Prologue
Kansas, 1863
A bullet in the gut would have been more merciful.
Even hanging.
But nothing in Captain Rafferty Tyler’s life had been merciful, and it was obvious that fact was not changing now.Every hope he’d ever had, every dream he’d ever dared dream, was gone.He was no longer Captain Rafe Tyler, respected, decorated officer and gentleman.
He stood there, disgraced.Cashiered.A convicted felon.He wanted to ball his fingers into fists, but he wouldn’t give the bastards that satisfaction.
Thief.Traitor.They had judged him a thief and very nearly a traitor.But his exoneration on the latter charge didn’t matter.He would carry the stigma of both labels for the rest of his life.
He squared his shoulders, standing alone before the garrison as he was stripped of his captain bars, his buttons, his sword.Stripped of everything that had ever meant anything to him.Publicly stripped of his dignity.His soul.
Drums tattooed out his disgrace, the rhythmic rapping accompanying every humiliation.He tried not to hear them, but he knew they would echo in his brain forever.
And then the branding.ATon the back of his hand.Tfor “thief.”Public branding was still one of the army’s preferred punishments, though not usually for officers.But then he was no longer an officer.
Rafe allowed his gaze to move slightly from the officer directing the punishment.A few army wives and daughters stood on the porches of the living quarters.His jaw tightened as he searched for Allison.He didn’t know whether she would watch her former betrothed’s humiliation or not.She had been the first to abandon him when charges were filed against him.She hadn’t even asked him whether they were true, had only returned his ring by proxy, without comment, while he awaited court-martial in the guardhouse.He’d found he hadn’t known her at all, and, Christ, it had hurt.
He shook off the two men assigned to hold him still, and he offered his hand on the forge.He would not wear the mantle of coward as well as thief.But inside he retreated into some dark place where no one else could enter, would ever be able to enter.And he endured this part of the punishment—because he had no choice but to endure.
He tried to blank his mind, but he couldn’t.Flashes from the past whirled by, a parade of events that had led to this day, to this ultimate ignominy.That day more than twenty years ago when he had watched his mother and father die, his father scalped, his mother raped before being killed.He had been taken by the Comanches and held captive for three months until he was “bought” back by the army.Little had improved.He had been taken in by a Texas family, but he soon learned it was only because of the work he could provide; he would have fared as well with the Indians.
But he was a survivor.He’d always been a survivor.He joined the army at fifteen and found a home he trusted.A place he belonged.
Eight years on the frontier until the war, working his way from private to master sergeant.Then the war with the South started, and he received a battlefield commission and two promotions.He had found his place in life; leadership had come easily.Because he had been an enlisted man, he understood them and valued their lives.He had known they would go wherever he led, do whatever he told them.
He’d thought he’d conquered his evil star, but now he realized it had just been waiting to strike again.At twenty-five he’d been wounded and assigned to a desk job, away from the fighting he understood and into army politics he didn’t.He was temporarily assigned to providing escorts for payrolls headed West.He hadn’t trusted his superior, Major Jack Randall; something about the man had rankled Rafe.
Now he stared ahead at Randall, the man who had perjured himself at the court-martial, who had so neatly framed Rafe for payroll robberies Rafe knew now Randall had committed.Rafe had been an easy target, a maverick officer with a Texas accent.
Rafe heard the sizzling of red-hot iron against skin, smelled his own flesh burning, and blessed the momentary shock that kept the pain from immediately rocking him.He stood, his legs braced, as agony filtered through his consciousness, firing the hatred that was fiercer than the branding iron.His eyes never left the face of Major Randall.
The man flinched, and Rafe knew his eyes had promised vengeance.Relentless vengeance.
Randall licked his lips for a moment, then turned away.
Rafe withdrew his hand and, despite himself, despite self-made pledges he would not do so, he looked at it.TheTwas already evident, the skin burned black and raw, the sickening smell hovering in the hot summer sun.He swallowed his own bile to keep from moaning as the pain heightened, assaulting him in waves that continued to increase in intensity.
He was marked now.Forever marked as an outlaw and thief.No matter what he did, he could never rid himself of it.
He could never have a normal life.Not with the brand.
His arms were seized, irons fastened around his wrists, the soldiers unmindful of the burning agony of his hand.He was pushed toward the guardhouse to await transport to the Ohio State Penitentiary where he was sentenced to serve ten years.There were no military prisons, and military prisoners were turned over to whichever state facilities had space.
He bit his lip to keep from crying out in pain, from raging against the injustice.But no one cared.Randall had done his work too well.
If it was the last thing he ever did, Rafe would make Randall pay.
It was that thought, and that thought alone, that carried him through the night, through three days of being chained and displayed like an animal as he was taken by wagon and train to Ohio.
Randall.The name might as well have been burned into Rafe’s hand as theT.Rafe would never wipe out the stink of burning flesh, the humiliation of being cashiered in front of the garrison he once served, the purposeful, planned destruction of his life.
Not until Randall suffered like a man damned, suffered as Rafe had in the same lingering, irreversible way.
Chapter 1
