Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (70 page)

“Poppa, no.” She reached for him, heard a gentle whine, and glanced down, startled. “Killer! Poppa, he’s still alive,” she said in wonder.

“Sure he is,” he laughed in spite of the sadness of the moment. “The Confederates can’t kill an old man like me, or an old dog like Killer.

“Say.” He cupped her face in his hand, tilting it upward. “Did you marry Nathan Collins? Are you his wife now?”

“No, Poppa. I met up with Nathan and he brought me home just before the battle in Atlanta. He’s with General Johnston’s army. I was to stay at his house, but I couldn’t…”

“That’s not important,” he said, cutting her off. “I don’t have much time. This is risky, me being here. If I got spotted, I’d get lynched for sure. Now listen to me. When Sherman marches into town, you stay put here at the hospital. You may have to treat our soldiers, but if you cooperate, you won’t be hurt. I’ll be close by and I’ll keep a watch on you…”

He raised an eyebrow, stared intently out of his one eye as he said: “Me and Travis. We’ll watch over you.”

The familiar stab of heat and warmth shuddered through her body uncontrollably. “Travis? He’s all right?”

“Finer’n a fiddle any day of the week. Still one of the best damned cavalrymen in the whole United States Army, him and Sam Bucher…”

“I don’t want to hear about Captain Coltrane,” she snapped. “Not after…” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to tell her father all of it, how he’d made a fool of her, how she had been so weak as to let him.

“I know, girl.”

She blinked in amazement. “Know what?” How could he possibly know? How could anyone know?

“I know that he loves you and you love him and the reason you saw him with that woman was because he set it up for you to see him. He figured you’d be so mad you’d do just what you did do, high-tail it to Richmond. Where we went was no place for you, girl. And I think, too, he wanted to give you a chance to get back to Nathan—let you see for yourself how you felt about him.”

“Travis told you this?”

“Me and Sam figured it out. Travis ain’t one to tell me much what goes on inside him, but I know him pretty good by now. You don’t stand up with a man and face death every day and not get to know just about everything inside him.”

She didn’t speak…couldn’t speak. Turning away, Kitty went to stand at the railing and looked out at the dark town about her. “You ain’t said whether or not you even care,” John spoke directly behind her.

“Poppa, I don’t know what I feel. Nathan…he has me all confused, but then so does Travis. Maybe it’s best I forget them both.”

He swatted her soundly on her bottom and she jumped. “Maybe it’s best you quit actin’ so damned stubborn and started figuring a few things out instead o’ refusing to see the light. None so blind as those who won’t see, I always heard. Now then, I’m going to have to ride out of here. It’s a tricky ride back to where I’m goin’ and I can’t risk being followed.”

He kissed both her cheeks, hugged her, and turned away, but Kitty reached out and clutched his shoulder as the tears burned in her eyes. “Poppa…the war…is it as bad as they say? Are we losing?”

“The South is losing.” He spoke sadly in spite of his allegiance. “Sherman is advancing toward Goldsboro, and he’s got enough men to take the town if the town doesn’t surrender. It’s just that simple, girl. It ain’t a matter of you and the rest of the citizens running. There’s no place to run to now. The war is upon you. At least Sherman stopped the burning and raping and killing once he crossed into North Carolina. Everyone says he’s got a soft spot in his heart for North Carolina, but he sure had a hard one everywhere else we’ve been. He just turned his head to what the soldiers were doing, let them destroy and do whatever they liked. He says we have to teach the South a lesson, but I think the South has learned it already…”

“Halt! Who’s there?”

Kitty and John froze as the uniformed Confederate soldier came walking out of the shrubbery with fixed bayonet. “Soldier,” his voice cracked with authority, “what the hell you doing out here this time of night? You sick or wounded? You get your butt inside. If you’re okay, then you get the hell back to your company. Everyone is standing by Sherman could get here anytime.”

“Yessir, I’ll go now. I had to slip out here and see my lady for a few minutes.”

“Just git!”

Kitty’s heart was racing with tension. Would he be able to just ride away? Would he be able to get back to his own company? There were those who would have said at that moment she should have turned in her own father to the South. Hadn’t he just admitted he was practically a spy for General Sherman, that he had the information he had been sent to obtain? She was on one side and he on the other, but where did her allegiance lie?

No. She could never turn him in, no matter what the consequence. “He’s just leaving.” She spoke to the soldier for the first time. “Please forgive us.”

His tone softened somewhat. “Sure. I’ve got a girl, too, and I wish I could see her, but right now everyone is supposed to be with his company to be ready to fight when the time comes. You, lady, should be inside. The Yankees wouldn’t fire on the hospital. At least we hope they wouldn’t.”

“Yes, yes,” she nodded, turning back to her father for one farewell embrace. “God speed,” she whispered, choking with dry sobs.

“Any message for Coltrane?” he asked lightly, wanting to stop her crying over his leaving.

She thought for a moment. “Goodbye. You can tell him goodbye. That’s what I was doing when I found him that night by the Rapidan.”

He laughed. “You take care, girl. We’ll meet again. Damn a bear! I didn’t know I’d raised such a stubborn little filly!”

And chuckling to himself, he disappeared into the night. The Confederate soldier seemed satisfied and he, too, drifted away. Kitty leaned against the wall, slowly letting herself slide down until she was sitting down in the shadows. She would not be seen unless she chose to be.

Word had just been received that Johnston had assumed command once again on February 23rd. The report was that his army was scattered, dislocated, extending over an area from Kinston to Charlotte. General William J. Hardee, with two divisions totaling seventy-five hundred men, had been in almost daily contact with Sherman’s column for several weeks, but everyone said his small force could only delay Sherman’s advance momentarily. The feared Yankee General who had left a wave of smoldering destruction behind him on his march to the sea was headed straight for Goldsboro, wanting to capture the valuable railroad center.

And they could do nothing but await his arrival.

And she would have to wait, also.

Travis had wanted her to see him with that woman—the knowledge burned into her being. Was it so? What difference did it make? It was over. All of it. She had been weak, careless. Perhaps she did not even love Nathan. Maybe she was incapable of loving any man. She pressed her fingertips against her temples wearily. God, why wasn’t she born a man instead of a woman? She would not have rebelled. She would have accepted her role, her lot in life. That life would have been different.

Closing her eyes she could see that mocking, smirking smile and those steely gray eyes that could be all fire with anger one moment and warm with passion and desire the next. He could hold her gently or shake her into submissiveness—and all the while her blood flowed like rivulets of fire within her veins, leaving her spent and breathless.

Nathan. So boyish and charming. The ideal husband and father. Dreams shared, dreams broken—all because of the war. Was he the man for her? If one existed, then he had to be the one. They were alike in many ways, yet miles apart in others. Marriage would be interesting, perhaps, in bed, but for the most part she saw herself having a baby every year, occupied with womanly things, womanly chatter. The thought was suffocating.

But no man had ever excited her the way Travis Coltrane had been able to do. Even Nathan’s kisses, which made her feel warm in a way, were merely the touching of lips compared with the way Travis’s seemed to crawl inside the very depths of her soul, making her choke with wanting him to consume all of her. Passion. That was all it could be. What would marriage be like to a man like that? Babies? Yes, he would want sons to carry on his name. But somehow, she knew that he would want a woman to stand beside him all the while they lived. He would not be content to have her at home doing things she despised. No, he would have taken her hunting, fishing, maybe even let her pursue a life of her own in nursing. He believed in freedom—for himself, for everyone. He would not have stood in her way.

But she had to remind herself of one important fact: Travis did not love her. He merely wanted her. Marriage could not be a happy state if based merely on physical needs. But then, as a woman, she was not supposed to care about such things. Her needs were to be filled by a cuddling baby, day-to-day chores. A man took his pleasure and a woman gave it to him. That was the way Nathan viewed it, as did every other man she had ever heard speak of marriage.

Travis would not have shared those views, but it was no longer important how he felt about life because that life would not be shared with her.

And why was marriage so important to a young girl, anyway? Her mother said a girl should marry well, as young as possible, to be assured of security in life. Well, with the war, what security did anyone, male or female, have? And what kind of life if it is spent in total misery?

Bullshit! She did not feel very ladylike as the word entered her brain—the only word that seemed to describe her opinion of the world around her. But then, why did she have to be on guard against her thoughts, to make sure she was always the lady, doing the “acceptable” thing, the “right” thing? Couldn’t she even have the precious pleasure of thinking the way she chose privately? Not according to decorum? Should she always be ladylike?

“Bullshit!” She whispered the word out loud. Maybe it wasn’t feminine, but suddenly she felt good saying it, as though the walls were at last torn down. She was free—to say what she pleased, do what she pleased, and most of all, think what she pleased.

“Bullshit!” She said it again, louder this time.

The soldier stepped out of the bushes once again. “You say something?” he snapped. “You get back inside, lady. This is no time for a lady to be outside.”

She put both hands on the railing and leaned over as far as she could without toppling over. She stared straight at the soldier in the darkness, searching for his face, and when she found it, she laughed out loud and cried: “Bullshit, soldier!”

And, in spite of the cloud of doom surrounding the South, Kitty lifted her skirts and ran back inside the hospital, laughing, feeling better than she had felt in many, many months.

Praise God, her spirit was free!

Chapter Forty-Four

“I’m going!”

Doctor W. A. Holt, Medical Officer of Goldsboro Way Hospital #3, stared at the girl with the blazing eyes. She was a sight to behold, dressed in a dirty, ragged Confederate uniform she admitted taking from a dead soldier’s body.

“I’m going and don’t try to stop me. I’m not a member of the army. You can’t make me stay here”

“Miss Wright.” The officer took a deep breath. They were sitting in his office, bare except for a desk and the chair he was sitting in. There was no attempt at frills here.

“Miss Wright, you do not understand. General Sherman is on his way to Goldsboro. There is no way that you could reach the battle at Bentonville without running straight into his lines.”

“And you do not understand, Doctor,” she snapped, hands on her lips. “I was
born
in that country, grew up in it. I can find my way around in those swamps blindfolded. I can get by his lines without a bit of trouble. All I’m asking is for you to issue me a rifle in case I do need a weapon. And I want as many medical supplies as I can carry. General Johnston is bound to be in desperate need.”

He nodded, smiling sadly. “Miss Wright, you could not carry enough supplies to do any good.”

Stamping her foot, Kitty cried, “Well, do you give me a rifle or do I walk out of here with no weapon at all? My fiancé is with General Johnston and my father is with General Sherman, and those two armies are going to finish the war right there at Bentonville.”

“No, the war will not end at Bentonville. But many will die. If will be a pity to lose a valuable medical assistant.”

“I’m not going to stand here and argue any longer. Already they have been in battle for a day. I only heard a short while ago or I would already have left. Goodbye.”

She turned and headed for the door. Wearily, he got to his feet and said, “Miss Wright, please…”

She turned, eyes blazing defiantly, waiting.

“Here.” He walked to the corner of the room and picked up a Sharpes rifle. “You know how to load this?”

“Yes. And I know how to shoot it.”

“Then take it and I wish you well.”

Kitty snatched the rifle and ran from the room, anxious to be on her way without further argument. Hurrying from the hospital, she brushed by those who called out curiously about her dress. The horse she had stolen was tied at the back of the building and without further hesitation she mounted and rode fast and furiously out of town.

She took to the swamps and the lowlands outside of town, moving cautiously, carefully, lest there be any Yankees about. The little settlement of Bentonville was only a few hours’ ride, but she had to be extremely discreet in the path she chose to take.

Within two hours’ riding time, she began to hear the explosion of artillery fire. The sky was thick with smoke, the March sun trying to break through the clouds. The air was heavy with the odor of sulphur. Only then did she pause to think of the folly of her decision to go to the battlefield and help the wounded—the wounded that might include Nathan, her father, and, yes, as much as she hated to admit, Travis, as well. The three men in her life were close by—and close to death at any moment—and she could not stay back at that hospital and wait for word of what would eventually happen.

She was forced to abandon her horse as she got closer to the firing. It was easier to be inconspicuous on foot. Perhaps, she thought, it would be best to wait until night—but wait for what? In the darkness, it would be even harder to locate the Confederate army. Everyone was so scattered, it seemed. She would spot a few Confederates only to see them gunned down by Yankees, and she would shrink back into the thick undergrowth and shrubs. Darkness would only make matters worse.