The Raging Hearts: The Coltrane Saga, Book 2

by Patricia Hagan

  “It’s still a shame, a damned shame,” the guard mumbled.

  The doctor sighed. “Soldier, just keep your mouth shut about what you heard here today. Otherwise you will find yourself on report. Is that clear?”

  Heels clicked to attention. “Yes sir,” came the snapping reply.

  Chapter Eight

  Kitty stepped off the hospital porch and turned to gaze one last time at the squat building where she had spent so many months. She wondered if she would ever be able to forget the blood, the stench of decay and dying, and the anguished screams. Men had been in need, and her heart had burned with desire to help.

  She walked down the rutted street toward the heart of the small town. Children played and laughed, despite the rags they wore, oblivious to the Yankee soldiers who wandered about. She neared the home of Mrs. Eleanor Parrott. Once, she had sat up with her all night when she was having a difficult labor with her last baby. Memories of placing the red-faced, screaming baby girl in her mother’s arms brought a smile to Kitty’s lips. Several times she had been afraid she would lose both mother and child. “Oh, Kitty, how can I ever repay you?” Mrs. Parrott had cried gratefully, tears of joy streaming down her face as she gazed at her newborn. “If it hadn’t been for you, my precious darling wouldn’t have made it.”

  “Just seeing you together is reward for me,” had been Kitty’s fervent answer, overcome by the holy sight of new life.

  How could anyone see such a miracle and deny the existence of God?

  Mrs. Parrot had showered her tiny daughter’s face with kisses, then, as the infant began to suckle at her breast, she looked up at Kitty and whispered, “Katherine. I’ll name her Katherine, after you, Kitty. And when she grows up, she will know she was named for the woman who brought her into the world and saved her life.”

  Suddenly the door to the house banged open, and a little girl came running down the steps. A purple-and-gold butterfly was flitting around the honeysuckle vines, and the child chased after it gleefully. Kitty stopped walking and stared after her. Was that her namesake, she wondered, heart pounding.

  The door banged open once again, and Eleanor Parrott came storming down the steps. “Katherine, you come in here at once,” she cried, her voice a mixture of anger and exasperation. “I don’t want you chasing about with these soldiers everywhere.”

  She stopped short, catching sight of Kitty standing at the gate. “You!” Eleanor spat. “You keep moving. Don’t you dare stand at my gate.”

  Surely, Kitty wasn’t hearing right. Not Eleanor Parrott. She wouldn’t turn against her. Why, she had told everyone in the county how Kitty had saved her life and her baby’s, how she had named her child after Kitty so the deed would never be forgotten. And now she stood glaring, eyes burning with hatred, body trembling with rage.

  Kitty cleared her throat, took a step forward, then stopped when she saw the woman’s fists clench. “Why, Mrs. Parrott, don’t you recognize me? It’s Kitty…Kitty Wright. Remember?”

  “I remember nothing except that you’re not fit to walk the streets with decent folk. Now you move along. I don’t want people thinking you been to see me, and I sure don’t want you around my child. Now git! Before I get Jed’s gun and shoot you myself.”

  “Mrs. Parrott!” Kitty’s heart wrenched. “How can you talk to me that way? I helped you bring Katherine into the world, remember? Whatever have I done to you, of all people, that you turn against me?”

  Mrs. Parrott shook both her fists in the air. “You know what you’ve done, you traitor. Sleeping with a Yankee, going to have his baby, if’n you even know whose bastard you carry. And a fine, Christian man like Nathan Collins lies in the ground because of the likes of you. Get away from my home.”

  The little girl, terrified by her mother’s raging, had run to cling to her skirts. Peering out at Kitty, feeling protected with her mother’s arms about her, little Katherine stuck her tongue out. Turning away, Kitty quickened her steps, heart pounding.

  As she walked along, it became obvious that everyone shared Eleanor Parrott’s feelings. Some just turned their backs when she passed. A few openly glared or hissed as she passed by. One old man even spat at her. There were at least a thousand Yankees left in town, maybe more camped around. The townspeople ignored them, but they vented their wrath on Kitty.

  Where in all of Wayne County could she go for shelter?

  Night came, and she huddled among trash barrels in an alley. Drunken soldiers passed nearby, laughing and singing. She knew if any man attempted to rape her, no one would come to her defense. She would have to hide until daylight, till it was safer. Maybe she would have to accept Dr. Holt’s offer to make her home with him. But what if Travis returned and she was nowhere to be found? There was no way she could leave word for him, and no way she could send him a message. Dear God, what was she going to do? Her stomach was rumbling and twisting with hunger, and she had no money to buy food.

  A door opened nearby, and she crouched down even lower in the dirt. Footsteps shuffled in her direction. She cringed fearfully, afraid to breathe lest the slightest sound give her away. Close, so close that his breeches brushed against her arm, the man reached down and lifted the lid of one of the barrels. There was the sound of something being dropped inside the wooden barrel. Then the lid was replaced. Footsteps shuffled away. Kitty let out her breath.

  The smell of food touched her nostrils. Garbage! He had put food scraps in the garbage barrel, and, no matter what it was, she had to have something to still the gnawing in her belly. No longer could she turn away from worms. She had to eat, had to keep strong. The baby had to come first now, no matter what.

  Rising out of the shadows, Kitty reached out and removed the lid from the barrel. The odor was awful, but she reasoned that whatever had just been placed on top would not be rancid. Grabbing the wad of paper-wrapped food bits, she replaced the lid and sank back to her hiding place in the darkness.

  She had no idea what she lifted to her lips with trembling fingertips. It was slimy and cold, and it was in tiny pieces that held together with difficulty. But soon, she knew she was in luck. Rutabagas cooked in fat meat. Hungrily, she wolfed the morsels down. She opened another paper wad to find fish scraps. Her stomach gave a heave, but she fought against it.

  Pushing the fish bits away, she clutched her stomach and weaved to and fro, fighting nausea. The greasy rutabagas had not set well on her empty stomach, and the rotten odor of the fish had made things worse. Bile was slipping into her throat, and she held her breath, hearing footsteps approaching once again.

  “We can get in this way.” The gruff male voice punctured the solitude of her hideaway. “Ain’t no damn body gonna kick me out the front door of no saloon and tell me I can’t come back in.”

  “Me either,” Kitty heard another man answer. He, too, spoke in clipped tones of rage and fury. “That son of a bitch bartender ain’t got no right to kick me out and tell me I’ve had too much to drink. Shit, I’ll go in there and bust every bottle on his goddamn shelf over his pumpkin head.”

  They were right alongside her. Kitty held her breath until she was about to pass out. Suddenly, the belch leaped from her throat.

  “Who’s there?” a voice cracked. “Tom, I know damn well I heard some drunk belch. Maybe he’s got a bottle. Maybe we won’t have to bust in the back door.”

  “Yeah. Shouldn’t be too hard to find in this alley. He’s around here somewhere. Hey, where are you, buddy? All we want is a little drink. Share a drink, will you?”

  “Come on, you old fool. If you ain’t nice about it, we’ll steal the whole damn bottle and might bust your head just for the fun of it. Now speak up.”

  Kitty began to tremble. Her only hope was to leap from her hiding place and run for the street. Here, she was trapped. Pushing herself upward, she screamed. She had leaped right into the waiting arms of one of the men, and his whiskey-sour breath in her face was overwhelming. “Hey, it’s a woman. I found me a woman, Tom. How about that? I ain’t h
ad me no good lovin’ lately. Ain’t this a find? Better’n a bottle any day of the week.”

  “What does she look like?” the other asked dubiously.

  Kitty continued to scream. She felt a beefy hand slapped over her mouth as another groped across her breasts. “Feels okay to me. Let’s lay her down and spread her out and see what we got. Don’t matter about the face. Hell, we can throw a Yankee flag over it and fuck it for revenge.”

  His sidekick guffawed as both began tugging at her muslin skirt. Kitty tried to fight them, fearing not only for herself but what their assault might do to her baby. But the heavy hand stayed pressed on her face so hard that she was finding it difficult to breathe.

  Her hands were clawing at them, at the dirt around her, and then her fingers touched a bottle. She picked it up and brought it swinging down. Glass cracked against a skull. There was a yelp of pain, and the beefy palm fell from her face. She brought her knee up into the other man’s groin, and heard a shriek of pain. She scrambled to her feet and fled from the alley, leaving the two stunned men groaning in the darkness.

  For a moment she stood in the dim glow of the saloon’s lanterns, wondering where she could run to, where it would be safe to hide. Perhaps she should try to make it back to the hospital, beg Dr. Malpass for a night’s refuge. In the daylight hours, she could make plans. Now, there was only danger about.

  “Hey, look what I see!” She turned, trembling, at the sound of a voice to her right. Three men had just swaggered out of the saloon and stood there appraising her. One was tall and slender and wore a tattered Confederate uniform. He grinned at her with yellowed teeth. Another wore overalls and no shirt and was barefooted. He had flared nostrils like a hog, and his fingers dug into his groin as he looked at her with excited eyes. The man who had spoken was heavyset, a scar ran down one side of his cheek, and she saw that only a stump-remained where his right arm should have been.

  “I remember you,” the one-armed man spoke, his upper lip curling in a snarl. “You helped chop my arm off.”

  “I m sorry,” Kitty stammered, rubbing one hand across her forehead. “There were so many. I was a nurse. I worked in field hospitals, you see…”

  “Yeah, I see.” He stepped off the plank porch fronting the saloon. “I begged them fool doctors to just let me die. But no, they kept telling me I had to live. For what? To come back to this stinking hole and starve to death? What good is a one-armed man? And all the time, you was there, a syrupy smile on that picture-pretty face of yours, telling me God had a plan for me and all that bullshit. And you helped ’em take off my arm. I was crazy with pain, but I remember you was right there.”

  “Bert, I thought you said it was a Yankee doctor what took your arm off, a’fore you was sent to that prison.” The man wearing the tattered gray uniform spoke. “If this little filly was there, how come she’s here?”

  “Oh, where are my genteel Southern manners.” Bert gave a mock bow, sweeping his straw hat off with his remaining hand. “I didn’t introduce this young ‘lady’,” he sneered.

  “This here,” he continued, insolently grinning, “is Miss Kitty Wright. She worked for the Yankees. Had her a Yankee lover, too. Hard-fightin’ bastard cavalryman by the name of Coltrane.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” the overalled man said, awed. “I remember soldiers saying Coltrane would ride into hell and go after Satan himself with his sword if it would clear the path to draw the blood of a Reb. That son of a bitch was her lover?”

  “Oh, yes, he was,” Bert snickered. “And you know what else? He’s the one what murdered Nathan Collins. I didn’t know the man myself, and neither did you-all, being we ain’t from these parts, but I hear tell he was a fine Southern officer, and he was murdered by this trollop’s Yankee-boy ’cause Collins had the misfortune of being her betrothed.”

  The overalled man spat a wad of tobacco juice into the street. “Well, ain’t that a pile of horseshit. Then what’s she doing back here?”

  “Well, I reckon she’s looking for a man to take the place of her Yank.” Bert started toward Kitty at the same time she began to stumble backward. “You boys reckon the three of us could take the place of one Yankee and satisfy the little lady?”

  “No, please.” Kitty turned and started running in the darkness, the three men right behind her. She knew what would happen if they caught her. She would be dragged into the nearest alley and raped. She would probably lose her baby. They might even kill her. And no matter how loudly she screamed, anyone who heard would turn a deaf ear as soon as they realized it was Kitty Wright who cried for help.

  She ran past several buildings, windows dark. If the men had not been drunk and staggering, they could easily have caught her, but their stumbling gave her an advantage.

  Then she saw the dim glow of a lantern straining to cast a shadow through the cracks in a boarded-up window. Perhaps someone was inside to hear the shouts of a woman in distress. If they would only open the door quickly, Kitty prayed, she would rush inside before they could recognize her and shut her out.

  “Please! Help me!” She banged on the door with her fists, voice hysterical. “Help me. You must help me, please!”

  “Gotcha!” She felt a hand grabbing at her skirt, yanking her backward. She would have fallen from the wooden porch if her attackers had not been upon her, supporting her even as they pulled her away from the door. Already hands were pawing at her breasts, streaking beneath her skirt and inching up her legs.

  “Oh, we’re gonna have us a fine time with this one.” She smelled their whiskey breath. “I’m first, remember.”

  Just as they reached the street, Kitty’s feet digging and kicking up a dust swirl about them, the door to the little building opened. A man stepped outside, holding a lantern above his head. Kitty did not see the gun he also held. “What’s going on out here? What are you men doing to that woman? Leave her alone.”

  He spoke as though he were used to being obeyed, and the mauling stopped as Bert spoke up quickly. “You don’t understand, Mr. McRae. This here is Kitty Wright. Everybody in town knows she’s trash.”

  Kitty shuddered as the explosion spit the air. “I said leave her alone. Unhand her. What right do you have to manhandle a woman? Get away from her.”

  The hand fell away from her mouth. She was allowed to slump into the dirt. Footsteps thundered as the men disappeared into the night. A few people had gathered out of nowhere, it seemed, at the sound of gunfire. Trembling, her nerves frazzled by the two confrontations, Kitty meekly allowed her rescuer to lift her out of the street and to her feet. In the lantern’s glow, she saw two fiery black eyes staring down at her beneath thick eyebrows. The man had hard, chiseled features, a deep cleft in his chin. His dark hair had flecks of gray, and his moustache, clipped neatly, gave him an aristocratic air. She decided at once that she was not at the mercy of ordinary riffraff.

  Then, for some reason, despite her gratitude for being saved, Kitty’s bosom began to quiver with an unexplainable fear. There was something terrifying about the man. He exuded power, authority and brute male force, yet his arm was gentle as he steered her up the steps.

  “Are you all right, miss?” he asked, ignoring all the staring eyes. “Shall I have one of my men go for a doctor?”

  “No, no, they didn’t hurt me. They just scared me to death.” Kitty allowed him to lead her inside and close the door. She didn’t like those angry, staring faces. She doubted there was one among them who would do for her what this man was doing. Then why did she fear him? She tried to tell him how she appreciated his helping her. “I have many enemies in this town, and I have just been discharged from my work at the hospital, and there’s no place for me to go, and…”

  She stopped, realizing how hysterical she must sound. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rattle on so. My problems are no concern of yours. You have helped me enough for one night. I’ll go now.”

  He had poured brandy into two glasses. Handing one to her, he smiled and said, “Go where, my lady? Yo
u just finished telling me that you have nowhere to go. It was terrible of Dr. Malpass to dismiss you because of that unfortunate incident at the hospital today. I realize he was only following orders, but I should think his heart would have overruled his obligations as an officer.”

  Kitty could only blink at him, stunned. “How…how is it that you know so much about me, sir?” She took a big gulp of the brandy, not caring that it burned her throat, which was raw from so much screaming. “I haven’t even told you my name.”

  He smiled down at his glass, swirling the amber liquid around and around. He wore fine clothes, Kitty noted. His silk shirt was open at the throat, revealing a muscular chest covered in dark, curly hair. His boots were of genuine leather, hand-polished. She also noticed a large diamond ring. He was obviously quite wealthy.

  “Your name is Kitty Wright, and you were born and raised in Wayne County.” He spoke in words that sounded memorized. “You helped both sides during the war in the hospital tents. You were engaged to a Confederate officer from Wayne County by the name of Nathan Collins. You were the mistress, lover, whatever you wish to call it, of a Federal cavalry officer named Travis Coltrane. At the Battle of Bentonville, Collins and Coltrane fought, and Collins was killed. I have heard many reports of what happened, the most popular of which is that Coltrane ruthlessly stomped your ex-fiancé to death. You rode into Goldsboro with Sherman’s army, then went to the way hospital to work there. Coltrane left town a few days later with General Sherman and has not returned. You now carry his child. The people of Goldsboro and Wayne County despise you, and it is not safe for you to live among them as long as the scars of war still fester.”

  Kitty coughed, almost choking on the brandy. “How could you possibly know so much, when I have never seen you before in my life? I don’t even know your name.”