A fresh flow of blood was now coming from the wound. “Lint,” she said to Sam, who was hovering nearby. “Get me some lint and some material for a tourniquet. Then we’re going to suture and put the leg in a splint.”
“You’ve got to cut that leg off!” The assistant was dancing up and down in his anger once again. “I forbid this. I’m the doctor in charge here.”
He yanked at Kitty’s arm as she fumbled in the bag she had brought, and that’s when Sam sent his fist driving into his face. He fell backward onto the ground, and Sam pointed his finger at him. “Now you get the hell out of here. This woman knows more by instinct, and just plain givin’ a damn about savin’ lives, than you’ll ever learn from a book.”
Travis’s head fell back, a grateful, relieved smile on his lips. Kitty worked feverishly, mopping up the blood, stitching the torn flesh together as best she could. She sent the men into the woods to search for something with which to make a splint, then she told Sam to get Andy and have him bring a stretcher. “We’ve got to get him back to the hospital where we can keep a watch on him. If the Confederates are going to overrun us, then we’ve got to be prepared to retreat.”
At that, Travis opened his eyes and grinned, that cocky, arrogant grin that she hated. “Hey, Sam, did you hear the lady? She said ‘us’—like she’s one of us now.”
“Well, damnit, Captain, she just saved your leg. Don’t that mean she ain’t mad at us anymore?”
They both laughed, and Kitty stiffened, glaring down at Travis as she said, “It only means that I don’t hold to cutting off a man’s leg, any man’s leg, if it can be saved. I still hate you with everything within me, Travis Coltrane, and don’t you forget it.”
“And I still don’t give a damn how you feel!” He snapped back at her. “Just get me out of here before you decide to show your true colors and cut my throat…”
She was able to laugh, to taunt him. “You aren’t going to be giving anybody orders for quite a while, Captain, because that wound is going to keep you down. If the Confederates do come you just might be left behind and taken prisoner, and then you’ll know how I’ve felt all these months.”
“Maybe the other Southern women will treat a Yankee kinder than you. Maybe they aren’t so hypocritical about their feelings.”
“Hypocritical? I’ve never made any pretense of how I felt about you.”
The stretcher-bearers arrived. They lifted Travis up, and he gritted his teeth against the pain. “No need to be gentle with him,” Kitty quipped, following along behind. “You couldn’t hurt him if you tried.”
Travis raised his head, trying to look back at her. “Just wait till I get on my feet. You need a good sound thrashing, Kitty Wright, and I’ll see that you get it.”
Sam chuckled, and Kitty shot a sideways glance at him. “Just what do you think is so funny? You saw how I saved his leg. That young doctor’s assistant didn’t know what he was doing. If I hadn’t been around, he would have cut that leg right off, and what thanks do I get? He threatens to beat me!”
“I’m laughing because the two of you are ridiculous. Both of you are so goldarned headstrong and stubborn that you refuse to admit that you fell in love with each other a long time ago.”
It was Kitty’s turn to laugh. The idea was absurd. No one could possibly know how much she hated that man moaning on the stretcher. No one could realize how she wanted to slap that smug, arrogant grin right off his face. Love? The idea was absurd—ridiculous.
When they reached the hospital area, Dr. Gordon was waiting for them, the angry assistant standing beside him. “Just who in hell gave you the authority to override my assistant?” he roared indignantly. “He said amputate, and that’s what should have been done. You have no right…no authority. I understand you’re a Confederate prisoner. I think it’s time you were sent to prison.”
“I think it’s time everyone shut up and let me have some peace,” Travis snapped as the stretcher-bearers set him down on the ground. “It’s my leg, and I said it wasn’t coming off. As for her, she’s my prisoner, and don’t you go thinking you’ve got any right to say what’s to be done with her. Now if you want to examine my leg, I think you’ll find she did the right thing. And I’m going to ask General Grant to look into your assistant’s qualifications, because there’s no damn telling how many arms and legs he’s chopped off because he was too stupid to know of anything else to do to try and save them.”
Sam seemed to be able to do more to calm Travis Coltrane than anyone else. He talked both to Travis and to the surgeon, and finally it was agreed that Kitty would go back into the tent and work as an assistant. The battle was raging. There was no time for arguing among themselves.
The air hung heavy with the odor of sulphur. It was a cloudy day, and made worse by the sun being shrouded from view by smoke and gas. The Confederates were bombarding. Many of the Federals, Kitty noted, were walking around dazed, eyes glassy, unable to speak except in monosyllables. Some were so addled by the horrors they had witnessed that they could not speak at all, merely sat and stared straight ahead, not seeing anything. Many men were lost from their regiments. Everything was a mass of confusion.
Day turned to night, then Kitty lost track of time. She wondered vaguely how Travis was getting along, not because she cared, she told herself, but merely to reaffirm the correctness of her diagnosis in the field that his leg should be saved. It didn’t matter otherwise. Sam Bucher was out of his mind. Love Travis Coltrane? She’d sooner love the devil himself.
Word had come that General Robert E. Lee’s army had broken the Federal lines at Gaine’s Mill. McClellan ordered his army to retire to Harrison’s Landing, the Federal supply base on the James River. Kitty was moved along with the retreating forces. Lee’s troops tried again and again to destroy the entire Federal army, but after hard fighting at a place called Savage Station on June 29, 1862, and Frayser’s Farm on June 30th, White Oak Swamp the same day, and Malvern Hill the first day of July, McClellan was able to safely reach Harrison’s Landing and the protection of a Federal river fleet. The dream of the north capturing Richmond had ended.
Kitty remained behind the lines, working in the hospital, but the news drifted in, along with more and more casualties, that General John Pope was moving overland from Washington with a newly formed army—his target was Richmond. Then Lee shifted his army northward to block him, and on August 9th, Jackson was able to check Pope’s lead elements at Cedar Run, a few miles south of Culpepper, then he swept around the Federal right flank and captured Pope’s all-important supply base at Manassas.
“We’re getting out,” Sam came to Kitty one night and told her. ‘We’re getting our pants beat off, and we’re pulling back. The Captain isn’t in any shape to stand and fight, and he refuses to be moved with the other wounded men to Washington. Besides, Grant and McClellan both know that Travis is the best danged scout they got, and as soon as he’s on his feet again, he’ll be out again. We’ve had some new men assigned to us, and as soon as we can get our gear together, we’re moving out.”
“I’d rather stay with the hospital wagons,” she protested. “I don’t want to go with Travis and his band of cutthroats.”
“Now, Kitty,” he chided her. “There’s no point in arguing about it. Travis sent me to get you ready to go, and you know when his mind’s made up, there’s no changing it. You ought to know how it is, because you’re just as stubborn. Now let’s go.”
“Only if Andy goes, too.”
“He’s already with the Captain, helping to load him into a wagon. Now get moving.”
There was nothing she could do but go with him. But where? To what wilderness were they headed now? Why couldn’t Travis stay and fight with the regiment? Why did he have to have a special band of men assigned to him just so they could get out and roam the countryside?
There were fourteen of them sitting on horses around the small wagon. And Kitty did not like the looks of any of them. Burly, grizzly, rough, mean—there was nothing ni
ce she could say about any of them. None of their uniforms matched, and they were all dirty and blood-stained. And she didn’t like the way their eyes raked over her, either, resting insolently on her breasts. She was glad she wore a loose-fitting shirt and baggy trousers.
Andy was loading water barrels onto the back of the wagon, and one of the men yelled, “Hurry it up, Johnny Reb, you want to get shot and left behind?” The others laughed, and Kitty bristled. She didn’t like this—any of it. These men were hard, cold, cruel.
She had been riding behind Sam, and she slid off the horse and hurried to the wagon and climbed inside. Travis lay on a stretcher, his head resting on a blanket roll, and he frowned as she entered. “Just what kind of animals do you have traveling with us now? Do they assign the muck to you because they feel more at home?”
“I believe the Generals feel that I can control the more unruly soldiers better than they can. I’ve tamed you, haven’t I?”
She stamped her foot, crying, “Oh, why can’t you leave me and Andy behind, damn you! This is no place for us.”
He ignored her protest, threw back the blanket that covered him. “I want you to check my leg, see if it’s healing properly.”
“You mean no one has checked it lately? Are you mad?”
“No. I didn’t want McClellan to hear about it if it was worse than anyone thought. He’d send me to Washington with the others, and I want to stay in the war.”
“Till you’re killed?” She leaned forward and started unwrapping the messy bandage that Sam had obviously put on the wound. “What will happen to you if you are killed, Captain? Neither heaven nor hell would let you in, because you don’t belong in either—not good enough for one, and too mean for the other.”
He started to comment but instead howled with pain as she jerked off the last of the bandage. The wound was healing. The leg was still in a splint. In time, perhaps a few months, he would be s good as new. She said as much, and he nodded. “Then I suppose the thing for us to do is head into winter quarters. It’s almost September, and cold weather will soon be here. I think we’ll be safe in the mountains of Tennessee, and come spring, we’ll be ready to fight. I’ll use these months to whip my men into the toughest cavalry unit in the whole Federal army.”
Sam came in, and Travis told him his plans. “Head for Tennessee. By the time the snows come, we’ll be set for the winter.”
Sam took a seat in the front of the wagon and picked up the reins, with Andy right beside him. The other men fell in line behind the wagon, and they started moving.
“I think I’d like to ride a horse,” Kitty said quietly, staring straight ahead. “I don’t think I want to be here with you.”
“Well, those men back there would love to have you riding a horse with them, Kitty,” he grinned in the manner she detested. “You just go right ahead. You tell Sam to stop and let you get on a horse.”
And she did. And within a half hour, she was off the horse and back in the wagon beside Travis, who laughed at her. “They’re animals,” she said, furiously. “They have no respect for a woman. One of them even reached over and touched my breast!”
“And you slapped his face, of course…”
“I certainly did.”
“I told you, Kitty, those men are about the roughest there is. That’s why they’ve been assigned to me. When I’m on my feet, I can control them, make soldiers out of them. But for now, stay clear of them. We’re in for a long winter without my having to keep you out of their beds.”
“I don’t want to be in their beds!” she snapped indignantly.
He gave her a long look—a warm look, caressing her with those steel-blue eyes. “Would you like to share my bed?”
“Certainly not.” She moved as far away as she could in the crowded wagon, but he was still able to reach out and touch her.
“Get your hands off me, please!” she said haughtily.
With more strength than she knew he possessed since he had been wounded, Travis wrapped his fingers around her arm and yanked her forward. The wagon was jouncing along, and she was unable to keep her balance and fell across his chest. Their faces were mere inches apart. “Tell me, Kitty Wright” his breath was warm against her skin, “do you slap every man who tries to touch you? Would you slap me now, a poor, wounded soldier?”
Strong hands cupped her face, pulling it close. His lips brushed hers, gently at first, then hard, demanding. He slipped an arm down around her shoulders, pressing her forward until her breasts touched his bare chest. Strangely, she could not will herself to resist, and she melted against him, her blood surging hotly through her quivering body.
He released her, but he was not grinning arrogantly this time. His whole expression was, serious. “I guess I’ve got you in my blood, you little spitfire. It’s going to be a long winter, and we’re going to have to keep each other warm. Why don’t you relax and enjoy it?”
“Just wallow in the filth you call love?” She jerked away, passion quickly cooled by the flood of anger that washed over her. “Just sleep with you and be your whore? Is that it? Is that why you brought me along?”
Now his expression changed to one of anger, and he gave her a shake before flinging her away from him. “Damn you, girl, every time I try to love you, really love you, you remind me all too well that you’re just another woman with a heart as cold as ice—good for only one thing. Let me get my strength back, and I’ll give it to you, with no strings. You can be sure of it, if I have to tie you down to do it to you.”
“I’m going to get back on that horse and ride beside Sam.” She started toward the front of the wagon. “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.”
And once outside, on the horse and riding next to Sam on the driver’s seat of the wagon, Kitty felt her head swirling. Why did he enjoy tormenting her so? What kind of animal was he? Didn’t he know she didn’t love him, didn’t want him? Why, then, did he insist on keeping her with him?
And then she thought of her own feelings surging whenever he was near. It couldn’t be love. Sam couldn’t be right. She couldn’t actually love that…that monster! It was all a nightmare!
But yet, there was no denying that his kiss left her breathless, and there was that little quiver that went through her whenever he flicked his eyes over her in a way that told her he found her beautiful—and desirable. Could she really be falling in love with him? Did the conflict come because they were both so much alike? She did not know. But as he’d said—they were in for a long winter. By spring, she would surely be all too aware of her feelings for Travis Coltrane.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kitty awoke, startled. Blinking her eyes, she tried to remember where she was. How long had they been traveling toward wherever they were headed in Tennessee for winter quarters? She couldn’t remember. A week. Yes, it had been a week now. Already the air was cool and crisp, the leaves turning golden and drifting slowly to the ground. It was coming back to her. They had pitched camp beside a sleepy creek, and she remembered Sam and Travis talking over the supper of mush and bacon. Travis wanted to try to ride his horse for the first time, impatient to be back in the saddle. Sam had argued, but, as usual, the Captain had his way. It was a nice night for a ride, Sam had conceded, and Travis had smiled at her and asked if she would like to come along. She had declined, taking her blankets very far from the campfire, saying she was tired and wanted to sleep. She could have told them the last thing she wanted was to spend more time than necessary with the arrogant Coltrane.
But what had awakened her? Staring into the darkness, she strained to hear. And then it came to her. “You go to hell!” It was Andy’s voice, reaching her from beyond the trees and dense foliage of the forest. “I’ll never swear allegiance.”
“The hell you won’t…” a Yankee voice boomed. “You’ll swear allegiance, or we’ll make you wish you had.”
“Nail him to that tree.” Another angry voice. “Nail his hand up if he won’t raise it in allegiance.”
Kitty was scrambling to her feet, legs twisting in the blanket that covered her. Kicking free, she hurried toward the clearing, where the campfire still burned. She could see them in the eerie glow, gathered around Andy, who faced them defiantly unafraid.
“Hold his right hand up against that tree!” The thickly bearded man with the long shaggy hair doing the talking was Wiley Burns. Sam had confided to her that he was the meanest of the lot. He was holding a hammer and a long nail. “You swear allegiance to the North, boy, or I’ll crucify you like Jesus!”
“Stop it! Are you mad? Stop it, I say!” Kitty burst into the clearing, lunging for Wiley. The others were holding on to Andy, who was struggling for his life, but two stepped forward to grab Kitty, twisting her arms behind her back.
“Well, well, the little spitfire is awake!” Wiley’s slitted eyes moved over her. “When we finish with Johnny Reb, here, I think we’ll tame you and have you pledge allegiance. ‘Course we’ll have a little fun first, though.” They all laughed, and it was an ugly sound—ominous, and Kitty shivered, frightened because she realized suddenly that she was all alone—and helpless against them.
“Now you take the oath, Andy!” Wiley turned to the wild-eyed boy who was struggling to get his arm down. “Repeat after me…I pledge allegiance…”
Andy spit in his face, and Wiley turned purple with rage. He yanked the boy’s hand into position against the tree, and the others held him fast as Wiley drove the nail through the youngster’s hand and into the tree. Andy screamed with pain, writhing and twisting.
“Damn you!” Kitty screamed, twisting with all her strength, but the two men wrestled her to the ground and held her firmly.
“Go on, take the oath,” Wiley commanded, grinning. He was actually enjoying seeing the boy suffer, Kitty realized. He was Luke Tate all over again! She could hardly see through the red haze that clouded into her eyes.
“Andy, for God’s sake, take their damned oath,” she begged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s only words. Take it before they kill you. They’re animals…they’re…”
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 28