The Raging Hearts: The Coltrane Saga, Book 2

by Patricia Hagan

  Sam stopped laughing. Kitty had never seen him look quite so ominous. “I mean you’re another man after the prettiest woman God ever set on this Earth. But I got news for you, mister. There’s only one man for her, and she knows it. You’re wasting your time.”

  Cocking his head to one side, Jerome said quietly, “But does he know it, Marshal? Does he want her? I think not. I think one day very soon Kitty will realize that fact and open her heart to someone who can give her the love she deserves.”

  “Well, it won’t be you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Kitty stepped between them, hands pressed against her ears. “Stop it, both of you! You sound like children. I will be the judge of what goes on in my heart, not you two. So stop it, please.”

  A strained silence fell over the room.

  Kitty pulled her hands down. “All right.” She spoke very quietly. “Jerome, you go back to town and make the necessary arrangements. How soon do you think we can leave?”

  “Tomorrow. It’ll take me the rest of the day and most of the night, but I’ll have everything ready and be here to pick you up shortly after sunrise.” He shot Sam a triumphant look.

  Sam was undaunted. “I’ll be here, too.”

  “Nobody said anything about you tagging along.”

  Ignoring Danton, Sam put his arms across Kitty’s shoulders. “You will let me go along and try to reason with Travis, won’t you? Remember, I know where he’s gone. No one else does. And it is a long trip. You want to be alone with this scalawag all that time?”

  “Bucher, you’re pushing your luck.”

  “You’ve already pushed yours.”

  Kitty cried out once again. “I said stop it! I’m not going to have this quarreling. Yes, Sam, you may come along. If you can go into the bayou and reason with Travis, it may save us all a lot of trouble.” She looked at Jerome. “And I am sure you can understand that it would be best if we weren’t alone for such a long journey. What if one of us got sick or something? We need all the help we can get, and Sam knows the way.”

  Jerome sucked in his lower lip petulantly. “All right, but he’d better stay out of my way.”

  “Boy…” Sam pointed a shaking finger, his face reddening.

  Kitty held up her hands, moving her head from side to side in disgust. “That’s enough for today. Please, both of you leave me now. I’ve much to do to make ready for the trip.”

  “Kitty, I need to talk to you. It won’t take long,” Sam said quietly.

  “All right.” She nodded to Jerome. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  With one last glare at Sam Bucher, Danton opened the door and stepped outside.

  Sam turned to Kitty with misery-filled eyes. “I don’t blame you for making this trip, honey. I’m glad that your mind is made up. But there’s something I want you to bear in mind. Whatever his reasons were, Travis thought he was doing the right thing when he took that boy of his and rode away from here. He left me behind in a mess, and he knew it, and look what good friends we are. He felt he had a damned good reason. When I find out what it is, I’ll know how to deal with him.”

  “He did it to hurt me,” Kitty said bitterly, walking to the sideboard to pour herself another glass of wine. “He hates me, Sam. He never really loved me. He just wanted to hurt me because he blames me for so many things. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?”

  “You didn’t leave him alone. You wanted him to believe that boy was his. You obviously still loved him.”

  “I did then. I don’t anymore.”

  “Kitty, you’ll never make me believe that. I know you and I know Travis, and you’re two of the most stubborn people I ever saw, but you love each other. I saw it before either of you did. I’m the one that pointed out that fact to Travis, and he called me a fool.”

  She sighed with exasperation. “That was then, Sam. This is now. What’s in the past no longer matters. He hates me now, and he took John to try and hurt me.”

  She brushed a tear away, turned her back so Sam wouldn’t see.

  “You do still love each other, Kitty. A lot of things have happened, I agree, but I believe, with all my heart, that you two will get together. I know. Now, I want you to promise me that when we get there, you’ll let me try to talk to Travis before you let that hothead Danton do anything foolish.”

  “I promise,” she murmured.

  Sam gave her a fatherly peck on the cheek and left quietly.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Pulling an ornate silk rope, Kitty opened the heavy, full-length drapes of gold velvet. She could see the city of New Orleans through wide, multi-paned glass doors which led onto the balcony. Pushing these open, she stepped outside. A cool breeze drifted across her face, and she wrinkled her nose at the smell. Sea air, Sam had called it.

  The St. Louis Cathedral loomed up out of the darkness Sam had pointed out landmarks early that morning before he left on his mission. She knew the place called Jackson Square was somewhere beyond the cathedral, the busiest section in the daytime. The sound of laughter and voices drifted through the night, and she supposed the sound came from people leaving the Paris Opera after an evening’s entertainment.

  Kitty was growing more anxious with each passing moment. Sam had said he would do his best to return by dark. “I just don’t know how things are going to go,” he had told her, a somber expression on his leathery face. “Travis ain’t the kind you just walk right up to and start telling what’s on your mind. You got to feel him out, see what kind of mood he’s in, and go from there.”

  “I don’t care what kind of mood he’s in,” she had wailed impatiently. “Just tell him if he doesn’t give my baby back, I’m going to send hired guns into those swamps. I’m not bluffing, Sam. I mean it.”

  Seated in the hotel dining room that morning at breakfast, Sam and Jerome had eaten ravenously. Kitty could not touch a bite.

  Jerome had given Sam a contemptuous glare and said, “Money talks, my good man. Wait and see. If you return without that boy, I will have men ready to go into the bayou by sunrise tomorrow. I promise you that.”

  “Oh, you’re out of your mind.”

  “Stop it!” Kitty had slapped her palms on the table, sending the dishes into a brief dance. People turned to stare, and she lowered her voice, staring at the two men alternately. “I listened to your quarreling for two weeks. It was bad enough riding bumpy stage coaches and dirty trains, and wondering if we’d ever get here. All the while, I had to listen to you two sniping at each other.”

  Sam had replied, “You should have left him at home. He ain’t good for a damn thing. Travis is just gonna kill him.”

  Jerome had paled slightly at that but recovered to snap, “I consider myself quite accurate with a gun. I killed my share of Yanks.”

  “You ain’t no match for Travis Coltrane.” With that, Sam rose. “Now I’ll get back soon’s I can,” he had said with finality. “You’re just going to have to sit tight and be patient.”

  Kitty had spent the rest of that endless day fighting off Jerome’s advances. He was most determined, but she was damned if she’d ever love another man.

  After a fretful dinner, during which Sam did not appear, she had retired to her room. Now, standing on the balcony, from the corner of her eye she saw a man’s shadow in the room behind her. Kitty managed to stifle her scream just in time—it was Sam.

  She ran to him.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said. “I figured you were downstairs eating, so I just let myself in.”

  She studied his face. “You have bad news,” she whispered.

  He lowered himself into one of the ornate chairs beside the fireplace, not looking at her. “Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

  She moved on stiff legs to seat herself opposite him, leaning forward anxiously. “You talked to Travis? Did you see John? Is he all right?” Her heart was pounding.

  Sam stared into the fireplace as intensely as if flames actually crackled in the empty grate. With
great difficulty, he forced himself to speak. “Kitty, I found Travis right where I figured he’d be, at his cabin in the bayou, up on them stilts. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. In fact, he seemed kind of glad I was there.”

  “The baby,” she said intensely, reaching across to clutch his knee. “Tell me about my baby. Was he all right?”

  “Little John?” He met her eyes for the first time, and a grin made his moustache and beard quiver. “Ahh, that boy’s fine, just fine. He’s his granddaddy and his daddy all rolled into one, and you couldn’t ask for a better combination. Travis has got an old Creole woman there looking after him while he’s out trapping and fishing during the day. The boy is just fine, Kitty. You ain’t got a worry in the world about that. It shows in Travis’s face how much he loves the boy.”

  “But did you tell him I’m here?” she asked, feeling a wave of desperation. “Did you tell him we came for John?”

  “Well, I’m getting to that. Right away, Travis wanted to know had I turned in my badge and come home to stay, and when I told him I’d only come for a visit, on business, he looked at me in that way of his, you know, like he can see right through to your brain and know what you’re thinking?”

  She nodded. He had looked at her that way many times.

  “I just came right out and told him why I’d come, and that you was with me. I reminded him he was breaking a law by taking that boy because he had no legal claim on him. He just looked at me like I was tetched and then laughed and said the law of the bayou said otherwise, and if I thought I was going to touch that boy, I’d better just go ahead and draw on him and be done with it, because I’d have to take him out over his dead body. He meant it, too, and that’s what really got to me, Kitty. Me and Travis, we been together a mighty long time. Been through hell and back together. And there he sits, telling me to draw a gun on him. Now, he knew I couldn’t draw on him.”

  “But you did tell him I would not return without my son?” she cried.

  “Yeah, I told him all that and a lot more, too, about how you and him really love each other, but you’re both too proud and stubborn to admit it. Well, it seems that when Corey McRae was dying, you didn’t know it, but Travis was standing right behind you. He said you took up a handful of dirt in your hand and said, ‘This is mine now. Whatever else is over and done with, this land is mine…’”

  He gave her a long, searching look. “Did you do that, Kitty? Did you pick up a handful of dirt and say all that?”

  “Well, something like that, yes,” she said, perplexed that Travis had made something of it. “What I meant was that even though I’d lost my father, and Travis, and had lived in hell with Corey, the land was now mine—mine and John’s. I was reaching out to touch the only thing that was real to me.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I can understand that, but you have to understand that Travis took it another way. He always did feel that your land meant more to you than he did, and he resented it. So when he saw you clutching that dirt, he said something just popped inside him.

  “All along, he didn’t know it, but he was clinging to the hope that maybe you did love him. But right then, he knew there was no hope. He’d already decided the boy was really his, so he just did what came natural. He went and got his son and he came back here. And here is where he plans to stay.”

  “Oh, God,” Kitty moaned, swaying to and fro, her hands wrapped around her knees. “I didn’t mean it the way Travis took it, Sam. I swear to you on my father’s grave.”

  “Well, me believing you don’t matter. It’s what Travis believes. I spent all day arguing with him, trying to make him see things the way they really are. But he’s stubborn. He don’t want no part of you, and the boy stays where he is.”

  She gave a short, bitter laugh. “And you said you thought he loved me. You were going to make him see that. You were a fool, Sam, a fool! And so was I, to ever get mixed up with such a villain!”

  She got to her feet and began pacing up and down anxiously. “I’m not going back without my baby, Sam. I won’t leave without him. If I have to go into those swamps by myself and crawl on my hands and knees, I won’t go without him.”

  “Oh, I told him all that,” he said matter-of-factly. “He just laughed. He said he reckoned you had so much money now you thought you could do anything, but the one thing you couldn’t buy was that boy. He says as ruthless as you are, he don’t want you for the mother of his son. I’m sorry, Kitty, but that’s what he said, and I have to shoot straight with you. It’s over.”

  She stared at him incredulously. “You mean you think I should just leave and go back to North Carolina without John? I won’t do it, Sam.”

  Sam got up and walked to where she stood, putting his strong arms about her. “Honey, I love you like you was my own daughter, and I ache inside because I know you’re aching. But believe me when I say that I know Travis better’n you or anybody else. And he ain’t going to give up that boy. You’re wasting your time.”

  She shoved him away. “So you’re scared of him. Well, I’m not. I’ll fight him with my bare hands if I have to.”

  “Oh, Kitty, Kitty.” He shook his head from side to side, and she could see that his eyes were moist. “I wish I could help you. I honestly do. But there’s nothing anybody can do. Maybe, in time to come, he’ll change. But for now, there’s just nothing we can do.”

  “I’m not giving up my child, Sam.”

  They faced each other silently for several moments, and then Sam sighed and said, “Well, I guess I never figured you would, Kitty, and hard as it is for me to say this, I have to be honest and say I won’t help you anymore. I did what I could. I brought you here. I went into the bayou and found Travis and talked till I was blue in the face, trying to get him to change his mind. Now I’ve done all I can do, and I won’t take up arms against my best friend. I’m going back to North Carolina and finish the job I’ve got to do up there. Then I’ll probably come back here and head into the bayou, too. It’s my home. Just like North Carolina is your home. That’s where you belong.”

  “And I won’t go there without my baby.”

  “Well, dang it, girl, how do you expect to get that baby?” His eyes flashed. “I done told you, Travis ain’t giving him up. Are you going to march in there with a gun? Hell, you wouldn’t get past the first swamp before a snake or a gator had you.”

  She pursed her lips, and up went that stubborn chin, and Sam knew Travis was in for a fight. “I’ll find a way.” Her voice was clipped. “Don’t you fret about me anymore, Sam. Believe me, I’ll find a way.”

  “Travis will figure you don’t aim to give up easy. He’ll be on his guard.”

  “I don’t care. I won’t go home without my baby.”

  Sighing, Sam shook his head. Shoulders slumped in defeat, he walked to the door. “Kitty, there’s a stage heading east tomorrow at noon. I plan to be on it. I wish you’d give up and come back with me.”

  Her fists were clenched, her lower lip trembling. “How can you ask me to leave here, Sam? That’s my baby out there in that…that damned swamp! You know I can’t go off and leave him. God knows, he’s all I’ve got.”

  Sam stood looking at her a long time. Then he turned away once again. “Good-bye Kitty. God bless you,” he said quietly.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jerome Danton waved his arms in the air wildly. “I tell you, woman, it simply cannot be done. I’ve spent a small fortune trying. Two men are dead, and six have refused to go back in there. The word is out. There isn’t enough money in the world to hire anybody to go back and try again. You’ve got to face the facts. It cannot be done! Travis Coltrane is in the bayou with your son, and you are never going to get him back.”

  He stopped his frantic pacing to stare down at Kitty seated in a chair by the fireplace, watching him.

  “I still refuse to give up.”

  “It’s been two weeks, Kitty! I’ve been trying for two weeks. I even went to the federa
l marshals here and asked for help, but they’re not going to get involved. Oh, no, you aren’t going to get them to take any men in there. ‘It’s your problem’, they said. ‘We’ve got enough to worry about in the city without getting into a family fight.’ That’s what they said. And I don’t blame them. I thought I could buy the necessary men to get the job done, but the word has spread. No one else will go in there.”

  “I will go there,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m not afraid.”

  He stared at her incredulously. Then he fell on his knees before her and clutched her hands desperately. “No, Kitty. You can’t. I won’t let you. He’d kill you. You must face reality. Travis has us beaten. There is nothing more we can do. Let’s go back home. We’ll be married. We’ll have other babies. We’ll make a new life and forget the misery and pain of the past.”

  She jerked her hands from his grasp. “I don’t intend to leave New Orleans without my son. You can leave whenever you like.”

  His pleading expression turned to cold anger. “It isn’t your baby you’re after, is it?”

  For a moment she could only stare at him, bewildered. Then she murmured, “I don’t understand what you mean, Jerome.”

  “Oh, the hell you don’t. It isn’t that baby at all. I should have figured it out before now, but I was so blinded by you that everything else was blotted out. It’s Coltrane you want. And you’ve been using me to get to him. You knew if we got the baby back here, Travis would come after him, and you’d be waiting with open arms to beg him to take you back.”

  Kitty was fighting to remain composed. “That is not true, Jerome. I’m through with Travis for all time. As for me using you—if you will recall, you are the one who offered your help. I did not go to you. Now you make me think this was all a scheme for you to make me love you.”

  “There’s a stage east leaving at noon today, and I plan to be on it. You’re going back with me.”

  “I’m not leaving without my baby. You go ahead. And if you will figure out how much money all this has cost you, I will see that you are reimbursed.”