Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (38 page)

Travis dug at his chest furiously. “I’ll be glad to see the cold come. Maybe these damned lice will freeze to death.”

Andy started scratching too, then stopped to snap his fingers excitedly. “Hey, Sam, that new man just joined us today? Jack Wilson from New York?” Sam nodded. “He says he’s got the fastest louse in the whole army.”

“Naw, he don’t.” Sam grinned. “Old Pete can outrun anything he’s got. Want to bet on it? Go get that scutter and tell him he’s get a louse race!”

Kitty wrinkled her nose in distaste. She’d seen these contests before, and they never failed to nauseate her. So far, she had been lucky not to get any of the crawling white creatures on her body, but Travis constantly scratched and he forced her to sleep right beside him every night. Sooner or later she knew, she, too, would be infested. One night she had complained about it, but he very quietly explained that he had to keep her close by during the night. “I don’t want to take a chance on what happened before happening again.”

“Are you talking about the incident with Andy and me and your men the night Sam got snake-bit…or the time later on that same night when you took your pleasure with me?” She had looked at him mockingly.

Eyes flashing fire, he snapped, “You know damned well what I’m talking about, Kitty. The men we’re recruiting are tough, and they wouldn’t blink twice over raping you or any other woman. The only reason I can hold them in line is because they’re scared of me. I’ve got a reputation for killing any man who crosses me, and that’s the only reason they haven’t taken you before now. If you want to play games, go sleep elsewhere, but don’t scream to me when one of them crawls on top of you.”

“You’re disgusting!”

“No, just honest.” He smiled wryly. “Which is more than I can say for you. You can’t admit even to yourself that you enjoy my making love to you, but you sure let me know it when…”

She picked up a pot of coffee from the fire and threw it at him, and he ducked, laughing. “Wait till my leg heals, you little she-devil, and I’ll have you running in the other direction.”

But Kitty didn’t laugh. Travis still had the power to infuriate her, in spite of the so-called bargain they had made to try to get along with each other as long as they were together.

Andy had run to get Jack Wilson, and Kitty looked up as he stepped into the clearing.

“Which one of you’ns thinks he’s got a louse that’ll outrun my champeen?” He looked at them, still grinning broadly. “Done won every race we ever been in.” He pulled out a small container from his trousers pocket.

“Pete can whip anything you got,” Andy shouted.

Kitty stepped close enough to where she could jab him with her elbow and whisper so the others couldn’t hear. “What’s wrong with you, Andy? Are you forgetting your loyalties? Why do you act so friendly to these Yankees?”

He looked at her, eyes gleaming quizzically in the glow from the fire. “Kitty, we might as well make the best of things, and it’s a whole lot easier to be friends than it is to be enemies.” He looked back to the others and said, “Come on, Sam, bet him that Pete can whip his louse!”

The bets were made, and Kitty went to bring Sam a tin plate, while Jack returned to where the other men were to fetch his own. A few minutes later, he came back with all the others, and they gathered around, placing their bets.

And then the race started. Sam’s louse “Pete” was placed in the middle of a tin plate at the same time Jack released his champion. Kitty stared through an opening in the crowd circling the two men who were down on their knees, and she felt itchy all over just watching the tiny specks of white begin to scurry around. Sam’s was moving slowly, lazily, but a cry went up from those watching as Jack’s louse darted across the plate into his master’s waiting hand!

“I don’t believe it,” Sam yelled above the din. “I dang well don’t believe it. That louse was all but flying!”

“Told you,” Jack crowed proudly. “I’ve got the
champeen
! Anybody else want to race? I’ll beat every louse you creeps got crawling all over your bodies. Come on. I’ll take anybody.”

Travis was struggling to his feet. “I imagine you could, Jack, and so could anybody who put his louse on a heated pan.” He reached out and snatched the plate and passed it among the men. “Feel for yourself. A louse is naturally going to run like thunder across a hot surface. A smart trick, my friend, but an old one, I’m afraid.”

For a moment, Kitty feared there might be trouble, but the new member of the Raiders just threw his head back and laughed good-naturedly. “Well, I’ll just save my critter till I join a new group, and then I’ll clean up again.”

The tension was eased, and Sam told Andy to bring out a hidden jug of popskull. Kitty turned away, planning to take her blankets and go to bed beneath the wagon. She didn’t like to stay around the men when they were drinking, and Travis usually told her to leave when it started, anyway.

She was ready to crawl beneath the wagon when she heard the shouts of the picket. A shot rang out, then a cry, “Don’t shoot! I give up! God, help me, I’m through with fightin’…” And whoever was doing the yelling was obviously crying.

The picket brought him in, jabbing him in the back with his gun to keep him moving. His clothes were bloodstained, the hanging shreds of a Union soldier. His eyes were huge dark sockets in his heavily bearded, sallow face. He fell to his knees, then buried his face in his hands. “God, God, don’t kill me…please, don’t kill me…”

Travis signaled to one of the men to haul the stranger to his feet. He was so weak he had to be held up. He looked at Travis, squinting wearily. “Who you be, sir? I’m no Federal or Rebel soldier now, I swear to you. I’ve had my guts filled with dying, and I’m running to the mountains to get out of all of it.”

“I’m a Union officer, soldier, and I think you’d better explain yourself. Where do you come from and why are you deserting your cause?” Travis’s voice was firm, intimidating—with that heavy quality that made men instantly realize he was a natural-born leader, a man not to be taken lightly.

“Virginia…the fightin’ in Virginia…oh, God, it was a blood slaughter. I just got a horse…a cavalryman got killed, and I took his horse and just rode away.” He paused, heaving, gasping for breath. Someone held a cup of whiskey to his trembling lips, which he gulped so eagerly he choked, sputtering. Sam slapped him vigorously on the back to help him catch his breath. Travis told him to lower the man to the ground and their told the other men to go back to their campfire. This was army business that concerned only officers—not enlisted men who might hear something to give them itchy feet to run away also.

“Now tell me what’s happened. We’ve been out here in the wilderness for weeks, traveling to the mountains for winter quarters. Are you injured?”

“No, just bone-tired. I been riding for days. I lost count of just how many. I just kept riding…running…anything to get away from that infernal war and all the killin’…and dyin’…oh, God…” He put his head in his hands and wept.

Travis and Sam exchanged looks over the man’s lowered head. Andy squatted nearby, keeping very quiet so he, too, wouldn’t be asked to leave.

Finally, when he had stopped sobbing and just sat with head lowered, sniffling, Travis spoke in that same forceful tone: “I asked you what happened, soldier, and I expect an answer.”

A frightened expression on his face, he looked at Travis and promptly burst into tears again. “A skirmish—just a skirmish, but I couldn’t stand it no more!”

Travis swore, signaling to Andy to help him get up. Sam was already moving toward his blankets. “Kitty, give him some of those flapjacks if there are any left, and then he can go sleep with the men. Like it or not, the coward is one of us now. God knows how they expect me to get a force together in one short winter when I run up with such cowardly…” His voice trailed off as Andy helped him hobble toward the wagon.

“I can make some more flapjacks if you’re hungry,” she said softly.

He looked up at her gratefully. “Miss, I ain’t eaten in so long, I can’t remember…would you believe the last thing I ate was a damned lizard I found crawlin’ on the trail? I been scared to run up on another human being. In these parts, you don’t know who’s friend and who’s foe.”

“We might all be eating lizards before this war is over.” She turned to the wagon, brought back an apple and a potato, which the soldier snatched greedily from her hands and began to gnaw voraciously, fingers twitching anxiously as he turned the raw food in his grasp.

“The South is winning the war, isn’t it?” She was unable to keep the pleasure from her voice. “General Lee is marching on the North and he’s winning, isn’t he?”

“No, ma’am.” He raised his eyes curiously. “Everybody’s gettin’ killed on both sides. I can’t see that anybody’s winning. All we’re doing is killing each other, and that’s why I wanted to get out. Couldn’t get back home. I’d run into soldiers who might hang me for desertin’. I aim to stay in the mountains till one side or t’other wins or everybody is dead.”

“Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea.” She smiled wryly.

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but you ain’t no Northern lady, are you? I mean, the way you talk, so soft and drawly, kinda, you don’t sound like no Northern lady.”

“I’m a prisoner here.” She saw no reason to hide the fact. All the other men knew it. “I was kidnapped from North Carolina by a Confederate traitor, and Captain Coltrane took me from that hell and put me in this one last spring. I’m a nurse.”

“North Carolina…” He chewed at the rest of his apple, then threw the core into the fire. “We had a man in with us one time a couple of months back when we was fightin’ back in the Valley campaign. I remember ‘cause we always find it strange when a Southerner comes North to join up with the Union army. Oh, I know there’s a lot of sympathy in the South, but it still seems strange. You know, a man leavin’ his family and all to go fight against his own neighbors and family. It’s strange. I never get over that fact.”

“My father left to join the Union army.” Kitty’s heart had started pounding; she was suddenly apprehensive. It couldn’t be true. This man could not know John Wright! Deep down, she had finally accepted the fear that he was probably dead, that she would never see him again, but now tears were stinging in her eyes.

He chomped down on the raw potato, oblivious to the trembling girl who knelt before him.

“Did this man…” She took a deep breath and clasped her hands. “Did this man from North Carolina…wear a patch over his eye?”

He raised his head, wiped saliva from his lips with the back of his hand, eyes widening just a bit. “Yep, he sure did. Had an old hound dog with him, too.” He laughed, remembering. “That dog stuck right by his side like these lice crawling on me. I remember we used to talk about that old hound…what was it he called it? Killer—yeah, that was it…Killer.”

Kitty felt herself swaying, the world closing in about her. She started falling…and would have…but Travis who had been standing back, away from the light of the fire, listening, stepped forward quickly and caught her shoulders, lowering her gently to the ground.

“Hey, what’d I say?” Jack had jumped to his feet, waving his arms. “I didn’t say nothin’ to make her pass out, Cap’n, honest…she asked about a one-eyed man.”

“Go join the others,” Travis snapped. The man obeyed, shuffling away through the night, gnawing his potato, mumbling to himself.

“Kitty…” Travis shook her gently. “Kitty, are you all right?”

Her eyes fluttered open. It all came flooding back, and she began to shake with tearless sobs. “I heard.” He held her against his chest, smoothing her hair back from her face. “I assume he was talking about your father.”

“It’s been so long,” she said weakly. “It’s a shock. I guess I’d made myself believe he was dead. After all this time. Maybe by now he is dead. There’s been so many killed…so much bloodshed. Maybe he was even fighting close to where we were at Shiloh. Maybe he was one of those torn and bleeding bodies that lay two and three deep in piles…waiting for that great big hole in the ground they were digging…”

The tears came, and her body shook convulsively. Travis held her tightly, and she buried her face against his strong chest, clinging to him to give her some sanity in a world that had suddenly turned insane. The father she had loved, adored, so close…yet so far…and maybe she would never see him again.

Andy and Sam had moved forward out of the shadows, but Travis sent them back with just a glance. He held Kitty while she cried. When there were no more tears, she lay in his arms quietly. “Let’s help each other to the wagon,” he said. “My leg’s still too weak to put much weight on it. I think we need to talk, princess.” His voice was tender, his gaze one of deep concern.

The night air was cold, damp…foreboding of the devastating winter that lay ahead in the Tennessee mountains. A blanket of leaves, resigned to their season of death, crunched beneath their feet as they walked to the wagon. Travis’s wound was healing, but the muscle and tissue throbbed whenever he moved, made worse by the crude splint Kitty and Sam had fashioned for him. Kitty’s arm was around his waist, and his arm fell gently across her shoulders, but Kitty moved trancelike, tears streaming down her face,

She moved beneath the wagon, but Travis was slower. By the time he wriggled beneath the coarse blanket, Kitty had turned her back and was crying brokenly.

Somewhere an owl offered a curious hoot, as though asking why the young girl cried with such sorrow.

“Crying doesn’t help,” Travis said gruffly. Tears had never moved him, but Kitty sounded so weak, so helpless, that the sound was starting to penetrate his shell of indifference, and this bothered him. Damnit, was he getting weak? Were the war and this girl tearing him down?

Kitty sniffed, rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You don’t understand, Travis. We were very close. I loved Pa more than anything…”

“More than anything? Come on, Kitty. He felt so strong about the war that he left you, his wife, his land, everything, to go fight with the Union. You stayed behind to help save wounded Confederates—Rebels out to kill any Union soldier that got in their way, including your father if he got in their way. It makes no difference in this war where a man was born. If he wears the uniform of the enemy or flies his flag, try to kill him. And what about your Rebel lover?”