1898, the North African Frontier

"Join the Foreign Legion," the dirt and blood-stained young man muttered, jamming a cartridge into his rifle's magazine. "She'll be sorry when she hears you died. That'll teach her, all right." He dug another cartridge out from the bottom of his kit, ramming it alongside its fellow. "Only one problem: You'll be dead, jackass."

He took a deep breath, counted to five, and stuck his head out from behind the boulder where he'd taken refuge, snapping off a couple shots as he tried to locate the Mahdist tribesmen hidden amongst the rocks littering the desert floor. A dozen shots answered in reply, peppering his face with shards of rock. He jerked back, breathing hard.

He'd counted five guns but there could easily be ten men out there. They'd been at it for two days now. As of last night he was the only one of his troop left. The rest were either dead or had fled.

He squinted up at the sun blazing half a hand's span above the western horizon, sweat pouring down his back and soaking his shirt. His face was sunburned and blistered. He had a hole in his left bicep that screamed bloody hell every time he shouldered his rifle and a broken collarbone that made the bicep wound feel like an itch by comparison. He hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. He was running low on ammunition and even lower on water. To his south, north, and east were at least five Mahdist gunmen eager to put more holes in him while to his west stretched a hundred miles of desert wasteland just as likely to kill him.

The situation did not look promising.

Inside a half hour it'd be dusk and then, well, a bad situation would turn downright grim. The days were infernos but at least there was some shade behind the boulder. The nights were worse, a frigid, bone-soaking cold from which there was no escape. A cold that set your teeth chattering and your body shaking like a rag doll in the jaws of a pit dog. He didn't think he'd survive another night. If he was going to make a move, it had to be soon.

He didn't have much of a plan, more of a half-cocked idea and since the last half-cocked idea he'd had was to join the French Foreign Legion , he didn't put much store in it. Unfortunately, it was the only one he had.

He upended his kit, producing his remaining clips. Flicking open his pocket knife, he set to work prying off the tops of the cartridges, emptying the gunpowder into the well worn folds of a letter he'd carried next to his heart over the past year. He watched the delicate signature disappear under the gunpowder, thinking he'd finally found a decent use for the damn thing.

Grimly, he began tearing the letter's second page into little squares, piling a small bit of powder in the center of each and then twisting it into a plug. "Well, I hope you're satisfied," he muttered as he worked. "If your grandmother could see you now she would be laughing herself sick--if she knew how to laugh. Hell, you deserve to die for being such a god-awful idiot."

As soon as he'd finished twisting the last plug closed he yanked his shirt free of his trousers and ripped a band of material off the hem. He tore this into several thinner pieces and tied the ends together, tucking a paper plug in at each knot, and then rubbed cartridge grease up and down the length of the make-shift fuse.

When he was done, he stripped to shirt and trousers and boots, shedding anything that might glint. His plan was simple. Come sunset, with the setting sun briefly blazing right in his enemies' eyes, he'd light the fuse and belly crawl out to a shallow dip in the ground he'd spotted a hundred yards out. By the time he'd reached the depression, the linen would burn down to the gunpowder filled plug, explode, then burn down to the next plug and so on. The Mahdists' attention would stay on the boulder, thinking he was desperately wasting his last shots while in fact he'd be sneaking into their camp to take off on one of their horses.

That was the theory anyway.

Because aside from not knowing if the setting sun would be bright enough to cover his scramble for that depression, he had no idea if the linen would burn or how fast it would if it did. Just like he didn't know how loud a pop the gunpowder would make and, if it did, whether it would even sound anything like a rifle shot. And if all that worked out, the rest of his plan depended on his being able to get up on a horse-- sans saddle but hopefully not sans bit, and with a broken collarbone and a bum arm-- take off and stay ahead of pursuers until he, well, got away.

No, sir, the situation did not look at all promising.

Oh, he was good with a horse. Damned good. Until he'd been fourteen, he'd lived on his grandfather's ranch where he'd been taken under the wing of the world's best horsemen, his grandfather's Comanche ranch hands. He'd learned a few things about riding from them. The question was, had he learned enough?

He looked up. The sun had come to rest on the horizon now, spreading colors across the sky as bright yet delicate as an houri's veil. Another minute and it would flare before disappearing. That was his chance, or as much of a chance as he was going to get. He tilted his head back, closing his eyes.

He was nineteen years old and he did not want to die. "I swear, God, if I make it out of this in one piece I'll never, ever do something stupid because of a woman again."

He opened his eyes, rolled over, and began crawling.

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