that her face was streaked with tears.

“I’ll be back, Miss Mercy Hibbert. And when that day comes, you’re gonna pay for this night,” he snarled, his voice laden with fury. “So help me, God
. You’re gonna pay.”

With that said, Spence slapped a hand on his horse’s rump, the beast taking off at a charge.

Hell-bent for leather, the McCabe brothers galloped across the Hibbert farmstead, their sights set for Missouri.

Mercy staggered
through the back door of the house, her arm held over her forehead to shield her eyes from the early-morning sun. Her hair hung in tangled hanks down her back, her bedraggled body clothed in the same garment that she’d worn the day before.

Once the gunfire
had ended, the jayhawkers making haste to chase after their southern adversaries, Mercy had dragged Gabriel into the house. To her relief, she’d discovered Prudence hiding in the kitchen pantry. The three of them then spent a restless night huddled in her mother’s bedroom, terrified that armed gunmen might return. Mercifully, the balance of the night passed uneventfully, silence now reigning supreme after two days of chaotic mayhem.

Although it was a sickening sort of silence, the s
mell of death heavy in the air.

Slowly, Mercy looked about the farmyard, feeling as though she’d just awaken
ed from a terrible nightmare. In spite of the dreamlike feeling of unreality, the shattered window glass at her feet, and the dead men and horses littering the yard, gruesomely confirmed that it had been no dream that visited her the previous night.

Sickened
by the sheer barbarity of it all, she shuddered at finding herself in the midst of such carnage. Already vultures and crows circled overhead, rapaciously surveying the bloody spectacle.

As Mercy silently counted the seven dead men who
littered the yard, she was alarmed to realize that there was no way to distinguish jayhawker from bushwhacker. In death, their differences were negated, no clipped Yankee accent or lazy southern drawl to tell them apart. Somehow, that fact made their deaths seem all the more senseless.

Hearing a door slam, Mercy turned to where Prudence stood on the back stoop
. Without warning, Prudence suddenly reeled sideways and fell to her knees, violently retching.

Merc
y quickly dashed to Pru’s side.

Because there was nothing that she
could say to lessen the horror, Mercy simply placed a consoling hand on her sister’s shoulder. As horrible as the scene that lay before them, she feared it was only the beginning.

‘I’ll be
back, Miss Mercy Hibbert. And when that day comes, you’re gonna pay for this night. So help me, God. You’re gonna pay.’

That had been the last utterance Spencer made before galloping off with his brother. Given the conviction in his voice, Mercy knew
that it was no idle threat. With those departing words, Spencer McCabe had made it all too clear that he held her personally responsible for the violence that had so suddenly erupted.

And perhaps he was right.

Granted, it had never been her intention to put her family in such danger. Somehow, she had naively thought that the Union soldiers would arrive, round up all of the bushwhackers and haul them away to prison camp without a single shot being fired.

She’d never imagined that a gang of jayhawkers would come charging to the ‘rescue,’ indiscr
iminately shooting and killing. Try as she might, she still couldn’t expunge the image of that bloodthirsty, white-haired man waving a cutlass over his head. She’d never seen such avid hatred as she’d seen in that man’s eyes.

Mercy slowly
shook her head, willing herself to block out the horrific memory. Walking over to the well, she drew a bucket of water from which she filled a metal dipper.

“
Would you like some water?” she asked Prudence once the nausea had abated.

Her sister
nodded shakily as she accepted the dipper.

“Perhaps you should go back inside. One of us ought to look after Mama.”

“She’s . . . she’s still sleeping,” Pru managed to say before greedily gulping several mouthfuls of water.

‘
Still sleeping.’ Thank God.

The last thing
that Mercy wanted was for her mother to witness this atrocity. Last year, after the bushwhackers killed her husband, Temperance Hibbert had suffered a terrible physical malady that paralyzed the left side of her body and afflicted her speech. Overnight, her mother had become an old woman, her blond hair turning gray, all the vitality sapped from her body. With good reason, Mercy feared what would become of her mother this time around.

As she d
ejectedly peered around the farmyard, Mercy took a deep breath, inwardly steeling herself. “Prudence, we must . . . we must harness Old Blue to the wagon so that we can . . . can remove these bodies to the lower field.”

Pru’s periwinkle blue eyes opened wide. “I don’t understand.”

“We must bury these men as soon as possible,” Mercy said gently, knowing that her sister had yet to consider the unpleasant ramification of having seven dead corpses in the yard. “If we do not, we’ll have to contend with the vultures and such.” Mercy directed her gaze to the feathered carrion circling overhead. Quite intentionally, she failed to mention that the stench from putrefying flesh would soon be unbearable.

“Why do you wish to bury them in the lower field? Wouldn’t it be easier to bury them next to Papa?”

“No! I will not have our father’s grave desecrated by these fiends.”

Mercy swiped at several angry tears. Turning away from her sister, she strode toward the barn, trying her best to ignore the shocking sight of so many dead, motionless bodies. It was a
n impossible feat as she suddenly glimpsed a stiffened arm raised in the air.

As she neared the barn, Mercy caught sight of something glinting in the sun
light. Bending at the waist, she retrieved the two framed daguerreotypes that she’d tossed aside the previous evening in her haste to arm herself with the pitchfork.

“Why, it’s Papa’s picture,” Pru exclaimed, reaching for one of the frames. “And Benjamin and Ethan’s, as well. Whatever are these doing here?”

Mercy saw the puzzled look on her sister’s face.

“Spencer McCabe gave them to me last night
just before the shooting began,” she said flatly, humiliated to recall the way in which she’d writhed in his arms and begged for his kisses. She’d behaved like a harlot. If the jayhawkers hadn’t attacked when they did, there’s no telling how far she would have let her passions take her.

“I told you
that he wasn’t a bad man,” Pru said as she deposited both pictures into her skirt pocket.

“Humph!” Mercy lifted her skirts and continued to the barn
door. She didn’t wish to unduly alarm her sister by mentioning Spencer’s threatening farewell.

When
, a few moments later, they stepped inside the barn, the two of them stopped in their tracks. Riddled with bullet holes, the barn was illuminated with multiple beams of dust-laden sunlight. As they took stock of the damage, they both noticed the same thing at the same time – their plow horse, Old Blue, was nowhere to be seen. Running to the back of the barn, Mercy shoved the doors wide open, frantically searching the barnyard for their only horse.

“No, no, no,” she muttered, not seeing the dappled gelding anywhere in sight.

“How are we going to manage without Old Blue?” Pru asked anxiously.

“I don’t know
.” Mercy’s shoulders forlornly sagged. Without a horse there could be no plowing. And with no plowing, there would be no food. To make matters worse, given their dire financial straits, there was no hope of replacing Old Blue.

Glancing at the buckboard wagon standing sentry in the barn, Mercy wondered if she and Pru might be able to pull it to the lower field
. Despite the loss of the horse, they still needed to bury seven dead men.

Just then
, a flock of killdeer suddenly flew out of a nearby walnut tree, the birds’ abrupt departure boding ill.

Straining her ears, Mercy heard what sounded like the pound of hooves in
the distance. Her heart hammered against her chest as she recalled Spencer’s dire threat.

Within moments,
the ground beneath their feet began to vibrate.

Pru’s lower lip
started to quiver. “What are we going to do, Mercy?”

“Defend ourselves,” she stubbornly announced, gulping back her own terro
r. “To the death, if need be.”

With that said, she ran to middle of the yard, stopping at the first corpse she came
upon. Bending at the waist, she reached for the pistol still clutched in the dead man’s hand. Averting her gaze from the gaping hole in the middle of the man’s forehead, she unsuccessfully tried to pry the pistol free from his death grip. When that proved a fruitless endeavor, she went down on her knees, rolling him over so that she could get to the other pistol holstered in his gun belt.

Remembering how Spencer had opened the cylinder on his weapon, Mercy did the same,
verifying that the revolver was fully loaded. Quickly, she snapped the cylinder back into place before stumbling to her feet.

Turning toward the fast approaching riders, Mercy stood her ground
. Her knees shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped her clammy right hand around the butt of the dead man’s pistol. Prudence ran toward her, her face marred with fear.

“Get in the house,” Mercy ordered, not wanting her sister to witness what was about to
transpire.

Pru
dence stubbornly shook her head.

“Pru, I said get in the
—” Mercy stopped, realizing that the riders would soon be upon them. “Oh, very well,” she acquiesced. “But stay close to me. And for goodness sake, let me do all of the talking.”

The two of them
then stood side-by-side, waiting for the approaching riders, each able to feel the quiver in the other’s shoulder. When the riders finally came into view, Mercy reached over to hug her sister, barely able to contain her joy.

The Union soldiers
have finally arrived!
A detail of cavalry troopers from the looks of them.

Riding into the yard,
the blue-uniformed soldiers came to a halt amid a jangle of harness bits and shouted orders. Mercy rushed toward the officer in charge, overcome with relief.

The officer tipped his hat in her direction. “We mean you no harm, ma’am,” he politely informed her, pointedly nodding to the pistol
that she still held in her hand.

Mercy flushed, not knowing what exactly she should do with the loaded firearm since the
Union soldiers were clearly friend not foe. “I’m sorry, um –” she glanced at the officer’s epaulettes– “Captain, but we heard riders approaching and didn’t know what your . . . your intentions were.”

The captain glanced at the dead corpses littering the yard, a grimace on his face. “It looks as though you folks had quite a fight on your hands. Are these dead me
n bushwhackers or jayhawkers?”

“Bot
h,” Mercy informed him. “We were raided two days ago by Bloody Ned Sykes and his bushwhackers.”

“
Bloody Ned? Here, in Marion County?” When Mercy nodded in the affirmative, the officer hastened to ask, “Is everyone in your household all right?”

“Yes, we’re
—” She unwillingly thought about all of the shooting, the bloodshed, the sheer terror that they’d been forced to endure over the course of the last two days. Straightening her shoulders, Mercy thought it best not to burden the captain with her tale of woe. “We came through unscathed. As you can see, a band of jayhawkers attacked last night and—” Again, she stopped in mid-sentence. There was no point in stating what was so tragically obvious.

“If you just tell me where you’d like to have the graves dug, I’ll have a burial detail remove the bodies.”

Mercy actually smiled, grateful for the considerate gesture. “Oh, thank you, Captain . . .?”

“Pettijohn,” he finished, sweeping his hat
from his head. “Captain Avery Pettijohn. And you are . . .?”

“Mercy Hibbert.”
Turning toward her sister who had obediently remained silent, she said, “And may I present my younger sister, Prudence.”

“Miss Hibbert,”
the captain said, politely acknowledging the introduction.

Prudence, clearly awestruck to be in the company of such a well-turned out officer, bobbed a curtsy, her vocal cords, for once, having failed her. Mercy
was also highly impressed. Captain Pettijohn embodied all of the qualities that she admired in a man – a fastidiously well-groomed appearance, a soft-spoken voice, a cordial manner. A true gentleman in every sense of the word, he was as different from Spencer McCabe as night was from day.

“Do you have any idea where
Bloody Ned and his men were headed when they left here?”

“I’m not certain
. Although I do know that they planned to vandalize the whole of Marion County.” Mercy bit her lower lip, trying to recall something that she’d overheard. “Leavenworth. I heard Bloody Ned say something about leading a raid on Leavenworth.”

A grave expression on his face,
Captain Pettijohn nodded. “I must caution you ladies to be especially careful. Although I suspect that Ned Sykes and his gang have crossed the border into Missouri, those jayhawkers who attacked last night might have reason to return.”