Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 Read Online Free PDF

mother’s withered lips.
    “You’ll find nothing of value here,” Mercy hastened to inform the thieving bushwhacker, hoping to prevent the house from being ransacked.
    In the process of tossing her mother’s undergarments onto the floor, the would-be thief turned to wards her. Mercy’s eyes widened with disbelief, gauging the beardless youth to be no more than fifteen years of age.
    “I haven’t come across an old lady yet who didn’t have a few trinkets squirreled away. See what I mean?” Angry tears scalded Mercy’s eyes as she watched the youthful bushwhacker pocket a silver-framed daguerreotype of her father.
    “Enough of the yammering.” Sykes clamped a hand around Mercy’s upper arm as he headed toward the door. “We got business to attend to.”
    Unwillingly in tow, Mercy grabbed hold of the door frame. “I can’t leave my mother!”
    “The hell you can’t!” Sykes yanked her arm away from the door jamb, ripping her dress sleeve in the process. “Now, unless you want me to tear off the rest of that dress, you best do as I say.”
    Casting a glance toward the bed, Mercy silently mouthed the words ‘I love you’ to her mother. She hoped, prayed , that her family would find the inner fortitude to survive this dark day.
    As Sykes dragged her down the stairs and out to the front porch, Mercy’s gaze met with a woeful sight, that of her sister Prudence imprisoned between two bushwhackers, each of whom had a blond braid wrapped around his fist.
    “Hot damn! If there ain’t two of these lil’ blondies!” one of the men loudly exclaimed, his announcement precipitating a round of lewd catcalls.
    “Mercy! Are you all right?” her sister called out upon catching sight of her.
    “I’m fine.” Then, knowing what her sister would next ask, she added, “As is Mama.”
    “Hey, looky here, Ned,” a voice suddenly bellowed. “I done found me the man of the house.”
    Mercy nearly cried aloud as she watched Gabriel hauled onto the porch, his captor holding him aloft by the seat of his pants. To Gabriel’s credit, his little fists were flying.
    “Let me go!” he hollered, his boyish face flushed with anger. “I’m not afraid of you!”
    While the bushwhacker promptly set him down, he kept a restraining hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.
    “How old are you, boy?” Sykes demanded to know, a menacing scowl on his face.
    Gabriel defiantly stuck his chin out, his brown eyes blazing with animosity. “I’ll be ten years old come September.”
    “Then you’re a lucky lad.” To Mercy’s utter surprise, Sykes playfully ruffled Gabriel’s dark hair. “A few years more and you wouldn’t have lived to see September. Now run along. We got some business to conduct here with the Hibbert ladies.”
    Gabriel turned to ward Mercy, his face puckered with uncertainty.
    “It’s all right, Gabriel.” Mercy tried to affect a calm tone of voice. “Just do what the man says and don’t get in anyone’s way.” She breathed a sigh of relief as th e child dashed across the lawn.
    No sooner had Gabriel departed than Sykes spun her around to face him. “All right, girl . I’ve got good reason to believe that you’ve been lying do me. I’m only going to ask you one more time . . . where’s your menfolk?”
    “Papa died last year,” Mercy replied woodenly.
    “That’s a damn shame. How about a n older brother? You got any of them around?”
    Raised to tell the truth no matter the circumstance, Mercy could not bring herself to fashion a lie. “Both of my brothers are back East fighting in the army.”
    “On which side?”
    Mercy froze. In that instant, she was acutely aware that every eye on the front porch had focused on her. Many a life had been cruelly extinguished when the wrong answer had been given to that deceptively simple question. As well she knew, that very question having been put to her own father right before he died.
    With bowed head, she murmured, “They fight on the side of