Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 (33 page)

“I’ll be waiting,” Spencer said calmly.

“Yea, as long as demon-sired Southerners walk among us, the Lord’s work is far from over,” Maddox exclaimed before he spurred his horse up the hill.

When horse and rider were finally out of sight, Spencer sheathed his
Henry rifle in the saddle scabbard and dismounted. Holding the reins in one hand, he walked over to where Mercy stood.

“I
had expected that bastard to arrive earlier in the day. Hopefully, the preacher is still at the house,” Spencer said as he placed a hand on Mercy’s elbow.

Stunned, Mercy whipped
her head in Spencer’s direction. “Do you really mean to say that you were going to kill a man,
in cold blood
, then traipse back to the house and get married as though nothing had happened?”

A muscle
noticeably ticked along Spencer’s jaw. “What happened here today has nothing to do with me and you getting married.”

“Oh, but I beg to differ with you!”
Outraged, Mercy yanked her elbow free from his grasp.

“So we have the ceremony at three o’clock instead of twelve noon. What difference does it make, huh? If you like, I can
—”

“
You can go to the devil! That’s what you can do!”

Mercy turned her back on
Spencer, heartsick by the knowledge that from the very beginning he’d used her like a pawn. Spencer wanted Luther Maddox; and he’d used her and her family to bait him. No excuse under heaven could change that odious fact.

Spencer cupped a hand on her shoulder, forcing her to turn
around and look at him. The sudden motion caused Mercy’s stomach to queasily lurch against her ribcage.

“I want to marry you, Mercy. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

Staring into Spencer’s whiskey-colored eyes, Mercy saw him as though for the first time. “You used me for your own ends,” she said dully, rolling her shoulder away from his hand. “I want nothing more to do with you.”

For several moments
Spencer wordlessly stared at her. Then, without warning, he swung himself into the saddle.

“If that’s the way you want it, fine by me. You made your bed, Miss Mercy Hibbert. Now you get to lie in it, all by your sweet lonesome. Being the smart man that I am, I’m getting the hell out of here before you change your mind.”

As he tugged on the horse’s reins, Mercy rushed forward. “What shall I tell your family?”

“Tell them that I’ve got me a war to fight.”

If he’d shot her with his big Henry rifle, Spencer couldn’t have wounded Mercy more. “You’re returning to the bushwhackers, aren’t you?”

“If they’ll
have me.”

“Only a fool would willingly return to so aimless and violent a life.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve acted the fool ever since we met,” he scoffed. “Why should I alter course now?”

With that said, Spencer slapped
a hand on his horse’s flank.

Mercy
stood and watched as he charged across the pasture at full gallop. When horse and rider finally disappeared from sight, she willed Spencer to come back to her.

When it became apparent that he would not be returning, Mercy fell to her knees,
unable to keep her nausea at bay.

“Damn that woman,” Spence muttered, cursing
Mercy and her mulish, ball-breaking pride. He wanted to rejoin his old bushwhacking cronies about as much as he wanted a hole in his head.

For the first time in eight years, he finally had a reason for living. And damned if Mercy
hadn’t snatched it out from under him before he even knew what hit him.

Easing up on the reins, Spence slowed to a trot, knowing
that it was wrong to take his anger out on his mount.

‘
Only a fool would willingly return to so aimless and violent a life
.’

Mercy sure measured him right, didn’t she? Even when he joined the regular army at the beginning of the war, it was little more than an excuse to kill as many Yankees as he could line up in his pistol sights. Stupidly, he thought that fighting for a cause would change things. But riding with Old Pap Sterling’s tattered Confederate forces only heightened his need for revenge,
making him ever fearful that someone else might get to the Dark Angel before he had a crack at the bastard.

When his need for vengeance
had finally reached an intolerable level, he hooked up with Bloody Ned and his gang of cutthroats. If anything, that only took him deeper into the heart of darkness.

Hell, for the last eight years, he’d spent nearly every waking hour plotting his revenge
, letting Maddox insinuate himself so deeply into his life, nothing else mattered to him. Not his family. Not Mercy. Not even his unborn child.

If he suffered now, and God knows
that he did, then it was a pain of his own choosing. And, for the most part, of his own making.

In the
last eight years, only one thing had alleviated the torment. That was the love that he’d found in sweet Mercy’s arms. Yet, once again, he’d let Maddox worm his way into his heart, his need for vengeance blotting out everything that was good and right and decent in his life.

Catching sight of
something in the middle of the road, Spence slowed his horse, reining it to a halt. The large lump appeared to be a dead man lying face down in the dirt. Surely a common enough sight in these violent times.

Dismounting, Spence tied his horse to a nearby fence rail before approaching the black-suited corpse. Having seen more dead men than he cared to recount, he was sufficiently inured to the shock of it. Which is why he felt no compunction about kicking the lifeless body with the tip of his boot, rolling the dead man onto his backside. When
Spence did, his heart nearly skidded to a stop.

“Damn it all to hell and back!”

The dead man sprawled at his feet was none other than Luther Maddox.

Christ
Almighty! Spence had always thought that he’d been the only one wanting to kill the bastard.
Evidently, there’d been a whole slew of us.

Catching sight of a shovel not far from the body,
Spence figured that’s what the killer used to deliver the fatal death blow. In fact, Maddox was so bashed to pieces that had it not been for the blood-soaked tangle of white hair, the dead man at his feet would have been unrecognizable.

A man would have to be
mighty enraged to commit so brutal a murder
.

A thought that made Sp
ence wince; for in that instant he knew that
this
was what Mercy had saved him from, this stark brutality that superseded all reason.

More than likely
Maddox’s murderer was a man much like Spence, someone who’d been forced to witness the atrocities of a mad man, the pain eating away at him, day after day, year after year, until he’d evolved into the very thing that he despised. Which is exactly what Mercy had been trying to tell him.

W
hy the hell couldn’t I have left well enough alone?

If he’d just practiced a little Christian cheek turning, he’d be sitting down right now to his wedding supper, the woman he loved at his side.
He’d been given a new start in life, blessed with a woman of uncommon beauty and courage. And what had he done? He’d thrown it all away like it was nothing but a piss poor poker hand.

“Damn you, Luther Maddox,”
Spence swore aloud, half-way tempted to pull out his pistol and pump Maddox’s corpse full of lead bullets.

Bending at the waist, Spence lifted the dead man by his boot heels and dragged him to the side of the road. While some men might take the time to bury Maddox, he wasn’t one of ‘em.

Spence then headed over to where his horse was nonchalantly gnawing on a patch of grass. About to swing himself into the saddle, he was stopped in his tracks when he suddenly spied a fast-moving cloud of dust heading down the pike.

From experience, Spence knew that when a man rode hell-bent for leather like that, it
can only mean trouble.

Taking a deep breath
, he whipped the Henry rifle out of the scabbard and braced himself. He now had something worth living for; and no way in hell would he let anyone take that from him.

There were riders fast approaching!
At least half a dozen of them.

At hearing the persistent pound of
hooves, Mercy quickly shoved herself to her feet. She knew from experience that a gang of fast-moving riders did not bode well. Clutching her shawl in one hand and her skirt in the other, she hurried up the hill toward the farmhouse to warn the others.

For the last hour or so, she’d been curled under an old oak tree wallowing in her grief, too distraught to face anyone
. Certainly, she’d been too upset to return to the house and inform her family that she’d sent Spencer packing. Meaning that there would be no wedding.
Ever
.

Shoving those
maudlin thoughts to the back of her mind, Mercy raced towards the house.

Had Luther Maddox returned, this time with reinforcements?

With Spencer gone and Dewey having ridden into town on a wild goose chase, the McCabe and Hibbert women were utterly defenseless. Was there even a gun in the house? Perhaps she could sneak through the back door and grab a sharp knife from the kitchen.

Cresting the top of the hill, Mercy dashed toward the house, commanding her exhausted legs to move
even faster.

She was no more than a few feet from the kitchen door when a gruff voice commanded her to come to a halt.

She turned a deaf ear.

Just as she reached for the door knob, she was
forcefully swung in the opposite direction. A towering oak of a man stood before her, his hand wrapped around the ball of her shoulder.

“Goddamm
it, sister! I told you to stop.”

“And I chose to
ignore you,” Mercy tartly replied between huffy breaths. As she spoke, she frantically searched the farmyard, searching for a weapon – a hoe, an iron kettle –
anything
that she could use to disable the foul-mouthed Goliath.

“I bet this will change your l
il’ rebel mind right quick.” Having correctly deduced her thoughts, her captor slid his pistol out of a low-slung holster. Cocking it, he pointed the muzzle at Mercy’s temple. “Not so brave now, are you?” he taunted with a feral grin.

Mercy kept silent, assuming the question to be rhetorical.
If the man standing before her wasn’t one of Maddox’s men, then he was surely cut from the same bolt of fabric.

How in heaven’s name could
I have ever believed that these jayhawkers were good Christian men fighting on the side of righteousness?

Admittedly, it was just one of many beliefs
that she’d been forced to abandon in recent weeks.

Grabbing
a fistful of her hair, the jayhawker began to yank Mercy across the yard. Still holding the pistol to her head, he strode toward the front of the house. To Mercy’s dismay, half a dozen armed men stood in the yard, their attention fixed on the porch.

Casting a glance in that direction, Mercy gasped
aloud at seeing Pru, her mother, Lydia, Dixie and Gabriel, all huddled around Ginny McCabe. Fearless, Ginny stood with a long-barreled musket held to her shoulder.

“Mercy!”
her sister cried out upon catching sight of her.

When
Pru tried to break free of the group, Lydia immediately put a restraining hand on Pru’s arm, Mercy greatly relieved that she did so. One wrong move would surely spell disaster for all of them.

One of the men stepped toward the porc
h, a drawn pistol in his hand. “All right, rebel woman. How about puttin’ down that squirrel gun?”

“Go to hell!” Ginny promptly shouted back
at him.

“Then how about I put it to you another way.”
The man gestured to the behemoth who held Mercy captive. “You put down your weapon and we won’t kill this lil’ blond-headed gal.”

Mercy saw Ginny’s resolve
begin to waver, her gaze nervously darting between the gang leader and the brute who held her at gun point.

“Whatever you do, don’t surrender your musket,” Mercy called out, the remark earning her a painful cuff on the jaw.

Ginny dolefully shook her head. “Spencer would have my head on a platter, sure enough, if I let anything happen to you or that baby you’re carrying.”

“Believe me
. Spencer doesn’t care one way or the other,” Mercy blurted.

“The hell I don’t!”

At hearing that adamant declaration, everyone present, friend and foe alike, turned their head toward the other side of the yard. Spencer, the Henry rifle clutched to his shoulder, stepped out of the shadows and strode toward the gang of armed men.

“Put down your weapons!
” Spence ordered.

“Why the hell should we do that?” the gang leader belligerently
shouted back at him.

While sorely tempted to pull the trigger, Spence knew that
the time had come to stop the killing. Right here. Right now.

“It’s
all over, that’s why.”
Although it hadn’t ended soon enough
, Spence lamented bitterly.

“Damn right, it’s over,” some
one in the crowd bellowed.

“Yeah, and it’s gonna be even more over once we pump you
rebels full of lead bullets,” another gunman added snidely.

Staring
at the motley gang, Spence wondered how the pack of vicious killers would take the news. “I mean the war . . . it’s over. General Lee surrendered his army to Grant three days ago in a little place called Appomattox, Virginia.”

“The hell you say!”

Spence glanced at the naysayer. “I ran into a fellow who just got wind of the news over the telegraph.” Literally ran into him, in fact. If the fast-moving rider that Spence had encountered along that deserted stretch of road had had a feather in his hand, he would have been airborne.

Spence’s
unexpected announcement incited a collective din, everyone present voicing an opinion.

Ginny, the hunting musket still gripped in her hands, swayed slightly, a stunned look on her face. “Are you saying that th
e damned Yankees won the war?”

If the situation
had not been so menacing, Spence might have smiled, his sister having phrased the news more succinctly than he had.

“
Yep. That’s what I’m saying.” Spence returned his attention to the scowling gunmen, hoping that what he said next would sink into their thick jayhawking skulls. “From here on out, we’re all back to being just plain old Americans.”

The gang leader’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How do we k
now that you’re telling the truth?”

Spence shrugged.
“I admit that I’ve been known to tell a good tale. But not even I would make up a bald-face lie about the Confederacy falling to its knees. Believe me, this is one bit of news that I don’t particularly relish having to announce.”
At least not to this pack of armed hyenas.

The giant holding Mercy captive stepped forward
; with Mercy unwillingly in tow. “There’s nothing that says we can’t do what we came here to do. Hell, just because you Rebs surrendered, it don’t mean we can’t keep on killing you.”

Trying to keep a lid on his escalating
fury, Spence directed his gaze at the jayhawker who held Mercy at gun point, his stomach muscles painfully clenching at the sight.

Heavenly Father, if you’re listening, I could use a little help right about now.

Because if the Good Lord didn’t get to it on the double-quick, Spence knew that he’d be left with no choice but to pull the trigger and kill the big bastard holding Mercy captive.

“I got no quarrel with you,” Spence
stated in a firm tone of voice. Then, purposefully locking gazes with the woman he loved, he added, “My fight is over.”

“And
all of yours should be, too,” Mercy said emphatically, addressing the crowd. “The war has ended. To kill us now would be an act of unjustified murder.”

More than likely i
t was the word
‘
murder’
that gave the assembled mob a moment’s pause. To a man, they knew that in war time killing was sanctioned, the act of taking a life condoned, if not encouraged. In peace time, the same action becomes a contemptible act of manslaughter.

Sullen-faced,
the gang of men, one by one, grudgingly holstered their pistols. In tandem, both Spence and Ginny lowered their weapons.

“What are we gonna do now that the war is over?” Mercy’s captor opined as he released his hold on her.

“Damned if I know,” someone morosely answered him.

“If you’re smart, you’ll do like
I’ve done and return to your women and children,” Spence told them. The suggestion met with grumbled asides as the disbanded gang remounted their horses.

Within moments, the only remnant of their visit was a thick cloud of chalky dust.

Jubilant, the McCabe and Hibbert women swarmed off of the porch, heartfelt words of prayer and thanks loudly offered.

With more hesitancy in his step than he cared to admit, Spence walked
over to where Mercy stood. Belatedly realizing that he still wielded the Henry rifle, he came to a sudden standstill. While she might not take kindly to what he wanted, no,
needed
, to say to her, she certainly wouldn’t care to hear it while he was armed to the teeth.

The words w
ould have to keep until later.

He just hoped
that she was still around to hear them.

Twilight cast a pink wash onto the wood
en pickets that enclosed the McCabe family cemetery.

Because his eight year quest had come to an end,
Spence had wandered down to the burial plot after supper to let Pa and the boys know that Luther Maddox finally got what he had coming to him.

Of course, n
o one in his right mind would dare dispute the fact that a shameful tide of violence had rolled across these peaceful Missouri hills. Sadly, for the rest of his born days, Spence would have to live with the knowledge that he’d been a part of that violent tide. And while he may not have had a hand in starting the fire, he’d made damned sure the flame didn’t go out too soon.

They’d all made sure of that
. On both sides of the fence, blue and gray, alike. Truth be told, it was a sobering thought that there were thousands upon thousands of these graveyards all over the South, every one of them full of men who would never come home.

Spence ran
a hand over his father’s headstone, calling to mind the tall, boisterous man he’d so dearly loved. He could only hope that someday he would be able to forget the blood-soaked night that had forever changed his life.

Hearing a twig snap, Spence spun on his heel
and reached for his pistol. When he caught sight of Mercy walking down the hill, he immediately holstered his weapon.

God help me. O
ld habits die hard.

Bidding a silent good-bye to his father and
two brothers, Spence closed the picket gate and made his way toward Mercy, meeting her beneath the sheltering limbs of a giant oak tree.

From the way
that she knitted her hands together, Spence surmised that Mercy was nervous.

“Evenin’.”

“Good evening, Spencer.”

The stilted greeting was the most
that he and Mercy had said to another since the jayhawkers rode off several hours ago. As though by tacit agreement, not a single member of their respective families had brought up the uncomfortable topic of their shelved wedding ceremony. With the momentous news out of Virginia, the talk around the supper table had primarily revolved around General Lee’s surrender.

Sighing wearily,
Mercy turned her head and shifted her gaze toward the setting sun. Spence couldn’t help but wonder if she turned away because the sunset was so pretty, or because she couldn’t stand the sight of him.