Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (58 page)

A few feet. She had made a few feet of progress toward the opposite shore. How much farther? It was difficult to gauge distance in water. From the bank, it had appeared to be fifty or sixty feet. Now it seemed miles away. Suddenly, she was slammed against a rock and she lay there, pressed back, gasping, resting against the current that gurgled and pushed about her neck, splashing into her face. It was a welcome rest for the moment, but then she realized that Jabe was standing at an angle to her right with a rope in one hand and his hand gun in the other.

“It’s your choice, Kitty,” he yelled across the thunder of the rushing waters. “You grab this rope when I throw it and let me pull you in, or I’m going to shoot you here and now.”

She could tell by the grimace on his face that he was serious, but there was no way that she would grab the rope and be hauled back in. When he lifted his arm to fire, she would duck her head and let the current take hold. Her fate would be in the hands of the Lord and the stream with the falls waiting not far away.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” Luke came charging out of the woods, eyes bulging, shoulder wrapped in bloodstained bandages that would soon need changing again. His gaze took in Kitty, pressed against a rock in the middle of the stream with the water swirling all about her face, and Jabe, on the bank preparing to throw a rope out and holding a gun in one hand. “You hear me, Jabe? What the hell’s goin’ on? Get her outta there!”

He started down the sloping bank, his face pale. He had lost much blood during the night. Once he stumbled, grabbed at a nearby tree trunk to right himself, then continued on down. Kitty felt sick at the sight of Lonnie peeking out from behind a tree, his eyes wide with terror. If the boy had ever had any grit, it was gone now.

Jabe swung the rope above his head and then snaking his arm out, he threw it. It landed with a dull plop less than a yard away from the rock. Kitty could have reached out and caught hold—but didn’t. “Damn you, girl, I said grab the rope. You think I won’t shoot? I’m givin’ you one more try.”

“You ain’t shootin’ her, Jabe,” Luke cried, reaching his side and struggling for the gun. There was a brief scuffle and Kitty watched as Jabe easily threw the wounded man aside. He yelled to his men to keep him down on the ground, then he hauled the rope in and made ready to throw it once again.

This is it
, Kitty told herself, filling her lungs with great gulps of air and making ready to plunge beneath the water. When she failed to grab the rope, Jabe would surely raise his gun and fire. How high were the falls? She guessed it would be about a hundred-foot drop. There were rocks in the pool below, sharp rocks. The thing to do was fight for consciousness, try to leap off the falls away from the rocks, and guide her descent. She could do it. She knew she could. Damnit, this was her life and she was not going to give up ever again—not as long as there was breath in her body. She would never let the war, or any man, take the spirit from her again. By God, she had fallen to her knees and begged for mercy for the last time. If death waited, then so be it. That would be faced as stoically as possible. But she would fight it to the end. No longer would she be pummeled through life as was her body now threatened by these swirling waters which were drawing her into their dictating grasp. Whatever happened, it would not be due to her allowing the current of life to sweep her up and along without a struggle.

The crashing sound of rushing water was deafening. Blinking against the stinging sprays of the torrent, Kitty saw the rope making its final arch through the air, landing just beside her.

“Grab it, goddamn it,” Jabe screamed. “Grab it, or I’ll kill you.” One of his men had taken hold of the end of the rope. Jabe was lowering his handgun, pointing it straight at her.

She took one last great swallow of air, filling her lungs till they ached. Her arms moved, projecting her body around and into the gushing, gurgling waters that waited to gobble and consume like some great predatory creature of the wild.

And just as the waters closed, she heard the great explosion.

Kitty opened her eyes, closed them again. She was dreaming. A man with feathers in his hair was staring down at her. Silly dream. That’s all it was. Feathers, indeed. Soon her mother would be in to tell her to get up, and if she were lucky, this would be another day to slip off with Doc Musgrave in his old buggy, going around to visit the sick in the county. Or maybe Pa would want to go hunting, letting her tag along. And there was that handsome Nathan Collins coming to call. His kisses left her dizzy. Blue skies. Warm winds across the sandy plains of eastern North Carolina. Cotton fields with white puffs ripening in the sun. Green tobacco leaves swaying to and fro in the fields. A good life. A rich life. So much happiness, so much joy. No grief here. Not in dreams.

She opened her eyes to reality. A man with feathers in long, shiny black hair was staring down at her. His eyes were like tiny dots beneath bushy brows. His nose was large and hooked, his mouth a grim, set line surrounded by red skin. An Indian. It was an Indian. Kitty struggled to get up, but there was a fierce pounding across her forehead. Touching it tenderly, her fingertips became tinged with blood. The Indian frowned.

She realized her clothes and her hair were dripping wet. Slowly it was coming back. The stream. Jabe. The choice she’d made. The determination. Dizzily, she did manage to sit up, gasping at the sight of several Indians surrounding her. Bare-chested, they wore buckskin pants; some had hair streaming down, others wore theirs tied back in a queue. A few wore earrings and all had on moccasins.

“Speak.”

She blinked. Was the Indian squatting right beside her speaking English?

“Speak,” he repeated, pounding his fist into his open palm.

“My name is Kitty,” she began to blabber nervously, aware that all those dark beady eyes were glaring at her. “I must’ve gone over the falls, hit my head. Did you pull me out? I…I thank you.”

The wind had become brisk and she shivered in her wet dress as the chill passed through her body. The sky above had grown dark, with great gray clouds rolling in ominously across the mountains.

The Indians continued to stare silently. What else was there for her to tell them? Maybe they didn’t know about any intended “trade” with Jabe. Perhaps she could just get up and walk quietly away into the woods. These were obviously Cherokees. Surely they were civilized to a degree and knew about the war going on all around them. She had heard about how the Sixty-ninth North Carolina Regiment had recruited two Cherokee companies of men; their chief contribution was a savage shriek that made the Yankees quake in their boots, she recalled. Their only major encounter had been the battle of Pea Ridge back in 1862. They fought well, charging into battle with that soul- squeezing war cry and carrying bows and arrows, guns, tomahawks, war clubs. But the Confederates experienced a major problem with them: they mutilated the dead, which was condemned. In desperation, some Cherokees were being used as scouts, or for raiding when absolutely necessary, and the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes were used also.

The Indian closest to Kitty reached out and touched her wet hair, and she snapped her head back away from his touch. “Leave me alone,” she hissed, struggling to her feet. She began to back away but one of the braves blocked her path.

“Come.” The first Indian, that same stony expression on his face, held out his hand. “We go.”

He was speaking English. She felt her eyes bulge with astonishment. Seemingly sensing her puzzlement, the Indian said tonelessly. “I fight in war. I come home. I know of white man’s war. You go with us. You make medicine.”

Then they did know about her, she thought with sagging shoulders as she trudged along followed by those few Indians whose task was to make sure she didn’t escape. Where were they going? God only knew. She didn’t. But at least she was still alive, and there was still hope for getting out of all this.

The sound of rushing water made her turn her head sharply. They were on the opposite side of the stream’s bank now, and she could see Jabe’s men standing around, scowling, shaking their fists at the Indians. One of the braves fired a gun in the air and all of them laughed as the white men scattered into the woods, yelling in fright.

And when they scattered, Kitty froze there where she stood. A body lay in a bloody puddle beside the rushing stream. It was Jabe. So that had been the explosion she heard as the waters closed over her: the Indians had shot Jabe, probably saving her life.

But for what reason had it been saved?

Suddenly, the Indian with the most feathers was standing beside her. “Chief’s son sick. You come…hurry.”

“I don’t have my satchel,” she blurted out. “I need my bag.” She motioned with her hands, trying to show him the size of the satchel. “It has medicine…a few things. I’ll do what I can, I promise, but I need my satchel. Without that, I have nothing.”

He turned to the others and barked orders in the language of the Cherokee. Screaming war hoops and brandishing tomahawks, war clubs, and guns they’d stolen from soldiers here and there, the Indians leaped down the bank and headed for the stream. Kitty watched as they ran up the side a little ways and then leaped across the rocks to reach the other side—traversing spaces perhaps as great as six-feet wide—with grace and ease.

He touched her arm. “We go.”

Slowly, she turned to follow, and in the distance, over in the woods across the stream, she could hear the sounds of the ear-splitting war whoops, the gunfire, and the screams of dying men.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The air was heavy with the smell of sulphur. Travis wondered if he would ever know another living moment without the familiar stench in his nostrils. Looking around him in the shadows of the sunset, he noted that everyone in the camp seemed lost in his own thoughts. Were they brooding, as he was, over whether they would live to see another sunset in the Tennessee mountains—or even a sunrise? So many had died. Others would surely follow. Who would be next? Only God knew.

God.

He looked at the sunset, its last rays of orange and pink fading behind the towering pines in the west. God made the sun rise and set, didn’t He? He made those trees, so tall and sturdy and proud. And He made him and everyone else about. The wonder of life—the sheer miracle of being alive. Why, then, did he not think very much about God or the hereafter? He’d seen men die in peace, their guts busted open and innards spilling onto the ground, yet they could whisper about hearing beautiful music and seeing blue skies while the rains poured onto their blood-soaked faces. They saw something in death he didn’t think he would see when the time came. Evidently they’d seen more in life than he had, too. But what? Living. Dying. That’s all that ever happened to a man, wasn’t it? And whatever happened, a man had to do the best he could. He couldn’t go around thinking about sunsets and trees and wondering how one person, God, could make everything. But He wasn’t really a person, according to the preachers he’d heard in camp occasionally, or
overheard
, actually. He had never gone to a service; but once in a while a parson would deliver a sermon so loud that the very ground shook with his yelling and a person would have to be deaf—or dead—not to hear. The parson talked about the hereafter, how a person who doesn’t live right will not be in the Lamb’s Book but will burn in hell forever and ever because God won’t take him into heaven.

Travis had never thought much about hell—or heaven, either, for that matter. He worried about survival, food in his belly, clothes on his back, a drink when he needed one, and a woman to answer a different kind of need. He’d think about dying when the time came—maybe.

He thought about the other kind of dying, the screaming and cursing and shrieking that went on with some men who weren’t really hurting that bad at the last. “Scared to die,” someone once said of such a man. “He sees the fires of hell.” Bullshit. Travis didn’t believe in heaven or hell or God or the devil. He believed in very few things, but those things he defended with his life. Freedom for every man and the preservation of the Union at any cost, those were the things that mattered because those were the things that affected him here and now. He’d worry about this God and His heaven and hell one day when everything else was taken care of.

He wondered suddenly whether Kitty believed in God. Somehow, he felt that she did. She was a peppery one, that woman. Just thinking about those dancing eyes and the saucy grin made him smile to himself. They’d had their bad moments, but there had been some good ones, too. Then, damn it, right when he let his guard down, actually thought that the little vixen was in love with him, she stabbed him in the back like every other female he’d ever let get to him.

It was cold. He wished the fires were burning, but General Grant had said no lights, not with the Rebs all around. Pulling his poncho around his shoulders, he still felt a spot of tenderness where he’d been wounded. But it had healed, thank God, and he had finally gotten out of that horrible house with that crazy woman pulling at his crotch all the time. He shuddered, remembering.

Kitty. Damnit, why did he have to keep thinking about her? She probably hadn’t given him a second thought since that day she’d ridden off with her Rebel boyfriend or whoever the hell he was. For all she knew when that shot was fired, it tore into him instead of the soldier he was struggling with. Maybe he should’ve let him shoot her, Hell, what difference did it make? She hadn’t cared. She’d used him. And if he ever got the chance, he’d make her pay for it. How he’d love to wrap his hands around that smooth-skinned neck and twist until those funny-colored eyes of hers popped out.

No. He shook his head, picked up a rock, flung it to no place in particular, then ran a weary hand through his long ragged hair. He could pretend with Sam and everyone else, but the truth was he’d let himself care something about her. He couldn’t hurt her. Not that he wanted her again. Oh, no, should they ever meet, he’d turn and keep on going, but he wouldn’t hurt her. That funny, warm feeling he got whenever she came to mind would keep him from actually hurting her.