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  Rides a Hero

  ( Slater Brothers - 2 )

  Heather Graham

  The return of Heather Graham's historical trilogy has been on readers' wish lists for a long time This second novel follows the August publication of Dark Stranger and continues the story of the Slater brothers who discover the importance of family ties, loyalty and love amidst conflict and despair.

  Heather Graham

  Rides A Hero

  (Slater Bros #2)

  PROLOGUE

  May 30th, 1865

  Kentucky

  The Road Home

  "It's him, I tell you. It's Captain Slater! Captain Malachi Slater!" The young man seated on the wagon that blocked the road could hardly control his excitement. "We done got him, Bill," he cried.

  Startled, Malachi pulled back on the reins of the bay mare that had taken him through numerous battles, and stared ahead. Two young Union sentries were guarding the road that eventually led to his own home. The sight of the sentries here in Kentucky didn't surprise him. The war was over. The Yankees had won. Yanks were everywhere now, and that was the way it was.

  At least he no longer had to be wary. His fighting days were over. He was going home. His unit had surrendered, and he had put his own signature on the paper, swearing an oath of allegiance to the Yankee flag. He should have been bitter, but right now he was just tired. He had seen the death toll, and he was just damned glad that it was all over.

  So he didn't need to fear hostility from the sentries. And hell, seeing them, he couldn't feel much fear. The Yanks, it seemed, had been dipping into the bottom of the barrel as the war ended, almost as much as the Confederates had. These boys were teenagers, green-gilled, and he was certain that neither of them had ever shaved.

  Except there was something…something about the way they said his name.

  "Captain Slater, you just hold on there," the first boy said nervously.

  They shouldn't have known his name. His rank, of course, was apparent from the worn gold braid on the shoulders of his gray wool cavalry greatcoat. But his name…

  "You're under arrest," the second boy—the one called Billy—began, and then his mouth started to work hard as if he couldn't seem to remember the right words to say.

  "Under arrest?" Malachi roared out in his best voice of command. "What in hell for? The war is over, boys. Haven't they told you yet?"

  "You're a murderin' outlaw, Captain Slater!" the first boy said. Malachi frowned and the boy quickly added, "Sir!"

  "Outlaw, murderer? I know that you don't give the Rebels much credit, but our cavalry fought as soldiers, same as yours."

  "Captain, the poster that's out on you has nothing to do with the cavalry!" Billy said. "And that's a fact. You're wanted for murder in Kansas—"

  "I've never been in Kansas!"

  "It says right on the poster that you and your brothers are part of the Slater gang, and that you rode into Kansas and murdered private citizens. Yes. sir, you are under arrest!"

  Kansas?

  Hell.

  He'd not been in Kansas for years. But his brother Cole had been in Kansas, and he bad waged a single-handed battle against the cutthroat who had murdered his first wife.

  Malachi hadn't been anywhere near Kansas during that time, but that was only part of what was taking him aback. Cole was no murderer either. Someone must be out for them. The Slater gang indeed! That must mean that someone wanted his younger brother, Jamie, dead, too.

  The Union boys were trying to ready thier breech-loading rifles. They were both so nervous they couldn't seem to rip open their powder bags, not even with their teeth.

  Malachi's cavalry saber was at his side and he had a Colt stuffed into the holster beneath his greatcoat He had enough time to fill them both full of holes. "Listen to me, fellows. I am not going to let you put me under arrest," he said.

  The boys looked green. They glanced his way, but they kept trying to get to their powder. When they did get to it, they spilled most of it trying to get it into the well of the gun. They glanced at him again with terror, but they still moved to their pouches for balls, and tried to ram them down according to proper military procedure.

  "Confound it," Malachi said irritably. "Do your mothers know where you are?"

  The boys looked up again. "Hank, you got him?"

  "Hell, no, Billy, I ain't ready. I thought you were ready."

  Malachi sighed deeply. "Boys, for the love of God, I don't want your deaths on my conscience—"

  "There's a big, big bounty out on you, Captain Slater! A Mr. Hayden Fitz in Kansas is fierce and furious. Says if 'n somebody don't shoot you and your brothers, he's going to see you all come to justice and hang by the neck until dead."

  "Oh, hell!" Malachi swore savagely. "Damn it!" He dismounted, sweeping his hat from his head and slamming it against his thigh as he paced back and forth before the two. "It's over! The war is over! I fought off the Kansas jayhawkers before the war, and then I fought all those damn years in the war, and I am tired! I am so damned sick and tired of killing people. I can barely stand it! The bounty isn't worth it, boys! Don't you understand? I don't want to kill you."

  They didn't understand. He stopped and looked at them, and they might be still green, but they'd gotten their muskets loaded. Billy started to aim his.

  Malachi didn't wait any longer. With a savage oath escaping him, he charged the boy, pulling out his saber.

  But he was sick and tired of killing. As he leaped atop the wagon where the boys sat, he could have skewered them through, both of them. But he didn't. For some damned reason, he wanted them to grow old enough to have the wisdom not to pull such a stunt again.

  He sliced his saber against the boy's musket and sent it flying.

  "Run, Bill, run!" Hank suggested wisely.

  But Hank was holding tight to his own rifle. Malachi swore at him and leaped from the wagon and hurried for the bay mare. He leaped on the horse and just barely nudged her. Like a true warrior, she soared forward like the wind, straight for the wagon.

  She carried him up and up and they were sailing. But just as they were over the top of the wagon, a burst of pain exploded in his thigh.

  Hank had apparently managed to shoot his rifle. Amazingly enough, he had struck his target.

  Malachi didn't dare stop. He kept the bay racing, veering into the woods. She was a good old horse, a fine companion, and she had been with him through many a battle. When pain and exhaustion claimed him and he slunk low against her, she kept going, as if she, too, knew the road home, the long, long road home.

  Finally the bay stopped before a stream. For a long moment, Malachi clung to her, then he fell and rolled until he could reach the water. He drank deeply before falling back. His leg was burning; his whole body was burning. Surely it wasn't such a deep wound. He needed to keep moving. He had to get to Cole as quickly as possible.

  But it wasn't going to be that night. Despite the strength of his will, his eyes closed.

  It seemed to him that a fog swirled up from the stream. Pain no longer tormented him, nor hunger, nor exhaustion. The stream was inviting. He stood and shed his worn uniform. Balancing his way out on the rocks, he dived in. The water was cool and beautiful, the day warm with a radiant sun, and birds were singing. There was no smell of burned powder near him, no screams of the dead or dying; he was far, far from the anguish of the war.

  He swam through the coolness, and when he surfaced, he saw her.

  An angel.

  She was standing on the shore, surrounded by the mist, her hair streaming gold and red, sweeping down and around her back. She was a goddess, Aphrodite emerging from the sparkling beauty of the stream. She was naked and lithe and beautiful, with sultry sky-blue eyes and ink-dark lashe
s, ivory cheeks, and lush, rose-colored lips.

  She beckoned to him.

  And he came.

  Looking at her, he knew that he must have her. Naked, he tried to hurry, thrashing through the water. He had to touch her. To feel the fullness of her breast beneath his hands, caress her with his whisper and his kiss. But even in the strange seduction of the dream, he knew she was familiar. She was his Circe, calling him with magical promises of unimaginable pleasure, but he also knew her.

  Nearer, he drew nearer to her, nearer and nearer…

  He started to cough. His eyes flew open.

  The only Circe that awaited him was the faithful bay mare, snorting now upon his soaking cheek. Malachi staggered to his feet and looked from his sodden clothing to the stream. He had fallen in, he realized, and nearly drowned.

  He had been saved by a dream. The dream of a lush and beautiful woman with golden hair that streamed down her back, and eyes to match a summer's day.

  He touched his cheek. At least the stream had cut his fever. He could ride again.

  He should find attention for his leg, he thought. But he couldn't spare the time. He had to reach Missouri. He had to warn Cole.

  "Come on, Helena," he told the mare, securing the reins and leaping upon her back. "We need to head on west. Home. Only we haven't got a home anymore. Can you believe that? All these damned years, and we still aren't at peace yet. And I get shot by a kid who still has to have his mother tell him to scrub behind the ears. And I dream about beautiful blond temptresses." He shook his head, and Helena whinnied, as if she doubted the sanity of her rider.

  Maybe he wasn't sane anymore.

  He grinned as he kept riding through the night. It had been a funny dream. Curious how his Circe had seemed so familiar. His sister-in-law, Kristin, was a beautiful blond, but it hadn't been Kristin…

  Malachi was so startled that he drew in sharply on his reins and the bay spun around.

  "Sorry, old girl, sorry!" Malachi told the horse. Then he went thoughtfully silent, and finally laughed out loud.

  It hadn't been his sister-in-law in the dream, but it had been Shannon, Kristin's little sister. Kristin's obnoxious little sister! Willful, spoiled, determined, proud…obnoxious! He'd itched to take a switch to her from the moment they had first met.

  But it had been Shannon in the dream. Shannon's eyes had beckoned him, sultry and sweet. Shannon's hair had streamed in a burst of sun and fire around the slender beauty of her form. Shannon's lips had formed to issue whispers of passion.

  And he had thought when the dream ended that he had lost his temptress! he told himself dryly.

  Well, he had not. He was riding toward the spitfire now, and he could almost guarantee that their meeting would not be sweet, nor would she beckon to him, or welcome him.

  If he knew Shannon, she wouldn't be waiting with open arms.

  She'd be waiting with a loaded Colt.

  "Doesn't matter much, Helena," he told his horse. "Damn it!" he swore out loud to the heavens. "When will this war be over for me?"

  There was no answer. He kept riding through the night.

  CHAPTER ONE

  June 3rd, 1865

  The Border Country, Missouri

  The McCahy Ranch

  Someone was out there.

  Someone who shouldn't have been out there.

  Shannon McCahy knew it; she could feel it in her bones.

  Even though the sunset was so deceptively peaceful!

  It was peaceful, beautiful, quiet. Radiant colors soared across the sky, and sweetly kissed the earth. There was a silence and a stillness all around. A soft breeze just barely stirred, damp and sweet against the skin. The war was over, or so they said.

  The night whispered tenderly of peace.

  Peace…

  She longed for peace. Just ten minutes ago she had come outside to watch the night, to try to feel the peace. Standing on the wide veranda, leaning idly against a pillar, Shannon had looked out over the landscape and had reflected on the beauty of the night.

  The barn and stables stood silhouetted against the pink-streaked sky. A mare and her foal grazed idly in the paddock. The hills rolled away in the distance and it seemed that all the earth was alive with the verdance and richness of the spring.

  Even Shannon had seemed a part of the ethereal beauty of the night. Elegant and lovely, her thick hair twisted into a knot at her nape, little tendrils escaping in wisps about her face. Tall and slim, and yet with curved and feminine proportions, she wore a luxurious velvet evening gown with a delicate ivory lace collar that fell over the artfully low-cut bodice.

  She was dressed for dinner, though it seemed so very peculiar that they still dressed every evening. As if their pa was still with them, as if the world remained the same. They dressed for dinner, and they sipped wine with their meat— when they had wine, and when they had meat—and when their meal was over, they retired to the music parlor, and Kristin played and Shannon would sing. They clung so fiercely to the little pleasures of life!

  There hadn't been much pleasure in years. Shannon McCahy had grown up in the shadow of war. Long before the shots fired at Fort Sumter signaled the start of the Civil War in April 1861, Missouri and Kansas had begun their battling. Jayhawkers had swooped in from Kansas to harass and murder slave owners and Southern sympathizers, and in retaliation, the South had thrown back the bushwhackers, undisciplined troops who had plundered and killed in Kansas. Shannon McCahy had been only a child when John Brown had first come to Missouri, but she remembered him clearly. He had been a religious man, but also a fanatic, ready to murder for his religion. She had still been a child when he had been hanged for his infamous raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

  So she really couldn't remember a time of real peace.

  But at least the thunder now no longer tore at the earth. Rifles and pistols no longer flared, nor did swords clash in fury. The passion of the fight was over. It had died in glorious agony and anguish, and now every mother, sister, lover and wife across the nation waited…

  But Shannon McCahy hadn't come outside to await a lover, for she had the questionable luxury of knowing that her fiance lay dead. She even knew where he was buried.

  She had watched the earth fall, clump by clump, upon his coffin, and each soft thud had taken a bit more of her heart.

  The war had robbed her blind. Her father had been brutally murdered in front of her by bushwhackers, a splinter group of Quantrill's infamous Raiders. And in the summer of 1862 Zeke Moreau and his bushwhackers had returned to the McCahy ranch to take her sister, Kristin. But that had also been the day that Cole Slater had walked into their lives, his guns blazing. He had saved them from being murdered and eventually married Kristin. After that his name kept them safe from the bushwhackers, but the war had still gone on. And ironically, she and Kristin had then been arrested by the Yankees for giving aid and succor to Cole, just because once upon a time Cole had briefly ridden with Quantrill.

  But Shannon had fallen in love with the Yankee officer who had pulled her from the wreckage of their prison when the faulty old building had literally fallen to pieces. For a brief time, she had believed in happiness.

  Until Robert Ellsworth had been slain by the bushwhackers.

  In the end, Zeke Moreau and his bushwhackers had come back to the ranch one last time. Cole had ridden in with his brothers and their Confederate cavalry company, and Shannon's brother, Matthew, had brought his Union compatriots. For one sweet moment, there had been no North, and no South, just a fierce and valiant stand against injustice.

  But the war was over now.

  No…never. Never in her heart, she thought. Then she stiffened, suddenly alert and wary.

  There was a movement out by the stables. She blinked and stared again, and felt a quickening in her stomach, a streak of cold along her spine.

  Now she was sure.

  Someone was out there.

  Someone who shouldn't have been out there.

  Someone f
urtive, stealthy, sneaking around the stables.

  "Cole? Kristin?" she whispered. She cleared her throat and called their names again a little louder.

  Where were her brother-in-law and sister? They should have been in the house, but no one was answering her. She bit into her lower lip, wondering what she should do. There was a pair of Colt six-shooters over the cabinet just inside the hallway; Cole had set them up the very night they heard the war was over.

  After that last fight, Malachi and Jamie Slater had ridden back to the war, not knowing that it was already over. Matthew McCahy had known it was over before he left, for he had stayed until his injury had healed, but then he had left also, to return to his Union Army unit. The war might be over, but he knew that peace was yet to be assured. The aftermath of the war would follow them.

  And Cole Slater knew that he would eventually have to flee Missouri. He had ridden with Quantrill, although only briefly, and certain Yanks with power might consider him ripe for hanging. But Cole intended to wait for Matthew to return home before leaving the ranch. It wouldn't be safe to leave Kristin and Shannon alone. He had friends who would warn him if danger threatened.

  Meanwhile, Cole had hung the Colts and had given Shannon some stern advice. "Most of the men coming home will be good ones," he had told her, hammering nails into the wall. "Yep, lots of good men, both blue and gray. Those who have fought with heart and soul for their ideals. And all that those men want to do now is come home. They want to pick up their plows again, open their shops again, start up their businesses once more. They want to hold their wives, and kiss their children, and lick their wounds and try to find a future. They'll come through here. They'll want water, and they'll want meals. And we'll help them when we can, both Union and Confederate."

  "So what are the guns for?" Shannon asked, not even wanting to think of helping Confederates, men like the bushwhackers who had killed Robert.

  "Because there are men whom the war has maimed, Shannon. Not in body but in mind. Dangerous men. Deserters and vultures. And I can assure you that as many of that type fought for the Union as for the Confederacy. Mind your step, Shannon. You know how to use these guns. Use them well. If anyone threatens you at all, be ready to defend yourself."