One Wore Blue (10 page)

Jesse nodded again. The young man’s pain-filled eyes touched his father’s. “It hurts, Pa. Can’t you shoot me?”

“You’ll get over it,” Brown said.

Jesse stiffened. He could swear that despite this abrupt answer, the old man cared deeply for the boy.

He opened his surgical bag and found bandaging to bind up what he could of the fatal wound. The lad’s eyes were on him now. He pulled out a syringe and a bottle of morphine. At least he could ease the lad’s pain. He set the needle just beneath the boy’s skin and administered the drug.

“Thanks, mister,” he breathed. There were tears in his eyes.

His eyes closed, and he moaned again. “If you must die,” Brown suddenly thundered, “die like a man!”

Jesse’s gaze snapped to the old man’s. For a long moment they stared at each other. Brown saw the condemnation in Jesse’s gaze.

He seemed sorry for his harsh words, but that blaze was still about his eyes. He didn’t mind offering up his own life for his cause, nor his own flesh and blood.

Sinn told John Brown that he’d murdered Mayor Beckham when the man had been unarmed.

Brown gave his attention to Sinn. “That, sir, was regrettable.”

Jesse had done all that he could. He saw that the hostages and the other wounded were gathered in the rear of the firehouse.

He recognized Colonel Washington immediately. Washington nodded his way, tall and straight. Jesse saluted him, and Washington returned the salute.

“We’ll see you soon, sir,” Jesse said to him.

Washington offered him a half grin. “Either that, or in hell, Captain!”

Brown and Sinn broke off in their negotiations. “Captain!” Sinn said to him. “Are you ready, sir?”

“A moment.”

Jesse saw to the others, though he could do little for them under the circumstances. He bandaged what he could and set a few limbs on splints, removed a nail from an arm muscle, and gave some advice for staying still until real medical help could be given.

“A man doesn’t need to be in good health to hang,” one of the raiders said dryly.

“Hang?” the lean young farmer Jesse had been helping said.

“Sure, for treason,” he was told.

His eyes went wide, and he searched out old John Brown.

“Was this treason, sir?”

“Sure was,” John Brown answered.

“Heck, I didn’t want to be guilty of treason,” the young farmer said. “I just wanted to free the slaves.” He gripped Jesse’s arm. “I just wanted to free the slaves. We didn’t mean nothing else.”

Jesse nodded, thinking the man might not live to hang anyway. “I understand exactly what you meant.” He could have told him that innocent people had been killed, but he decided not to. He was a doctor, not a judge, and if John Brown thought he knew what God intended, Jesse sure as hell didn’t.

“Captain?” Sinn called to him.

He closed his bag with a snap, straightened, and joined Sinn at the door. The two men exited the firehouse.

Jesse felt the searing eyes of old John Brown boring into him. He turned back.

Indeed, the man was watching him with his blazing gaze.

A coldness crept along Jesse’s spine. He wasn’t afraid of John Brown, he knew that. He was afraid that John Brown foretold some kind of doom.

The heavy doors closed behind them, and he and Sinn went back to report to Baylor.

Then he was free once again to ride through a town gone mad.

*  *  *

Kiernan saw Eban at the edge of the crowd and circled around until she could reach him.

“Eban, what’s happening?” she demanded.

“Some of the hostages have escaped,” he told her.

“Oh, how wonderful!” she exclaimed. Then she asked softly, “Has anyone else been—”

“No more of the hostages have been killed,” Eban told her. “But you should have seen what they did to Daingerfield Newby.”

“Who?”

“He was a free black man. I hear tell he joined up with John Brown because no matter how he tried to earn the money to buy his wife and family, her master kept raising her price. The poor man was shot down with anything you could imagine and left there in the alley.” He pointed up the hill a little way. “I hear they let the hogs get ahold of him then.”

“Oh!” Kiernan gasped. She felt ill. Yet something drew her to the spot—maybe she couldn’t quite believe that people she knew so well had been driven to such violence. But she walked uphill toward the alley, then paused with horror.

Blood still stained the alley. It was on the ground, and splashed against the wall.

Hogs were still rooting around the alley. She backed away, feeling ill.

Daingerfield Newby would never buy his wife and children.

“Miss Mackay!” Eban stood behind her. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. Pieces of burned nails lay at her feet, and she bent down and picked one up. The citizens had fired these at the poor man. She stared at Eban, and he was instantly on the defensive. “For pity’s sake, Miss Mackay. John Brown’s men killed Mr. Turner, just ’cause he owned slaves. They meant to rouse all the slaves in the area against us. They meant to have us murdered in our beds! But we stopped them. We fought back with nothing, and we holed them up in that firehouse. We’re going to get them. But it’s too late
for Turner. They put a gun right up to his head and pulled the trigger and killed him. And they killed Hayward! They’re supposed to be so good and kind and all-loving to the black men, but they come in here and shoot down a free black man themselves. It’s frightening, Miss Mackay, darned frightening. We fought back, that’s all we done. We fought back.”

Kiernan nodded again. Who was to be condemned in this madness? John Brown? But John Brown seemed to believe that God whispered in his ear and gave him his orders.

“Is Brown still in the firehouse?” Kiernan asked.

“He is, Miss Mackay.” Eban tilted his hat to her. “And he’s still got hostages. No one knows what he intends to do. The militia have been talking with him. If they rush him, he might kill the captives. We’re at a standstill now, waiting on Washington, D.C., and the federal military.”

A chill rushed through her, and she was suddenly very afraid. Many militia units had been called in, it seemed. People were grouped in the streets. She could still hear shots and wild cries.

And in that awful alley the blood still lingered.

She was afraid, with the kind of fear that Jesse had been talking about himself feeling.

We didn’t start this tragedy, she thought, trying not to imagine the mutilated, body of the black freeman. John Brown had ridden into town and awakened the terror of a peaceful people. But John Brown hadn’t started the debate on slavery. She couldn’t blame him for that.

She could blame him for bringing it and all this horror and bloodshed to Virginia.

“’Scuse me, Miss Mackay,” Eban told her. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

Kiernan stayed at the edge of the crowd as the day waned. The sun began to set in earnest. She learned that Colonel Robert E. Lee had a detachment of marines stationed just outside of town, and that he’d be taking over from the militia soon enough.

She wondered if Jesse was with Lee.

She heard shots again, by the firehouse. The crowd was
shoving. Before she knew it, she was being pushed nearer and nearer the firehouse.

Suddenly she nearly tripped over the body of a man, a man so filled with shot that he must have been heavy with the lead. His face and body were ruined beyond recognition.

She was pushed again as the crowd gathered nearer. She was almost shoved upon the man. She looked down at sightless holes where eyes had been, and she started to scream, panic growing within. Another shot was fired into the body. The young farmer who had aimed the rifle seemed heedless of the crowd around the dead man.

“No!” Kiernan screamed again. She had to get away from those horrible sightless eyes.

Suddenly, she was swept up high into strong arms. She looked up, her horror mirrored in her gaze.

Deep blue eyes stared sternly down upon her. Jesse. Jesse wasn’t with Lee at all. He was here.

With her.

Come to her rescue once again.

Her arms locked around his neck, despite the fury in his eyes.

“Jesse,” she whispered.

“Make way!” he demanded, and the crowd parted. His long strides brought them quickly through the crowd and to his waiting roan horse.

He set her atop it, then leaped up behind her. Within seconds they were cantering down the street, and the clean wind was blowing against her cheeks and washing away the scent of tragedy and blood.

And the chill that had seeped into her was warmed away by the heat of the arms around her.

Four

He didn’t take her back to Lacey’s house.

The well-trained roan quickly traveled through the town of Harpers Ferry, climbing the hill to Bolivar Heights with what should have been frightening speed.

She wasn’t frightened—not with Jesse.

She felt the muscled heat of his chest hard against her back as she rode, and the events of the past two days seemed to fade away. Nothing could happen to her now that Jesse’s arms were around her.

He didn’t stop in the town of Bolivar, but climbed up to the woods atop one of the hills. He spurred his horse all the way to the top, where the tall trees looked down at a great distance on the little cleft of land where the Shenandoah met the Potomac and old Harper had started his ferry service across the river. The townspeople seemed tiny now, and the buildings looked tiny, too, like toys.

Jesse leaped down from his horse and reached up for her. She set her hands on his shoulders and slid down into his arms. She was trembling, and he kept his arms tight around her.

“Oh, Jesse, the things they’re doing down there are so horrible!”

His hands moved gently, soothingly, over her hair. “It’s all right. It will all be over soon enough. A tempest in a teapot.” He stroked her cheek, meeting her eyes, then spun
her around so she could see down the far distance of the cliff. Again, the people and buildings were like toys. The white rushing waters of the rivers could be seen, meeting. “Today will end. Shenandoah and Potomac will continue to shed their haunting tears, and the mountains will be beautiful again.” His arms were about her, his fingers entwined at her waist and over her belly. He must have felt that she had ceased to tremble.

His tone suddenly changed, and he swung her around so that she faced him again.

“And I told you not to leave the house!”

“Damn you, Jesse, you’re not my father!”

He uttered an oath beneath his breath, and she placed her hands upon his arms. She broke free of his touch, backing away from his tall, muscular form, a form that suddenly seemed threatening.

“If you’d stayed inside, you’d never have been exposed to all this!”

“But Jesse, so many people are down there! So many people I know are pumping lead and debris into a man’s body!”

“And with any luck, they won’t pump it into one another,” Jesse said. He came toward her again. She couldn’t back away any farther on top of the mountain cliff.

“Jesse—”

“You little fool!” he said heatedly. “You could have gotten hurt!”

“The whole town could have been hurt.”

“Some people
were
hurt! The mayor was killed, gunned down unarmed.”

“Jesse—”

He was really angry. But when he stopped before her again, his fingers gripping her upper arms and pulling her close, she couldn’t think of another argument. He stared down into her eyes, and his were alive with cobalt fire. Her heart suddenly seemed to flutter like butterfly wings against her ribs, and a weakness seized hold of her knees. She was just as angry as he, she told herself, and that anger made her weak.

“Jesse—” she started, but his mouth touched hers,
smothering her whisper. His touch was both fierce and coercive, a sweep of dazzling fire, stealing away both breath and reason. Her fingers curled on his chest, her lips parted, fascinated, to the pressure of his. The hot sultry fever of his kiss pervaded her, touched her mouth, and stole and curled through her body like slow-moving nectar—or lava. Her senses seemed so very much alive. Her flesh burned to the slightest brush of his hand. His body against hers was hard but like the fever inside her, so very hot, and pulsing, and alive. The closer she drew herself against him, the more she knew about the fever that threatened to consume them both. For even as she tasted the texture of his tongue, she felt the pressure of hips hard against hers, and the fever of that touch that should have been so forbidden to her did nothing but entice and seduce her into a longing for further discovery.