BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 11

When Luke Jensen was ten years old, he fell out of a tree and broke his left arm. It hurt like blazes, and he couldn’t hold back the tears as his pa set the bone and splinted the arm.

“No need to cry,” Emmett Jensen had said. “That don’t make the arm feel any better, does it?”

“Hell yes, it does!” Luke had yelled.

Emmett had laughed too hard to get on to him for cussing. Luke’s ma took care of that later, fussing at him until he wished he’d broken his ears instead of his arm.

Luckily, Emmett had set enough broken bones that he knew what he was doing, so his oldest son’s arm healed cleanly and Luke didn’t suffer any loss of strength or movement in it. He never forgot how bad it hurt when it happened, though.

A couple years later, while getting some wood from the pile next to the back door of the Jensen cabin, he was stung on the right hand by the biggest scorpion he’d ever seen. It felt like somebody had shoved a dull knife through his palm.

The hand swelled up and got almost as red as a beet, and for a while the family worried that he would lose it. Emmett was prepared to cut the hand off if it meant saving Luke’s life, but first, he rode up into the hills and brought back an old granny woman who scoured the countryside for plants, made a foul-smelling poultice out of them, and bound it onto Luke’s hand.

Within a day the swelling started to go down and the redness went away. By the time a week had passed, the hand was back to normal and Luke couldn’t even see the place where the scorpion had stung him.

He remembered what that had felt like, too, and took particular satisfaction in stomping every one of the ugly little varmints he saw after that.

The pain radiating from his back made breaking his arm seem like stubbing his toe. That scorpion sting was nothing more than a mosquito bite. Without a doubt, the current pain was the worst agony Luke had ever experienced in his life.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, awash in suffering, before he realized the pain meant he wasn’t dead.

His pulse hammered an insane rhythm inside his skull. He tried to force his eyes open, but couldn’t do it. There wasn’t enough strength in him even for a tiny task like that. All he could do was lie there and drag ragged breaths into his body.

After another unknowable length of time, he became aware of light striking his eyelids. He tried again to lift them, and succeeded.

Sunlight lay in a dappled pattern around him. Lying on his stomach on damp ground, his head was turned to the right, his left cheek pressed against the dirt. After a moment, he figured out the sun was shining down on him through some tree branches. Trying to make his brain work provided a welcome distraction from the pain.

He tried to remember how he’d gotten there. At first, everything up until that moment was a blank slate in his mind, but slowly the details began to fill in. He remembered the gold, the journey from Richmond, the friends who had been with him . . .

Then the ambush and Wiley Potter’s sneering voice telling him the others were dead and he was dying. In fact, he recalled Potter saying, “He’s dead.”

Potter had been wrong about that. Luke was too weak to move, but he sure wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.

Since Potter had been wrong about him, maybe the bushwhacker had been wrong about the others, too. Luke yelled, “Remy! Dale! Edgar! Can any of you hear me?”

It was only when he heard the faint croaking sounds that he realized he wasn’t yelling at all. He’d only thought that he was. He was the one making those incoherent noises. Finally, after what seemed like another hour, he struggled to get out the name, “R-Remy . . .”

He heard some birds in the distance, the wind stirring the branches in the trees, the tiny lapping sound of the river flowing nearby, but that was all.

He had to get up and look for them. He might still be able to save them.

The gold was gone. Luke knew that. Potter and the other deserters would have taken the wagons with them when they left him for dead, so Luke didn’t waste time worrying about that. His only concerns were saving his own life and helping his friends if he could.

He needed to get up and see how badly he was hurt, but one thing at a time, he told himself. First he wanted to look around. He moved his hands enough to dig his fingers into the dirt and brace himself. Then, with a grunt of effort, he lifted his head.

A yell burst from him as even that much movement set off a fresh explosion of pain. He wanted to drop his head, close his eyes, and retreat back into the welcoming darkness.

Instead, he forced his head from side to side in small, jerking motions.

He couldn’t hold back a sob as he saw Dale lying on the ground a few yards away. The young man’s face was unmarked and his eyes were open, but flies were crawling around on them. He was dead, no doubt about it. His clothes were black with blood where he’d been shot.

Remy and Edgar had fallen in the other direction. Edgar’s face was a hideous ruin where several shots had struck him, but Luke recognized his friend’s burly build. Remy was disfigured as well, with most of his jaw shot away. The flies were feasting on their spilled blood, as well.

Luke groaned and let his head fall. There was nothing he could do for his friends, after all. Nothing he could do except save himself and maybe go after Potter and the others once the pain in his back got better.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, stretched out on the riverbank. The earth turned and the sun moved in the sky, and he was no longer in the shade. When the heat began to bother him, he tried to heave himself up to hands and knees so he could crawl where it was cooler.

The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched, and the upper part of his body lifted slightly, but that was all. Luke pushed on his hands again to move upward, but was unable to move high enough. He tried to press against the ground with his knees . . . and realized he couldn’t feel his knees. He couldn’t feel any part of his legs.

Horror washed over him. His body seemed to end at his lower back, where the bullet had struck him and the pain was so bad. Below that, however, nothing hurt. His legs might as well not have been there, and for one sickening moment, he believed they weren’t. He thought Potter had sawed them off before leaving.

Slowly, Luke moved his right hand next to his hip. Breathing heavily against the pain, he twisted his neck and looked along his body. He couldn’t see very well, but caught enough of a glimpse to know his right leg was still there.

He slumped down. The effort had made his heart pound crazily and left him breathless. As he gasped for air, he remembered a farmer back in Missouri named Claude Monroe, who’d been kicked in the back by a rambunctious mule. The accident busted something in Monroe’s back, and after that he was never able to walk again. He had lived for a couple years, lying in bed or sometimes lifted into a chair, before he’d taken an old flintlock pistol, carefully loaded and primed it, and blown a hole right through his head.

He wouldn’t have to do that, Luke thought as a hysterical laugh worked its way up his parched throat. No, he would die right where he was . . . on the riverbank . . . more than likely. He knew from the terrible thirst gripping him that he’d lost quite a bit of blood, and he might be losing more all the time without being aware of it. The easiest thing in the world would be to just give in to the pain that enveloped him, and wait for death. So easy . . .

There was no dramatic moment, no stirring speech he made to pull himself back from the brink of despair. It was just that after a while he got so thirsty he thought he might as well try to get a drink from the river. He moved his left arm next to his left hip and cautiously looked under his arm to see if his left leg was still there. It was. He pushed and clawed at the ground in an effort to turn himself around.

When he got far enough around, the steep slope worked against him, and before he knew what was happening, he was rolling down toward the water, his useless legs flopping loosely.

So, I’m going to fall in the river and drown in a foot of water. As that thought flashed across Luke’s mind he reached out, caught hold of a root growing from one of the trees on the bank, and stopped himself at the edge of the river.

He hung on to the root with one hand while he reached out with the other and cupped it in the stream. When he brought that hand to his mouth, the water he sucked out of his cupped palm was the sweetest he’d ever tasted.

Thirst made him ignore the pain in his back. His movements grew frenzied as he drank. He missed sometimes and splashed water over his face. It felt good.

Then his stomach lurched, and he spewed up all the water he had managed to guzzle down. The spasm made him cry out.

The sickness faded after a few minutes. Luke lay there a little longer and started drinking again, slower.

He kept it down.

When his thirst wasn’t so desperate, he twisted around and looked up at the top of the riverbank again. In his condition, the slope seemed impossible for him to climb. He would be better off just staying close to the water, so he could get another drink later.

Making that decision was all he could manage. Closing his eyes, he rested his head against the ground, content to lie there and wait for . . . something.

What he got wasn’t good. A short time later, it started to rain.

Luke hadn’t noticed the sun going behind the clouds, hadn’t been aware the day was growing dark and ominous with the approach of a storm. He had no idea what was happening until thunder suddenly boomed so loud it shook the earth underneath him.

Or was that artillery fire? He had felt the earth move plenty of times in Richmond as the Yankees pounded the city with their big guns.

No, definitely thunder, he thought as several large raindrops pelted the back of his head. In a matter of seconds, a torrent was sluicing down around him.

Luke lifted his head, tilted it back as much as he could, and shouted at the heavens, “Go ahead! Rain on me, damn you! After everything that’s already happened to me, how much worse can this be?”

He wasn’t sure if he actually bellowed out the words or just thought them, the way he’d thought he was calling his friends’ names earlier. But either way, the sentiment was real.

Unfortunately, a few minutes later he realized his situation could get worse.

When he looked along the banks, he saw how they were washed out in places. That was why the root he’d grabbed was sticking out of the ground. It meant the river had a tendency to rise when it rained. If the marks on the bank were right, the water could come up higher than the place where he was sprawled.

But how long will it take to do that? he asked himself. And how much will it have to rain before I’ll be in danger?

He couldn’t answer those questions, but it was a downpour, no doubt about that. A real toad-strangler, they’d call it back home. All along the banks, miniature waterfalls were already forming as rain landed higher up and ran down to the river, raising its level drop by drop.

And there were millions of drops.

Luke started laughing again. By all rights, he should have been dead already. How many more times could he manage to dodge the reaper? When was his luck going to run out?

Soon, he thought. Soon.

The water would climb up his body until the current plucked him away from the bank and spun him out into the stream and sucked him under. Tomorrow his lifeless body would wash up somewhere downriver. He could see that grotesque image in his mind, plain as day.

But he wasn’t going to give in to that fate without a fight. His father had made it clear to him at an early age that Jensens didn’t have any back up in them. Don’t go lookin’ for trouble, Emmett had told him, but don’t ever go runnin’ away from it, either. And if the devil finds you, spit in his face.

Luke reached up the bank, dug his hand into the mud, and pulled.

The ground was wet and slick, but he clawed at it stubbornly, grabbed another root, dug in with his elbows, and shoved. He got his body turned so he was facing up the bank again instead of lying sideways on it.

Even if he’d been able to use his legs, it would have been difficult to crawl up that muddy slope. With only his arms to pull himself along, it was sheer torture. The burning pain in his arms and shoulders dominated the misery in his back.

Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he pulled himself up the riverbank.

After what seemed like hours, when he was too exhausted to go on, he turned his head, looking under his arm, and realized he was only a couple feet higher than when he’d started out. He looked back along his body as best he could.

His feet were already in the water. The river had risen about a foot, and the current was running fast, which meant more and more water was coming down from upstream.

Gritting his teeth, Luke tried to haul himself higher. He made another few inches, maybe half a foot, and his strength deserted him again.

Maybe what he ought to do was try to roll over onto his back, he thought. Then the rain, which was still coming down with blinding force, might drown him before the river rose high enough to do the job.

The problem was, he was too weak to roll over.

Luke laughed. “You got me,” he rasped. “I’m done for. Fought all I can fight. I’m sorry, Pa. Wish I could see you again. You and Ma and Janey and Kirby . . . but this is where it ends for me.”

His head fell forward. Mud covered his face, clogged his nose, choked him. He coughed and fought free of it, his instincts refusing to let him die. The rain washed some of the muck from his eyes.

And he was able to see the slender fingers reaching down and wrapping around the wrist of his outstretched right hand. Thunder boomed again and lightning flashed.

Luke Jensen blinked in amazement as he rose up as best he could, carefully turned his head, and saw the face of the angel who had reached down from heaven to lift him from earth.

It was funny. He’d always figured when he died, he’d be headed in the other direction.

CHAPTER 12

“Damn it!” the angel yelled. Confused, Luke blinked rainwater out of his eyes. He’d never gone to prayer meeting all that much, but he didn’t remember any preachers he’d ever heard saying anything about angels cussing.

“Come on, mister!” the beautiful vision urged. “You weigh too much for me to lift you by myself. You gotta help me some!”

Understanding sunk slowly into Luke’s brain. Despite the pretty face, it was no angel above him but rather a flesh-and-blood girl. She wasn’t wearing heavenly robes and didn’t have wings, either. She was dressed in tattered overalls, a woolen shirt, and a battered old black hat with rainwater streaming from the brim.

She tugged on his wrist. “Mister, can you hear me? The river’s comin’ up. If we don’t get you off this bank, you’re gonna drown.”

After fighting on his own for what seemed like an eternity, the sheer fact that someone else was trying to save him filled Luke with gratitude and relief. That feeling was short-lived, though, because he realized she was right. “Can you . . . get help?” he croaked.

“No time!” she said. “This ol’ river comes up mighty quick when it rains like this. Goldang it, I told Grampaw I heard somebody yellin’ last night!”

“You better . . . fetch him. Has he got . . . a horse or . . . a mule?”

“Yeah, but like I told you, there ain’t enough time for that.” She dug the heels of her bare feet into the bank and got hold of his wrist with both hands. As she hauled hard on his arm, she said through clenched teeth, “Can’t you push . . . with your damned legs?”

Luke couldn’t, and he didn’t have a chance to explain it. Just then her feet slipped in the mud and she sat down hard as her legs went out from under her. With a startled cry she started sliding down the bank toward him.

She didn’t go very far. His head butted her in the stomach and stopped her. Her thighs rested on his shoulders. She put her hands on the ground and pushed herself away from him.

“Dadblast it!” she cried. “Don’t you go gettin’ any ideas, mister!”

“The only idea I have . . . is not drowning,” Luke said. “Let’s . . . try again.”

The girl scrambled up and took hold of his wrist again. Luke used his other hand to grasp one of the tree roots and pulled. The combined effort was enough to break him free of the sticky mud. He slid upward almost a foot.

“Hang on,” Luke told her. “Let me . . . get hold of . . . another root.”

She waited until he had a good grip, and then both of them grunted with the strain as they lifted his mostly dead weight. He wound up higher on the bank.

“Here we go,” the girl urged. “We’re gettin’ it now.”

They had made some progress, that was true, but Luke didn’t know how much longer his strength would last. He was already drawing on reserves he hadn’t known he possessed.

The rain was falling harder, turning the riverbank into a swamp. Knowing there was a risk he would slide back down and lose all the ground he had gained, he reached up to grasp another root and pull himself higher with the girl’s help.

But the roots were about to run out, he saw with a sinking heart. The top of the bank was only about six feet above him, but it might as well have been six miles. The rest of the slope was nothing but slick mud.

“You’ve got to hang on here,” the girl told him. “I’ll go find a branch or something I can reach down to you!”

“You can’t hold my weight,” Luke said.

“I’ll figure out a way. It’s our only chance!”

Luke nodded his agreement and got a good grip on the last root. “Okay.”

With obvious reluctance even though it was her idea, she let go of his wrist and clambered up the bank, slipping and sliding. When she disappeared over the top, he felt a sharp pang of loss. There was a chance he would never see her again, and for some reason that bothered him as much as the possibility that he was about to die.

He hung on to the root for dear life as the rain continued to pound down on him. The river was making a rumbling sound, and he wondered if the water was already plucking at his legs. He still couldn’t feel anything below the waist.

The jagged end of a gnarled tree branch nearly poked him in the face. He looked up and saw the girl lying on top of the bank, extending the branch down toward him. All he could see of her was her head, arms, and shoulders.

“Grab it!” she called. “Pull yourself up!”

Luke let go of the root with one hand and grabbed the branch. “I don’t want to pull you over!”

“You won’t! I’ve got it! Now climb, damn it!”

Luke shifted his other hand to the branch. Its rough surface provided a pretty good grip. He looked up at the girl again, and she gave him an encouraging nod.

He didn’t see how it was going to work, since she probably didn’t weigh even a hundred pounds soaking wet, the way she was at the moment. But he tightened his hands and hauled hard on the branch, and to his surprise, his body followed. Reaching hand over hand, he continued pulling himself up.

When he glanced at the girl, he saw pain etched on her face. Supporting his weight was obviously painful. Not wanting to hurt her any longer, he summoned all his strength and energy and continued climbing up the branch.

When he was finally close enough, she reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling hard. He added his efforts and surged up and rolled over the top of the bank. He came to a stop on his back and had to push himself onto his side to keep the rainwater from filling his nose and mouth.

“C-careful,” she said. “After all that, we d-don’t want you to drown now.”

Luke blinked water out of his eyes and looked over at her. She still wore the soaked wool shirt, but she had taken off the overalls. The suspenders were tied around the trunk of a tree while one of the legs was tied around her ankle. That was why she’d been hurting, he realized. The strain of his weight had gone through her whole body, passing through her hands on the branch to her shoulders, along her body, and through her ankle.

When he turned his head, he saw the surface of the river racing along about three feet below the edge of the bank. He almost hadn’t made it.

This girl, whoever she was, had saved his life.

“Th-thank you,” he gasped out.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “The river could still get out of its banks.”

Her hands were scraped raw from the rough bark, he saw as she sat up. Rain washed away the blood seeping from the wounds.

“I’ll fetch Grampaw and the wagon,” the girl went on. “He’s pretty strong for an old fella. We oughta be able to lift you into the wagon.” She paused. “Your legs don’t work at all, do they?”

Luke shook his head. “No, I can’t even feel them. I was . . . shot in the back.”

“Last night?”

He nodded wearily.

“Then that was you I heard hollerin’. I wanted to come see, but Grampaw wouldn’t let me. He said to let the damn Yanks and the damn fool Rebs shoot each other, that it weren’t nothin’ to us either way.”

Luke didn’t know exactly what she meant, but it wasn’t the time to discuss it.

The girl untied the overalls from her leg and scrambled to her feet. “You could have the decency to close your eyes, seein’ as how I ain’t got no pants on and I saved your life and all.”

Incredibly, Luke felt himself smiling. “Yes, ma’am.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Could I ask you one more favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Tell me your name.”

She hesitated, then said, “Emily. Emily Sue Peabody.”

“You sound like a good Georgia girl, Emily Sue Peabody.”

“I am. Where are you from?”

“Missouri. My family has a farm up in the Ozarks.”

“Then you must be a soldier, in spite of what you’re wearin’. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so far away from home.”

“I was a soldier,” Luke said. “But not any more.”

That was true. The gold was gone, his friends were dead, and he had spent the past day on the razor’s edge of death. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit if he closed his eyes and opened them again to find himself in Hell.

“What’s your name?” Emily asked.

“Luke Jensen.”

“Well, I’d say that I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Jensen, but right now that’d be a plumb lie. Now don’t you move . . . Come to think of it, I guess you won’t, will you?”

“Not likely.”

“I’ll be back quick as I can with the wagon. I’d take it kindly if you don’t die in the meantime.”

“I’ll . . . try not to,” Luke said as a new wave of exhaustion washed over him. His eyes closed. He heard the swift splashes as Emily hurried away over the wet ground.

Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought it wasn’t raining quite as hard. Even if the downpour stopped, it wouldn’t mean the danger was over. All the water that had fallen upstream still had to go somewhere. The whole area might flood. If it did, he would be helpless.

I’m pretty much helpless either way, he reminded himself. All he could do was lie there and wait for Emily to come back.

“Emily Sue Peabody,” he murmured. It was a pretty name for a pretty girl.

Thinking about her made the pain not quite so bad.

CHAPTER 13

The sound of wagon wheels creaking brought Luke out of his stupor. Rain still fell, but it was definitely not pouring down as hard.

The wheels stopped, and he heard a thud as somebody jumped down from the wagon. Footsteps ran over to him.

“You ain’t dead, are you, Mr. Jensen?” Emily asked.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. “I’m . . . still here,” he croaked.

Emily bent down to look at him. “Good.” Then she turned her head to call, “He’s still alive, Grampaw!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” replied a voice cracked with age. “I’d hate to think you dragged me out in this rain for nothin’! My rheumatiz don’t like this damp weather at all.”

Luke looked past Emily and saw a man with long white hair and a drooping white mustache coming toward them. The years had bent him some, but he was still fairly tall and his shoulders were broad with strength. He reminded Luke of a thick-trunked old oak tree draped with moss.

“Let’s roll him onto his back so I can get hold of him under his arms and drag him,” the old man suggested.

“We can pick him up and carry him,” Emily said. “I’ll help you.”

“No, the other way will be easier,” her grandfather insisted.

“He said he’d been shot in the back. Draggin’ him like that’s liable to hurt him even worse.”

The old man frowned. “You might be right about that,” he admitted. “All right, get on that side of him. I can take most of the weight, but you’ll have to support some of it.”

“I’ve got it.” Emily moved to loop both arms around Luke’s right arm in a secure grip.

Her grandfather took Luke’s left arm in the same fashion. “All right, you ready? Lift!”

With grunts of effort, they straightened, hauling Luke upright for the first time since the night before. Emily’s feet slipped a little in the mud as the strain of his weight hit her, but she managed to keep her balance and didn’t lose her grip on him.

“This’d sure be easier if you could walk, mister,” the burly old-timer said, “but since you can’t . . .”

Half dragging, half carrying him, they started toward the wagon, which Luke saw had a team of four rawboned mules hitched to it. They looked like pretty sorry specimens and the wagon wasn’t much better. Every step the old man and Emily took sent pain jolting through him, but he gritted his teeth and didn’t cry out. He recalled how he had screamed after Potter shot him, and the memory filled him with shame. He wasn’t going to let himself act like that in front of Emily Sue Peabody and her grandfather.

That wasn’t the only shame he felt. The knowledge that he had driven right into that ambush, had lost the Confederacy’s gold, and gotten his friends killed had started to gnaw at him. He had known good and well there was a chance Wiley Potter and the others would double back and make a try for the bullion. For a couple days he had watched very closely for any signs of an ambush.

But he guessed he’d let his guard down, especially while he was concentrating on getting the wagon up the steep slope of the riverbank. All it had taken was that moment of carelessness, and he had lost everything.

Well, not everything, he corrected himself. He was still alive, even if just barely. Remy, Dale, and Edgar couldn’t say that much. The guilt Luke felt because of that ate at his insides all the more.

When they reached the wagon, the old man said, “Mister, you grab on to the sideboard and help hold yourself up whilst Emily puts the tailgate down. Hop to it, girl.”

Luke grasped the side of the wagon as tightly as he could. When Emily had the tailgate lowered, they helped him around to it and lowered him face down over the gate. Luke’s weight kept him there while they lifted the lower half of his body and shoved him into the wagon bed.

That hurt like hell, too.

“I can see where the bullet tore his shirt,” the old-timer commented. “Looks like the rain washed out most of the blood. Maybe it did the same for the wound. If it didn’t, he’ll likely die of blood poisonin’ in a day or two.”

“Grampaw!” Emily said.

“Just tellin’ you the truth of it,” her grandfather said. “I’ll wager the fella’s already thought of that his own self.”

“I . . . have,” Luke gasped from where he lay with the side of his face pressed against the rough boards of the wagon bed. “I appreciate you . . . trying to save my life anyway.”

“It was the girl’s idea,” the old man said. “I got no use for either side in this war. Haven’t ever since it took my boy and my two grandsons.”

That explained the bitter undertone in the old-timer’s voice, Luke thought, as well as Emily’s comment that her grandfather didn’t want to get involved in the Yankees and the Confederates shooting each other. He thought he had already lost enough to the fighting, and he was probably right about that.

Luke didn’t consider himself a Confederate anymore, not after the way he’d let down the cause by losing that gold. But it didn’t really matter since, as Emily’s grandfather had mentioned, he expected to die from his wound in the next few days.

He would worry about guilt when and if he survived.

“Might be a good idea if you was to climb up there with him and hold him as still as you can,” the old man told Emily. “It’s gonna be a rough ride, and bumpin’ around’s just gonna hurt him worse.”

“You’re right.” She climbed into the wagon bed and sat down next to Luke. Her grandfather got on the seat and took up the reins, yelling at the mules and slapping them with the lines until they lurched forward into a walk.

The jarring motion sent fresh bursts of agony through Luke’s body, just as the old-timer had predicted. His breath hissed between clenched teeth, but again he managed not to yell. Emily lay down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, hanging on tightly to brace him against the wagon’s rocking and bouncing.

He couldn’t help being aware of the warmth of her torso pressed to his. If he responded to it, he didn’t know it, but somehow it comforted him anyway. Gradually the pain eased a bit.

He didn’t know how far it was to their destination or how long it took to get there, but finally the wagon came to a halt.

“We’re here,” Emily said. “This is our farm.”

Luke felt the wagon shift as the old man got down from the seat. A moment later Luke heard the tailgate drop and felt himself moving. He knew the old-timer had taken hold of his feet to drag him out of the wagon, even though he couldn’t feel the grip.

The rain had tapered off to a drizzle. It was late in the afternoon and darkness was coming on quickly, earlier than usual because of the overcast. As they lifted him from the wagon, Luke saw a rectangle of yellow light and recognized it as an open doorway. The glow from a lantern spilled out from the room beyond the door.

Emily and her grandfather wrestled him inside.

The old man said, “We better get him outta these wet duds, or he’ll catch the grippe for sure. He don’t need that on top of ever’thing else. I ought to take a look at that bullet hole in his back, too.”

“You think you can help him, Grampaw?”

“You want me to, don’t you?”

“Well . . . yeah, if you can.”

“One thing I got to know first.” The old man hung on to Luke’s arm, but moved enough so he could peer into Luke’s face. “Are the Yankees gonna come lookin’ for you, mister? Is helpin’ you gonna get me and my granddaughter killed?”

“The Yankees . . . don’t know I exist,” Luke whispered.

That might not be exactly true—there might still be patrols searching for eight or nine men with two wagons—but the Yankees would have no interest in a lone man with what was probably a mortal wound in his back. The bodies of Remy, Dale, and Edgar had surely washed downstream, Luke realized, and when they were found, likely they would be miles from there.

He figured Emily and her grandfather would be safe enough having him. If the Yankees had left them alone so far, they’d have no reason to bother them now.

“All right,” the old man said. “I hope you’re tellin’ the truth. I’ll hold him up, gal. Get a knife and cut them clothes off him. That’ll be the easiest way to do it.”

Luke was in too much pain to worry about the girl seeing him naked. Anyway, he’d seen her wearing nothing but that soaked woolen shirt, so he supposed turnabout was fair play, as the old saying went.

He heard the faint sound of a sharp blade cutting through fabric. His clothes fell away from him. A chill went through him, and he started to shiver.

“Get somethin’ and dry him off,” the old man said as he struggled to keep Luke upright. “Then we’ll put him in my bunk.”

Luke felt her drying his torso. When she moved around behind him, he heard her sharp intake of breath. He figured she had spotted the wound low down on his back.

“It don’t look too good, Grampaw.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to. Come on, we need to get him warmed up some.”

Emily finished drying him, and they carried him over to a bunk. As they lowered him face first onto it, Luke heard a rustling sound that told him the mattress was stuffed with corn husks.

Even with nothing but a rough blanket covering it, it felt wonderful. He let his face sink into the softness.

His head jerked up a second later as something prodded into the wound in his back. His lips drew back from his teeth in a pained grimace.

“Looks like the bullet’s still in there,” the old man said. “It’ll have to come out, but not now. The hole’s already festerin’ too much. Fetch me that jug o’ corn.”

“You don’t need to get drunk, Grampaw,” Emily said.

He snorted. “I ain’t plannin’ to drink it. It’ll clean out that wound better’n anythin’ else we got.”

After hearing that, Luke knew what to expect. But he groaned anyway, a moment later, when the liquid fire of the corn liquor burned into his back and seemingly all the way through to the core of his being. Something poked into the wound again, probably the old man’s fingers, he guessed.

That was confirmed when the old-timer said, “I can feel the bullet. Should be able to get it. But not yet. I’ll dig it out in a day or two . . . if he’s still alive.”

“He’ll be alive,” Emily said. “I’m gonna see to that.”

“Why in Tophet do you care so much whether this varmint lives or dies? You don’t even know him.”

“I know his name,” Emily said softly. “That’s enough for now.”

The pain eased a little, and Luke let out the breath he had been holding. As the long sigh escaped him, his eyes closed.

Exhaustion caught up to him, crashing down like a hammer, and once again he knew nothing but darkness.

CHAPTER 14

When he woke up the next time, the only light in the room came from a small candle burned down to almost nothing. The dim glow was enough to reveal Emily sitting in an old rocking chair next to the bunk, dozing. Her eyes were closed.

Now that Luke got a better look at her, he saw that his initial impression had been right: she was beautiful. Her face showed lines that sorrow and hard work had put in it already, even though she was only around twenty years old, but that didn’t detract from her beauty as far as he was concerned. Her thick dark hair was plaited into a single braid hanging over her left shoulder as she sat in the rocking chair. She had put on a clean shirt and a clean pair of overalls, maybe the only clothes she owned besides the ones she’d been wearing earlier.

Rough snores came from a long, bulky, blanket-wrapped shape in the bunk on the other side of the room. Luke recalled the bunk in which he lay belonged to Emily’s grandfather, which meant the old-timer had claimed Emily’s bunk while she slept in the chair.

Or maybe she had insisted on sitting up with him, he thought. That was certainly possible.

The pain in his back had receded to a dull throbbing. He felt it with every beat of his heart, but was able to ignore it by focusing his attention on Emily.

Growing aware of his gaze somehow, her eyes opened, the initial flutter of eyelids as delicate as that of a butterfly’s wings. She scooted forward in the rocker and leaned toward him. Quietly, she spoke. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

Before Luke could say anything, Emily shook her head. “You don’t have to answer that. I’m sure you hurt like hell.”

Incredibly, he felt his lips curving in a smile. In a voice that sounded rusty to his ears, he said, “I do.”

“Then why are you smilin’?”

“Because I don’t think I’ve . . . ever run across a young woman who . . . talks like you do.”

She looked surprised, and Luke saw a pink tinge spreading slowly through her lightly olive skin. She was blushing, he realized.

“You mean the cussin’? I started doin’ it for a reason. After . . . after we got word that my pa and my brothers wouldn’t be comin’ back from the war, I got worried that Grampaw would miss not havin’ any other menfolks around, and since one of the things men seem to do a lot is cuss, I figured it might make Grampaw feel better if I was to do it. They all tried to watch their language around me while I was growin’ up, what with me bein’ the only gal in the place, but I heard enough. I can cuss up a storm when I want to.”

“How did that . . . turn out for you?” Luke asked.

“To be honest, it spooked the hell outa Grampaw at first, but once he got used to it, I think he sorta likes it. And I got used to it, too, I reckon, so I don’t hardly know I’m doin’ it anymore. Sometimes when you’re really mad or frustrated, it sure feels good to let loose with a few ripsnorters.”

“Yes, I can . . . imagine.”

Emily put a hand to her mouth and looked embarrassed again. “As bad as you must hurt, you must really feel like cussin’. You go right ahead if you want to, Mr. Jensen. It won’t bother me none.”

“That’s all right. What I’d really like . . . is for you to call me Luke.”

Emily thought it over and nodded. “I reckon I can do that. I’ve always been taught to be careful around fellas who were slick talkers, because my pa said there was only one thing they wanted, but I guess the shape you’re in, I don’t have to worry about that, do I?”

“Not hardly,” Luke told her. “And even if I . . . wasn’t hurt . . . my pa brought me up to be a gentleman.”

“I can see that in your eyes,” she said softly, nodding. She reached forward and lightly rested her hand on his forehead. “Oh, my Lord! You’re burnin’ up with fever.”

Luke wasn’t surprised. He had already known he felt chilled and lightheaded. He supposed the wound in his back had festered and blood poisoning had set in, just like Emily’s grandfather had predicted.

“I’ll wake Grampaw and see if there’s anything he can do for you,” she went on.

“There’s . . . no need. Just get a wet cloth . . . wipe my face with it . . . That’s about all . . . anyone can do for me.”

“There’s gotta be somethin’ else!”

“There’s not,” Luke told her. “It’s pretty much . . . out of our hands now.”

He knew that was true. If the fever broke, he might have a chance. If it didn’t, he would die. Simple as that.

And it might be better if the fever went ahead and took him, he thought. Emily and her grandfather could bury him and be done with it. They wouldn’t have to run even the slight risk of the Yankees finding him and taking action against them.

Better for him, too, because he still couldn’t feel his legs or anything below the waist, and he would rather be dead than a cripple. He wouldn’t go back to the farm and be a burden to the rest of his family.

Emily got up for a moment and came back with a wet rag. She leaned down and swabbed it over his face. The cool touch felt wonderful.

Sometime while she was doing that, he passed out again. When he woke up, bright sunlight was slanting in through the cabin’s open door.

“Huh. You ain’t dead after all.” That somewhat surprised statement came from Emily’s grandfather, who had taken her place in the rocking chair beside the bunk.

Luke licked dry, cracked lips and husked, “I could use . . . something to drink.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty well wrung out, I expect. I’ll fetch you a cup.”

The old man came back with a dented tin cup. Luke took a sip of the clear liquid in it and promptly spit it out in an instinctive reaction.

“That’s a waste of good corn, son,” the old-timer said. “See if you can keep some of it down this time. You’re gonna need it.”

“What do you . . . mean by that?”

“I mean your fever may have broken for now, but that wound in your back’s in bad shape. That Yankee bullet’s got to come out if you’re gonna have any chance of makin’ it.”

Two things were wrong with that, Luke thought. It wasn’t a Yankee bullet that had laid him low, but rather one fired by a renegade Confederate. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to have a chance of making it, not in the condition he was in.

But the hatred of giving up was bred deeply within him. “All right, give me another sip of that shine.”

The old man chuckled. “Emily said you was from up in the Missouri Ozarks. I reckon you prob’ly know good corn liquor when you taste it.” He held the cup to Luke’s lips.

Carefully, Luke sipped the fiery stuff. His stomach rebelled against it, but he managed to keep it down. He drank enough that it affected him immediately and set his head to spinning. “You’re going to . . . cut the bullet of me, aren’t you?”

The old man nodded gravely. “That’s the only thing to do. As soon as Emily gets back from the tradin’ post to hold you down, we’ll get started.”

“Go ahead and . . . do it now,” Luke urged. “I can . . . stay still.”

“You don’t know what you’re sayin’. Even with that liquor in you, it’s gonna hurt worse ’n anything you ever felt before.”

“Look . . . Emily doesn’t weigh enough . . . to hold me down . . . if I start bucking around. I’m going to have to . . . control it . . . whether she’s here or not.”

The old man rubbed his jaw as he frowned in thought. His fingertips rasped on the white stubble. “More than likely you’re right about that,” he admitted. “Might not make much difference whether the gal’s here or not.”

“I don’t want her . . . to have to see it,” Luke said. “Give me . . . a leather strap or something . . . to bite on.”

“My razor strop’ll do.”

“And maybe . . . some more of that moonshine first.”

“We can sure do that,” the old man said.

A few minutes later, after several more swallows of the potent liquor, Luke’s head was spinning even faster. He set his teeth in the leather strap and watched as the old man heated the long blade of a hunting knife in the fireplace until it glowed cherry red.

He carried the knife quickly back over to the bunk. “The wound’s scabbed over, but I’ll have to open it again so all the pus can get out. You ready?”

“Just . . . get it done,” Luke said around the strap. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The old man was right about one thing: it hurt worse than anything Luke had ever experienced. His teeth bore down on the leather and every muscle in his body turned tight and hard as an iron strap . . . every muscle he could still feel, anyway. The mingled stink of burned flesh and corruption filled the room. Luke groaned.

After what seemed like an eternity of torture, the old-timer exclaimed, “I got it!”

Some of the terrible pressure Luke had felt in his back was released. The pain didn’t slack off much, but any relief at all was a blessing.

He felt the old man wiping at his back with a rag. “You’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig, boy, but I reckon that’s a good thing. Maybe it’ll wash out all the festerin’. If you don’t bleed to death first, that is.”

The pain continued to recede. Luke’s head slumped back to the bunk, and the leather strap slipped out of his mouth as his teeth released their grip on it. His pulse pounded inside his skull, and he breathed harshly and heavily.

“Grampaw, what in hell are you doin’?” That startled cry came from Emily. “My God, there’s blood all over the place! You’ve killed him!”

“Take it easy, gal. He’s alive. And I got that bullet outta his back.”

“Is that why you sent me to the tradin’ post?” she demanded. “So you could start cuttin’ on him without me bein’ here to stop you?”

“Shoot, I didn’t even know he was gonna wake up. His fever broke, but it would’ve come right back if I didn’t get that bullet out. Look there . . . that’s healthy blood comin’ out of him now. We can go ahead and stop it, and he can start gettin’ his strength back.”

Emily went closer to the bunk and bent down to peer at Luke’s face. He saw her only vaguely through his pain and weariness.

“You mean he’s gonna be all right?” she asked.

“I mean he’s got a chance now,” her grandfather told her.

But the biggest question, Luke thought just as he slipped back into unconsciousness, wasn’t whether he would live or not.

The question was whether his legs would work . . . or whether he was going to be a cripple for the rest of his life, however long that was.

CHAPTER 15

The fever didn’t come back. When Luke woke again, he was ravenously hungry, but able to eat only a few bites of the stew Emily fed him before it started to sicken him. He kept it down, though.

From talking to Emily, he found out it wasn’t the day after she’d rescued him from the riverbank. As a matter of fact, three days had passed since that stormy afternoon.

“You were burnin’ up with fever and out of your head most of that time,” she told him as she sat in the rocker beside the bunk. “You kept ravin’, but I couldn’t make much sense out of most of it.”

“What did I say? Did I talk about anybody in particular?”

“Oh, your ma and pa, of course. I’d expect that. And somebody named Kirby.”

“My little brother,” Luke said.

“And Janey.”

“My sister.”

“And Potter.”

It was all Luke could do not to snarl in hatred. “He’s not part of my family.”

“I hope not, the way you were talkin’ about him. Remember how I said I could cuss pretty good? Well, you had me beat all hollow while you were talkin’ about that fella Potter.”

“He’s the man who shot me,” Luke said. “He and his friends are deserters and renegades.”

“Well, then, you’ve got good reason to be cussin’ him. I figured somebody must’ve waylaid you and robbed you when I didn’t find no horse anywhere thereabouts.”

Luke waited a moment, then asked, “Did I talk about anything else?” He wanted to know if he had said anything about the gold while he was out of his head.

“Not really. There were some other names . . . Renny, somethin’ like that?”

“Remy,” Luke said. “A good friend.”

“And Dale and Edgar. Who are they?”

“More friends.” Luke didn’t offer any further explanation. Their bodies must have been taken by the river before Emily found him, otherwise she would have asked him before now who those dead men were.

Just as well, he thought. He didn’t want to tell her about the gold, about the way he had lost it and gotten his friends killed. That was a burden he was going to bear alone.

“Grampaw says it looks like that bullet hole in your back is healin’ up better now,” Emily went on. “I was sure upset with him when I came in and found that he’d been cuttin’ on you, but I reckon he did the right thing.”

“What’s your grandfather’s name?” Luke hadn’t heard her call him anything except Grampaw.

“Linus Peabody,” she told him.

“A fine name. I’m in his debt . . . and yours.”

She shook her head. “You don’t owe me nothin’.”

“You saved my life. I would have died out there if it wasn’t for you.”

“It’s my Christian duty to help folks in need.”

“I wish more people felt like you about that,” Luke said. “If they did, we might not have had this war.”

“Grampaw says we didn’t need to have it anyway. We never had no slaves and didn’t want any. He tried to talk my pa and my brothers into not goin’ off and fightin’, but they said it was their duty because the Yankees had no right to invade us.”

“They were right about that. I just wish it had never come to that point.”

Emily sighed. “Wishin’ don’t do folks a lot of good, Mr. Jensen . . . I mean, Luke. If it did, there’s a whole heap of things in the world that’d be different.”

She was certainly right about that, Luke thought.

Because if wishing did any good, his legs would work again, and so far . . . they didn’t.

* * *

It really hasn’t been very long yet since my injury, he reminded himself several times that day . . . and the next and the next and the day after that.

By the time a week had passed, Luke’s appetite had returned and so had some of his strength. He was able to sit up in the rocking chair with a pillow to cushion his wounded back, as long as Peabody and Emily helped him get there from the bunk.

But he still had no feeling in his legs, and when he sat there and stared at them and willed them to move, nothing happened. The legs remained limp and lifeless.

“I wish I could help you with the chores,” Luke said at supper one evening. “You folks saved my life, you’re feeding me, and I can’t do a blasted thing to repay you.”

“Nobody’s asked you to repay nothin’,” Peabody said.

“I know that, but I want to, anyway.”

“Maybe the time will come that you can. You can’t never tell.”

Another couple days passed. Luke continued to get stronger. Peabody built him a bunk of his own, so he and Emily could return to their own beds. He checked the wound in Luke’s back and changed the dressing on it, then proclaimed, “Looks like that hole’s just about healed up, son. I got to admit, I didn’t think it’d happen that way, but you must be durned near as strong as a mule . . . and stubborn as one, too.”

Emily said, “Grampaw!”

But Luke threw back his head and laughed, which was something he hadn’t done much of for a long time. “My pa used to say the same thing about me. The stubborn part, anyway. But the real reason I’m not dead is because you and Emily took such good care of me, Mr. Peabody.”

“The gal wouldn’t have it no other way,” the old-timer said, which brought another blush to Emily’s face.

Peabody went out to work in the fields, leaving Emily to finish cleaning up after breakfast before she joined him. With just the two of them to take care of the place, they both worked from dawn to dusk most days. They had gotten behind on the chores during the time they’d had to take turns looking after Luke, and knowing that added to his feeling he owed them more than he could ever repay.

A short time after leaving, Peabody hurried back into the cabin just as Emily was finishing up with the dishes. Luke saw instantly that the old-timer was upset about something.

Peabody didn’t keep them in the dark about it. “Yankees comin’.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” Emily said. “How many?”

“Just a dozen or so . . . but that’s plenty if they’re lookin’ for trouble.” Peabody frowned at Luke. “You’re sure they ain’t huntin’ you?”

“I don’t see how they could be.”

An old single-shot rifle Peabody used for hunting game hung on hooks attached to the wall. He took it down and checked its load.

“You don’t want to start trouble,” Luke warned him. “Not if there are a dozen of them.”

“Don’t plan on startin’ it. But if they force me to it, I’ll fight.”

Luke thought swiftly. “How close are they?”

“About a quarter mile, I’d say.”

“Put the rocker on the porch and help me into it. I’ll hold the rifle in my lap, under a blanket.”

“They’d be able to see it anyway,” Emily said. “I have a better idea.” She opened a cabinet and took out the Griswold and Gunnison revolver Luke had brought with him from Richmond.

He didn’t know what had happened to his rifle, but the sight of the revolver lifted his spirits a little. Only for a moment, though. He recalled how wet the gun had gotten. “The charges in that are bound to be ruined.”

“They were,” Emily agreed, “until I cleaned it up and reloaded it.”

“Where’d you get ammunition for that gun?”

“Bought it at the tradin’ post the other day. I thought we might need it sometime.”

Luke hoped that time hadn’t come. Even with the revolver, he wouldn’t be any match for a dozen Yankee cavalrymen, especially stuck in a rocking chair with useless legs.

But being armed was always better than being defenseless, so he held out his hand for the gun and slipped it into the pocket of the overalls he was wearing. It was a good thing Linus Peabody was a fairly big man. His clothes fit Luke without being too tight.

Peabody dragged the rocking chair onto the cabin’s front porch, then he and Emily helped Luke get seated in it. She hurried back into the cabin to grab the blanket from the bunk, which she draped over the lower half of Luke’s body.

It was the first time he’d been outside since the day of the storm. The air was warm and smelled good. It was a beautiful spring day.

At least, it would have been if it hadn’t been marred by the sight of those Yankee troopers riding toward the cabin.

Peabody came out onto the porch holding the rifle. He said to Emily, “Get back inside, gal. And don’t come out no matter what happens.”

“You know damn good and well I ain’t gonna do that, Grampaw.”

“Blast it. For once in your life, do what I tell you!”

Emily looked angry and upset, but she said, “I’ll be right inside,” and moved back through the door.

Luke put his right hand under the blanket, slipping the revolver out of his pocket and gripping it tightly as he watched the Yankees ride closer. He had to fight down the impulse to yank out the gun and start blazing away at the enemy.

Or are they the enemy anymore? he suddenly asked himself. They were laughing and talking among themselves as they approached the cabin. They certainly didn’t seem to be looking for trouble.

The officer in charge of the patrol, a lieutenant judging by his insignia, heeled his horse into a trot and rode ahead of the others. He came up to the cabin with the others trailing behind him and reined in. With a friendly nod, he touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Good morning, gentlemen. Does one of you own this farm?”

“I do.” Peabody’s voice was flat and hard.

“Then I’d like to ask your permission to water our horses.”

Peabody took one hand off the rifle and jerked a thumb toward the north. “River’s about half a mile that way. Plenty of water there.”

“Oh,” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t know that. I’m not that familiar with the area. We’re obliged to you for the information. We’ll just water our horses at the river.”

“That’s a good idea.” Peabody stood stiffly, both hands tight on the rifle again.

The Yankee officer hesitated, then said, “Sir, you have heard the news, haven’t you?”

“What news?”

Luke had a hunch he knew what the answer was going to be even before the lieutenant spoke.

“The war’s over, sir,” the young officer said. “General Lee offered his surrender to General Grant nearly three weeks ago at a place up in Virginia called Appomattox Courthouse.”

Luke closed his eyes. He’d been right.

And Potter and the others had been right, too, about the Confederacy collapsing. They hadn’t been traitors, after all.

Just murdering, back-shooting rogues.

“The fighting is all over,” the lieutenant went on. “There’s no need for you and your son to worry, sir. We’re all countrymen again.”

Peabody didn’t correct the man about Luke being his son. He just said, “The river’s up yonder.”

The lieutenant nodded. “We’ll be going, then. Good day to both of you, and thank you again.”

The cavalrymen rode around the cabin and headed north. Luke listened to the sound of their hoofbeats fading as Emily came out of the cabin.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” she said.

“About the war being over?” He shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m not. I knew that was how it was going to turn out. Better to have it end before more good men were killed for no reason.”

“Amen to that,” Peabody said.

Luke took the revolver from under the blanket and handed it to Emily. “I guess you can put that away again.”

“All right.” She hesitated, then said, “Luke . . . what are you gonna do now?”

He looked up at her and realized he had no idea.

CHAPTER 16

Luke balanced himself on the crutches, reached into the bag he held, and slung grain onto the ground for the chickens clustering around him. The fowl went after the stuff with their usual frenzied enthusiasm.

He draped the bag’s strap over his shoulder, got a good grip on the crutch handles so he could turn himself around, and stumped back toward the cabin.

Emily came out onto the porch before he got there. “I was gonna feed the chickens,” she told him with a grin.

“No need,” Luke said. “I took care of it.”

“There’s just no stoppin’ you, is there?”

“Not when it’s something I can do.” He changed course, angling toward the side of the house where the big stump they used for splitting firewood stood. The ax leaned against the stump, handle up.

“What are you fixin’ to do now?” Emily asked.

“You said you needed some wood for the stove,” Luke explained.

“I didn’t say you had to split it!”

“I don’t mind.” He reached the stump and propped the right-hand crutch against it. With only a small amount of awkwardness, he picked up a piece of wood from the pile beside the stump and set it upright in the middle. Then he took hold of the ax and lifted it one-handed.

“You’re gonna miss and cut your leg off one of these days,” Emily warned.

“No great loss,” Luke said.

“Unless you bleed to death!”

Luke swung the ax above his head and brought it down in a precise stroke, splitting the cordwood perfectly down the middle. He used the ax to brush the two pieces off the stump, leaned the ax against it, and picked up another piece of wood to split.

Emily blew out her breath and shook her head in exasperation. “You are the most stubborn man I ever saw, Luke Jensen.”

And that was a good thing, Luke thought, otherwise he’d probably be dead. The wound he had suffered a few months earlier would have killed him.

The late summer sun blazed down, and it didn’t take Luke long to work up a sweat. His damp linsey-woolsey shirt clung to his back. He lifted his arm and sleeved beads of perspiration off his face.

When he’d first started shaving himself again, rather than relying on Emily to do it, he’d been shocked at the gaunt, haggard face looking out at him from the mirror. That man looked at least ten years older than he really was, Luke thought.

Since then his features had begun to fill out some, and he thought he looked more like himself. Most of the time, the strain of what he had gone through painted a rather grim expression on his face. When he laughed, though, he didn’t feel quite as ugly. Still ugly, mind you, he told himself, just not as much.

Recently he had stopped shaving his upper lip and let his mustache grow. It gave him a certain amount of dignity, in his opinion, and Emily didn’t seem to mind. How she thought about things had taken on a lot of importance during the months he had spent on the Peabody farm.

She came down from the porch to gather up the chunks of wood he had split. “Breakfast is ready. Come on inside and eat.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice, and she didn’t have to help him up the steps. He made it just fine with the crutches.

He had carved them himself, putting quite a bit of time and effort into it. He’d wanted the crutches to be as comfortable as possible, since it looked like he’d be using them for quite a while. Some of the feeling had started to come back into his legs, enough that he could get around a little with the help of the crutches, but he was still pretty helpless. He didn’t let himself think too much about how long that might go on. He still held out hope that one day his legs would work again, the way they were supposed to.

Because of that, he’d asked Emily to help him exercise the muscles in them. He knew it wasn’t fair to place that extra burden on her, but she didn’t object. He had seen what happened to Clyde Monroe back home. Doing nothing after his injury had made him worse. Luke wasn’t going to give up like that . . . which led right back to that stubbornness Emily had accused him of.

He fed the chickens and gathered eggs and split wood and hoed the vegetable garden and shucked corn. Anything he could do sitting down or balanced on one crutch, he would do. The work put thick slabs of muscle back on his arms and shoulders and back.

He was damned if he was going to be useless. He would die first.

Emily and her grandfather had both asked him if he wanted to send a letter to his family back in Missouri letting them know he was alive. Luke only had to think about it for a second before he shook his head.

After failing the Confederacy and his friends, he didn’t want his pa and Kirby finding out about that. One day, if what he planned came about, he would return home, but not until he had done the job he had set out for himself.

Once his legs worked right again, he was going to track down Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey and kill each and every one of them. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to recover the gold they had stolen—there was no Confederacy to return it to, anyway—but at least he could even the score for what they had done to Remy, Dale, and Edgar.

And to him.

Then and only then, when he had reclaimed at least a vestige of his honor, would he return to his family. Until then it was better to let them think he was dead, even though they would mourn him.

It had to be that way. On his darkest nights, he admitted to himself there was a very strong possibility he would never walk normally again, no matter how much he tried. In that case, he would live out his life on the Peabody farm, unless Emily and her grandfather kicked him out.

The way he and Emily had started to feel about each other, he didn’t think that was likely.

And yet that thought tortured him, too. Emily might be falling in love with him—Lord knew he’d been in love with her pretty much from the moment he first saw her and mistook her for an angel—but was it fair for him to saddle her with a cripple for a husband? He wasn’t even sure he could be a real husband to her, although lately he’d begun to feel some stirrings that told him it might be possible.

Feeling anything below the level of the wound in his back was a good sign. The bullet wound was completely healed. A pale, ragged scar was the only sign of it that remained. Luke hadn’t seen the scar himself, of course, but Emily had described it for him. He could move around now without feeling even a twinge in his back.

He clumped over to the table Emily had set for three people. Setting one of the crutches aside, he gripped his chair and lowered himself into it.

Emily poured coffee for him and set a plate of flapjacks, bacon, and eggs in front of him. They ate fairly well, because the Peabody farm had escaped most of the damage and destruction inflicted by the Yankees when they rampaged through the area a year earlier.

As she sat down opposite Luke, Emily said, “Grampaw told me he’s goin’ to town today, if you need anything.”

The settlement of Dobieville was about five miles down the road. A trading post was closer to the farm, but Linus Peabody refused to do any business there since a Yankee carpetbagger had taken it over a month earlier when the previous owner had been unable to pay his taxes.

Luke shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Unless he can pick me up a new pair of legs.”

Emily frowned across the table at him. “I thought you promised to stop sayin’ things like that.”

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“I know you think you got to walk again, Luke, and I don’t blame you for feelin’ that way, I really don’t. But you don’t have to. Not . . . not for me, anyway. It ain’t gonna change the way I feel about you.”

Suddenly the food in front of him didn’t seem so appetizing. He didn’t want to have this discussion. Of course, it was his own fault for bringing it up.

He looked at the plate. “We don’t need to talk about this. It won’t change anything, anyway.”

His voice sounded harsher than he intended. He didn’t look up at Emily, afraid he would see hurt in her eyes.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s just eat.”

Linus Peabody came in a few minutes later. He’d been in the barn, tending to the mules, the milk cow, and the hogs. If he sensed the tension between Luke and Emily, he had the good sense not to say anything about it as he sat down. ”Did Emily tell you I’m goin’ to town this mornin’, Luke?”

“She did, but there’s nothing I need right now.”

“I was thinkin’ you might want to go with me.”

Luke frowned in surprise. “To Dobieville?”

“Yep. Actually, I thought we might all go. Been stuck here on this farm all summer.”

Luke glanced at Emily and caught a glimpse of excitement on her face.

She hurriedly covered it up. “I don’t need nothin’ in town, Grampaw.”

“Yes, you do. You need to see somebody ’sides a pair of ugly ol’ galoots like me and Luke.”

“Neither of you is ugly,” she protested.

“There’s no point in arguing with the facts,” Luke said with a smile. “Neither of us is going to win any prizes for being good-looking, are we, Linus?”

The old-timer cackled. “The judges’d have to be plumb blind if we did!” Peabody nodded. “So it’s settled. After we eat, we’ll all load up in the wagon and head for town.”

CHAPTER 17

Luke had to have some help doing it, but he managed to climb into the back of the wagon. From there he was able to use his arms to pull himself to the front, just behind the seat. Peabody settled down on the seat next to Emily to handle the team.

Despite what the old man had said, Luke had a hunch there was more to this trip into Dobieville than Peabody let on. He didn’t press the issue, though, as the wagon rolled across fields and along narrow, tree-shaded country lanes toward the settlement.

It was a good test of how well his back actually had healed. The wagon wasn’t in the greatest shape, and its ride was pretty rough, even on level ground. But he didn’t feel any pain in his back, and that was encouraging.

The mules didn’t get in any hurry. The trip to town took more than an hour. Luke was tired by the time they got there, but he still wasn’t hurting.

Dobieville had a wide main street running for several blocks between businesses, along with a couple side streets lined with houses. The steeples of the Baptist and Methodist churches stuck up above the trees on the edge of town. Some of the businesses had been burned when the Yankees came through, but Dobieville had gotten off with less destruction than many Southern settlements.

Several of the businesses that had been burned were being rebuilt, Luke saw as Peabody sent the mules plodding along the street with the wagon rolling slowly behind them. The sounds of hammering and men calling to each other as they worked filled the air.

But Luke sensed something was wrong about what he was hearing, and after a moment he realized what it was. When the workers raised their voices to talk, it wasn’t in the slower, softer drawl of Southerners, but rather the hard, brisk tone of folks from up north.

Those were Yankees rebuilding those businesses.

Carpetbaggers.

He had heard Peabody talking about greedy opportunists from up north swarming in all over the South. He saw for himself what was going on. It wasn’t just the carpenters. Men in derby hats and gaudy tweed suits and cocky grins strolled along the town’s boardwalks, cigars clenched at jaunty angles in their teeth. All Luke had to do was look at them to know they were Yankees.

The true citizens of Dobieville knew it, too. Luke saw the glances filled with resentment, anger, and fear the townsfolk cast toward the newcomers.

Blue-uniformed soldiers lounged here and there. Yankee troopers stood in every block, not necessarily doing anything, but their mere presence was a bitter reminder that the Confederacy had been defeated and the Southern states had been forced back into the union at gunpoint, after the spilling of rivers of blood.

Peabody brought the wagon to a halt in front of Connally’s General Store. He turned on the seat and said to Emily, “Go on inside, gal. I’ll join you in a minute.”

“What about Luke?” she asked.

“I’m all right sitting back here. It’s too much trouble for the two of you to help me down and then back up again.”

“No, it’s not,” she argued. “You came to town so you could see something different from the farm.”

“And so I can.” Luke smiled. “I can see just fine from right where I am.”

“Oh, all right.” Emily climbed down from the wagon. “But if you change your mind, we can get you out of there and you can use your crutches.”

“I know,” Luke assured her.

She still looked a little puzzled, but she went on into the general store. Peabody sighed and turned more on the seat to say quietly, “I wanted a chance to talk to you while Emily ain’t around, Luke.”

“I thought that might be the case. What’s wrong, Linus?”

Peabody let out a disgusted snort. “What’s wrong? Just look around you, son!”

“You’re talking about all the Yankees?”

“Soldiers and carpetbaggers alike. They’ve moved in like a swarm of locusts!”

“What did you expect? We lost the war. They can do whatever they want now.”

“They could treat us with some respect,” Peabody said as fierce anger edged into his voice. “Instead they’ve just bulled their way in, run folks off, took over businesses . . . What you’re lookin’ at, son, is the beginnin’ of something that may turn out to be even worse ’n the war itself.”

“I don’t see how that could be possible.”

“You just hide and watch,” Peabody said. “Them Yankees got the idea they can waltz in, grab what they want for themselves, and grind the rest of the South into dust under their heels. And they’ll laugh at us while they’re doin’ it.”

That was probably right, Luke thought. That was exactly what the carpetbaggers intended to do, and they had the Yankee troops to back them up on it. “Why did you want to show me this?”

“Because there’s gonna come a time when we may have to fight for what’s ours. So far the Yankees ain’t come anywhere near the farm, but one of these days they’re liable to. And I don’t intend to just let ’em take it away from me.”

“You didn’t support the war,” Luke said. “They should leave you alone.”

Peabody waved a gnarled hand. “This ain’t about the war anymore. It’s about greed, pure and simple, and the chance for a bunch of no-good skunks to grab what ain’t theirs.”

“And you want to know if I’ll stand with you against them?” Luke couldn’t keep the dry, acid tone out of his voice.

“I’m just sayin’ you may have to make a choice,” Peabody snapped. “Legs or no legs.”

Luke sighed and nodded. “You’re right, Linus. I’m sorry. I appreciate you bringing me to town today and showing me what we may be facing. It’s always best to know when trouble’s coming.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“And as for whether or not I’ll be with you when that trouble comes . . . you ought to know the answer to that. You saved my life, you and Emily . . .”

“I know how you feel about her, too,” Peabody said. “I’ve seen the way she’s started lookin’ at you lately. I ain’t sayin’ that I like it—”

“I’m not exactly the man you had in mind for your granddaughter. I know that.”

“Maybe not, but you’re a good man, Luke.” Peabody clapped a hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know that, too.” He wrapped the team’s reins around the brake lever. “Now, I’m gonna go and help Emily pick up a few supplies. Sure you’ll be all right out here?”

Luke nodded. “I’ll be all right.”

“Okay.” Peabody jumped down from the wagon and went inside the store.

Luke looked around at the bustling settlement. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the Yankees, he would have said Dobieville was well on its way to recovering from the war already.

Unfortunately, under the surface, the truth was that Dobieville was well on its way to being gutted by the carpetbaggers.

Peabody was worried their greedy reach would extend outside the settlement, Luke mused. The old-timer was probably right about that. Even though the prospect worried Luke, too, he didn’t see what an old man, a girl, and a cripple could do to stop the arrogant outsiders who now held power in the South.

Peabody wanted to fight if the carpetbaggers came for his property, and he wanted Luke to fight with him. If it came down to that, Luke knew he wouldn’t turn his back on the two people who had saved his life. But if that happened, there was a very good chance he and Peabody would wind up dead, leaving Emily alone and defenseless . . .

Or else she would take up arms, and the Yankees would kill her, too.

Maybe the best thing to do, Luke thought suddenly, would be to pack up and leave at the first sign of any Yankees trying to take over the farm. It would mean running from trouble, which stuck in his craw worse than anything. Peabody would probably feel the same, but it might be the only way to save their lives.

The frontier was a big place, with lots of room for folks to settle and start new lives. Luke thought maybe he could even swallow his pride and return home to the Ozarks, taking Emily and her grandfather along with him.

He took a deep breath. No use getting ahead of himself. At the moment, things were all right. Maybe they’d be lucky and it would stay like that.

As he mused, a couple Yankee soldiers came along the boardwalk toward the general store. They stopped and propped their shoulders against one of the posts holding up the awning in front of the store. One of the troopers, a wiry little man with dark hair, glanced at Luke and then looked away, obviously uninterested in him.

The taller, brawnier soldier, with bushy side-whiskers and a thatch of straw-colored hair sticking out from under his forage cap, fastened a cool, appraising stare on Luke.

Keeping an eye on them without drawing attention to himself, Luke tried to ignore them.

A short time later, Emily and her grandfather came out of the store. She was carrying a crate of supplies, while Peabody had a bag of flour slung over his shoulder. As they moved to place the supplies in the back of the wagon, the big trooper straightened from his casual pose.

“Hey, Reb”—he directed the harsh words at Luke—“what kind of man sits by and lets a girl and an old geezer do all the work?”

Peabody turned toward the soldier and snapped, “Who you callin’ an old geezer, sonny?”

Emily put a hand on her grandfather’s arm and asked the soldier, “Just leave us alone, why don’t you?”

“I wasn’t talking to either of you.” The Yankee soldier pointed at Luke. “I was talking to that big strapping specimen of Southern manhood.” A grin stretched across his rough-hewn face. “But I guess he’s like the rest of those Johnny Rebs . . . just a lazy coward.”

Emily forgot about being reasonable. Even as Luke started to say, “No—”, she put herself in the trooper’s face. “Shut your mouth, you big, stupid, Yankee tyrant.”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise. He brought his hand up to slap her and growled, “You foul-mouthed little Rebel slut! I’ll—”

Luke grabbed the crutch from the wagon bed beside him and drove the tip of it into the soldier’s midsection as hard as he could. He put plenty of the strength in his arms and shoulders behind the punch.

The trooper cried out in pain and stumbled back a step, tripping on a loose board in the porch. He sat down hard, gasping for breath, the blow had been so strong.

His companion acted swiftly, unsnapping the holster at his waist and pulling out a revolver. He eared back the hammer as he raised the gun and pointed it at Luke’s face.

CHAPTER 18

Luke knew in that instant how close he was to dying. He had reacted instinctively when Emily was threatened, and it looked like that reaction was going to cost him his life.

But before the little Yankee could pull the trigger, a voice asked sharply, “What’s going on here?”

The soldier’s gaze darted past the wagon toward a man who had come along the street from the other direction. The short Yankee hesitated, licking his lips. “This Reb just attacked Private Packard, Mr. Wolford.”

The newcomer strode past the wagon to confront the soldiers. “It looked to me more like he was defending this young woman. Packard was about to strike her, wasn’t he?”

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but you didn’t hear what she called him.”

“Nor do I care,” Wolford replied. “A man who acts like he’s going to hit a lady deserves whatever he gets. And I’m confident Colonel Morrison would agree with me.” He used the walking stick he carried to point at the bigger soldier. “Now put that gun away, help Private Packard to his feet, and both of you move along.”

The little trooper took a deep breath, obviously reluctant to follow the civilian’s orders. But Luke could tell he was afraid not to do what Wolford said. After a couple seconds the soldier holstered his revolver and turned to extend a hand to his companion. “Come on, Packard. We got things to do.”

Packard had gotten his breath back, but his face was pale. Anger made twin spots of red glow on his cheeks. He brushed aside the other soldier’s hand and climbed to his feet on his own.

“This ain’t any of your business, Wolford—”

“Come on,” the smaller soldier urged. “Let it go.” He got hold of Packard’s sleeve and tried to drag him away.

Packard didn’t want to, that much was clear. He glared darkly at Luke, who saw a promise in the man’s eyes that the skirmish wasn’t over. But the soldier turned and stalked off along the boardwalk, his shorter compatriot hurrying to keep up with him.

Wolford turned to Luke, Emily, and Peabody and smiled ingratiatingly. “I’m sorry about that unpleasantness. Unfortunately, too many soldiers haven’t gotten it through their heads yet that the war is over.” He put out a hand to Peabody. “Vincent Wolford.”

The man’s accent marked him as being from somewhere in New England. He was about forty, with a lean face, dark hair, and thick, salt-and-pepper side-whiskers. His suit was a subdued blue, and he wore a black beaver hat.

Wolford wasn’t just a carpetbagger, Luke thought. He was a boss carpetbagger.

Peabody hesitated, clearly not wanting to shake hands with any Yankee, but Wolford had kept the little soldier from shooting Luke. After a moment, he took Wolford’s hand and clasped it briefly. “Linus Peabody.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Peabody.” Wolford smiled at Emily. “And this is your granddaughter, I expect? I can see the resemblance.”

“My name’s Emily. I ain’t much on shakin’ hands with Yankees, though.”

Wolford smiled. “That’s all right, Miss Peabody. A perfectly understandable attitude, considering all the upheavals that have taken place. Believe me, I know what you’re going through.”

Luke didn’t believe that for a second. Wolford had the smooth look of a man who had always been rich and gotten whatever he wanted.

“Or perhaps it’s not Miss Peabody,” Wolford went on as he turned to Luke. “Are you the lady’s husband, sir?”

“That’s Luke—”

“Luke Smith. I’m a friend of the family, that’s all.”

“I see.” Wolford glanced at Luke’s legs and the crutch still in his hand. “You were wounded in the war?”

“That’s right.”

“A terrible shame.”

Luke was aware that Emily and her grandfather were looking at him curiously, no doubt wondering why he had given Wolford a false name. Without much thought, it had popped out of his mouth. He’d been brooding a lot lately—about the stolen gold and the deaths of his friends—and hated to think the name Jensen would ever be linked to such a shameful failure. That probably had something to do with it.

And the fact he instinctively didn’t trust Vincent Wolford.

“Colonel Morrison, the commander of the troops in this area, is a good friend of mine,” Wolford went on. “I’ll have a word with him and ask if he could order his men to treat the citizens with a bit more respect. After all, we’re all partners now in rebuilding the South. If we’re going to work together, we should get along, shouldn’t we?”

“We don’t want trouble with anybody,” Peabody said, which didn’t really answer Wolford’s rhetorical question.

“Of course not.” The man smiled and lifted a hand to the brim of his beaver hat. “Well, good day to you folks.”

As Wolford strolled away, Peabody climbed quickly to the wagon seat and told Emily, “Get on the wagon, girl. We’re gettin’ outta here.”

The old-timer turned the vehicle around and got the mules headed back toward the farm. Peabody muttered under his breath about how they shouldn’t have come to Dobieville today in the first place.

Emily turned around to lean over the back of the seat. “You shouldn’t have got mixed up in that, Luke. That big, dumb Yankee never would’ve been able to hit me. I’m too fast for the likes of him.”

Luke shifted on the wagon bed. “Maybe so, but it’s bad enough I had to sit by while you and Linus loaded the supplies. You can’t expect me to do nothing while that soldier attacked you.”

“You almost got yourself killed, that’s what you did.”

Luke couldn’t argue with that.

“If that slick-talkin’ Yankee carpetbagger hadn’t come along, that mean little varmint would’ve blowed your head off.”

“More than likely,” Luke admitted with a sigh.

“And what was that business about callin’ yourself Smith?” Peabody asked. “Have you been lyin’ to us all along, son? Are you some sort of criminal on the run from the law?”

“No,” Luke answered without hesitation. “Absolutely not. I may not have told you quite everything, Linus, but I give you my word, nobody’s looking for me, lawman or otherwise.”

Peabody nodded. “Reckon I can accept that. Just like I can accept it’s your business what you call yourself.”

“Well, it may take me some gettin’ used to, after callin’ you Jensen all this time.” Emily paused. “Just don’t get yourself killed on account of me, Luke Smith or Jensen or whatever the hell name you want to use.”

Luke laughed. “I’ll certainly try not to.”

When they got back to the farm, Emily and her grandfather helped Luke down from the wagon before they unloaded the supplies. He stood at the back of the vehicle on his crutches and said, “If you want to drape that flour sack over my shoulder, Linus, I might be able to carry it in.”

“There ain’t no need of that,” Peabody said. “You don’t have to prove anything to us, Luke.”

“That’s right.” Emily turned away from the tailgate with the crate in her hands. “You already do plenty to help out around—

Oh!” she cried out as the heavy crate slipped from her grasp and fell on Luke’s right foot.

Luke took a sharp breath.

“Hell and damnation!” Emily exclaimed. “Oh, Luke, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to drop that on you. It must’ve—”

He smiled as she stopped short in what she was saying. “Must have hurt? Only a little. That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.”

Looking flustered, Emily picked up the crate. “Well, when we get inside, I want to take a look at your foot anyway. You could be hurt and not even know it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Luke said.

A few minutes later, he was sitting in the rocking chair. Emily knelt in front of him and took off his boot and sock. There was a red mark on the top of his foot where the crate had landed, but no blood. Emily poked around on the spot.

Luke blinked.

“Doesn’t feel like any bones are broken.” Without looking up, she pulled his sock back onto the foot. “You were lucky.”

“That’s me. Lucky Luke Smith.”

Emily snorted.

* * *

After they ate a hasty midday meal, Emily and Peabody went out to work in the fields, leaving Luke sitting in the rocker. When he was sure they were gone, he put his hands on his thighs and squeezed as hard as he could, working the muscles. He had succeeded in covering up his reaction so Emily and her grandfather hadn’t noticed it, but it had hurt like blazes when that crate fell on his foot, the most sensation he had felt in one of his feet for a long time. And it had been repeated when Emily poked at the site of the injury.

It excited him as no pain ever had.

He stared at his legs, willing them with every fiber of his being to move, but all he could summon up were a few twitches.

He slumped back in the rocking chair, suddenly breathless and exhausted. That might be the most my legs will ever move, he told himself. But his heart soared inside him, anyway. For the first time in months he had real hope again.

Hope that someday he might be able to have the things he most wanted . . .

Emily.

And vengeance.

CHAPTER 19

Over the next few days, Luke struggled against the impatience he felt as he looked for another sign that his legs might be improving. Any time he was alone at the cabin, he moved them as much as he could, sometimes unconsciously straining his other muscles until he was breathing hard and sweat popped out on his face. He rubbed his legs and then pounded on them in frustration when they failed to respond as much as he wanted them to.

One day he lifted himself out of the chair with his crutches, then let them fall to the sides in the hope he could force himself to stand.

He fell on his face.

And struggled hard to push himself up with the crutches to get back in the chair.

He didn’t give up. He worked at it every day and would continue as long as it took.

He didn’t say a word about his efforts to Emily or her grandfather. If he failed—again—he didn’t want them to know about it. There would be time enough later to fill them in if he was successful in learning to walk again.

Emily continued to exercise the muscles in his legs, massaging and working them back and forth.

Several days after his fall she noticed a change. “It may be my imagination, Luke, but it seems to me like your legs are getting stronger rather than weaker.”

“Really? Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, real good. I knew it was just a matter of time before you started healin’ up.”

He thought she was just trying to be encouraging, but maybe she was more right than she knew. Whenever Emily and her grandfather weren’t around and Luke was on his crutches, he let more of the weight of his body rest on his legs.

At first they had buckled, but as the days went on he was able to stiffen them and partially support himself more than he could before. He still didn’t say anything to Emily or her grandfather. Hope and resolve filled him, but he was wary.

One evening while Emily was inside cleaning up after supper, Luke sat in the rocker on the porch and the old man sat on the steps. Peabody filled his pipe and lit it, then said quietly enough that Emily wouldn’t overhear, “I spotted some fellas on horseback watchin’ the place today.”

Luke tensed, hearing the worry in the old-timer’s voice. “Soldiers?”

“Nope. Civilians. I didn’t get a very good look at ’em, but I could tell that much.”

“What do you reckon they wanted?”

Peabody shook his head. “Don’t know, but Bud Harkness come by today and talked to me. Bud’s got the next farm over. He says there’s some problem with the taxes and he might lose his place.”

“Didn’t he pay them?”

“He did . . . but the judge the Yankees put in charge of such things says that Bud didn’t pay enough. It’s a blamed lie . . . but he’s a judge.”

“What’s this fellow Harkness going to do?” Luke asked.

“What can he do? He can stay and fight, or he can leave.” Peabody puffed on the pipe for a second or two in silence, then went on. “Bud’s got five kids and another on the way. He can’t afford to get himself killed.”

“So he’s going to pack up and leave?”

“I expect so. That’s the smart thing to do.”

“If they’re after his place . . .”

“This one’s next in line,” Peabody said, his voice heavy. “That’s who I think was watchin’ us today. Somebody who works for the varmint who’s got his eye on this place.”

“You happen to know who that is?”

Peabody turned his head to look at Luke in the fading light.

“Wolford.”

The answer didn’t surprise Luke. Vincent Wolford had stepped in to help them that day in Dobieville when they’d had the trouble with the soldiers, but he had seen through the man’s slick façade to the predator underneath. Weighing his words carefully, Luke said, “Maybe Harkness has the right idea. There’s Emily to think of—”

“You mean you think we should run, too?” Peabody snapped. “That ain’t the way you sounded the last time we talked about this, son.”

“I know. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to Emily.”

“You think I do? But you got to remember this . . . gettin’ her to leave wouldn’t be easy. This land . . . well, look at it this way. When her pa and her brothers went off to fight, they figured they were doin’ it to protect our home. This land. Emily still sees it the same way. She’ll feel like she has to defend it, too, just like they did.”

Luke understood that. He felt the same way about the Jensen farm in Missouri. So would his pa and Kirby.

There was no good answer. None at all.

Emily appeared in the doorway behind them, drying her hands on a cloth. “What are the two of you talkin’ about so serious-like?”

“Who says we’re talkin’ serious?” her grandfather said. “I was just tellin’ Luke a joke.”

“I didn’t hear anybody laughin’.”

“That’s because I ain’t got to the funny part yet.” Peabody turned to Luke. “So then the farmer says, ‘You’re all mixed up, mister. That there’s my prize hog.’” He slapped a hand on his thigh and hooted with laughter.

Luke threw back his head and laughed, too, even though on the inside he had seldom felt grimmer.

* * *

Using the crutches, Luke lifted himself from the chair and stood beside the table. He took a deep breath and let go of the crutches, allowing them to fall to the sides like he had done before. As they thumped on the floor, he stood with his hands spread, trying to balance himself.

He didn’t fall immediately. He felt the weight on his legs, felt the muscles struggling to support him. But they began to give out, and he had to slap his palms down on the table to hold himself up. Even that was progress, he thought as his pulse pounded in his head. He hadn’t collapsed. Yes, he was leaning on the table, but he was still standing.

A footstep sounded on the porch.

Luke turned his head toward the door, and as he did so, his legs folded up underneath him. He tried to catch himself on the table, but wound up lying on the floor between the chair and the table.

Emily came in and saw him there. “Damn it all to—” She stopped herself. She had been trying to stop cursing so much lately.

He thought maybe she had decided it wasn’t ladylike . . . as if acting more like a lady might have become more important to her.

She rushed over to him and bent to take hold of him. “Lord have mercy, Luke, what happened? How did you manage to fall?”

“Don’t worry about that,” he snapped, furious at himself for letting her distract him. “Just help me up.”

He saw the quick flash of hurt in her eyes and wished he could call back the sharp words, but they were already out there. He couldn’t do a thing about them except add in a softer tone, “Please, Emily.”

As she lifted him, he reached up and grabbed hold of the table. With it to support him, she was able to get him back into the chair.

“I’ll pick up your crutches.”

He held out a hand to stop her. “I can get them. Thank you.”

She looked at him with a slight frown. “Were you trying to walk, Luke? I’ve told you, I don’t care about that, not for me. I want it for you, but it’s not going to make any difference how I feel—”

“Of course it makes a difference. It’s bound to.” Luke frowned at her.

“No,” she said as she leaned closer to him. “I swear to you, it doesn’t. I’ll prove it to you.”

Before he could stop her, she lowered herself onto his lap, her arms clasped around his neck, and her mouth pressed hungrily to his.

Luke bit back a groan of mingled despair and desire. His arms went around her. She was such a little bit of a thing, yet the curves of her body were those of a woman. Her lips worked urgently against his, their taste sweet and hot.

As he held her and kissed her, he felt something, no doubt about that.

She did too. Pulling back slightly, her eyes widened. He was about to apologize, but a pleased glow sprang to life in her eyes. “See, Luke,” she whispered. “I told you it didn’t matter.”

She kissed him again, then slid out of his arms and stood up.

“Grampaw might be comin’ in any time, so we’ll save our sparkin’ for later.”

Luke nodded. After everything Linus Peabody had done for him, he didn’t want to offend the old-timer.

Peabody hurried in a short time later, all right, as Emily had predicted. He wore a worried expression on his face, and it quickly became obvious the last thing on his mind was who was sparking his granddaughter. “There’s a buggy and some riders comin’.” He reached for the rifle hanging on the wall near the door.

“Yankee soldiers again?” Emily asked, her body tensing as she stood next to the stove where she had started supper.

Peabody shook his head as he checked to make sure the rifle was loaded.

“Nope. It’s that fella Wolford, and unless I miss my guess, the men he’s got with him are hired guns.”

CHAPTER 20

“Get my revolver,” Luke told Emily.

“What’re you thinkin’ about doin’?” She looked at her grandfather. “What are the both of you thinkin’ about doin’?”

“Nothin’ we don’t have to,” Peabody told her. “Could be Wolford just wants to talk. If he does, I’ll listen to him. Won’t do him any good, but I’ll listen.”

“Is this about the folks who have been losin’ their farms to the carpetbaggers?”

Peabody frowned. “You know about that?”

“How the hell could I not know about it?” Emily blurted out. “It’s the only thing folks all over this part of the country are talkin’ about!”

“I need my revolver,” Luke said again. He was trying to stay calm, but the same tense feelings he had experienced before every battle were going through him. He might soon be fighting for his life, and the lives of Emily and her grandfather as well.

But that wasn’t exactly likely, he told himself, not just yet, anyway. From what Peabody had said about Wolford’s attempt to take over Bud Harkness’s farm, the carpetbagger was using quasi-legal means in his land grabs, relying on corrupt judges and what passed for the law under Yankee occupation.

Wolford would have hired guns in reserve, though, and if he couldn’t get what he wanted peacefully, he would use force to take it. Luke had no doubt about that.

He looked intently at Emily until she sighed and went to the cabinet where the Griswold and Gunnison revolver was kept. She took it out and brought it over to Luke. “I can use this gun.”

He held out his hand. “You need to stay inside.”

A quick flash of anger lit up her eyes. “Luke—”

“Luke’s right,” Peabody said. “You stay in the house, girl, like you did when the Yankees came.”

“Men!” she said in exasperation. “You’re the most stubborn critters on God’s green earth!”

Luke stuck the revolver in the pocket of his overalls and grasped his crutches. “That’s because we’re raised by women to be that way.” With a smile, he lifted himself to his feet.

She still looked mad, but rested a hand on his arm for a second. “Don’t start trouble with them.”

“I don’t intend to start trouble with anybody,” Luke assured her. He didn’t say anything about finishing it, if things came down to that. He looked out through the door Peabody had left open. “Here they come.”

“Be careful,” Emily whispered to Luke. “We just . . .”

She didn’t finish, but he knew what she meant. They had just admitted how they felt about each other. She didn’t want him going and getting himself killed.

Luke didn’t want that, either. He nodded to show her he understood as much.

Peabody went out onto the porch. Luke followed him, moving fairly easily on the crutches. He wished he could have walked out there bold as brass, but that was something for the future if his legs continued to improve.

With a clatter of hoofbeats and wheels, Vincent Wolford drove his buggy up to the cabin and brought the vehicle to a halt, reining in the two fine black horses pulling it. Luke found himself wondering who those horses used to belong to, and how Wolford had gotten his hands on them. He was willing to bet the carpetbagger hadn’t bought them fair and square.

Three men on horseback accompanied Wolford. As they reined in, Luke studied them. Back home he had seen Jayhawkers from Kansas on several occasions, and these men reminded him of those ruthless guerrillas.

One wore a derby and a flashy eastern suit. He was big, with broad shoulders and a rough-hewn face dominated by a rusty handlebar mustache. His hands were huge, with knobby knuckles broken more than once in various brawls. He wasn’t carrying a gun that was visible, but Luke figured there was probably a revolver in a shoulder holster under that tweed coat.

The other two riders were dressed more like frontiersmen in boots, work clothes, and broad-brimmed hats. They wore their guns out in the open, carrying holstered pistols on their hips. They had rugged, hard-planed faces and cold eyes.

Luke knew all three men were probably killers, paid by Vincent Wolford to enforce his will and help him take what he wanted. They would be fast on the draw. If Linus Peabody raised his rifle, one or more of the gunmen would drill him before he got a shot off.

Luke was pretty handy with a gun, but knew he wasn’t a match for those three. Not with the Griswold and Gunnison stuck in his pocket. If he had a regular gun rig and a pair of revolvers, he might manage to down a couple, maybe all three, but they would get lead in him, too.

It wasn’t going to come to that. He couldn’t allow the carpetbaggers to kill him and Peabody, leaving Emily at their mercy.

“Take it easy,” he said under his breath to Peabody. “Stay calm.”

The old man nodded, but the tense way he stood and the urgency with which he gripped the rifle told a different story. He was ready to fight. He wanted to fight.

Luke levered himself forward on his crutches, putting himself between Peabody and the buggy. He nodded to Wolford. “Howdy. What brings you out here from town?”

“Mr. Smith, isn’t it?” Wolford asked with that phony smile of his, without getting down from the buggy. “I came to speak with Mr. Peabody there. I have a business proposition for him.”

Peabody moved up even with Luke. “I ain’t interested in doin’ business with the likes of you.”

“You should hear me out,” Wolford said. “That’s just a smart rule of thumb. Always listen to the other fellow’s proposal. You never know when he might offer something you want.”

Peabody glared darkly at the visitors, but after a moment he nodded. “I’ll listen. I don’t reckon it’s very likely you got anything I want, though.”

“You might be surprised. What I’m proposing, Mr. Peabody, is that I take this farm off your hands for a very reasonable price.”

“Why in blazes would I want to sell?” Peabody snapped.

“Well, the market for cotton, tobacco, and other crops is very depressed right now. You can’t hope to make very much for them.”

“We’ll get by,” the old man said.

“Yes, perhaps, but you can do even better somewhere else. I hear people are having phenomenal success migrating to the frontier. There are millions of acres out there just ripe for the taking.”

“This is my home. I’ve lived on this land all my life, and my pa lived here before me. I intend to stay until the Good Lord calls me home.”

Wolford’s smile didn’t budge, but Luke thought he saw impatience growing in the man’s eyes.

“You can do that,” Wolford said, “but you’d still be wise to sell out to me. If you don’t want to leave, you can always stay and work the land on shares.”

“Why in the Sam Hill would I want to do that?”

“You wouldn’t have all the worries of dealing with the new government. I’d handle all that. You could just work the land the way you always have.”

“While you rake in all the profits?” Peabody asked.

“Not all of it. You’d still get by, as you put it.” Wolford’s voice finally hardened as he went on. “You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Peabody, that things have changed around here. It’s not the same as it was before the war, and it never will be again. Different people are running things now. I happen to be well acquainted with Colonel Morrison and Judge Blevins, and although I may be speaking out of turn here, I know they’re going through all the records and uncovering a number of cases where insufficient taxes were paid on properties in this area.”

“You mean you’re gonna grab folks’ land by claimin’ they owe taxes they really don’t,” Peabody said.

The big eastern tough in the derby glared and edged his horse forward. “Don’t you talk to Mr. Wolford like that, you old Rebel,” he warned.

Wolford lifted a hand. “Take it easy, Joe. I’m sure Mr. Peabody didn’t mean to cast any aspersions.”

“What I’ll cast is you offa my land,” Peabody said. “I paid my taxes, and can’t nobody say otherwise!”

“Yes, but you paid them to the Confederates who were in charge here at the time.” Wolford shook his head as if he were genuinely regretful. “There’s no way of knowing where all that money went, but it isn’t in the county’s coffers like it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, in order to fund the new government, a new taxation schedule will have to be put in place—”

“Why don’t you call it what it is?” Peabody broke in. “Stealin’, plain and simple!”

“I’m just trying to help.” Wolford leaned over slightly on the buggy seat to look past Luke and Peabody. “Isn’t that your granddaughter I see just inside the door?” He raised a hand to his hat. “Good day to you, Miss Peabody. You’re looking as lovely as ever.”

“You leave Emily outta this—” Peabody began, but she stepped onto the porch and confronted Wolford and his gunmen, too.

“We don’t want your so-called help, mister.” Her eyes blazed with fury.

She counseled restraint, Luke thought, but her emotions got the better of her and she couldn’t practice what she preached.

“You’d better turn that buggy around and get off our land, right now!”

“Or what? An old man and a cripple will run us off?” The gunman leaned over in his saddle and spat. “I don’t think so.”

“Please, Howell, there’s no need for unpleasantness.” Wolford smiled at Emily again. “I think if you’d just give me a chance, Miss Peabody, you and I could be good friends. If you were to help persuade your grandfather to be reasonable, why, I can see all sorts of benefits in it for you. A girl as beautiful as you should have some of the finer things in life, the sort of things a man like me could give you—”

“So I could be some sort of backwoods harlot for you?” Emily turned toward her grandfather and reached for the rifle. “Gimme that gun.”

Luke saw the three hired killers grow tense in their saddles and knew the situation was teetering perilously close to violence. Under the circumstances, the outcome of that wouldn’t be good for him and his friends.

He moved between the Peabodys and the unwelcome visitors and said in a loud, hard voice, “That’s enough.”

“Do you speak for these people, Mr. Smith?” Wolford asked with a sneer.

“I speak for myself, and this is what I’ve got to say, Wolford.” Luke looked right into the man’s eyes. He didn’t like taking his attention off the others, but knew they wouldn’t act unless Wolford ordered them to. “If there’s trouble here today, you’ll be sorry. I’ll see to that personally.”

“That’s mighty big talk for a man on crutches.” The eastern tough called Joe sneered.

Luke let go of the right-hand crutch, letting it fall behind him, and moved his hand so it wasn’t far from the butt of the revolver sticking out of his pocket. “I only need one to balance on,” he told Wolford, making it clear as he could. If any gunplay broke out, Luke was going to draw that revolver and kill Wolford, no matter what else happened. He might die, and Emily and her grandfather probably would, too, but Wolford would die first.

Luke was going to see to that.

Reading the deadly message in Luke’s steady gaze, fear flared in the carpetbagger’s eyes. An instant later, it was replaced by smoldering anger.

But the fear was still there, underneath, and Luke knew it. “All right,” Wolford snapped. “I was just trying to be generous. I thought perhaps we could consider ourselves friends and neighbors, Mr. Peabody. But if you’d rather this . . . this unreconstructed Rebel speak for you—”

“Smith’s right,” Peabody said. “We’ve heard enough. You and your boys need to git.”

Wolford lifted the reins. “We’ll be going, then. Perhaps I was wrong, Mr. Peabody. Perhaps you won’t lose your farm”—he paused—“but don’t count on it.”

With that, he turned the team and sent the buggy rolling away from the cabin. The three gunmen lingered a moment, giving Luke hard, murderous stares before they wheeled their horses and followed Wolford.

“I ain’t countin’ on nothin’,” Peabody said, “except that this trouble ain’t over.”

Luke knew the old-timer was right about that.

CHAPTER 21

Wolford had been so angry when he drove away Luke wouldn’t have been surprised if problems started cropping up right away. But several days passed with no sign of the carpetbagger or his hired guns.

Linus Peabody reported the Harkness family on the neighboring farm had packed up and moved away, abandoning the place because they couldn’t pay the exorbitant taxes being demanded by the Reconstruction government. Another worried neighbor had come by the farm and told Peabody about it, adding that the sheriff was going to auction off the Harkness farm in Dobieville on Saturday.

Luke knew Vincent Wolford would win that auction at a rock-bottom price. And he would probably get some of the money back from the sheriff and the judge in the form of a kickback.

The idea of Emily going out to work in the fields with her grandfather worried Luke. If Wolford’s gunnies showed up, intent on causing trouble, Peabody wouldn’t be able to protect her. In his current condition, Luke couldn’t watch over them, so he made up his mind the best thing for him to do was improve as much and as quickly as he could.

With that determination goading him on, he worked with his legs for long hours each day while Emily and her grandfather were gone. He put more and more weight on his own muscles, forcing them to move and carry him, not just support him.

Back and forth across the cabin’s main room he shuffled endlessly, using the crutches. Eventually he was able to take a step, then several steps, without touching the floor with the crutches, although he held them ready to catch himself if he fell.

Those efforts made his legs ache almost intolerably, but he welcomed the pain, even embraced it. To have his legs hurt was so much better than to have them feel nothing at all.

By the time a week had passed since Wolford and his gunmen had shown up at the farm, Luke was able to take actual steps as he walked across the room, no longer sliding his feet in a shuffling manner. He left the crutches behind and walked on his own, something that had seemed utterly impossible a few months ago. His gait was slow and halting, to be sure, and he told himself with a wry smile that he was a long way from being able to dance a jig, but he was getting there.

He was getting there, all right, and it was the best pain he had ever felt, although he sometimes had to bite his lip to keep from crying out when Emily massaged his legs.

It wasn’t long before she noticed the change in his legs. “These muscles are definitely harder and stronger than they were. You’re gonna walk again one of these days, Luke. You just wait and see.”

“Thanks to you, I am,” he told her. Without the way she had kept him going through his darkest days and nights, and without the determination his fear for her safety gave him, he might not have ever walked again. Soon he was going to be ready to reveal his secret to her.

A little later, when Peabody caught a moment alone with him, the old-timer said, “I spotted them fellas who work for Wolford watchin’ the place again today.”

Luke hated to hear that, but he wasn’t surprised. He had known better than to hope Wolford would give up on getting his hands on the farm. Even worse was knowing the man wanted to get his hands on Emily. He had hinted as much when he visited the farm, and Luke had seen the unmistakable lust in the carpetbagger’s eyes when Wolford looked at her.

“Why don’t I start going out to the fields with you and Emily during the day?” Luke had discarded that idea a week earlier but was beginning to think it might work.

“On your crutches?” Peabody asked with a frown.

“No, you can help me climb into the wagon, and I’ll sit up there and keep an eye on things while you’re working. We can take along the rifle and my revolver. I can handle a gun just fine.”

Peabody scratched his stubbly jaw and shrugged. “That ain’t a bad idea.”

The next day they put it into practice, even though Emily was insistent on knowing why Luke was coming with them.

“Wolford’s men have been watchin’ us again,” Peabody admitted.

“Oh, them? Shoot, I saw them before. They don’t scare me.”

“Well, they scare me, and they ought to scare you, too,” Peabody insisted. “They’re bad men, and the fella they work for is even worse. We got trouble on the horizon.”

It was even closer than they suspected.

With help from Peabody and Emily, Luke climbed to the wagon seat and they went out to the fields. He wished he could help them harvest the late summer corn crop. Unfortunately, his legs weren’t yet steady enough. Instead, he scanned the surrounding countryside for any sign of Wolford’s men without spotting them.

The sound of shots made Emily cry out in alarm and Luke twist around on the seat to peer toward the cabin.

The shots continued from that direction as Emily and Peabody dropped what they were doing and ran to the wagon. Peabody scrambled up to the seat and jerked the reins loose from the brake lever while Emily practically threw herself into the back. Even the normally stubborn mules sensed something was wrong. They broke into a run as Peabody headed them toward the cabin.

Breathing hard, Emily leaned over the back of the seat between the two men. “What are they doin’?” she asked anxiously. “What’s all that shootin’ about?”

“We’ll know in a minute.” Luke gripped the rifle tightly. It was only a single-shot weapon, but the revolver in his pocket was fully loaded.

The shooting stopped before they came in sight of the cabin. As they did, Luke caught a glimpse of several riders galloping away from the place. They were already too far off for him to make out any details, but he was willing to bet they were the three hired guns who worked for Vincent Wolford.

“No!” Emily cried as her grandfather wheeled the wagon into the open area between the cabin and the barn. Limp, bloody bundles of feathers were scattered around on the ground. The chickens had been blasted to pieces. In the pen over by the barn, the hogs lay motionless in the mud.

Emily leaped out of the wagon and ran into the barn. When she came back a moment later, tears were running down her cheeks. “They killed the milk cow, too. Looks like they just shot everything that moved.”

“Why in blazes would they do that?” Peabody asked furiously. “It aggravates the hell out of me, but losin’ those animals ain’t enough to ruin the farm.”

“This is just the opening gambit,” Luke said. “Think of it as a warning. Wolford wants to let you know it’ll get a lot worse if you don’t give him what he wants.”

“Never! I’m goin’ to town and swearin’ out a complaint against the varmints! The sheriff’s got to do somethin’. He’s supposed to uphold the law around here.”

“The sheriff works for Wolford and that judge of his and the rest of the Yankees,” Emily said bitterly. “He’s not gonna do anything, Grampaw.”

“We don’t know that. If nobody ever speaks up, nothin’ will change around here!”

The old-timer was right about that, Luke supposed. But like Emily, he didn’t think complaining to the law would do any good. They would never know if they didn’t try, though. “We’ll all go to Dobieville. Maybe round up some of your friends and neighbors who’ve had trouble with the carpetbaggers and take them with you. If more people are speaking up, the men in charge will have a harder time ignoring them.”

Peabody nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

“Not as good an idea as goin’ to town and shootin’ that snake Wolford for tellin’ his men to do this,” Emily said.

It might come to that, Luke thought, but we have to try reason first . . . then bullets.

Peabody spent the rest of the day visiting his neighbors and putting together a delegation to complain to the sheriff in Dobieville. The killing of his livestock wasn’t the first such outrage in the area. Barns had burned down mysteriously, crops had been trampled on dark nights, wells had been fouled, and cattle had been run off.

Nor would that harassment stop, Luke thought. In fact, he expected it to escalate into outright violence in fairly short order. Wolford and the other carpetbaggers were not patient men.

* * *

The farmers rendezvoused outside of town and rode in on mules and in wagons and buggies. Some of them walked. A few had brought their wives and children with them, something Luke thought probably wasn’t wise. A group about forty strong converged on the sheriff’s office.

Their arrival in town stirred up enough of a commotion that the lawman heard them coming. He stepped out onto the porch of his office to wait for them. He was a middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and a mustache. A gun belt was strapped around his waist, and he carried a shotgun in addition to the holstered revolver.

“Fella’s name is Royce Wilkes,” Peabody explained to Luke as they approached in the wagon. “Used to be a deputy here, but he was too fond of corn liquor. The old sheriff ran him off. When the war was over, the Yankees put him back in office and gave him the sheriff’s job. He’s local, but he’s in the back pocket of them no-good carpetbaggers.”

Wilkes had the shotgun cradled in his left arm. He held up his right hand for silence and called, “All right, what the devil’s goin’ on here?”

Everyone in the group turned to look at Linus Peabody. He had talked them into coming, and they regarded him as their spokesman.

“Sheriff, we’re all here to lodge complaints against Vincent Wolford and those fellas who work for him,” Peabody said. “I beg pardon of the ladies in earshot of my voice, but Wolford’s men have been raisin’ hell hereabouts, and it’s gotta stop.”

“You know for a fact that what you’re sayin’ is true, Linus?” Wilkes asked.

“I do,” Peabody replied with a forceful nod. “They came out to my place yesterday and shot all my chickens and hogs and my milk cow. We seen ’em ridin’ off after they done it.”

Luke and Emily nodded. In reality the riders had been too far away for a positive identification, but there was no question in Luke’s mind that Wolford’s men were responsible.

“Well, that’s a mighty serious charge,” Wilkes said. Another man in the crowd said, “That ain’t all they’ve done. My barn burned down last week, and I know good and well somebody set that fire. I rode into town and told you all about it, Royce.”

“You did,” Wilkes said, “but you also told me you didn’t see who done it.”

“It had to be Wolford’s men! You know that!”

“I’m a lawman,” Wilkes boasted, his chest puffing out pompously. “I got to have proof. And somebody thinkin’ they saw something ain’t proof.”

“Are you callin’ us liars?” Peabody demanded.

“I’m sayin’ maybe you were mistaken.”

Luke suggested, “Why don’t you at least ask Wolford about it? See if he can account for the whereabouts of his men yesterday when Mr. Peabody’s livestock was being slaughtered.”

Wilkes shook his head stubbornly. “I ain’t gonna bother an important man like Mr. Wolford—”

“It’s no bother,” a new voice said.

Everyone swung around to look. The crowd parted, and Vincent Wolford himself sauntered up to the porch.

“I heard there was a gathering of some sort and decided to come see for myself what it was about,” Wolford went on. “I’d be glad to answer any questions you have for me, Sheriff.”

“I don’t have any questions,” Wilkes said.

“I do,” Peabody snapped. “Did you send your men to kill my livestock, mister?”

Wolford gave a solemn shake of his head. “Of course not, Mr. Peabody. Why in the world would I do a thing like that?”

“To try to run me off so you can grab my land!”

“I wanted to make you a fair offer for your land, but you wouldn’t even consider it,” Wolford said. “As far as I’m concerned, our business is over.”

“Where were your men yesterday morning?” Luke asked.

“Burnett, Howell, and Prentice?” Wolford shrugged.

“I’m not sure. I don’t keep track of their whereabouts every hour of the day. As long as they do the jobs I give them, that’s all I really care about.”

“Did you give them any jobs yesterday?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t.” Wolford smiled. “I didn’t even speak to them. So you see, even if there was anything to these ludicrous accusations—and I assure you, there isn’t—I can’t be held responsible for them.”

Wilkes nodded. “Looks like that clears it all up. Sorry to bother you, Mr. Wolford.”

“Oh, it’s no bother, Sheriff, I assure you. All I want to do is carry on my business and get along with my neighbors.”

Wilkes turned back to the farmers. “You’ve said your piece, now it’s time for all of you to go back home and stop botherin’ folks.”

“Are you runnin’ us out of town?” Peabody asked. “Don’t we still have a right to go where we please?”

“No, you don’t,” Wilkes snapped. “Gatherin’ up in mobs like this is against the law. So if you don’t break it up and leave, it’ll be my duty to arrest you . . . and I’ll get the soldiers to help me, if I need to.”

“You’d better do what he says, Linus,” Luke told the old-timer.

“You mean let them get away with it?” Emily asked.

“Getting arrested isn’t going to help anything.”

Peabody scowled darkly, but he said, “All right, we’ll go. But this ain’t over, Sheriff. We’ll get justice somehow.”

“You step out of line and you’ll be sorry,” Wilkes warned.

With a lot of angry muttering, the crowd turned to leave town. As the wagon rolled past the last buildings, Emily said, “Like I told you, nothin’s gonna change.”

“At least Wolford knows we’re on to him,” Peabody said. “He’s the one who’s really to blame for everything.”

“And all he’s gonna do is laugh at us,” Emily said as her shoulders slumped in despair.

If that’s all that happens, Luke thought, then they might be lucky. Wolford’s smooth façade had never budged, but he had to be angry that the farmers had banded together to complain about his tactics. Luke wouldn’t be at all surprised if he decided to teach them a lesson.

And if he did, it would be a painful one. Luke was sure of that.

CHAPTER 22

Emily was cool toward Luke on the ride back to the farm and for the rest of the day. He wasn’t sure why she was upset with him, unless it was because he had talked her grandfather out of setting off a showdown in town. Maybe she didn’t understand he didn’t want anything to happen to her . . . or maybe she did, and that just made her angrier.

Whatever the reason, she didn’t have much to say to him around her grandfather, and they didn’t get a chance to talk alone. Luke turned in knowing nothing was settled and the situation was likely to get worse before it got better . . . if it ever did.

Sometime during the night he came awake instantly, smelling smoke. It was too strong to be coming from the fireplace or the stove. He sat up. No lights burned inside the cabin, but a flickering red glow came through the cracks around the front door and through the thin curtains hung over the windows.

The barn was on fire. It was the only explanation that made sense.

And he knew it hadn’t caught fire by itself.

“Emily!” he shouted. “Linus! Wake up!”

Peabody bolted from his bunk. Emily bolted from hers and cried out in alarm. “Something’s on fire!”

“The barn!” With his nightshirt flapping around his legs, Peabody grabbed the rifle from the chair where he had placed it to be handy and headed for the door.

When he flung it open, the garish red light from the blazing barn spilled into the cabin. He rushed outside with Emily right behind him.

Still struggling to get out of his bunk, Luke swung his legs to the floor and stood up, using the back of a nearby chair for support. He picked up his revolver off the chair and grabbed one of his crutches propped against the wall next to the head of his bunk.

Hoofbeats pounded outside. Someone shouted, and Peabody’s rifle cracked.

“No, no,” Luke panted as he hurried toward the door as fast as he could. He knew without having to think about it what had happened. To get back at Peabody for trying to organize the farmers against him, Wolford had sent his men to the farm to set fire to the barn.

And those killers were still out there, where they threatened Emily and her grandfather. That thought made Luke’s blood run cold.

As he reached the porch, he heard Emily scream, “Grampaw!” In the garish light of the fire, Luke saw a man on horseback nearly run down Linus Peabody. The old-timer threw himself out of the way just in time, losing his balance and sprawling on the ground. The rider wheeled his horse around and pointed a gun at Peabody as Emily ran toward her grandfather.

She leaped to shield him as the rider pulled the trigger. Luke fired at the same instant. Flame spat from the barrel of his revolver. The impact of the bullet jarred the man on the horse, knocking him forward.

“Emily!” Peabody cried out. “Oh, my God, Emily!”

Luke suddenly realized he was off the porch and didn’t think about what he did next as he cast the single crutch aside and broke into a stumbling run toward Emily and Peabody. The nightmarish glare of the fire revealed Emily’s body lying stretched on the ground while her grandfather hovered over her.

Hoofbeats thundered again as two more riders lunged out of the jagged shadows cast by the firelight. The newcomers seemed intent on trampling them. Still stumbling, Luke raised the revolver and thumbed off two more shots. He didn’t know if he hit either of the attackers, but they veered sharply away.

The man he’d wounded yelled, “I’m hit! We gotta get out of here!”

Luke recognized the eastern accent of the tough named Joe Burnett. The other two had to be Howell and Prentice. One of them snapped a couple shots at him, coming close enough for him to hear the bullets whine past his head, as the other grabbed the dangling reins of Burnett’s horse and all three gunmen fled.

Pain flared through Luke’s legs, but they continued to support him. Peabody looked up at him as he reached the old man’s side, but he didn’t seem to notice Luke was standing and moving around without the aid of the crutches.

“Emily’s hurt!” Peabody cried. “When that no-good shot at me, she got in the way of the bullet!”

“How bad is it? Where’s she hit?” Luke figured if he knelt down, he wouldn’t be able to get back up again, so he made his voice urgent in an attempt to get through the fear and confusion that gripped Peabody.

It seemed to work, because the old-timer looked down, gently grasped Emily’s shoulders, and rolled her onto her back. Luke caught a glimpse of blood on her nightclothes, but the stain appeared to be a small one, at least so far.

“I . . . I don’t think she’s hurt too bad,” Peabody said after a moment. “Looks like the bullet just nicked her side.”

Emily groaned.

“She’s comin’ to.” Peabody continued to watch his granddaughter.

Luke watched and listened for any sign of the gunmen doubling back. In the firelight, the three of them made good targets, he thought.

Not seeing further danger, he turned his attention back to Emily and Peabody. “You’ll need to pick her up and get her back in the cabin. Can you clean that wound and put a dressing on it?”

“Yeah, I reckon I can.” Amazement crept into Peabody’s voice as he went on. “Luke, you’re standin’ up on your own! And you ran across there a minute ago! I saw you with my own eyes.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just take care of Emily.”

“I will. What are you gonna do?”

“Something that somebody should have done before now,” Luke said.

He didn’t know how long his legs would keep working. It had taken the threat to Emily and her grandfather for them to move like they had a few minutes earlier. The mixture of fear, desperation, and rage had burned through him like the fire that was consuming the barn, a cleansing fire that forced muscles and nerves to work again the way they were supposed to. His movements were rusty and a little clumsy, but he could get around again, and didn’t want to waste the opportunity.

Peabody was still strong, and Emily was a slip of a girl. He had no trouble picking her up and carrying her back into the cabin.

Luke followed. While Peabody tended to Emily, he got dressed, reloaded the Griswold and Gunnison, and went back outside. His face was impassive in the firelight despite the pain shooting through his legs with every step. The rest of those nerves were waking up again after their long sleep, he thought. If they kept working for a while longer, it would be enough.

He pocketed his revolver and walked over to the spot where he had wounded Joe Burnett. The man’s revolver, a Colt Navy, lay on the ground where Burnett had dropped it. Luke picked up the gun, hefting it in his hand, and realized his ammunition would fit it. Both weapons would be fully loaded when he headed for town.

He frowned. How was he going to get there? The luckless mules had been in the barn, and so had the wagon. His legs were finally working again, but he couldn’t walk all the way to Dobieville.

Shouts and hoofbeats made him swing around and raise both guns. The man riding up to the farm reined in sharply and threw his hands in the air. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “Hold your fire, mister! I’m a friend!”

Luke recognized the newcomer as one of the men who had gone into town with them that morning. He thought for a second and recalled the man’s name. “You’re Thad Franklin, right?”

“Yeah.” The man dismounted. “My place is a couple miles east of here. I saw the light from the fire and knew somethin’ had to be wrong. Thought I’d better come see if I could help.” He shook his head. “It’s too late to save that barn, though.”

“Maybe you and the others can help Linus rebuild,” Luke suggested.

“Is he hurt? How about Emily?”

Luke jerked his head toward the cabin. “They’re in there. Emily was wounded by the varmints who set the barn on fire, but I think she’s going to be all right.”

“There’ll be more folks showin’ up soon, I reckon. People always come to help when they see a fire.”

“You can help right now,” Luke said. “Give me your horse.”

“My horse? What? Say, you’re the fella who can’t walk!” Franklin looked Luke up and down in confusion. “But you’re standin’ up now.”

Luke lifted the Colt Navy and pointed it at Franklin, saying coldly, “I need your horse. I’ll get it back to you, if I can. If I can’t, you’ll find it in Dobieville.”

“Careful with that gun, mister! What’re you gonna do?” Franklin’s eyes widened as he realized the answer to his own question. “You’re goin’ after the men who did this?”

Luke used his free hand to take the reins out of Franklin’s fingers. “Sorry, but it’s got to be done.” He got his left foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle, clenching his jaw at the pain caused by mounting.

“You’re crazy,” Franklin said. “You can’t fight those carpetbaggers. There are too many of ’em, and they got the Yankee army on their side!”

“I don’t plan to fight all of them, just one in particular and the men he sent to do this.”

“They’ll kill you!”

“Probably. But I plan on sending them to hell ahead of me.”

CHAPTER 23

Still burning brightly, the fire cast an orange glow into the sky behind Luke as he rode toward Dobieville. Being on a horse again felt good.

Despite his concern for Emily, he felt more alive than he had in a long time.

He hadn’t had a chance to reload the Navy after all. Checking the gun’s cylinder, he found that Burnett had fired only one round. The other five chambers were loaded. He had eleven shots.

It would have to be enough.

Regret gnawed at him. He hadn’t taken the time to say good-bye to Emily and her grandfather. He knew they would have tried to talk him out of forcing a showdown with Wolford. Luke didn’t trust himself not to give in to Emily’s pleading and stay at the farm with her.

If he had stayed, things would continue to get worse. He didn’t know if they would actually improve once Wolford was dead, but at least if the carpetbagger and his gunmen were gone they wouldn’t be able to threaten anyone else.

The raiders had come very close to killing Emily, and that knowledge filled Luke with a rage overpowering every other emotion. Somebody had to take a stand against their evil.

He was the man.

Simple as that.

Luke had a good sense of direction and was able to find the settlement without any trouble. When he saw its lights, he reined in for a moment, thinking of the situation and what he should do next.

The three gunmen weren’t that far ahead of him. He figured the first thing they would do was report to Wolford, so there was a good chance he could find them together. It would certainly make things easier if all four of his enemies were in one place.

That notion turned his thoughts to Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey. He’d had four enemies to deal with that fateful night, too, and it hadn’t turned out well. But he’d been taken by surprise, even though he shouldn’t have been, and tonight he’d be the one doing the surprising.

He shook his head and turned his thoughts back to the situation at hand. Wolford owned the North Georgia Land Company. Luke had heard talk about it and had seen the sign on a building in town, earlier, when the group of farmers came to talk to the sheriff. He nodded. It was the first place he would look for his quarry.

He used his heels to get the horse moving again. Dobieville was quiet. No reason for it not to be, Luke supposed. The citizens didn’t know what had happened out at the Peabody farm. They would hear about it by morning. As he rode down the deserted streets they were blissfully ignorant.

That was about to change.

The saloons were open, and a light still burned in the general store, but most of the businesses along Main Street were dark, including the building that housed Wolford’s office. It appeared to be locked up for the night.

A faint glow in the alley behind the place told a different story. Luke looked along the side of the building, saw that glow, and knew one of the windows in the rear was lit up.

He dismounted and his legs sagged for a second, forcing him to grab the saddle horn and hold himself up. He straightened and looped the reins around the hitch rack in front.

Hoping his muscles wouldn’t betray him at the worst possible moment, he drew both revolvers from his pockets and started down the narrow passage beside the building. His gait was awkward as he kept his legs rigid, but they got him where he was going.

Reaching the rear corner of the building, he edged around it carefully and saw the lighted window. It was raised a few inches to let in the night air.

As quietly as possible, he moved closer to hear what was being said inside.

“. . . doctor,” a man said harshly. “This bullet’s gotta come out of me.”

“If we fetch the doctor, there’ll be questions about how you managed to get shot, Joe.” That was Wolford’s voice. “I’d rather not deal with the potential embarrassment.”

“So you’re just gonna let me die?” Burnett’s voice was drawn thin with pain.

“Of course not. Harve can dig the bullet out, can’t you, Harve?”

One of the other gunmen answered, “I reckon I can give it a try.” He didn’t sound too confident about it.

“And I have a bottle of whiskey right here,” Wolford went on. “Take a nice healthy slug, Joe, and then Harve can clean the wound with it, too.”

“I don’t know about this.” Burnett was clearly reluctant to trust his fate to the medical skills of his fellow hired gun.

“You’re being well paid to take risks,” Wolford snapped, losing his patience. “And you didn’t even manage to kill the old man like I told you to.”

“That’s not my fault,” Burnett replied, a whine creeping in his tone. “I told you, boss, the girl jumped right in front of my gun just as I pulled the trigger.”

“Yes, well, if she’s dead, that’s going to be very regrettable. . . for her and for you. I mean to have her, along with her grandfather’s farm.”

Luke’s hands tightened on the guns, wanting to burst in there and start shooting. But it wasn’t quite the right moment yet. He needed to wait just a little longer.

“Here’s the whiskey,” Wolford said.

Luke heard the glugging sound as the wounded man took a healthy swallow of the liquor.

Wolford went on, “You can lie down here on my desk, Joe. Thurman, you hold him down while Harve removes that bullet.”

Murmurs of agreement came from the men.

Luke waited as he listened to them moving around.

Burnett let out a yelp. “Damn it, boss, at least give me somethin’ to bite down on!”

“All right—”

Now, Luke thought.

While they were all gathered around the desk with their attention focused on the crude surgery he took a couple steps and rammed his shoulder against the building’s back door. The flimsy lock gave under the impact and the door flew open.

Luke stumbled over the threshold, catching his balance as he brought up the guns in his hands. “Hold it!” he yelled. “Nobody move!”

They ignored the command and moved, all right. Luke had figured they would. But he had given them a chance to surrender, so his conscience was clear.

One of the gunmen—he still didn’t know which one was Prentice and which one was Howell—whirled away from the desk and tried to claw out the gun holstered on his hip. Luke shot him in the face with the Griswold and Gunnison. The .36 caliber slug destroyed the man’s nose and plowed into his brain, driving him backward over the desk, where he fell on top of the wounded Burnett.

The second gunman cleared leather, but before he could raise his gun, let alone get off a shot, a slug from the Colt Navy in Luke’s left hand ripped into his throat. The man spun around in a half turn, blood from severed arteries spraying across the expensive rug on the floor of Wolford’s private office.

Roaring in rage, Burnett shoved the dead man off himself and plucked the man’s Colt from its holster. Even wounded, he had the strength to lunge up off the desk.

Luke fired both guns into Burnett’s chest. The double impact lifted the big easterner off his feet and dumped him onto the desk again.

A pocket pistol went off with a small popping sound, and Luke felt something lance into his left shoulder. It wasn’t much worse than a bee sting, but he knew he’d just been shot. He knew, as well, Wolford had shot him, because the other three men in the room were already dead.

Wolford fired again as he darted for the door leading into the front part of the building. Luke ducked, which gave the carpetbagger time to flee from the private office. As Luke straightened, he fired again and stomped into the bigger, darkened room after Wolford.

Wolford’s gun went off again. Luke spotted the little tongue of flame from the muzzle as he heard the slug whine past his ear. He snapped a shot in return. Wolford cried out.

With Luke pursuing him inexorably, Wolford didn’t have time to unlock the front door. He took the only way out, throwing himself against the front window. Glass shattered and sprayed as he burst through it and sprawled on the boardwalk outside.

Luke kept moving. His legs hadn’t betrayed him so far, and miraculously, he was still alive. His quick reflexes and speed with a gun had saved him, but the job wasn’t done yet.

He stepped through the broken window onto the boardwalk as Wolford tried to scramble away. Wolford screamed for help.

“Should’ve thought of that before you sent those men out to the Peabody farm tonight,” Luke told him.

“You . . . you can’t be doing this!” Wolford gasped as he scrambled to his feet. “You can’t even walk!”

“Seems that I can.” Luke shot the carpetbagger’s left leg out from under him, the bullet shattering the kneecap into a million pieces. “But you can’t.”

Wolford collapsed and clutched his bleeding, ruined knee as he screamed. Luke aimed carefully, since the man was writhing around, and blasted apart Wolford’s other knee.

“Drop that gun!” a man yelled over Wolford’s shrieks of agony. “Drop it right now!”

Luke glanced over and saw a hatless, nightshirt-wearing Sheriff Royce Wilkes pointing a shotgun at him.

Luke lined the Griswold and Gunnison’s barrel on Wolford’s forehead and eared back the hammer. His thumb was all that kept it from falling. “You can blast me to hell, Sheriff, but you can’t pull those triggers fast enough to keep me from killing Wolford.”

The carpetbagger realized how close he was to death, and screamed, “Don’t shoot him, Sheriff! Don’t shoot him!”

Wilkes held off, but the slight tremor of the shotgun’s twin barrels showed how much he wanted to pull the triggers. “Listen here, mister, you’d better put that gun down. Otherwise you’ll die here.”

“So will this murderer,” Luke said, “and I think I’m just fine with it if that’s what it takes to rid the world of him.”

“I . . . I never murdered anybody!” Wolford gasped. “Oh, God! Somebody help me!”

“You’re beyond help from God or anybody else,” Luke growled. “And you paid those gunmen of yours to go out to the Peabody farm, burn down the barn, and murder Linus Peabody. I heard you say that yourself, just a few minutes ago.”

“Why . . . why would I . . .” Wolford couldn’t go on. He lay whimpering in pain.

“Because with her grandfather dead, you thought Emily would have no choice but to turn to you,” Luke continued. “You thought I didn’t represent any threat. You were wrong on both counts. Even if you’d killed Linus and me, Emily would have wound up cutting out your heart. Trust me on that, Wolford.”

“You . . . you’re crazy.”

“Am I? Sheriff Wilkes, why don’t you ask Mr. Wolford if he sent his men to kill Linus Peabody?”

The shotgun was still trembling in Wilkes’ hands, but it seemed to be from fear. “I don’t want any part of this. I’m supposed to enforce the law—”

“Then arrest Vincent Wolford. Arrest him for murder and see to it he’s tried, convicted, and hanged. And if you do that, then maybe, just maybe, there’s still some hope for this country after all.”

“Mr. Wolford?” Wilkes said, clearly uncertain what he should do.

“What does it matter?” Wolford suddenly cried. “Of course I sent my men to get rid of that stubborn old geezer! He’s just a Rebel! We beat them! We won! We can do anything we want to them!”

“There’s still supposed to be some law—”

“Not for Rebels!”

“We’re still Americans,” Luke pointed out. “Isn’t that one of the so-called reasons you Yankees fought the war in the first place?”

Wolford let out a shriek of rage and hatred and pushed himself up from the boardwalk with his left hand. His right flung up the little pistol. “Go to hell!” he screeched.

“You first.” Luke lifted his thumb. The revolver roared and bucked in his hand, and the bullet smacked into Wolford’s forehead, hammering the back of his skull down on the planks. The gun fell out of Wolford’s hand, unfired.

Luke expected to feel a double load of buckshot smash into him, ending his life.

Instead, he realized that other than the echoes of his shot dying away, the street was quiet.

He looked over at Wilkes. The sheriff had lowered the shotgun. Maybe it had something to do with the crowd of townspeople surrounding him. They had been drawn by the shots and the screaming, and probably had heard Wolford’s confession. It was possible a lot of them didn’t like the way Wilkes had been doing the Yankees’ bidding. He had to be worried the crowd would turn on him, if he shot Luke.

“The . . . the soldiers will be coming from their camp,” Wilkes stammered out.

“When they get here, you can tell them some criminals have been executed,” Luke said.

“There was no trial—”

“More than they deserved. Wolford got to speak his piece.” Luke nodded at the crowd. “All these people heard it.”

“There’s gonna be warrants sworn out on you—”

“Fine.” Luke tucked the Colt Navy away, but kept the Griswold and Gunnison in his hand as he stepped down carefully from the boardwalk. The horse he had ridden into town was only a few steps away. It looked like he wasn’t going to be able to return the mount to Thad Franklin after all. If he could, later on he would send some money to the man to pay for the horse.

“I thought you couldn’t walk,” Wilkes remarked.

“It seems that I can,” Luke said again.

“Old Peabody and his granddaughter . . .”

“They’re all right. Emily was wounded, but I don’t think it’s bad.”

“Then Wolford’s men didn’t murder anybody after all.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Luke said. “And there’s no telling what other crimes they’re guilty of, or how many men they’ve killed.”

“You’re the killer,” Wilkes said, his voice shaking. “A cold-blooded killer!”

“In that case, Sheriff,” Luke said quietly, “I think you’d do well to stay out of my way.” He put his foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the borrowed horse. Or stolen horse, if you wanted to look at it that way, he thought.

Part of him couldn’t believe he was still alive, or his legs were still working. But that was the case, and he had learned to deal with things the way they were, not the way he wished they could be.

Wilkes was right. The law would probably come after him. He could never go back to the Peabody farm. It would bring down more trouble on their heads, trouble they didn’t need.

One thing had to be left perfectly clear before he rode away. Raising his voice so he addressed the townspeople as much as the sheriff, he said, “Emily Peabody and her grandfather had nothing to do with what happened here tonight! I did it on my own, and the law has no reason to bother them for this or anything else! I’m counting on the good people of this community to make sure that’s understood! I did this!”

“We don’t even know your name, mister,” one of the townies called out.

“It’s Smith. Luke Smith.”

With that, Luke jammed his heels into the horse’s flanks. People scrambled to get out of his way as he galloped out of the settlement. The darkness at the edge of town swallowed him.

It swallowed Luke Smith . . . because Luke Jensen was dead. He had died the night the Confederate gold was stolen. His ma and pa, Kirby, and Janey would never know he was a failure and a fugitive.

The swift rataplan of hoofbeats in the night faded and then was gone.