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“No!” she said softly. Then she cried out, “No!” and she turned, and did so with such speed and with so great an element of surprise that she was able to tear past the two Yankee soldiers who had come for her.
    She raced down the steps. Those faded steps where ghostly couples had danced and laughed in days gone by.
    She called out for her horse, and, thank God, Blaze, her blessed, wondrous mare, trotted in from the trees, just as Taylor burst out behind her.
    She leapt upon her horse. Taylor wouldn’t shoot her down. And no one else could catch her. No one had such a mount. Except, of course ...
    Taylor himself.
    “Home, girl, home!” she told Blaze, nudging the animal.
    She lowered herself to her horse’s haunches and sped into the night. She knew the trails. They were the paths of her youth.
    Soon, the light of the house faded behind her. Only the bloodstained moon remained high above to illuminate the night.
    The earth seemed to tremble; mud flew. She felt the great workings of the animal beneath her as they raced. And then she realized that she wasn’t alone in the night, that he had come in pursuit, that he was almost upon her, with his men following behind.
    “Please, God!” she prayed to the night. She had to get home. She had to see her mother, her father, Cimarron. “Please, God ... !”
    But God was not with her. Taylor was an expert horseman; he leapt from his own mount to hers, drawing in on the reins. She twisted on the mount, trying to fight him. Her efforts brought them both crashing down from the horse to the ground. She tried to rise, tried to fight again. He caught her flailing fists, pinned them to the ground, straddled her. Again she felt his eyes, and his fury, and still she gazed up at him desperately. “Please, Taylor, please, for the love of God ...”
    He stared down at her, gold fire in his eyes, and she was suddenly reminded that this was the way that they had met, on a night when a legend was born.
    “Please, please!” she whispered. “Bring me home! Let me be there. Bring me home tonight. I’ll stay by your side, obey your every command! I’ll surrender, I’ll cease to ride, I’ll turn myself in to Old Capitol, I’ll put a noose around my own neck, I swear it, Taylor, please, I’ll—”
    “Love, honor, and obey?” he demanded harshly, a tremor of some dark emotion in his voice.
    And she realized that he, too, was thinking that this night was ironically similar to the one in which they had met. Was he wishing that he had never come across her in the woods?
    He was suddenly on his feet, drawing her up. “You’ll ride with me!” he told her harshly. “And go where I command, stay away from all fire! Blaze can follow on her own—she knows the way.”
    “Yes!” she promised, and she was amazed at first that he would show her this much mercy after what she had done, but realized then that if they didn’t ride now, ride straight, ride hard, they would not reach her father’s property in time.
    As it was, they raced the horses almost to death. She rode before him, and yet twisted enough to estimate the strength of the troops following behind them. Sixty to eighty men. How many had come against Cimarron? Would Ian make it home? Would there be other help?
    The night sky remained bathed in blood. Indeed, when they neared Cimarron, coming from the south below the river that would be one line of defense, the white plantation house itself was steeped in the blood.
    And ahead! Far ahead, defenses had been erected against the river and men were already busy at the work of battle, shouting, taking places behind newly erected earthworks. She could hear her father shouting orders; she could see men running to obey. His workmen, and men in blue and ...
    Men in gray. Both of her brothers had made it here, she saw. Her heart was suddenly warmed. Even in this horror, blood was thicker than water, friendship mattered, and a good man was a good man!
    Then she froze.
    Tia saw her