Reese (25 page)

"
We were misfits, lost souls, but once
el capitan
came into our lives and showed us the good we could do together, we did not want to go back to the way we had been." Rico spread his hands. "We each have our stories of why we were in the war, of how we came to the notice of Mosby. Most of them are not pleasant. But Reese never once asked what we had done. He accepted us without question, trusted us to guard his back, and risked his life for each of us, at one time or another. How could we not do the same?"

"When he asked you to do jobs after the war—"

"He did not ask; we vowed to be there for one another. Always."

"Why?"

"We are family."

"You have no other families?"

"None such as this."

"You don't even know his name."

"Names mean nothing if you know a man's heart."

* * *

Reese heard them talking from a long way off. He'd been wounded enough times to know he was wounded again, and this time it was bad.

He drifted in and out, listening to the rise and fall of the voices. They gave him comfort. Those men would never let him die.

Some sense of what they were saying penetrated his hazy, heated mind. Mosby and missions, secrets and lies. So many things the six of them had shared, yet in reality so little.

Regardless of his attempts to remain aloof, Reese was as much a part of them as they were of him. Just because he did not know Jed had a sister or why Rico had gone to war or how Sullivan could be a Comanche with an Irish name or why Nate drank or what woman had hurt Cash so badly he couldn't bear to be civil to anyone didn't mean that if he lost them, he would not be lost himself.

They were his friends, even though he didn't want them to be any more than he'd wanted to be their damn captain. Reese should know by now that what you wanted you rarely got.

You made do with what you had.

* * *

The revelations of Reese's men about their past in the war only confused Mary more. Reese had been a hero not only to his superiors but also to those that chose to follow him. Why, then, did he refuse to open up? To them? To her? To anyone? What secret horror lurked in the years before Reese had met Mosby in Atlanta? And did she really want to know?

Time had no meaning except in relation to Reese's needs. Mary nursed him day and night. Everywhere she turned, she tripped over a man. They refused to return to the hotel, sending one person to the tower at a time just in case El Diablo was stupid enough to return after he'd dared to shoot their leader.

Mary posted a notice adjourning school for the year. The session had only been a few days away from the end, anyway. When Clancy came by to protest, Sutton at his heels, she'd heard Cash tell them to—

Well... something obscene. That he'd stood up for her made Mary think he might be softening, if such a thing were possible. At least he'd stopped sneering whenever she came into a room.

In between practice shots, the women brought food. The older men—Brown and some of his cronies—had taken to teaching the women and helped keep watch in the tower. According to Jo, who stopped by each day, everyone had decided that to make the town theirs, they had to protect it, which was what Mary had been saying all along.

She walked into Reese's room at midday and shrieked when she found two figures bending over Reese's bed. The Sutton twins whirled even as Cash pounded down the hall and burst through the door. "How did you get in here?"

They nodded at the open window. "We was in the tower with Rico and Carrie. They were showing Miss Clancy how to keep watch."

Mary glanced at Cash. "Jo's going to keep watch?"

"Need more help than Brown and his friends if we have to go away a while."

They were still considering going after EI Diablo, against Reese's wishes. Mary couldn't say she blamed them. If Reese died, she wouldn't give a plug nickel for El Diablo's chances.

"We saw Miss McKendrick's window was open," Frank continued. "Rico said it should be closed, for sec-sec-security." The twins exchanged glances. "We just wanted to make sure he wasn't dead. Our pa said he was dead."

"Your pa's the one who's gonna be dead if he doesn't shut his trap."

The boys blinked at Cash, eyes wide.

"Go frighten someone your own size," Mary told him.

But Cash no longer glared at the twins; he stared at the bed. "What's wrong with him?" His voice had gone as dead as his eyes, and a chill ran over Mary even before turned to Reese.

His face unnaturally flushed, he trembled so hard the bed rattled, and his teeth chattered.

"What did you little brats do to him?" Cash thundered.

"N-nothin'!" Frank wailed. "We just talked to him a while. Told him how much we liked him. Said we wanted to ride with him, like you do. We never even touched him!"

The twins fled. Mary lifted the corner of Reese's bandage. The room spun. Cash's hands came down on her shoulders, steadying her.

"Get Nate," she said. "This doesn't look good."

Chapter 16

The men filled the parlor doorway. Mary stood in a circle of light that fell from the bedroom. Nate hovered in between.

"Infection and fever. It's what I was afraid of."

"He gonna die?" Cash asked.

Nate pulled out his flask, then, with a sigh, put it away again. "I don't know."

Mary had hoped Nate would come in, baptize Reese with alcohol, pat him on the head, and pronounce him cured. Instead, he'd drained a foul-smelling liquid from the wound, muttering all the while.

Reese thrashed and burned and mumbled like a madman. Mary was scared to death. She wanted to scream and rant and rave. She wanted to get her hands around the throat of the man who had done this. She wanted to curl up next to Reese on the bed and hold him close forever.

"I'm through waitin'," Cash announced. "I'm goin' after that Comanche bastard. No offense, Sullivan."

Sullivan merely turned his usual stoic expression on Cash and said nothing.

While Mary understood Cash's sentiments, she also recalled that Reese had not wanted them to go after El Diablo in his own lair. "What good will it do to kill El Diablo and the rest now, even if you can?"

"If?" Cash sneered. "I can kill anything that walks."

"Not something I'd be very proud of."

"Spoken like a woman."

They exchanged glares. Since Reese's injury and their subsequent talk, they had reached a truce of sorts, but that didn't mean they wouldn't pick at each other whenever the opportunity arose.

"Children." Nate raised his hands. "Bickering won't help."

"What will?" Cash asked.

"I wish I knew."

"I'm not watchin' him die when I can be out doing something. Who's in?"

No one bothered to answer. They all followed Cash through the door.

* * *

Reese was hot and cold by turns. He ached so deep in his bones he could hardly bear the pain. The only thing that helped was when Mary's sweet voice penetrated the limbo where he lived and her fingers entwined with his.

The warmth of her hand in his darkness was like the flicker of the lamp she left in her window, reminding him that she was there, steady and sure as the sun. Always.

When he'd heard the other voices—the ones that had sent him over the edge before—weak from pain, wrung out from the fever, he did not have the strength to fight the worst pain of all.

His memories.

Reese sank into the gray mist of a past long buried. Down a long corridor lined with faces he flew, faster and faster, toward something he did not want to see but could not stop.

The thunder of the cannon and the burst of the guns jerked his body, causing a shaft of agony that made him remember he was not really on a battlefield in Georgia, even though it seemed that he was.

"Mr.—I mean, Captain."

Reese glanced at the soldier-child who stood at his elbow, a shock of brown hair tucked beneath his gray cap, wide blue eyes fixed on Reese with respectful adoration.

Reese had known Robert Gow all his life. He'd known many of the boys in this company since the day they were born.

As the head schoolmaster at Garrison's Boys' Academy, outside Atlanta—a man whose father had attended West Point, then taught his scholarly son everything he knew—Reese had been offered a commission when the war broke out. He had not expected his fourth-year students to follow him into battle, but they had. As a result, the company Reese led consisted of the young men he'd been teaching since they were in short pants.

But he had taught them well—not only reading, writing, and the like but the importance of loyalty, honor, and devotion to friends, family, and country.

Reese was a leader, and he led well. His enthusiasm for the cause—the protection of their homes against the invader, the right to live as they chose—had kept the spirits of his men high when the morale of so many other companies flagged. Reese was proud of what they had accomplished, proud the boys admired him, proud they would follow him into hell itself—or so they said.

"Sir, shall we advance?"

Reese squinted against the damp, swirling gray mist—smoke, rain, and fog all mixed together. Somewhere out there were the Yankees. They were always out there somewhere.

Attack? Retreat? Wait? A choice he had to make every day. So far his choices had been good ones. Reese was confident he would continue to choose wisely. His company of soldier boys depended on him. Their families had entrusted them to him, and he would not let them down.

The scouting report he'd received that morning had said two companies waited over the ridge, but they were bedraggled from a battle not many days before. If Reese and his men could break through their line, they could join with another company to the east, flank the Yankees, and drive them back where they came from. Though the federal force was superior in number, Reese believed his soldier boys would triumph.

"Attack," Reese decided. "While the fog lingers."

"Sir." Gow saluted and moved through the mist to gather the men.

Reese patted the letter in his pocket—the latest missive from the fiancée who awaited him in Atlanta. When the war was over, they would be married, and he would resume teaching young minds in the daytime, with the pleasurable bonus of enjoying his lovely wife each night.

Reese joined his assembled company. Every time he saw them thus, lined up together, he was struck again by their youth. Not a man was over twenty, except for Gow and himself. But there was little Reese could do about that. The Confederacy needed every man it could find, even if some of them had spent too little time as boys.

He nodded to Gow, who gave the silent order to advance. That was the last order Gow ever gave.

The Yankees spilled over the ridge, more than two companies, more than an army it seemed from the sea of bluecoats that poured down the hill. Reinforcements must have arrived after Reese's scout had returned.

He should never have attacked. He should have done what his daddy always told him to do when faced with a superior force—dig in and defend.

Reese didn't have time to curse fate. Fate crawled all over them. Gow went down first without uttering sound, falling backward into Reese's arms. His blue eyes looked surprised, and then he was gone, just like that.

Several of the boys stared at their lieutenant in horror and shuffled about as if they might run, but Reese shouted, "Stand firm, men!" and the panic did not erupt right away.

Having no time to get to his horse, Reese dived in, using his sword this way, his gun that way. A bullet hit him in the thigh, and he went onto one knee. That was all it took for panic to engulf his soldier boys. A year of success in the field went the way of the west wind when they saw their lieutenant die and their captain fall.

Reese struggled upright. "Hold the line!"

But the swarm of gray rushing past him no longer heard anything but the buzz of terror in their own ears.

Cursing, Reese tried to follow, hoping that if he got in front of them, if they saw he was all right, he would be able to turn the tide. But another wave of blue came over the crest.

They were trapped.

He took one step toward his men, and the minie ball hit him in the back. He fell to the ground with the horror-stricken faces of his soldier boys imprinted on his mind forever. Not even the darkness that swallowed him made those faces go away.

Reese awoke to a darkness so complete, he thought he must be dead. But the dead did not feel pain.

Worse than the pain was the silence. Reese turned his head and saw trees then the sky beyond. He was all alone in the woods.

His feet were cold. Flexing his toes, he discovered his boots were gone, his socks too. When he dragged himself upright, the pain in his back and his thigh made the world spin in a sickening lurch. When it stopped, Reese found that his guns had disappeared, along with his bullets and his best horse.

All that was left to him in the grove of trees set between two ridges in Georgia were the bodies of every one of his soldier boys.

* * *

Mary learned more about Reese while he was unconscious than he'd ever shared with her while awake.