Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (27 page)

Jubilant! They were jubilant because the Confederates were dying. Couldn’t they see the dead all around them? Couldn’t they see the suffering, the agony, on both sides? Was the death of the enemy so satisfying that it overshadowed the death of your own brother in uniform? None of it made any sense.

Before her, on the table, a soldier of eighteen or nineteen years of age lay writhing in the agony of having his lower jaw shot away. She began to wipe away the blood to see if anything could be done besides attempt to ease the boy’s suffering while he awaited death. Outside the tent, someone screamed that the Confederates were retreating. Cheers and cries of joy went up from the hundreds and hundreds of wounded soldiers lying in the woods—those that were able to shout.

She felt like a traitor. Her countrymen were retreating, whipped, beaten, while she stood here fighting to save the enemy. What if Nathan were out there in the midst of the battle? What if he were already dead—or wounded. This soldier lying here struggling to even moan in agony might have been the one to kill the man she loved. And she was supposed to save him? Dear God, she could not, she could not lift one more finger to save the life of one more Yankee!

Chloroform. She would take the chloroform and pretend to put the soldier to sleep so she could work on his wound, only she would administer a fatal dose. Doc had taught her how to use chloroform, and she had also read the books in his small library. She would merely put the soldier out of his misery, and then, in the confusion, she would slip away—pretend to be sitting down for a rest—only she would move farther and farther away, all the way to the river, and perhaps she could follow the Confederate retreat and escape. Surely, no one would shoot a blood-stained woman!

Suddenly she was aware that someone was standing right behind her. Turning, she saw the haggard, drawn face of the doctor who had first been so opposed to having her work along with him. His eyes were misty, and his lips were quivering.

“It’s…it’s more than I can bear,” he choked out the words. “All this killing…”

Kitty’s frustration unleashed itself upon the first person who had spoken directly to her all night long and on into the day, except to discuss the business at hand. “It’s what you Yankees want, isn’t it?” she cried. “All the killing and blood and maiming and suffering? That’s what you wanted all along when you tried to tell the South how to run her affairs. And now that war is here, and your own men are dying, you don’t like it so well, do you? Well, I’m not helping another Yankee this day…”

His eyes stared down at the soldier on the table, who was barely moaning now. Without shifting his gaze, he said, “I’m not a Yankee, miss. I’m a Southerner, like you, captured at Bull Run and forced to work as a doctor for the Federals…”

She swayed, dizzy with disbelief and sudden fatigue that threatened to take her off her feet. “Then how do you do it? How do you stand here for hours and hours with only whiskey and coffee to keep you going—only to try to put Yankees back together again so they can go out and kill more of our countrymen?”

The boy on the table gave one final moan, gasped, and a rasping gargle of blood oozed from the gaping wound onto his chest as his eyes rolled upward. He was dead.

The doctor reached over and touched the boy’s forehead gently. “I told myself the day might come when someone I loved would come by my table…that I could help save him…but I couldn’t do anything…”

Kitty stared at the tears rolling down his cheeks as he smoothed back the blood-matted hair of the dead Yankee soldier. “He was my son…” He choked out the words. “He wasn’t a Yankee—he was my
son!
”

It was too much. Turning, she ran from the tent. In the confusion and shouting and the smoke from the guns, no one paid any attention to her. She fell, scrambled to her feet again, plunging into the woods deeper. Where was the river? She had no knowledge of where she was. Which way had the Yankees gone? Which way had the Confederates gone? She stumbled over a body, screamed at the sight of only half a body—the lower parts blown away. Whirling, she stumbled, fell across a wounded soldier who clawed out at her with a bloody hand, begging for help.

“No…no…” she cried, moving away, scrambling, clawing, running. It was too much—all of it—too much…

She made her way through the brambles, felt her dress being torn to shreds, but still she kept moving. The uniforms on the bodies she passed looked different somehow, and through the hysterical fog that enveloped her consciousness, the realization came that these were Rebel soldiers. She was getting closer to the line of retreat. Escape was nearer now. If only she could keep running, she was bound to stumble upon some
live
Confederates who would help her. But dear God, she thought wildly, as the bodies seemed to be stacked on top of each other, were there any left alive? It was difficult to even take one step without her foot coming down on top of a dead soldier—and soon the ground was so strewn with bodies that she was walking on a carpet of death!

Soon it would be dark. She would be at the mercy of both sides, shooting carelessly at anything that moved in the dark. And with the daylight, with the Yankees obviously victorious, they would be out in number to round’ up any prisoners, and if she did not find the retreating Confederates before then—she would be recaptured.

She had to keep moving. Once her foot slipped down inside the gaping wound in the back of a long-dead body, and she felt bile once again gurgling from the pit of her stomach as the flesh and blood squeezed around her ankle. She was struggling to pull herself free when she heard the sound—weak, but yet strong enough to carry to her ears.

“Please…help me…please…”

No,
she thought in terror.
I can’t help anyone now except myself. I have to keep going. I can’t stop for anything!

“Please…God…let it be so…
Miss Kitty
…”

She froze. Her name. Someone had called her name! It wasn’t so. She was dreaming. She was so tired, so bone-weary that she was having hallucinations. Doc had told her that happened to people sometimes, and it had to be happening to her. She had to get out of this sea of the dead before it drove her hopelessly insane.

“Miss…Kitty…” There it was again. It had to be a nightmare. She jerked her foot free from the grizzle and muscle of the dead man’s back, and, hoisting her ripped skirt high, began to move away.

“Help me…please…”

She could not move. Something within compelled her to turn around, find out once and for all whether or not she was really hearing things that weren’t really there. Her eyes moved slowly over the bodies strewn almost shoulder to shoulder along the ground.

“Miss Kitty…please…”

And then she saw him—the soldier in bloody gray, stretching out a hand to her. Nathan? Could it be? Cautiously, afraid to even breathe, she moved closer. No, it was not Nathan—he was too young, too small.

And then she recognized him, and a scream erupted from her heart as she realized it was Andy Shaw reaching out to her!

Stooping quickly, she tried to hug him but saw through her tears that he was wounded and she did not want to touch him. A large splotch of red was on the front of his shirt. “A cavalryman got me—they got most of us right here in this clearing,” he gasped out the words. “He stuck me with his sword. I think it’s in my side…but it hurts all over.”

Her fingers worked nervously to rip the shirt open. Using the hem of her skirt, she wiped the blood away gently. It was a sharp, piercing wound, in the side. With care, he could make it and live. If left here, he would die from the fever—if he didn’t bleed to death.

“Can you move?”

“No,” he whispered. “It hurts…to even talk. I…couldn’t believe…I saw you…”

“Thank God you did. I was running away from those damned Yankees to try and catch up with the retreating Rebels. Maybe it’s lucky I did stop, Andy, or I might not have found you.”

“No…you’ve got to go on…” He tried to raise his head but fell back weakly. “Catch up…escape…”

“You lie still,” she shushed him. “I won’t leave you, Andy.”

He closed his eyes, and she looked around frantically. There was no escape now, not if she stayed here. The Yankees would come through soon and find her. And she had to have help for Andy. How far away were the Confederates? How long before darkness fell?

Thundering horses suddenly came charging across the bodies as though they were only large clumps of earth to be trod upon. Yankees! They saw her and came toward her. “What in thunderation is a woman doing out here in the middle of this bloody mess?” the soldier in front cried.

It was no use. There was no escape now. She decided to tell the truth about how she came to be there. “Captain Coltrane brought me here night before last to help with the medical staff. I’m out here tending to the wounded.”

The men exchanged confused glances. “I don’t understand,” the soldier who had spoken scratched at his beard. “You’re a long way from the medical tents, and the only wounded soldiers out here are Rebs, and you sure don’t want to waste your time on them. Come along now. We’ll take you back with us…”

He held out his hand to pull her up on the saddle behind him, but she did not move away from Andy.

“Come along now. I know war is hell, especially for pretty young ladies like you, but you have to put your loyalties in their proper place, and this is not the place for any kind of pity, believe me. They say we’ve lost over 10,000 men, so there’s no time to cry over these dead bastards that did the killing!”

“I’m not leaving this boy…and he’s just that—a boy, hardly past fourteen years of age.” Kitty got to her feet slowly, the handgun she’d picked up at Andy’s side carefully concealed in the folds of her skirt. “I’m taking him back to the field hospital. He’s bleeding from a sword wound. He’ll die without medical attention.”

“You ain’t taking that goddamn Reb anywhere…”

Whipping the gun out, she pointed it at the soldier who was doing the talking. “If your men shoot me, I’ll get at least one shot into you before I die.” Her voice was braver than she had dared hoped it would be. “I’m not about to leave this boy.”

“You crazy?” The soldier’s eyes bulged incredulously. “He’s a Confederate! He was shootin’ at our men, probably killed one or two. Now you put that gun away before someone gets hurt.”

“Someone
is
hurt, and I intend to help him. Now are you going to help me take him back to the field hospital or do I have to carry him on my back?”

He got down off his horse and signaled to another soldier to help him with the wounded boy. Shaking his head, he grumbled, “That’s the reason the battlefield is no place for a dang woman. They ain’t got no sense.”

Kitty could have told them just what Andy Shaw meant to her—but she didn’t. The emotions churning within were hers and hers alone, rot meant to be shared with outsiders. She’d known him all his life, tended to him when he was sick and Doc Musgrave wasn’t around. In a way he was a symbol of the past that was very dear and precious, for she knew that life would never again be like the memories she held so fondly in her heart. There was no going back. Perhaps she would never see her home again, or her mother and father—or Nathan. She felt a stab of pain. Andy might have some news of Nathan—know something about his whereabouts, if he was still alive, if he had come back for her, then gone in search to find out why she had disappeared. Maybe he even knew something about Poppa. Had he come home? Had he been killed? Was he still in the war, fighting with the Yankees? Yes, Andy just might have some answers.

The soldiers lifted him onto a horse after Kitty made a compress from her torn skirt to press against the wound to help stifle the flow of blood. “You’ll be all right, Andy.” She smoothed back the unruly red hair, kissing his forehead. But he did not respond, mercifully unconscious and oblivious to the pain of his injury.

One of the soldiers held out his hand for her to ride behind him. She started forward—then stopped—heart constricting as a lump of terror knotted tightly in her throat.

There, in a puddle of blood and mud, in the spot where Andy had been lying—the flag lay, as though crumpled and defeated, never to fly so gloriously again.

The eagle was splattered with blood—the eagle of the flag of the Wayne Volunteers.

Chapter Eighteen

Kitty directed the soldiers to the hospital tent where she had been working. “It ain’t gonna do you no good, lady,” the one in charge told her as he helped lift the still unconscious body of Andy Shaw from the saddle. “With so many of our men wounded, they ain’t gonna let you waste time on no Rebel soldier.”

Just then the doctor who’d just lost his son stepped out of the tent and looked at them quizzically. “Doctor, this crazy woman insisted we bring in a wounded Reb,” the soldier blared out indignantly. “Tell her there’s no time to waste on a Rebel. She wouldn’t listen to us. Pulled a gun, she did.”

The doctor was tall and thin, with gaunt, hollow eyes beneath a thatch of thick, graying hair. His mustache and beard was matted with blood from the spatterings of the night before caused by so many amputations. He looked from Andy to Kitty, then spoke softly. “I was too busy to introduce myself properly last night, young lady. I’m Dr. Harold Davis, formerly a proud member of Company B, Fourth Regiment, Tennessee. Bring this boy in, and we’ll see what can be done for him.”

One of the soldiers in the back whispered, “That’s that Rebel doctor they captured and put to work. What can you expect?”

Another said, “Yeah, what can you expect? They’ll let our men suffer and die to save this damn Secesh.”

Dr. Davis carried Andy in his arms to a wooden board placed on top of barrels that served as a table. It was slick with blood. Kitty silently reached for a bucket of water as she’d seen the helpers do during the endless hours of death and suffering, and she sloshed the water across the board, sending a murky liquid to the dirt floor to mingle with the stagnating, putrid puddles that had already formed there.

The doctor removed the compress, then used a wet cloth to sponge away the blood. Probing with his fingers as Andy moaned in his sleep, he said, “We’re in luck. I don’t think any vital organs have been severed or punctured. We’ll suture and soak it in turpentine and keep a close watch. With God’s blessing, he’ll pull through.”