Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (40 page)

“How can you say that? You’ve certainly carried me right into the thick of battle before, with balls and shells exploding all around us! And it was different then because I hated you.”

The smile he gave her was wry, almost to the point of mocking her words. “And you love me now, my sweet—is that it? And the
only
reason you want to go with me is to be by my side ‘cause you can’t stand the thought of being apart from me—is that it?”

She looked him straight in the eyes, feeling as though he were looking right into the very depths of her soul and could see it was all a trick, a lie!

When she did not speak, Travis said, “What if I told you that yes you could go with me and I’m going to send you south, to your people, and you and Andy can go free. Would you leave me then?”

She knew this was important, but then she reminded herself the wrong answer might be what he was looking for. Blinking, as though to hold back unshed tears, Kitty whispered, “I would have to leave you, Travis, if you sent me away. If that was what you wanted, then I would go. I’d feel an obligation to go back to my people regardless of what I feel in my heart.”

Damn! He swung his feet off the bunk and stood up, yanking on his trousers. She admitted she would go—yet she wanted to stay with him. He shook his head, walked to the window, and peered out. The men
were
playing in the snow, racing their horses, exercising—anything to end the boredom that enshrouded them all.

He felt tiny feet scurrying across the floor, hands slipping about his waist, a bare body pressed against his in the chill of the small cabin. “Please, Travis. Let me stay with you. If you leave me here and never return, or if you send me home, then I’ll always wonder what would’ve happened to us—the feelings that smolder between us. I’ll never know any peace. I’ve stuck it out so far…let me see it to the end, please.”

He turned around quickly, eyes blazing, his voice snarling as he looked deep into the pools of those lovely purple eyes. “Goddamn you, Kitty, don’t lie to me now. This is a trick. You want to go with me to try and escape. I can
feel
it. You haven’t fallen in love with me any more than I’ve fallen in love with you, and all of this bullshit is just that—bullshit!”

He shook her, and she reached to tear his hands from her shoulders and ran naked across the room, throwing herself down on the bunk and sobbing, “I do hate you, Travis Coltrane, when you treat me like a…a whore! Is it so disgusting to you? The thoughts of me loving you? Do you think I’m just some trollop to ravish when you will and then cast me aside? Don’t you think I have some feelings, too?”

He watched her as she moaned and writhed on the bunk, and listened to her words of scorn. He had hurt her. And what had she really done to him? Once she had saved him from having his leg cut off by an over-zealous young field surgeon. She had also given up the chance to run away in order to save the life of his best friend. Even now she was skinny and lean, and he had seen her slipping the scarce food from her own rations to give to a sick Federal soldier who needed the nourishment. How could he believe she was only a deceitful female, out to catch him off guard so she could run away? In bed, she no longer lay limply beneath his caresses but returned his passion eagerly.

Had she even loved her Confederate fiancé, he wondered bitterly? So many soldiers had hurriedly married their sweethearts, or become engaged, when the war first broke out. Emotions and passions had run high—and still did, for that matter. Perhaps her betrothal to Nathan Collins had been made in the heat of the moment, faced, as she was then, with the threat of his going to war and never returning. And she loved her father. They had been terribly close. Perhaps she had been in a state of utter confusion when he walked out on his family to join the Union. She might not have known nor understood her own heart’s desires.

And now he had hurt her when the girl might genuinely be in love with him. Damn his own soul to eternal hell, did he have to strike out and hurt every woman that ever crossed his path because his own mother committed the sin of adultery? Because a single woman in his youth betrayed him? Was he that cold, that callous, that damned
hard
?

He crossed to the bunk, reached down to gather her naked body in his arms and hold her against his chest, wanting to warm her as well as stop the tears that stained her beautiful face. “Kitty, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tear you to pieces that way. The things burning inside me, well, I’ve got my own war going on deep inside and I take it out on you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not asking you to love me back.” She hid her face against his chest, afraid to look at him lest he see the truth in her eyes. “Just let me love you and stay with you. That is all I ask.”

For a long time he held her without speaking and then Sam banged on the door and bellowed, “Damnit, you two, I’m freezing my butt off out here while you two are in there playing like you hate each other. Open this door before I kick it down!”

Travis laughed and stood up as Kitty began to scramble into her clothes. “I’ll get you that dress of silk, Kitty, and I’ll see that you get some decent food in you and put some meat back on those bones.”

“You mean you’ll take me with you?” she cried exuberantly.

He nodded, walking across to open the door and let Sam in. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning, soon as it’s light. Do what you can for the ones who are sick before we go and tell Andy and Sam what you want them to do.”

Andy!

She stared at his back, chewing her lower lip nervously. How could she insist on Andy going along without giving herself away? She couldn’t leave him behind. Once she was gone and Travis realized she had played him for a fool, he might be so angry that he would kill Andy for revenge. Hadn’t he threatened to often enough? But if she said much about taking him along, it was bound to arouse suspicion.

Sam walked in, shaking snow from his hair and beard, when suddenly a big ball of snow smacked him right on the back of his neck. With a bellow, he wheeled about and took off stumbling through the snow after Andy, who was laughing gleefully over hitting his target. Through the open door, she watched Sam catch him and throw him into a snowbank, covering his face with the icy whiteness.

Kill Andy? No, neither Travis nor Sam would kill the boy. Now it was obvious to her that they liked the youth. And he had grown extremely fond of them. Andy would be all right. They would keep him from harm as best they could. She had to go on now and take her own chances at freedom.

The next morning Kitty bundled up as warmly as possible. Travis gave her a warm woolen cape and a battered old hat to wear. He, himself, wore a poncho. The sun was shining, but the air was bitterly cold and their breath hung in frosty puffs in the air. They took a wagon, driven by two men with a team of four horses, and six more soldiers accompanied them. “Not much to fight with if we run into trouble,” Travis told Sam. “But at least we won’t look too dangerous ourselves. Let’s just pray we get down and through the pass without a skirmish.”

Everything was covered with a layer of freshly fallen snow. Trees bent down toward the earth, their branches weighted by ice and snow. All was still, the silence shattered only by the sounds of their horses struggling to move through the frozen forest.

“Kitty, are you warm?” Travis asked her, twisting in his saddle to look back. They were riding single file.

She managed to smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my whole life. But it’s okay. I’m fine. I’m just thinking about that warm bed in Murfreesboro.” A look passed between them and for the moment there
was
warmth. Then Kitty reminded herself it was all an act and soon, if everything worked out according to plan, she would be safely across the lines and into Confederate hands. All she had to do was keep her ears open and find out where the Southern army was camped, and then one night when Travis went out for a drink or supplies, she would slip out, steal a horse, and ride! It seemed so easy—too easy, in fact—now that he wasn’t having someone watch her every single minute.

They entered a pass cautiously. On each side, ledges weighted down by heavy snowbanks loomed ominously. They headed through slowly, downward into the valley and then up again, each of them gazing about intently for any sign of danger.

Suddenly, Travis’s arm shot straight up, a signal for them to halt in their tracks. “Up there,” he pointed, speaking to the soldier closest to him, Jabe Harris from Pennsylvania. “I saw something glinting in the sun when the clouds parted. We’d better take cover. It could be an ambush.”

They moved into the trees on either side, while Jabe and another soldier rode cautiously up the side of the pass, moving slowly in the snowbanks. No one spoke. Kitty stared anxiously at Travis, but he was watching his men, eyes squinted in the glare of the snow and ice. The men disappeared around a bend, out of sight, but still he looked in that direction.

Perhaps ten minutes passed. Kitty waited tensely for the sound of gunfire. There was only silence, save for the mournful scream of the wind whipping down out of the mountains, swirling about them like some unseen foreboding ghost telling them that only danger, and possibly death, awaited.

“Captain!” It was Jabe, unseen but clearly heard, and he sounded frightened.

Travis moved quickly forward, motioning everyone else to stay back, but Kitty, not about to be left behind, dug her heels into the horse’s flanks. They plunged ahead, and the sight that greeted them as they rounded a bend made both of them gasp in horror.

There were four soldiers frozen at their post and completely enveloped in ice. Their eyes were open, staring straight ahead, mirroring the horror of their deaths. Icicles hung from their rifles, their noses, their chins—completely frozen in death.

“Rebs?” Travis asked tonelessly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Leave them be. We’ve got to move on.”

They rejoined the others, moving ahead slowly through the pass, each lost in thought. A few talked about the bodies, the way they’d looked. Kitty and Travis were silent, not wanting to discuss the horror of the scene.

They rode through the day, stopping for the night to camp beside a fire that strong winds kept blowing out. Kitty snuggled next to Travis beneath thin blankets, and he held her close. She prayed once again that he believed she really and truly loved him, and she told her stinging conscience that actually she felt nothing. Nathan. She had to keep thinking of Nathan.

Suddenly, as dawn broke on the icy world around them, a voice boomed out, “Freeze, Rebs, or prepare to enter hell before breakfast!”

Eyes flashed open, but no one moved. Kitty stifled a scream, expecting a bullet to come ripping into her heart at any moment. All around them stood men in tattered blue uniforms, guns pointed straight at them.

“Want to know what happened to your picket?” said a burly man with a thick beard, grinning. He seemed to be the leader. “He fell asleep at his post, but little did he know it was to be an eternal sleep, because now he’s got a Federal knife stuck in his throat.”

The movement came as a jolting surprise. What man in his right mind with a dozen guns pointed right at him would dare to leap to his feet, red-faced with anger. The soldiers were so stunned they did not fire as Travis yelled, “You goddamned fool! That was a Federal soldier you murdered! We’re Federals! Union soldiers! I’m Captain Travis Coltrane, U.S. Cavalry, under special assignment to General Grant.”

“Sir, I’m sorry…” The soldier quickly signaled to his men to put down their guns, while he kept his trained on Travis. “I will need to see some identification, sir. I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Coltrane snapped, reaching for his haversack and bringing you some papers. When the soldier was satisfied with his identity, he put his own gun away. “Now suppose you tell me who the hell
you
are!”

“Sergeant Jay West. Third New York. We’re patrolling for General Rosecrans. He’s licking his wounds in Murfreesboro.”

“And that’s where we’re headed.” Travis motioned to his men to get moving. “We don’t stop to eat. We ride straight into Murfreesboro before we run into some more bloodthirsty soldiers.”

“Sir, I am sorry.”

Travis brushed by him, yanking his saddle from the ground and throwing it on top of his horse.

“Sir, you know the penalty for falling asleep on picket. That man could’ve been shot if he’d been found. You know Grant’s rules.”

Travis whirled about, eyes blazing. “My men are sick, cold, half starved, and it’s no goddamned wonder he did fall asleep. That’s still no excuse for you sticking a knife in his throat because you were so damned eager to kill somebody you couldn’t take the time to find out which side he was on. Yours is the error, Sergeant, not my man’s for falling asleep on duty!”

Sergeant West spurred his horse up alongside Coltrane’s as they moved out. Kitty quickly moved close behind, eager to hear anything that might aid her plans for escape.

“You been up in the mountains all winter, Captain?” the Sergeant asked solicitously, anxious to make amends.

“Yeah. Rounding up deserters on both sides. But we’ve got to have supplies. We’ve had to start eating frozen horses.”

West shuddered in revulsion, then quickly changed the subject. “You heard about Antietam? You heard about Mr. Lincoln replacing McClellan with General Ambrose Burnside?”

“We don’t get much information where we’re camped, but we’ve managed to learn a little bit now and then.”

West plunged on eagerly, “Around the middle of December, Burnside ordered six big assaults against Lee’s army that were up on the heights above Fredericksburg in Virginia. It was nothing but a useless slaughter, Captain. They say Burnside just sat down and cried over all the killing. They got over ten thousand of our men, I hear tell. The Rebs lost less than half that many. Then, a few weeks later, Burnside tried a secret march and got bogged down in mud and couldn’t cover over a mile a day. Called it the ‘Mud March’, they did, and it sure finished up Burnside. He just up and gave up his command to General Joseph Hooker.”