“No, I didn’t desert.” He looked at her as though the subtle accusation had hurt. “I just didn’t want to be a part of any surrender terms. I didn’t go home, did I? I came here and reported for duty, didn’t I?”
“I’m sorry.” She was instantly contrite, ashamed for thinking such thoughts. But she had heard that General Lee had sent word to the Secretary of War that there had been frequent desertion from the North Carolina regiments, and only three months ago, Lee had written to the Secretary to say that unless something was done immediately, the number of North Carolina troops in his army would be drastically reduced. But morale was extremely low, and desertion was common among the soldiers. She was just glad that Nathan was not himself a deserter.
He hugged her, pressing her back against his chest. “Thank God, I did come here instead of heading home. I wouldn’t have gotten word that you were here. I just reported in, said that me and my men had somehow gotten separated from our unit, and then someone told me about you and how General Lee had asked that I be located, if possible. I can’t believe you’re really here, Katherine, in my arms.” He kissed her forehead gently. “Tell me, all of it.”
She took a deep breath and said, “It’s been a nightmare that I’d just like to forget, Nathan. Let’s just be thankful that we’re together again.”
“But how did you get here?” he persisted, his voice firmer, almost commanding.
She chose her words carefully, telling him only that she had been held prisoner by the Yankees, made to work in their hospitals, and finally escaped, thanks to the help of David Stoner. She explained how David’s mental state had changed since he lost an arm, how he had stayed behind with the grief-stricken family in Tennessee that had “adopted” him as their own.
“He married Nancy Warren, you know,” she added.
When he didn’t speak, she looked up to see the faraway look in his eyes, the glint of suppressed anger. Wanting to change the subject, she asked, “Nathan, when were you last home? I haven’t heard from my mother, though I wrote to her after I reached Richmond. Andy told me she was drinking a bit heavily.”
“Andy?” He raised an eyebrow.
“You remember Andy Shaw.”
“Yes. I thought he was killed at Shiloh.”
“I found him on the battlefield.”
“What I want to know,” he sat up straight, releasing her from his arms, his eyes blazing furiously, “is what happened to you and Doc Musgrave? Did the Yankees kill him?”
When she didn’t, couldn’t speak, he grasped her shoulders with his white-gloved hands and shook her. “Tell me, Katherine. What happened? I have a right to know, damnit.”
“Talking about it brings back the pain,” she said, fighting back the tears that were once again stinging her eyes. “It’s best to leave everything in the past where it can’t hurt anybody.”
But he insisted, and finally she began to cry and the whole story tumbled out in choking sobs. And then for a long time there was no sound, except Kitty crying softly, until an agonized scream drifted up from the hospital below. She shuddered. Someone had died or was dying, or had been told an arm or leg would have to be amputated. There was suffering and torture down there…and also here on the windswept hilltop in the late August sunshine.
Suddenly Nathan was leaping to his feet, his gloved hand knotting into a fist that went slamming into the tree trunk so viciously that when he withdrew it, blood was already seeping through the white cotton. He swore beneath his breath, and Kitty, frightened, stepped back.
“After all this time,” he said through gritted teeth, “I find you, Katherine, and you’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I still love you and want you for my wife. But goddamn it, it’s hard to take, realizing that you’ve been raped—and don’t try to tell me you haven’t!”
His eyes blazed into hers. She hadn’t told him the details—just that she’d been held prisoner first by Luke Tate, then Travis Coltrane. “I’m no fool!” he raved. “I know you weren’t with those men all this time without them raping you.”
“Do you think I liked it?” she screamed at him, angry herself. “You think I wanted it to happen? Any of it? You were the one, you and all the others, who thought war was going to be so great, so glorious. You couldn’t wait to march off in your fancy uniforms with the bugles blowing and the drums beating and everyone cheering and waving. And I’ve seen the blood and guts on the battlefield, and I’ve seen the suffering and the dying and the mutilated and the maimed—and I’ve suffered, too, and I’ve died a little, too, and I’ve hated every damn moment of it, and you stand there and act like I’ve committed some heinous crime because I was kidnapped against my will and raped?”
She turned away from him, trembling in rage. Why had she allowed herself to lose control? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be! This was supposed to be a tender, beautiful time, not an angry exchange.
She felt his hands touch her shoulders gently, heard the huskiness of his voice as he said, “I’m sorry, Katherine. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It just tears me apart to think of what you must have gone through. God, don’t you know I would have fought to my death to defend your honor? But I’ll try not to think about any of it. We’ll pretend it never happened and go on from here together.”
He turned her around. “Oh, Katherine, if you only knew how much I love you!” And he grabbed her, kissing her until her lips felt bruised, and she tried to return the kiss with equal fervor.
Why, she wondered with a flash of guilt, did she not feel the feverish surge of passion that Travis had been able to arouse so easily? Travis had not been the marrying kind, had known many women’s bodies, knew how to make them wild with desire. Yet, she had allowed herself to enjoy his lovemaking, and it was remembering this that made her feel ashamed to be in Nathan’s arms, receiving his kiss. But the guilt would pass. It had to. She could not let it destroy the future.
When at last he released her, they sat back down under the tree and he told her about the men from Wayne County who had been killed. She grieved for each but rejoiced that others had returned home, even if they were injured. At least they had lived. Nathan told her that there were not many left of the original Wayne Volunteers, that they had spread out into other units in the confusion of so many different battles and skirmishes.
“The war doesn’t look good for the South at all,” he said gloomily. “I hear things aren’t good back home, either.”
“You never did tell me if you knew anything about my mother,” she said quietly.
He dug the heel of one boot into the ground, and she could tell he did not want to talk about it. Finally, he said, “The last I heard, in a letter from my mother, your mother has turned into the town drunkard.”
A stab of pain went through her. “I…I can’t believe that. Maybe she’s heard that Poppa is dead and she’s turned to the bottle. I mean, a woman can be so grief stricken she could turn to whiskey to dim the pain of losing her husband…” She was babbling, shaking her head from side to side, not willing to accept either the realization of her mother’s condition or the possibility that her father might be dead.
Nathan, beside her, took a deep breath. “No, Katherine, your father is not dead. In fact, from all I hear, he’s very much alive. But if he ever returns to Wayne County, he’ll be hanged.”
“I don’t understand.” She looked at him in astonishment.
“Have you heard about the cavalry raids going on in western Tennessee? Have you heard about Grierson’s Raiders? Well, your father is said to ride with him, wrecking railroads, killing anyone who gets in their way. General Nathan Forrest is making some attacks for our side, thank God, but Grierson is doing a lot of damage, and your father is riding right alongside him.”
Kitty felt herself swaying. Grierson was the cavalryman whom Travis had been assigned to ride with. Had he known then that John Wright would be riding with them also? Dear God, if so, why hadn’t he told her? Or maybe he had planned to, had she not es
caped, had he not been killed.
“Katherine, are you all right?” Nathan was gathering her in his arms, concern etched in his face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blunt about it, but everyone back home knows about it. Your father was seen by one of your neighbors, Wiley Cox. In fact, he even shot at Wiley, but missed, and Wiley got away.”
“Travis was to have gone with Grierson…” she said, speaking more to herself than to Nathan. “I heard General Rosecrans give him his orders. He must have known Poppa was with them. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Travis? Coltrane? The Yankee who kept you prisoner? How’d he know about your father? Just what all did you tell him?” He was getting angry again and Kitty no longer wanted to argue. Her mind was whirling dizzily as she tried to sort out the bits and pieces of all that had happened in the past few hours.
“Travis is dead,” she said finally. “He was killed by one of his own men, trying to keep him from shooting me…as David and I were escaping…running away. Try to understand, Nathan, I kept those men alive—some of them. Many of them died. I was all they had for medical aid of any kind. I nursed Travis through an illness, saved his leg from amputation, saved his best friend from a snake bite. We grew to be friends. In the end, even though he was my captor and I, the prisoner, he couldn’t kill me when I was escaping. He saved my life—and lost his own.”
Her voice caught on a sob, and Nathan snapped, “Katherine, I just don’t want to talk about any more of this. You make me feel like there was something between you two. I’ve already got horrible images dancing around in my head of you with all those men…”
“There were only two,” she snapped, jerking her head up to glare at him. “I don’t grieve for Travis, but I owe him my life. After all is said and done, he was still the enemy and I still pledge my allegiance to the Southern cause. And if you will let me, and let yourself, I’d like nothing better than to mention none of this ever again.”
“We’ll go on from here.” He got to his feet, pulled her up once again. “And we’ll concentrate on the war around us and the future, if there is one.”
He began to lead her down the hill. Somewhere a bird was singing, but Kitty did not take it as an omen of happiness to come.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Travis reached inside his greatcoat, then under his shirt. His fingers were wet with blood. The ball had entered the flesh below the ribs on the left side and gone right through tearing a rough hole in his back as it ripped its way free. Shuddering, he felt the exit hole. The wound wasn’t all that bad. At least the ball wasn’t still in him. He’d been in the war long enough to know it was rougher when the ball stayed inside a man. There was a lot of bleeding, but the pain wasn’t so bad—not yet. Fingers probing around the edge of the wound, he felt numbness.
Well, if I’ve got to be hit, it’s the best kind of wound to have, he thought realistically. But it hadn’t come with bugles blowing and drums beating in some kind of glorious charge. No, when Grant had ordered a brigade of cavalry to come down from the Tennessee border, riding between the parallel north-south line of the Mississippi Central and the Mobile and Ohio railroads, it was no glorious charge. Led by Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson, they had hit hard and fast without warning.
And it had been successful, Travis thought with a wry grin. They had sliced right through the length of the state, cutting railroads, fighting detachments of Confederate cavalry, and finally reached the Union lines at Baton Rouge. For the few days when it had counted the most, Pemberton’s attention had been drawn away from General Grant and kept him from figuring out what the Yankees were driving at.
Pemberton had surrendered Vicksburg on the fourth of July. Grierson and his men could head back into Tennessee to continue their cavalry raids and try their damndest to track down Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Confederate cavalry.
Only Travis had decided to do some scouting on his own, and some stinking Rebel had ambushed him, but not before he fired his own rifle and killed the Rebel. But here he was lying in a muddy ditch and the pain was starting to come. And I’m going to die in this goddamn ditch, he thought, as blackness began to sweep over him.
Opening his eyes, he reached down dizzily and scooped up some of the brackish water to rub across his face.
Damn? There she was again. Kitty’s face swam before him. He swore to put all thoughts of her out of his mind. Then, just when he thought he’d succeeded, she would come creeping up on him again. He should have let that soldier shoot her when he didn’t have the guts to. Hell, he should’ve shot her himself. Murfreesboro had been crawling with Federals. Who would have thought that two soldiers couldn’t guard a hundred Reb prisoners inside a stockade? Who would have thought that a woman would succeed in helping them escape? Maybe fifteen or twenty had gotten away. The rest had been shot down in the street. And Kitty wouldn’t have succeeded in her plans if he hadn’t let his guard down.
But those eyes. He could almost see them in the darkness, shining with either passion or anger, flashing like a thousand lightning bolts on a stormy night. He could almost feel her body against his—warm, supple, giving, taking. He could smell the fragrance of the pine needles in her hair. Clean. She always managed to stay clean when the rest of them were practically rotting in their own filth.
Damnit, why couldn’t he get her out of his mind? She’d almost gotten him killed. The soldier he’d grappled with that night was probably nothing but bones by now—and it could have been him. Why hadn’t he shot her? All that time she was pretending allegiance to the North and it had been a trick to catch him off guard. All along she’d planned to escape at the first opportunity.
He leaned his head back against the rocky wall of the shallow ditch. Damnit, here in the silence of the night he had to admit to himself that he had loved her. Maybe he still did. But the hate, the anger were stronger. He prayed that someday their paths would cross and then he would make her pay for double-crossing him and for making him love her and then betraying him.
The wound was not so bad, he thought. Maybe he could still ride if he could get out of the ditch and find his horse. He might make it back to the camp. Hell, what had he wanted to go out scouting for anyway? Nobody asked him to. He just liked to be by himself, knowing that visions of Kitty would come to his mind. Why did he torture himself this way? She was probably back home with her Rebel boyfriend, married, maybe even going to have a baby. He hoped she was carrying a baby. His baby. Wouldn’t that be funny—for her to escape and run for home with a Yankee growing inside of her?
The pain was getting worse. Damn, if he could get up, get to a horse, and get back to camp, someone could patch him up, stop the bleeding. If he stayed here, he was going to die. Forcing himself, gritting his teeth against the pain, he pulled himself out of the ditch, slowly crawling on his hands and knees through the scrubby underbrush. Would that fool horse come when he called her? He hadn’t had her long and she wasn’t all that well trained.
Suddenly he heard voices and then saw a pine torch flaring in the darkness. They’re Rebs, he thought in panic. The drawl of the voices was deep, slow, and then he heard one say, “I swear, Cap’n, I know it was a Yankee and Zeb shot him and he shot Zeb deader’n hell.”
And now they’re going to find me and finish killing me deader’n hell. Travis silently mocked the Southern accent. They’ll finish killing me. They won’t take me prisoner, he thought. They’ll want their revenge. Out here, away from the order and precision of planned battles, few prisoners were taken, he remembered. He’d shot a few Rebs himself rather than fool with taking them prisoner.
He flattened himself in the underbrush, holding his breath as he heard the soldiers pass within a few yards of where he lay. “Go look along the ditch,” someone ordered. Travis was absolutely still.
It seemed like hours but was only a matter of minutes before the Confederate Captain told his men to discontinue their search. “Zeb probably didn’t hit him If he had, he wouldn’t be dead himself. Let’s take his body
back and bury him before we move out.”
The footsteps and voices faded away. So they weren’t that far off, Travis thought. When daylight came, he had to be away from here or they would find him. And if he could make it back to camp and report their location, Grierson and the others could attack and clean out a hornet’s nest of Rebs.
Blood seemed to be pouring out of the wound. How much longer did he have? How long was it before a man bled to death? He didn’t know. Maybe he should have called out to the Rebs, taken a chance on them taking him prisoner. He was getting weaker. He would never find his horse and be able to get out of there.
“Coltrane…” it was a barely audible whisper, “you out here?”
If he knows my name, then he has to be one of us, Travis thought excitedly. “Here,” he answered. “I’m hit.”
Footsteps moved through the brush; a figure squatted down beside him. “How bad?”
“I think the ball went all the way through, but I’m bleeding bad.” It was the man with the patch over his eye, Travis realized, He felt a wet nose nuzzle his cheek. Killer, the old hound dog that the one-eyed man kept at his side at all times, was whimpering his sympathy.
“There’s a nest of Rebs close by,” Travis told him quickly, afraid he might pass out and die before he was able to give the vital information. “Tell the others.”
He felt himself being lifted in the man’s arms, and then closed his eyes.
“You missed all the fun.”
Travis opened his eyes to see the one-eyed man peering down at him, his face covered almost completely by the beard and the patch. One jaw protruded, filled with tobacco juice; he spat on the ground and then turned and held out a tin of coffee. “We routed them Rebs and killed every last one of ‘em. Body count was twenty-three. Even got some right nice guns. Horses, too. Grierson says he’s much obliged to you for finding ‘em, even if you did nearly get killed doing it.”
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 38