Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (61 page)

And then his eyes scanned the bloodstained letter, and every nerve in his body was inflamed. It was from Andy’s mother. She was writing to say she’d received word from the cousin in Goldsboro that a soldier who had been taken along with Kitty had returned. And he told a story about how a band of Cherokee Indians had attacked them, killing all of them. He managed to escape. And the next words leaped out like giant fingers of blood: “The Indians took the Wright girl with them!”

“What is it, Coltrane?” John Wright barked. “What’s wrong with you? You look strange.”

“Travis!” Sam nudged him, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “What is it?”

And he told them in low, guttural moans. John rocked back on his heels, stunned. Then he sprang and the two men leaped to pull him down to keep him from getting shot as the air sang with bullets and shells all around them. “I’m goin’ after my girl,” John screamed. “I’ve got to get to her.”

“Listen to me!” Travis shook him fiercely and yelled: “Don’t you see, John? This is the reason Andy didn’t let us know he had even gotten this letter! He knew we’d take off and try to find her—and he knew we had to stay here and fight. Now get hold of yourself. I want to go after her just as damn bad as you do, but we can’t go running off half-cocked in the middle of a goddamn war. You want to get shot m the back for desertion? Now get hold of yourself.”

“Besides, you got to have more facts,” Sam spoke up quickly.

“Find out exactly where they were so we can get an idea of whereabouts the Indians are. You can’t just go riding off and not know where the hell to look.”

John slumped and they released him. “Look, we’ll finish this fight and ask permission to go after her,” Travis said quickly. “We’ll find her. I promise you we will.”

John nodded, tears swimming in his one eye.

“All right.” Travis patted him on the shoulder, his voice an ominous rasp against the noise that surrounded them. “Now let’s get this fight over with so we can go after her.”

They picked up their guns and stood for one last, somber moment, staring down at Andy’s lifeless body.

“Since the Rebs sent Andy to eat with the Lord tonight,” Travis said, biting out the words, “let’s send a few of them to eat with the
devil
!”

And with loud shrieks that split the air around them, the three charged on up the mountain.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The beaten Confederates withdrew into Georgia and General Burnside’s Federal forces were secure in Knoxville. Everyone was singing the praises of Grant. Word spread that he would soon become General in Chief of the Union armies. It was obvious that the South had lost the war in the west. For the time being, there seemed to be nothing left except scattered skirmishes through the winter months and both sides dug in to brave the bitter weather.

Travis Coltrane, John Wright, and Sam Bucher asked for, and received, permission to take furlough and find Kitty Wright. And while John waited a safe distance away, Sam and Travis rode right into Goldsboro, spending several days discreetly asking questions before they cornered Lonnie Carter in the alley behind the saloon and made him tell his story. From what he told them, they were able to calculate the approximate location where the Indians had captured Kitty.

“You tell anybody we were here, that we asked questions,” Travis hissed, holding the blade of a bowie knife against the shaking man’s throat, “and we’ll be back. You understand?”

Lonnie understood, but the blade was pressed so tightly into his flesh he could not give an affirmative nod. But Travis read the message in his eyes, released him, and flung him to the ground. “Just what kind of man are you to let them take her away? Hell, what did you do? Hide behind a goddamned tree and watch?”

“They…they would’ve killed me too if I hadn’t!”

Travis turned on his heels and walked away. Sam kicked the trembling soldier in the side, then followed.

It was winter and it was cold. Snow and ice made moving through the mountains slow, tedious, and all but impossible, and several times they were faced with the prospect of having to hole in until the spring thaw. But something deep within forced them to move on, if only a few miles a day.

And then they encountered a small band of Cherokee Indians high in the western region of Tennessee. The Indians were friendly enough. Speaking in broken English, they told them of hearing about the white woman with “big powers” who could bring people back from the dead. They spoke with reverence and awe, and it was obvious that Kitty was held in deep esteem by the Cherokees.

“That means she’s probably treated fairly well,” Sam said later, when they talked about it. “If they think she has the power to raise the dead, they’ll be scared of her.”

“Kitty ain’t raised no dead,” John said, chuckling. “She’s probably brought a few out of fever that looked like they were dead. But I agree. It sounds good. She might just be all right. We’ve got to hope for that, anyway.”

They were sitting in a cave high up in the mountains, with the snow whipping outside as the wind howled in all its fury. The fire they’d built from rotting wood found in the cave crackled and popped and cast eery shadows along the damp walls. The rabbit Sam had shot was being turned by John as he held the end of a spit over the flames.

“What happens when we find her?” Sam asked suddenly, looking from John to Travis. “If she’s all right, unharmed, how the hell do we get her away from the Cherokees? If she’s big medicine, they won’t let her go. And we can’t take on a tribe of wild Indians.”

“If we have to, we will.” John spoke quietly, his eyes fixed on the slowly browning rabbit. “I aim to find my girl and get her out of these mountains.”

“And then what?” Sam prodded him. “What do we do with her? You know they’re saying Grant is going to be named Commander of all the armies. The war is going to really get going once spring arrives. We’ve got to get back in it. I aim to see it through. What do we do with Kitty if we do get her back?”

“Let’s just worry about getting her back,” Travis said shortly. He knew it was going to be a problem, but it had to be done, He blamed himself, after much concentration, for the way in which it had all come about, for her even being in the thick of things. Had he allowed her to return to North Carolina when he first rescued her from Luke Tate’s clutches, she would probably be there now. Maybe if it hadn’t been for him, she and that Rebel officer would be married, and she’d be tucked away on some Southern plantation—and safe.

Safe! He shook his head. No one was safe anymore, not in this war. And he knew what Grant’s plan would be: attack! Attack at all points simultaneously and apply constant pressure on the ever-weakening Southern states, Attack and fight and get it over with.

And where was all of this going to end? How was it going to affect each of them—particularly Kitty? And how was he going to feel when he faced her again? One minute he hated her and in the next he remembered the joy of holding her in his arms, possessing, touching, feeling—and he felt a warmth creeping into his loins.

“When we get her back,” John said, cutting into his thoughts, “we’ll do whatever she wants. If she wants to go home, then by God, I’ll take her there myself. If she wants to go find Nathan, then I’ll set her in that direction. It’s up to her. She’s been through hell. I just want to make some of it up to her. She never asked to be brought into this war. All she wanted to do was stay home and do what she could in the hospital there. And look what it got her.”

“What gets me is the fact we’re almost exactly back where we started from,” Sam said disgustedly. “We took a chance on gettin’ killed riding right into that town in North Carolina and finding out where she was first captured. Then it turns out we were almost right there when we were at Missionary Ridge. Couldn’t have been over a day’s ride, two at the most.”

“We didn’t have any way of knowing that.” John pulled the skewered rabbit from the fire, propping the stick against a rock to allow the meat to cool. “With all this snow, we can’t move around and do much looking, anyway.”

Sam nodded. “We’ve got to duck Rebs, too. I hear the mountains are full of deserters.”

John shot a sideways glance at Travis, who was listening in silence. “What about you? When we find her, what’s it going to mean to you?”

Travis looked at him, chewed at his lower lip, the muscle in his jaw twitching. Finally, he said, “Well, it will mean she’s safe. If I can get her back home, where she belongs, then I’ll quit blaming myself for her getting this far to start with.”

“What if the North wins? What if we march right straight through the South and kill everybody?” John’s tone was sharp, his one eye glaring at the two men simultaneously. “You two thought about that?”

“I think only about getting the war over with so I can…” Travis paused abruptly, realizing that he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. So he could what? Go home? What home? There was nothing back there for him. Sam could do as he wanted. That was up to him. But what did the future hold for
him
?

Sam told John he should have thought about the possibility of eventually invading the South when he first joined the North. “You knew you were fighting against your own people, John. This isn’t the time to question your decision, not at this late date.”

“I didn’t really want to fight against my people. I wanted to fight for a final peace, for the Union, to strike back at slavery and all that goes with it. I just hate the thought of destroying what I left behind.”

“You can’t go back to it,” Travis said soberly. “You can’t ever go back to what you left behind.”

John squinted his one eye at him and scratched at his beard. “Then why are you going back to Kitty? What do you think there is to go back to?”

“Probably nothing. I just feel responsible.”

“He feels love, don’t let him fool you,” Sam guffawed. “I watched the two of ‘em. Oh, they put on a good show of hatin’ each other, but I knew.”

“Sam, the girl betrayed me,” Travis reminded him sharply, and the grin left his comrade’s face quickly. “One of my own men got killed over her, with a ball he intended for me if it came right down to it. She tricked me. I don’t take that lightly. Now, true, I feel responsible for her being messed up in the war, but as for love…” He shook his head.

Sam looked at John, winked, and then said, laughingly, “John, you one-eyed son of a bitch, how can I tell if you’re winkin’ or just closing that one eye of yours?”

The two men laughed, but Travis continued to stare at them soberly. Love? The idea was ridiculous. He might love Kitty’s beauty, her body, the feel of entering that body and plunging into its warm delights, but love her as a woman? Like a man loves a woman he wants to marry?

John and Sam were pulling the roasted rabbit apart, still laughing over Sam’s joke about the one-eyed wink. Travis pulled his greatcoat around his shoulders and walked toward the cave’s entrance and then straight into the wind and snow of the storm that swirled in the world beyond. It was time, he reckoned, to reflect on a few things that were whirling around inside him, to sort things out and think about the future—if he had one—and what it held for him. The last they figured, they were maybe fifty miles or so from the Indian camp where Kitty was said to be living. That meant that soon, weather permitting, they might reach that camp—and Kitty. And when they did, he wondered if he even wanted to see her, talk to her. True, most of the Indians around were friendly, but the ones who had Kitty reportedly slaughtered over a dozen Reb marauders. No great loss, true, but they appeared to be savages, from all reports. There was no way of knowing what to expect when they reached the camp, and they planned to be on their toes. But he still thought about Kitty and the image of her betrayal and escape blotted out any memory of happiness between them.

When the time came for an actual confrontation, perhaps it would be better if he just turned and rode away, heading back to the battlegrounds and letting Sam and John take over and get Kitty wherever the hell she wanted to go. There was no way of knowing what she wanted, either. Who could predict the whims of a woman that strong-willed and conniving? He didn’t intend to try. All he wanted to do was forget they’d ever met.

Travis was so lost in thought that he didn’t see the shadowy movements coming up on him in a blur of snow from his left. The howling wind absorbed any sound the figures might have made. But suddenly he was very aware of their presence as a shot rang out, then another. But the first had missed, its explosion instinctively making him hurl his body to the ground. The next went straight over him. Rolling in the snow over and over, trying to make it to the dark outline of the thicket beyond the cave entrance, he heard John and Sam shouting, calling out to him.

Struggling inside his tangled greatcoat, he reached for his holster pistol. Bringing his hand out, holding the gun, he wallowed on his belly in the snow, trying to see his target, not wanting to shoot blind for fear of hitting his comrades or missing the enemy and thus wasting the ammunition.

“Stay back,” he yelled, but his warning was drowned out by the sound of more gunfire. With the fire from within silhouetting them, John and Sam had made perfect targets—and they were now both falling to the ground. Travis leaped to his feet, throwing caution to the winds as he plunged forward, firing at the men running toward the shadow. With screams of pain, they fell, Travis’s shots hitting them squarely in the back.

Bending over Sam, he noted a small trickle of blood along his forehead. “I think the bastards just grazed me.” He rubbed at his head, struggling to sit up. “But see about John. I think they might’ve got him.”

John was hit. They moved him gently inside to the warmth and light of the fire. Sam wanted to know if there were only two of them and Travis said he was pretty sure of it. “Just Reb deserters, no doubt. We’ve known these mountains were crawling with them and I let my guard down.”

The front of John’s coat was soaked in blood, and when it was pulled open, they saw that the ball had landed in the fleshy part of his shoulder. “You ain’t gonna take my arm off,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “They got my eye. They ain’t getting my arm.”