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  "I'M NOT GOING TO SET YOU FREE

  NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, NO MATTER WHAT YOU GIVE ME."

  Her gaze was riveted to his. She was as angry as he was. "You and I are alike, Cain. I understand you. We've both been hunted like animals. I don't deserve it. Maybe you don't either. So prove it. Take me to Camp Brown."

  His grip on her tightened. "That husband of yours . . . is he the one hunting you or . . ." His words dwindled as he thought of all the possibilities.

  "Go ahead, think the worst. Everyone else has." She didn't need to be reminded how bitterly true her statement was.

  He searched her eyes, eyes that were crystalline blue in the brilliant sun. Slowly, he said, "No . . . you didn't kill him. You wouldn't be wearing those weeds if you'd killed him. You don't go mourning a husband you've murdered."

  "No, you don't," she whispered, again feeling that troubled gratitude. She'd been running for three years. Macaulay Cain was the first person to find her innocent before proven guilty.

  ISLAND BOOKS Published by Dell Publishing a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  Copyright © 1993 by Ruth Goodman •

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  ISBN: 0-440-20913-7

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press Printed in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada

  November 1993

  CLS 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Somebody's Darling

  And for Tom and Tommy,

  my two darlings.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WEARING OF THE GRAY

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Betsy McGovern and Tommy Makem for providing the beautiful songs, and for my dear friend Pat Warner, member of the Mississippi 3rd, who likes me even if I am a damned Yankee.

  And lastly, for Damans Rowland, Associate Publisher of Dell Books, and for my agent, Pamela Gray Ahearn, who, like millions of other women, see the feminism, beauty, and strength in the romance novel (and refuse to take no for an answer!). Thank God for all of you.

  WEARING OF THE GRAY

  The fearful struggle's ended now,

  And peace smiles on our land.

  And though we've yielded, We have proved ourselves a faithful band.

  We fought them long, we fought them well

  We fought them night and day.

  And bravely struggled for our rights

  While wearing of the Gray.

  Confederate camp song

  Chapter One

  June 1875

  It was a bad hanging.

  And if there was one thing Doc Amoss hated, it was a bad hanging. He surveyed the seven white-draped bodies laid out in his small office. Even these men, the infamous Dover gang, had deserved the respect of a sharp snap to the neck and a swift journey to damnation. But this hanging hadn't been clean. At least, not at the end.

  Doc shook his head, pushed up his spectacles, and went back to work. He'd spent all day with the Dover gang, first watching them be hanged, one by one, until their seven bodies dangled from their nooses, limp and solemn in the haze of dust kicked up by the horses. Afterward he'd helped cut them down and haul them to his office. The small town of Landen didn't have an undertaker, so it was Doc's job to ready them for burial. It'd taken all afternoon to wrap five of them. He was now on the sixth.

  Doc leaned toward the spittoon, missed it, and left a pockmark in the dust on the naked floorboards. Outside, beneath the peeling sign Haircut, bath, and shave, 10 cents—Surgery done Fast he could see to the end of town where seven men dug seven graves in the anonymous brown sweep of eastern plain.

  The shadows grew deep in his office. It was late. He pulled off the sixth man's boots and checked his mouth just in case the fellow had some ivory teeth the town could sell to pay for the hanging. Doc wrapped him, then crossed his name off the list.

  Now there was no avoiding it. The last man had to be attended to. The seventh and worst.

  Macaulay Cain. Just the mention of that name made a chill shiver down Doc's spine. He'd seen it on enough wanted posters to spell it backward and forward. He'd never wanted to mess with the likes of the notorious gunslinger. God and his sense of justice. Just when the hanging went bad, it went bad on Macaulay Cain.

  Doc reluctantly looked over to the seventh white-draped figure. In all his days he'd never seen a man so difficult to put atop a horse and get a noose around his neck. Cain had required every one of the sheriff's deputies and even at the end, when his face was covered by the black bag and the men were ready to put the whip to his horse, Cain struggled and demanded that they wait for that telegram, the one he claimed was going to clear him.

  The one that never came.

  "Son of a bitch." Doc hated a bad hanging. It made a man feel right uncomfortable inside just thinking about the horse rearing and Macaulay Cain twisting in the wind, no broken neck to put him out of his misery.

  When all was done, the deputies had brought Cain to the office. They cut the hands free and crossed them over his chest in a reverent manner. But Doc was the one to take the black bag off the head. No one else would do it. In a really bad hanging the tongue gaped out and the expression was frozen into a mask of terror as the poor bastard struggled to breathe while the noose tightened around his neck. The deputies visibly flinched when Doc removed the bag, unsure of what they might see. But before the sheet went over Cain's head, they all were relieved to see the expression loose and peaceful beneath the outlaw's scruffy growth of beard.

  Resigned to his task, Doc walked over to the last body. The sheriff would be there soon to take the gang away for burial. He'd best be quick.

  He bent to get a length of rope to tie the shroud. The room was quiet except for the buzz of green flies against the windowpanes and the sound of Doc's breathing. He leaned over the body, hand outstretched to grasp the sheet.

  Then he felt it.

  Another man might not have taken note of the small drop of blood that plopped onto Doc's black store-bought shoes. A man less trained in the medicinal arts might never have given it a thought, but John Edward Amoss had spent forty of his sixty-odd years learning one thing: Dead men
don't bleed.

  Sure, in a hanging there was always some oozing around the neck, but not enough to run off the table and plop right onto his toe.

  The hairs on the back of Doc's neck rose. His hands itched to remove the sheet, but his feet were wiser. He stepped back.

  Too late.

  The hand shot out from beneath the sheet and clamped around his neck. Doc squeaked like a prairie dog caught by a coyote, but no one heard him. The townfolk had all gathered on the prairie waiting for the burial.

  A long moment passed while neither man moved, Doc and the infamous gunslinger poised like statuary. In the silence Doc heard the man's labored scratchy breathing as Cain greedily filled his lungs.

  Unable to help himself, Doc croaked, "You coming alive just now, son?"

  The outlaw swept the sheet from his face. He looked bad. Too bad for a miracle. His voice was painfully hoarse. "Yeah. Sure. I'm the Second Coming."

  Doc nodded, too scared to laugh.

  "The telegram. Where's the goddamned telegram?" the renegade choked out, his words barely discernible.

  "Nobody cleared you, son. No telegram came." All the while Doc said this he kept thinking about the twelve men the Dover gang had been convicted of shooting and wondered how many of those men were this one's doing. He wondered too if in the end the final toll wouldn't be thirteen.

  Cain's hand tightened around his neck. Doc could hardly swallow.

  "You lying to me?" The outlaw's features tightened, already pale with the trauma of the hanging.

  "I wouldn't lie to you at a time like this, son."

  Cain looked straight at Doc. Then he smiled, the smile never reaching his eyes. "I reckon I'll have to take you with me, Doc. I'm hell-bent to get outta this hanging town. One way or the other."

  The man quit smiling. His wrists bled, his neck bled. And by God, thought Doc, he has cold eyes.

  Doc swallowed. Not easily, with the man's steely grip on his throat. "They ain't going to hang you again. They owe you. We all agree. It was a bad hanging."

  "Bad all around," the man spat.

  Doc didn't answer, his eyes drawn to the man's neck. The rope had sure made a bloody mess.

  "You got a horse?"

  Doc drew his gaze away from the wound. "Yep. Out back. Good solid Indian pony. Take her."

  "Gun?"

  "Ain't got one. Don't rightly believe in them. Being a doctor and all."

  "Then I'll take you with me. I gotta have some insurance." The man massaged his sore throat, then swung his legs over the side of the wake table. The fringe of his chaps was almost all sheared off, a sign of a renegade. Men running from the law sure as hell couldn't waltz into town to repair a harness. They used their fringe for everything from buckles to bootlaces.

  Doc swallowed, conscious of the hand on his throat, the hand that at any minute could close and choke the life out of him. Fear made the blood drain from his face. "How far do you think you'll get with me dragging behind you?"

  The outlaw stared. Those frigid gray eyes assessed Doc's paunch and balding head. "I need time" was all he offered.

  Doc understood. "I won't tell. Not for a while anyways. That'll buy you some time. Get on out of here."

  Those eyes narrowed, reminding Doc of a wolf s he'd once seen in the dead of winter. "Why would you do that for me?"

  "I don't believe in hanging a man twice is all. You survived it. Must be for some reason. I ain't playing God."

  The man pinned Doc with those eyes as his hand pinned him by the throat. "I need five minutes," he finally rasped. "If I don't get it, if you don't give it to me, I'll come back from the grave to get you."

  "I swear you'll get your five minutes if I have to barricade the deputies from the door." Doc nodded as best he could.

  Cautiously the man slid to the floor, his hand still clamped to Doc's throat. Together they walked over to the back door. For one brief second the two men looked at each other, a strange understanding passing between them. Just like that wolf, Doc thought, remembering how he'd lowered his rifle and die wolf ran off, leaving only the memory of those shattered-ice eyes.

  The outlaw was at least a foot taller than the doctor, lean, hard, and capable from years in the saddle. There was no reason for Doc to say it, but he whispered it anyway, his throat still constricted from the power of the man's grip. "Good luck to you, Macaulay Cain."

  The outlaw glanced at Doc, his expression startled. He looked as if he was about to say he didn't need any good luck from a man who had tried to hang him. But instead he took his moment, like the wolf, and he cleared the back door in a dead run. He leapt onto the startled Appaloosa in the corral and hightailed it west as if he were part Indian, with no need for a saddle or bridle to take him to the mountains that jagged up from the blue horizon.

  And Doc watched him. Strangely anxious to see him free and gone, like that wolf in the snow.

  Red is the rose

  That in yonder garden grows

  Fair is the lily of the valley

  Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne

  But my love is fairer than any. . . .

  Irish folksong

  WRITTEN RY Tommy Makem

  August 1875

  When traveling she always wore black. Widows were never questioned. They said all that needed to be said in the color of their weeds. Christal Van Alen had learned to wear black. She had learned the trick of wearing the black cotton gloves so no one would see she didn't have a wedding ring and therefore no late husband. And she had learned to wear the long black netting over her face, labeling her as a widow, veiling her features, obscuring her age. Dressed as she was, she rarely got inquiries, or conversation. It was safer that way. One would think that a woman traveling alone would want the friendly solicitations of her fellow passengers. But she'd learned, too, in her time out west that the only thing more dangerous than a renegade band of Pawnee was a stranger too inquisitive about her past.

  The Overland Express coach hit a rut in the road, shoving her into the sharp corner of an object next to her on the seat. She eyed it, a small replica of a bureau that was the pride and joy of the hefty furniture salesman who held it.

  She straightened, almost envying the salesman his wide girth. The stage accommodated six passengers, but the man next to her had been charged double fare because of the room needed for his samples and his large size. Squeezed between him and the side of the stagecoach, Christal could barely keep her skirts from being crushed. Her petite stature was no help. While the salesman was so heavy he hardly bounced around at all, she was thrust onto the corner of that tiny bureau at every jolt.

  Clutching her grosgrain purse, she resumed her position, sitting primly, ankles crossed, hands placed one on top of the other in her lap. The ride grew smoother and she chanced a look at the other three passengers who had boarded the coach with them at Burnt Station.

  One was an old man with a placid grandfatherly face. She thought he might have been a preacher when he reached inside his breast pocket and pulled out a book of Scripture. But then she noticed that the inside of the book was carved out to hold a small metal flask, which he eagerly swilled from, and she wasn't so sure anymore.

  The young man next to him—a kid, really—looked anxiously out the window as if he was ashamed of riding in the coach instead of doing the manly thing by pulling his weight alongside on a cow pony. His traveling companion might have been his father, a grizzled character with a faded indigo vest and a large wiry gray beard that would have benefited from a pair of shears.

  No one chatted. The "preacher" drank; the man in the blue vest dozed; the salesman stared at his little bureau as if thinking of his next account. Another jolt of the coach sent her once again into the vicious corner of the bureau. This time she sat back rubbing her ribs.

  "Name's Mr. Henry Glassie, ma'am."

  She looked up to find the salesman smiling at her again. He was a very pleasant-looking man, one whom she could believe provided good companionship on a long, du
sty ride across a prairie such as this. But she didn't want companionship. She preferred silence. She could hide in silence. At least from everyone except herself.

  She stared at the man through the anonymity of her veil. Bitterly she wondered if the kindness would flee from his eyes if she told him who she was. That her face was on wanted posters from Maine to Missouri. That the gloves she wore to hide her lack of a wedding ring also hid the scar on her palm that was sketched onto every one of those posters. She'd seen the last poster in Chicago. That had been three years back, and Wyoming Territory seemed far enough west to be safe, but every day she worried that it might not be. She'd been held captive in a nightmare in New York. Now she was running from that nightmare and from her own face. And from one violent man who would see her dead before she could utter the truth about a crime she didn't commit.

  "Madam, if I may be so honored to address you as . . . ?" The man raised his eyebrows as if imploring her for her name. She could see he was determined to get conversation from her.

  "I am Mrs. Smith," she answered in a low, polite voice.

  His smile widened. "A lovely name, Smith. So proudly democratic. So easy to remember."

  She almost smiled. He'd all but said her name was common—which it was. That was why she had chosen it. Yet Mr. Glassie made her feel complimented. He possessed the tools of a brilliant salesman: a silver tongue and a smooth presentation, and his comportment, his fashionable verdigris suit, and the large pearl stuck in his black four-in-hand tie, all proclaimed he was very successful at what he did.

  But poor widows didn't buy much furniture, and conversation quickly trickled away, much to her relief. She was left once again to look out the window at the ironing board-flat prairie. Every now and again she removed her handkerchief, reached beneath her dark veil, and dabbed the perspiration that beaded along her brow. The sun burned overhead, and dust blew in the open windows, coating her gown with a gritty blond powder. They had just started out. Noble was a long day's ride. She was anxious to get there.