Civil War trilogy featuring the indomitable Slater brothers
Harlequin
January 2003
Featuring: Jamie Slater; Tess Stuart
352 pages ISBN: 0373835418 Paperback Add to Wish List
"Look, Lieutenant! Fire, rising high to our left!"
Jamie Slater reined in his roan stallion. With penetrating
silver-gray eyes he stared east, where Sergeant Monahan
was pointing. Across the sand and the sagebrush and the
dry dunes, smoke could indeed be seen, billowing up in
black and gray bursts. Tendrils of flame, like undulating
red ribbons, waved through the growing wall of smoke.
"Injuns!" Monahan breathed.
To Jamie's right, Jon Red Feather stiffened. Jamie turned
toward him. The half-breed Blackfoot was a long way from
home, but he was still one of the best Indian scouts
around. He was a tall, striking man with green-gold eyes
and strong, arresting features. Thanks to a wealthy white
grandfather, Jon Red Feather had received a remarkable
education, going as far as Oxford in England.
Jamie knew that Jon resented the ready assumption that
trouble meant Indians, even though he admitted readily to
Jamie that trouble was coming, big trouble. The Apache
hated the white man, the Comanche despised him, and Jamie
was convinced that the great Sioux Nation was destined to
fight in a big way for all the land that had been grabbed
by the hungry settlers.
Through Jon, Jamie had come to know the Comanche well.
Hedidn't make the mistake of considering the Comanche to
be docile, but, on the other hand, he'd never known a
Comanche to lie or to give him any double-talk.
"Let's see what's going on," Jamie said quietly. He rose
high in his saddle and looked over the line of forty-two
men presently under his command. "Forward, Sergeant. We
ride east. And by the look of things, we'd best hurry."
Sergeant Monahan repeated his order, calling out harshly
and demanding haste. Jamie flicked his reins against the
roan's shoulders, and the animal took flight with grace
and ease. His name was Lucifer, and it fitted the animal
well. He was wild - and remarkable.
That was one thing about the U.S. Cavalry, Jamie reckoned
as they raced toward the slope of the dune that led to the
rise of smoke. They offered a man good horses.
He hadn't had that pleasure in the Confederate cavalry.
When the Confederacy had been slowly beaten into her
grave, there hadn't been many mounts left. But the war had
been over for almost five years now. Jamie was wearing a
blue uniform, the same type he'd spent years of his life
shooting at. No one, least of all his brothers, had
believed he would last a day in the U.S. Cavalry, not
after the war. But they had been wrong. Many of the men he
was serving with hadn't even been in the war, and frankly,
he understood soldiers a whole lot better than he did
politicians and carpetbaggers.
And he had liked the life in the saddle on the plains,
dealing with the Indians, far better than he had liked to
see what had become of the South. This was western Texas,
and the reprisals from the war weren't what they were in
the eastern Deep South. Everywhere in the cities and towns
were the men in tattered gray, many missing limbs,
hobbling along on crutches. Homeless and beaten, they had
been forced to surrender on the fields, then they had been
forced to surrender to things that they hadn't even
understood. Taxes forced upon them. Yankee puppets in
place where local sheriffs had ruled. The war was
horrible - even after it was over.
There were good Yanks, and Jamie had always known it. He
didn't blame good men for the things that were happening
in the South - he blamed the riffraff, the carpetbaggers.
He liked his job because he honestly liked a number of the
Comanche and the other Indians he dealt with - they still
behaved with some sense of honor. He couldn't say that for
the carpetbaggers.
Still, he never deceived himself. The Indians were savage
fighters; in their attacks, they were often merciless.
But as Jamie felt the power of the handsome roan surge
beneath him as he raced the animal toward the rise of fire
and smoke, he knew that his days with the cavalry were
nearing an end. For a while, he had needed the time to get
over the war. Maybe he'd needed to keep fighting for a
while just to learn how not to fight. But he'd been a
rancher before the war had begun. And he was beginning to
feel the need for land again. Good land, rich land. A
place where a man could raise cattle in wide open spaces,
where he could ride his own property for acres and acres
and not see any fences. He imagined a house, a two-story
house, with a great big parlor and a good-sized kitchen
with huge fireplaces in each to warm away the winter's
chill. Maybe it was just time for his wandering days to be
over.
"Sweet Jesus!" Sergeant Monahan gasped, reining in beside
Jamie as they came to the top of the rise of land.
Jamie silently echoed the thought as he looked down upon
the carnage.
The remnants of a wagon train remained below them. Men had
attempted to pull the wagons into a defensive circle, but
apparently the attack had come too swiftly.
Bodies lay strewn around on the ground. The canvas and
wood of the wagons still smoldered and smoked, and where
the canvas covers had not burned, several feathered arrows
still remained.
Comanche, Jamie thought. He'd heard that things were
heating up. Seemed like little disputes would eventually
cause a whole-scale war. Monahan had told him he'd heard a
rumor about some whites tearing up a small Indian village.
Maybe this was done in revenge.
"Damnation!" Sergeant Monahan breathed.
"Let's go," Jamie said.
He started down the cliff and rocks toward the plain on
which the wagon train had been attacked. It was dry as
tinder, sagebrush blowing around, an occasional cactus
protruding from the dirt. He hoped there was no powder or
ammunition in the wagons to explode, then he wondered what
it would matter once he and his men looked for survivors.
The Indians had struck sure and fast, then disappeared
somewhere into the plain, up the cliffs and rock. Like the
fog wisping away, they had disappeared, and they had left
the death and bloodshed behind them.
"Circle carefully!" he advised his men. "A half-dead
Comanche is a mean one, remember!"
Riding behind him, Jon Red Feather was silent. Their
horses snorted and heaved as they slowly came down the
last of the slope, trying to dig in for solid footing.
Then they hit the plain, and Jamie spurred his horse to
race around and encircle the wagons. There were only five
of them.
Poor bastards never had a chance, he thought. He reckoned
that someone had been bringing some cattle north, since
there was at least a score of dead calves lying glass-eyed
and bloody along with the human corpses.
There was definitely no one around. And there was not a
single Indian left behind, not a dead one, or a half-dead
one, or any other kind of a one.
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