Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 (24 page)

Sykes scratched his chin
as he considered Spencer’s explanation. Several moments passed in taut silence before he finally nodded his head. “What McCabe says makes sense. Which means that we best make tracks before them Dutchmen set the Yankee soldiers on us.”

Upon hearing that, the crowd
quickly began to disperse, most of the men heading for the makeshift corral on the other side of the grove.

“Y’all go on ahead,” Spencer said as he lassoed a hand around Mercy’s upper arm. “I’ll meet up with you boys in a few days.”

Clearly dissatisfied with the outcome, Kid Mooney stepped forward. “You jes gonna let her go free?” He asked Bloody Ned, his thin body quivering with anger.

The
southern chieftain shot Mercy a disinterested glance. “She can go to hell for all I care. If McCabe says she didn’t do it, then she didn’t do it.”

Mooney raised his pistol, unerringly aiming it at Mercy’s forehead. “If I find out any different, I’ll kill you, you damned abolitionist bitch.”

Quick as a mountain lion, Spencer grabbed Mooney by the front of his hunting shirt, hauling him onto the balls of his feet.

“Now, listen up, you little piece of prairie shit. You come anywhere near my woman, I’m gonna knock your ass seven ways to Sunday.”
Warning issued, Spencer hurled Mooney to the ground.

Craning his neck, the humiliated youth
peered beseeching at Bloody Ned. “You gonna let him treat me like that?”

“I already have. Now quit your gripin
g. I got more important matters to attend to. Like recapturing those damned Dutchmen.” Holstering his pistol, Bloody Ned Sykes strode off towards the corral.

“You think you’re so damned t
ough, don’t you McCabe? But jes you wait. Soon enough, I’ll show you who’s the tough man in this outfit,” Mooney snarled before stomping off to join the others.

As near as Mercy could determine, the threat had no discernible effect on Spencer. Unnerved by the implacable expression on his face,
she put a placating a hand on his chest.

“I know
how this must appear, Spencer. But believe me, I can—”

“For once in your life, just keep your damned mouth shut,”
Spencer grated between clenched teeth, clearly not in the mood to hear her side of the story.

Mercy complied, offering no resistance when Spencer dragged her through the wooded glen. While he may have rescued her from certain death, he was none too happy about it. She also suspected that, like the other bushwhackers, he had reason to believe
that she’d freed the prisoners.

When they reached the camp, Spencer released her arm, angrily
shoving Mercy toward the wagon.

“Everything’s packed and ready to go,” Dewey
informed his brother as he unhitched the horses from a nearby tree.

Spencer merely grunted
as he swung himself into the saddle.

Not wishing to antagonize
him further, Mercy hurriedly scrambled onto the wagon, unlashing the reins from around the brake handle. Prudence, seated beside her, wordlessly handed her one of the poke bonnets that Spencer had procured for them. Mercy dejectedly put on the bonnet, tying it under her chin. Then, slapping the reins on the horses’ backsides, she followed Spencer as he led the wagon through the overgrown forest.

Having driven their buckboard for the better part of the day, Mercy was near exhaustion.

Without so much as an explanation, or an apology, Spencer had pushed them all perilously close to the breaking point. Mile after mile, he’d ridden ahead of the wagon. Unlike the rest of them, he gave no indication that he was weary, or hungry.

Indeed, their midday meal
had been a pitifully brief affair, lasting no more than twenty minutes. And given the fact that there’d been only a few periodic stops to water and feed the horses, Mercy had reason to fear that supper would prove to be of short duration, as well. For all she knew, Spencer intended to keep on riding through the night.

While
he hadn’t uttered so much as a word to her since leaving Bloody Ned’s camp, Mercy knew full well the reason for Spencer’s sullenness – he was angry over the fact that she’d gone behind his back and freed the prisoners.

Truth be told
, she believed that his anger was completely unjustified. To her mind, she’d taken the correct course of action. If she’d followed Spencer’s orders and sat idle, the German prisoners would have surely been killed.

To do nothing, to turn her back on those four defenseless men
, would have been unconscionable.

Wearily glancing at the western sky, Mercy saw that the sun was fast sinking into the horizon.
Evidently, Spencer had also taken note of that fact for he suddenly raised his hand, indicating that he wanted them to come to a halt. Grateful, she tugged on the reins.

Gabriel,
who’d been sound asleep on the wagon seat, his tousled head resting on Prudence’s lap, stirred to wakefulness.

“Are we there yet?” he asked as he wiped the sleep from his eyes with a balled fist.

“I’m not certain,” Mercy replied. “We may only be stopping to water the horses.”

“Oh.” Gabriel made no attempt to hide his disappointment. Like the rest of them, the long journey was taking its toll on him.

Mercy watched as Spencer dismounted his horse and scanned the surrounding area. A few moments later, Dewey trotted past, reining his horse to a halt alongside his brother. The two of them then conferred with each other, presumably discussing whether or not the site was suitable.

Irritated that she and her family had no say in the matter, Mercy climbed off the wagon seat and rushed over to the brothers McCabe.
Covered in trail dust from head to foot, she swatted at her homespun skirt with the palm of her hand.

Paying her no heed
, Spencer continued to converse with his brother.

“This looks as good a place as
any to camp for the night,” he said to Dewey. “You go ahead and see to the wagon.”

Dewey
wordlessly nodded before heading off to unhitch the team of horses from the buckboard.

Given that he had yet to acknowledge her presence,
Mercy knew that Spencer was still furious over what had transpired earlier in the day. And though he refused to discuss the matter, she feared that if they didn’t soon clear the air, their relationship might deteriorate beyond repair.

Un
certain how to broach the subject, Mercy self-consciously shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

Just then, a
loud boom of thunder caused both of them to glance skyward.

“Christ, that’s all we need,” Spencer muttered, frowning at the dark band of clouds
that hovered overhead.

On the verge of reprimanding him
for using the Lord’s name in vain, Mercy thought better of it at the last. A bevy of harsh words already hung between them. There was no need to add to the pile.

Somewhat hesitantly, she touched
Spencer’s forearm. An action that caused his muscles to tense beneath her fingers. “We need to talk, Spencer. Because
not
talking about it isn’t going to make the problem go away.”

Hearing that,
Spencer instantly spun around to face her, a forbidding scowl on his face. “So you want to jaw about it, do you?” Not giving her a chance to reply, he suddenly grabbed Mercy by the shoulders and pinned her to a nearby maple tree. “Well, how about telling me what the hell you were trying to pull back there at Ned’s camp?”

“I was merely trying to
—”

“Get us all killed,”
Spencer interjected, his voice spiked with rage. “Or maybe you thought I wouldn’t notice that you
forgot
to return my revolver last night. What did you do? Send those damn Germans on their merry way with it?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I did!” she retorted. “And I’d do it all over again if
given a second chance.”

Still glaring at her
, Spencer reached into his boot and removed a bone-handled skinning knife. With a quick flip of the wrist, he jabbed the familiar-looking knife into the maple tree, the blade perilously close to her face.

“And I suppose this is the knife
that you’d use to cut them free,
assuming
you could do it all over again,” he hissed, his warm breath hitting her full in the face.

“Those men committed no crime other than being loyal Union patriots.”

“You best be careful, Miss Mercy Hibbert. Opinionated folks don’t last too long in these parts.”

“The good Chris
tian fears not the evil mongers,” Mercy informed him. ‘Yea, whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other.’”

Sniggering, Spencer said,
“Hell, the way you spit out those Bible verses, anyone would think you had a hand in writing the Good Book.”

“Blasphemer!”

“You know, I’m getting mighty sick and tired of your high-minded Christian name calling.”

Mercy
pointedly glanced at the knife hilt still protruding from the tree trunk. “Where I come from, men do not resort to violence in either word or deed to resolve their disagreements with the gentler sex.”

“I don’t know how to break it to you,
Mercy. But there’s a helluva lot more than a disagreement standing between us,” Spencer snarled. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? You just had to get involved with those damned Dutchmen.”

“How can you be so heartless?”

“Now there’s the pot calling the kettle black. If you ask me, it was pretty damn ‘heartless’ the way that you moaned and whimpered in my arms this morning, only to leave me hanging high and dry.” Spencer put his hands on his hips as his gaze slowly moved up and down her body. “You’re a fine one for acting all huffy and insulted over Ned’s fancy women, seeing as how you’re no better than them.”

Mercy gasped in outrage, each of his vile insults having unerringly hit its mark.
“How can you think, let alone say, such a thing?”

“Easy enough. ‘Cause just like a whore, you used that pretty little body of yours to get me to save your ass this morning.” Spencer stroked
his fingers across her breasts. To Mercy’s shame, her nipples instantly hardened. Having proved his point, Spencer let his hand fall to his side. “You figured I wouldn’t feed you to the wolves if you tossed me a few scraps beforehand.”

“I did no such thing!”

“The hell you didn’t!” Grabbing Mercy by the chin, Spencer held her in a vise-like grip. “Well, I got news for you, sweetheart. You can parade around buck naked for all I care. I had me a bite and I didn’t much care for the aftertaste.”

“And do all the members of your family conduct themselves in
such a barbarous manner?” Mercy taunted, wanting to give the man a taste of his own mean-spirited medicine.

Spencer’s eyes narrowed
. “All the ones still living,” he rasped before stalking off towards the wagon.

As she watched
him leave, Mercy dug her nails into the palms of her hands hoping the pain would keep her tears at bay.

Anxiously scanning the horizon, it occurred to her that she had no idea where they were.
She only knew that she was in the middle of enemy territory, far from home, at the mercy of a rebel bushwhacker who had little, if no, regard for her.

Suffering from a deep
despair, Mercy started to tremble.

The events of the
last six weeks had happened too rapidly, unfurling at a furious pace: meeting Spencer McCabe; Bloody Ned quartering his gang at the farmhouse; the murderous attack by the jayhawkers; the farmhouse being set ablaze.
Falling in love.

Mercy
gazed forlornly at the darkening sky.

Why, oh, why did I h
ave to go and fall in love with Spencer McCabe?

Raising
her arms toward the dawn sky, Mercy groaned aloud as she stretched her stiff, achy muscles.

While she longed for the luxury of a feather tick mattress, she knew that journey’s end was still days
away. Even then, there was no telling what manner of accommodations they’d find at Spencer’s farmstead; since leaving Bloody Ned’s camp two days ago, she and Spencer had barely spoken to one another. To her dismay, even the most innocuous of questions – ‘
Would you like some more coffee?
’ or ‘
Do you think it will rain?
’ – elicited no more than a grunt.

Glancing at her tousled bed pallet, Mercy’s heart painfully constricted. For the last two nights she’d slept alone
, Spencer bedding down far enough away to communicate that he wanted nothing to do with her. A few days ago, she would have been pleased with these new sleeping arrangements. Shamefully, all she felt now was the bitter sting of rejection.

The pain she felt was exacerbated by the fact that she
couldn’t stop dwelling on their last passionate interlude. Unable to stop herself, she kept revisiting those forbidden moments. Remembering how Spencer had fondled her bare breasts. Kissed her nipples. Slowly thrust himself inside of her.

Cognizant that she was doing it,
yet again
, Mercy smoothed her sleep-mussed hair with the palm of her hand.

She supposed that the wanton memories proved that
she was no better than the harlots back at Bloody Ned’s camp. But then, that’s exactly how Spencer thought of her, having falsely accused Mercy of using her body to coerce him into lying on her behalf. And while that wasn’t true, convincing Spencer otherwise was proving a daunting task.

Hearing a twig snap, Mercy spun around
. Spencer, a rolled blanket slung over his shoulder, walked toward her.

“I was just getting ready to cook breakfast,” she said, trying to muster a cheerful tone.

Ignoring her, Spencer secured the blanket to his saddle. Mercy fretfully bit her lower lip, his silent rebuke hurting more than she cared to admit.

“I thought
that I’d make some biscuits and coffee. How does that sound?”

“Wake the others,” Spencer tersely ordered. “We need to get a move on.”

“But it won’t take long. I’ll just fry up some—”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Ned and his boys are still
on the prowl.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” Mercy
said, nervously twisting her hands together. Then, realizing what she was doing, she awkwardly folded her arms over her chest. “Although I don’t see what that has to do with eating breakfast.”

“How about I spell it out for you? Ned Sykes won’t take kindly to finding out that you double-crossed him.”

“But he doesn’t know that I freed those men,” Mercy was quick to assert in her own defense.

Spencer stepped toward her,
a grim look on his face. “Let’s just say that he doesn’t know
yet
.”

Mercy stifled a fear
ful groan, Spencer’s remark filling her with a dread fear. Turning away from him, she saw her sister scrambling out of the back of the buckboard.

“What’s going on?” Prudence inquired. When she didn’t get a reply, she approached Spencer, her fourteen
-year-old brow lined with concern. “You two have been acting awfully strange these last two days.”

Spencer merely shrugged
. He then stepped over to where Dewey slept under the wagon, prodding his brother awake with his boot tip. Dewey groggily flung off his blanket, yawning as he scrambled to his feet. Stern-faced, Spencer instructed his brother to hitch the horses to the wagon.

“But
we haven’t cooked our breakfast!” Prudence wailed to no one in particular.

Mercy placed a
consoling hand on Pru’s shoulder. “We have a long way to travel and Spencer is, um. . . .” Unable to dredge up a suitable excuse for the man’s sour disposition, the words trailed into silence. “Would you please wake Mama and Gabriel?” she said in the next instant, purposefully changing the subject.

“You don’t think
that I’m grown up enough to be told, is that it?”

“There are some dried apples and jerked meat in the wagon,” Mercy said, refusing t
o answer her sister’s query. “That should tide everyone over until we can stop for our midday meal.”

Prudence
pivoted on her heel, her travel-stained calico skirt flouncing behind her as she climbed into the back of the wagon.

Mercy’s shoulders sagged, heartsick at having to keep secrets from her own sister. It
had never occurred to her when she freed Ned Sykes’ prisoners that her well-intentioned deed would throw everything into such turmoil. And Spencer’s cold-shouldered reticence wasn’t making that turmoil any easier to bear.

As
Mercy watched Spencer mount his horse, she became increasingly angry at herself for not having stood up to him. For letting him run roughshod over her, Pru, and even his own brother with his tyrannical breakfast decrees.

Determined to right that wrong
, Mercy purposefully strode toward Spencer. “We are not leaving this place until we’ve had a chance to cook a proper breakfast,” she informed him point-blank.

Gripping
his saddle horn, Spencer stared at her from an interminably lofty height. “If you’re so keen on cooking breakfast, be my guest. Me, I’m riding out of here. With or without you.” Nudging his horse with his knees, he maneuvered the huge beast away from her, trotting off without so much as a parting glance.

A few seconds later,
Dewey climbed onto the wagon. Casting Mercy a baleful glance, he snapped the reins across the backs of their two horse team, his own mount tethered to the tailgate. Fists clenched, Mercy stood her ground, watching in disbelief as the unwieldy wagon lurched and swayed as it may its way toward the rutted trail.

Prudence stuck her head out
of the back of the rug-covered buckboard, her expression fraught with worry. “Aren’t you coming, Mercy?”

Aren’t you staying?
she longed to yell back.

Infuriated,
Mercy glared at Spencer’s backside as he rode ahead of the wagon. He was so manly astride his horse.
So smug.
And so completely hard of heart. Bested by the brute, she had no choice but to bend to his will.

Snatching her bed blankets off
of the ground, Mercy hurried to catch up to the wagon.

Mercy sat on
a frayed quilt with her mother and sister as they rested after their noon repast. In the hours since her humiliating standoff with Spencer, she’d decided that the war of silence had gone on long enough.

Now, in addition to not sleeping with her, it seemed that Spencer no longer wished to take his meals with her, having stomped away soon after they stopped to cook the pheasants he’d caught earlier in the day. To make matters worse, since early
morning she’d had to field inquisitive stares from her mother and sister, both of them puzzled by the tense silence that fairly crackled in the air.

Given his antipathy, Mercy couldn’t understand why Spencer simply didn’t ab
andon her and be done with it.

Why go to all the trouble of
shepherding me through the state of Missouri to his farmstead in the western Ozarks?

Mercy, of course, k
new the answer full well – Spencer had offered sanctuary to the Hibbert family and, being an honorable man, that’s exactly what he intended to do. Regardless of how he personally felt about her. Which made Mercy realize, and not for the first time, that she’d misjudged him.

Time and time again, she’d haughtily sneered, denouncing Spencer for being southern born. Now, deeply
regretting all of the hurtful things that she’d said and done, she was paying the ultimate price, having fallen in love with a man who couldn’t stand the sight of her.

With a
weary sigh, Mercy surveyed the surrounding countryside. As she gazed at the clumps of wildflowers that dotted the nearby hills, she realized that somehow in the chaotic blur of the last two months, winter had ended and a new season had been ushered in. In the past, early spring had always meant helping her mother prepare the family vegetable garden while her father and older brothers worked in the fields.

Saddened by the memory, Mercy forcibly shoved it from her mind. Those days were gone and nothing,
nothing
, she could do would ever bring them back. Painful as it was, she must face up to the fact that Papa and Ethan were dead, that her mother was invalided with grief, and that their Kansas farm had been all but destroyed.

Tragically, her family was not the only one to have suffered on account of
the cruel war. Countless others, on both sides of the border, had been made to endure untold adversity. Even here, in the midst of this beautiful hill country, the skeletal remnants of a burned-out barn stood sentry on yonder knoll.

Since crossing the border into Missouri, Mercy had seen quite a few looted, abandoned farmhouses
. And more hastily dug graves than she cared to recall. All of which gave her some insight into the brutal enmity that incited Bloody Ned Sykes and others of his ilk. Simply put, they were bitterly angry men who’d turned to bushwhacking as a way to alleviate their unbearable grief. If she was a man, she, too, might have turned to violence as a remedial to alleviate the pain of having witnessed her father gunned down in cold blood.

It
certainly made her wonder if Spencer had also suffered some heartbreaking calamity that drove him to the violent life he led.

Lost in thought, Mercy glanced up as Dewey and Gabriel joined them on the quilt
. Pru practically beamed when Dewey sat beside her. In his hands, Dewey clutched one of Spencer’s revolvers; and while her sister had no interest whatsoever in firearms, she cooed admiringly as he began to dismantle and clean the pistol.

Watching
the two adolescents, Mercy suffered a pang of outright envy, reminded anew that her relationship with Spencer had deteriorated into a state of silent hostility. While dreading the thought of confronting him, Mercy knew that a truce had to be brokered.

Lunging to her feet, she anxiously scanned their campsite.
“Do you know where Spencer is?” she asked Dewey.

The youth
held the revolver’s cylinder up to his eye, inspecting it for dirt and other debris. “He’s probably down at that little stream filling the water canteens,” Dewey said, jutting his chin at the ravine behind them.

Mercy nodded her thanks
before she made her way toward the thick clumps of hyssop that dotted the hillside. Several minutes later, she found Spencer standing alongside the stream that was tucked away at the bottom of the hill, completely hidden from their midday camp.

Squatting alongside the swift running stream, Spencer dipped
a tin canteen into the water. Mercy watched, intrigued with the way that the dappled sunlight picked up the auburn highlights in his hair.

“I would like to have a word with you,” she said by way of a greeting.

Spencer stood upright. Craning his neck, he cast a cursory glance in her direction.

“So, what else is new?” He shoved a wooden stopper into the army
-issue canteen, the initials C.S.A clearly stamped on one side. “Seems I can’t do anything without you pointing out the error of my ways.”

Mercy bit back a tart reply, determined to keep a firm rein on her emotions. “I am here to propose that, for the sake of both our families, we declare a truce.”

“A truce, huh?” Spencer hung the canteen on a tree limb from which hung several other water vessels. “What are your terms?”

“There are no terms,” she said, admittedly baffled. “I merely thought that it would make for a more pleasant journey if we could cease all
of this pointless bickering. We’re both adults. Surely, we can speak to one another in a more cordial manner.”