Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (12 page)

Kitty waited in a frenzy, alternately cursing and sobbing, as Jacob went after Killer. He brought him back in his arms, limp, but still breathing. Then she followed him as he made his way expertly out of the swamp, knowing the way even in the pitch darkness. Once they reached the cleared land, she began running, stumbling, falling, picking herself up again.

She got to the barn and quickly lit the lantern just inside the door, then hurried to a stall and led out her father’s horse. He was faster than her own, and she had to ride quickly. Jacob came in carrying Killer just as she finished saddling the horse and was mounting him.

“You stay here, Jacob,” Kitty said, able to take command of the situation at last. “No need for them to come after you, too.”

“But where you goin’, Miss Kitty?” he looked up at her with frightened, tear-filled eyes.

“I’ll find Doc Musgrave. He’ll help me find others that will help.”

She galloped out of the barn and down the path that led around the house and to the road beyond. The cold January wind sliced into her as her hair whipped in a frenzy about her face, but she was oblivious to anything but the driving need to find help for her father. The Vigilantes were vicious. They were evil, blood-thirsty men who could kill if the notion struck them. Everyone feared their wrath!

The three miles to Doc Musgrave’s small house seemed endless. Kitty thundered the horse into the yard with such a commotion that Doc heard her and was emerging from the front door, lantern in hand, by the time she dismounted.

He stood there, nightshirt flapping around his ankles, eyes growing wider with each word that tumbled from her quivering lips. He ran trembling fingers through thin graying hair, pulled at his pointed mustache and beard as the gravity of the situation soaked into his sleepy state. Old, but alert, he nodded with squinting gray eyes and disappeared inside the house to return a moment later fully clothed, black leather bag in hand.

“They may have taken him to the slave cemetery down by the bend in the creek,” he said, as she allowed him to mount the horse, then pulled her up behind him on the horse’s rump. “We’ve found a few of their victims there.”

But he was turning the horse in the opposite direction, and she tugged at his shoulder and yelled, “You’re going the wrong way. The cemetery is back toward my house…”

“We’ll need help,” he yelled, spurring the horse into a gallop. “In case they’re not through with him, I’m going after David Stoner and his father.”

“But David rides with Aaron Collins,” she cried into the wind. “And a lot of people think Aaron is the leader of the Vigilantes. Poppa has said so.”

“David would have no part in the Vigilantes, you can be sure of that.”

The horse stumbled in the darkness, and for a moment, it looked as though both of them would go spilling onto the road. Regaining his footing, the horse slowed his pace, and Doc let him, fearing to go any faster lest he stumble in a rut and break a leg.

“Whoa…” Doc pulled up on the reins, and just as Kitty was about to ask him why he was stopping, she heard the sound of hoofbeats coming toward them. “Who is it?” Doc shouted into the night.

“Allen Stoner and son David,” the voice came back and Kitty breathed a sigh of relief. They rushed forward, horses pawing and prancing in the road. “We were coming after you, Doc. David just told me he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. He knew the Vigilantes were going after John Wright tonight. They set up a trap to catch him helping some runaway slaves.”

“Then it
was
a trap!” Kitty cried, and the two men saw her on the horse behind Doc for the first time.

“Kitty, I’m so sorry,” David spoke anxiously, moving closer to her. “I couldn’t say anything, no matter how bad I wanted to. The word is that they knew if that slave, Willie, was threatened with being sold, he’d take that girl who had his baby and high-tail it for whoever it is around here who helps the runaways get to the underground in Raleigh. Everyone figured it was your daddy.”

“It was,” she said miserably, wishing her father had stayed out of the whole mess. “I saw them come take him away in the swamps. I would’ve killed them with my bare hands if I could, but Jacob stopped me, made us hide. I came for help…”

“Jacob was wise to hold you back,” Allen Stoner said tightly. “Now let’s ride to that cemetery and see if we can put a stop to this madness.”

They turned the horses, running as fast as they dared through the night. They reached the creek, following its edge as they made their way around dark, shapeless blobs of overgrowth, forced to move agonizingly slow.

“We have no light,” Doc said in frustration. “How can we search for him if we can’t see a hand in front of our faces?”

“If we wait till morning, he might be beyond help,” Allen Stoner said quietly.

“If we just had a torch…”

“Shhh! I hear something.”

They reined the horses to a stop. And then they all heard it. A low, moaning sound—a sound filled with pain that wrenched Kitty to the very depths of her soul. She almost knocked Doc from the saddle as she swung her leg over to leap to the ground, falling to her knees as she landed in a pock hole.

“Up there,” someone shouted. “Oh, God, get him down quick!”

The men were running toward the moaning, gasping shroud of black that seemed to hang suspended in the air. There was the sound of a knife sawing into rope—a crumpling body falling into waiting arms—sudden gurgles rushing in fresh air in great gulps.

“Is he alive?”

“Yes, he’s alive. Can’t you hear him struggling to breathe?”

“But he’s barely alive.”

“Doc, do something…”

Kitty had bitten her lower lip until her mouth filled with the saltiness of her own blood. Forcing wooden legs to move forward, she could see their shadowy hulks bending over her father’s body.

“…got to get him back to the house where I can see to tend to him,” Doc was saying. “Easy now…get him on the horse. Somebody get a blanket to wrap him in. The dirty cowards beat him naked.”

With each movement of the horse, John moaned. The sound got weaker and weaker as they moved as fast as they dared. Kitty sat behind David on his horse, arms about his waist to hang on, her head pressed against his back as she sobbed softly…and prayed.

Doc’s wife, Kate, was waiting. Many lanterns were glowing softly as the men carried John in and placed him on the wooden table Doc used in the front room he called an office.

Kitty took one look at the bloodied, shriveled flesh and stumbled outside, vomiting. David went with her, holding her on her feet as her sagging knees threatened to buckle any moment.

John was beaten from head to toe, his body stripped of all his clothing. The lashes of the whips and knotted ropes had dug into the flesh again and again, leaving it in strips, threads of muscle hanging from gaping wounds, blood and matter oozing forth among the shreds of skin. Even his genitals had been the target of many blows—swollen and blackened and bloodied with the Vigilantes’ abuse.

“He’s in bad shape, Kitty, real bad,” Doc told her in a sad voice when she returned to the room. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and being exposed like that with so many open wounds might give him the fever. I’ve got my special ointment, and I’ll put as much of that on him as I can tonight, and we’ll just have to wait till morning and see what happens.

“I’m sorry…” he added quietly.

Someone had pressed whiskey to John’s lips, and after a few sips, he had mercifully sunk into unconsciousness. Doc was then able to apply more ointment. “He couldn’t stand for me to touch him if he was awake. Goddamn them, they tried to kill him!”

“No, I don’t think so,” David said, still holding on to Kitty. “They’d have gone ahead and hanged him if they meant to kill him. They left him barely alive, for an example to anyone else who thinks about helping runaway slaves—and who goes against the way they think.”

Doc had to agree. “Yes, I hear slaves rebelling is getting to be a problem, with the war talk. They made an example all right…an example of the kinds of no-good sons of bitches that they really are.”

Kitty remembered something and twisted away from David, turning her wrath upon him. “You knew,
David. You knew they planned to do this to my daddy, and you waited too late to do anything to help him. You’re just as bad as they are!”

“No, Kitty, I only heard the rumors.” His face grew pale. “I got worried and told Daddy, and he said we should check on it.”

He held out a hand to her, but she slapped it away, then reached to send a stinging palm across his face. “You’re as guilty as they are. And I’ll bet Nathan knew, too.”

“No, Nathan didn’t know…” They all turned astonished faces to the open doorway where Nathan stood, eyes angry, lips set grimly. “I didn’t know a damn thing till the noise from the slaves screaming woke up everybody in the house.”

He walked slowly into the room, toward the table where John lay unconscious. He muttered an oath under his breath, running nervous fingers through his sandy blond curls. Turning toward Kitty, a stricken look on his face, he gestured helplessly. “By the time I got dressed and ran to the slave cabins, the Vigilantes had already killed Willie—hanged him. They beat Jenny so bad they say she won’t live. Nobody knows what they did with her baby.”

Kitty swayed, and David took her back into his arms. Nathan saw it and frowned.

“I heard the slaves whispering about the white man that was supposed to have been hanged for helping Jenny and Willie,” he continued, “and I figured out what was going on. I started for John’s house and passed here and noticed all the lights and horses…”

He crossed to where Kitty and David stood, unable to control himself any longer. Yanking her from David’s arms he wrapped his own about her and said, “Kitty, darling, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You’ve got to believe me. If I had known, I would’ve warned your daddy. But no one told me, ‘cause they knew I’d tell.”

John stirred, moaned softly, and they all turned to stare at him. He opened his eyes slowly, then closed them, and Kitty screamed. ‘It’s all right,” Doc said quickly, stepping forward to fasten his fingers around John’s wrist to feel for a pulse. “He isn’t dead. He just passed out again. That’s good. Let him sleep. He won’t hurt that way.”

Doc turned worried eyes upon Kitty. “He’s hurt bad, honey. He may not live. Somebody’s got to tell your mother.”

“I…I’ll go,” she said after a moment of silence, her body shaking. “It’s best that I be the one to do it.”

Nathan spoke up quickly. “I’ll go with you. My horse is right outside. We’ll go to your house and bring your mother back in your daddy’s wagon.”

Chapter Eight

Kitty had been too distraught on the ride home to talk. She had clung to Nathan’s back and wept silently as the horse trotted through the night along the rutted dirt road.

Lena had reacted when told about John’s beating in the way that Kitty had expected. She went into hysterics, and Nathan had to carry her out to the wagon once he had it hitched to a team of mules. Kitty felt scornful of her behavior, knowing it was only an act for Nathan’s benefit. She didn’t love her father. How could she, the way she treated him?

When they had arrived at Doc’s, Lena had scrambled down from the wagon, not waiting for Nathan to help her, and she ran into the house screaming at the top of her lungs. Doc, in a show of strength despite his wiry size, met her at the door and pushed her back onto the porch, gruffly ordering her to calm down or he would not let her enter. Subdued, finally, Lena allowed Kate Musgrave to lead her back to the kitchen for a cup of warm broth before letting her see John.

The night wore on, and as an orange sun rose against the watermelon sky that heralded a new day, Doc told Kitty he was going to need more laudanum to still John’s pain as he was starting to awaken. “I’ve done what I can with the salve, but his whole body is just one big mass of wounded flesh. I’ll need some opium for the laudanum.”

Kitty nodded and got to her feet. She had been sitting at the fireplace hearth, Nathan hovering anxiously nearby. “Where are you going?” he asked as she started for the door.

“To pick some poppies from the shed where Doc grows them for his opium,” she answered dully. “In winter, he has to grow the flowers indoors or the cold will kill them.”

“You know how to make opium?” he asked incredulously.

“Of course, she does,” Doc snapped. He snorted before returning to where John had been put to bed on a soft, goose-feather mattress.

Nathan followed Kitty to the back of Doc’s house, where she crossed the dirt yard to an old wooden shed. Stepping inside, they could see rows of poppies in the early morning sunlight that filtered through an open window, giving them warmth.

Kitty took the handle of a woven straw basket that hung on a nail near the door, then knelt among the poppies. “You have to pick the heads, just after they’ve ripened,” she explained.

“How’d you learn to do that?” Nathan wanted to know.

“Oh, Doc taught me when I was real little. He taught me all about making medicine from plants. I know how to make quinine from the dogwood tree.”

“Quinine from dogwood trees?” he asked, amazed. “I never knew that. Do you use the flower? They only bloom at Easter…”

“No, not the flower. We use the berries that come in the fall. We make enough quinine then and hope it will last for a year. Doc says the bark has alkaloid—which has something called ‘cinchona and Peruvian bark’ in it.

“Did you know that the cordial you take for dysentery is made from blackberry roots?” she asked as she searched the poppies for ripe bulbs, anxious to talk about something to take her mind off her father for a little while. “And you can also make it from ripe persimmons, but we don’t have many of those around here. Doc also taught me how to make an extract from the barks of the wild cherry, dogwood, poplar, and wahoo trees, that you can use for chills. Then for coughs, we make a syrup from the leaves and roots of the mullein plant and globe flower. Castor oil, of course, comes from the castor bean.”

“And you know how to do all this?” He was unable to keep the shock and amazement from his voice.

“What’s so strange about that?”