She had taken him in the dimly lit tent, led him to a spot in the corner, Wincing at the sight of a nearby sawed-off, bloodied stump arm lying in wait for disposal, Sam held out his hand for her inspection. “Just barely nicked me. All I need is some bandaging.”
“And some turpentine,” she said crisply, reaching for water to wash the wound.
He made a face. “That stuff burns.”
“Sam, nothing can hurt an old bear like you! I feel sorry for the Johnny Reb that tries.”
They were a few yards away from the others, affording them some semblance of privacy in a night filled with hell. Kitty’s touch was gentle, and Sam looked up at her gratefully. “You ain’t all bad, Kitty. I swear you ain’t. And I know I’m stickin’ my neck out, but I was a-hoping that you and the Captain would start feeling a bit mellow toward one another.”
“You’re teasing me.” She looked up from tending the wound to laugh at him. “I hate him, and he hates me. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more despicable man in my whole life—so conceited, arrogant, ohhhh…” Shaking her head, she could not go on. The list of names to call him was endless, and besides, Sam would only defend him.
“I’ve known him a hell of a long time, and he’s had a lot of sorrow and grief, particularly where women is concerned. But you know what? I think in spite of all the words between you two, he thinks something of you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you think he ain’t looking. And if any of the men, you know, get to drinking and get some high ideas and start talking about you like you was just a trollop, well, believe me, the Captain sets ‘em straight and shuts ‘em up. He don’t allow nobody to talk about you with no disrespect.”
“That’s interesting,” she said as though she didn’t really think so. “Especially when he, himself, treats me like a trollop.”
Sam looked away, embarrassed. “Well, I wouldn’t know nothing about that, ma’am,” he lied. He and the other men had overheard Travis’s tirade in the hotel room that night and knew a little about the tenseness between them. “But he does care. I know he does. I’d like to see the two of you get together, ‘specially after I seen the way you looked after him when he had smallpox. Now you can’t tell me you didn’t care whether he pulled through or not.”
“Sam, when you love helping people as I do, when you’ve trotted along behind a doctor learning all you could since you were knee-high to a hound dog, you don’t even think about disliking the person you’re treating when they need help. That’s the way I felt about your Captain. He was just another soldier, another sick man, and I did what I could because I’ve got this driving need in me to help the suffering. I don’t care whether you believe me or not. I could never love, or even like, a man like Travis Coltrane, and aren’t you forgetting I’m betrothed to a Confederate Major?”
“You don’t even know if he’s still alive, Kitty.”
“Well, that’s true,” she admitted, “but I know I still love him, Sam, and that’s what keeps me going…keeps me praying that he is alive, and that one day we’ll be back together.”
She finished bandaging his hand, and he held it up for inspection, then grinned at her, showing yellowed teeth beneath a bushy mustached mouth. “Thank you, Kitty. I say both men are lucky—your Rebel lover for having you love him—and the Captain for having you around. You’re a danged beautiful woman, and even if you are a Reb at heart, I think I love you, too.”
“Oh, Sam!” She reached out to ruffle his graying hair. She’d grown quite fond of the grizzly old soldier, who could be so mean and nasty one minute—and sweet and gentle the next. She sat down beside him, grateful for a moment away from the putrid smell of saws grinding into bones, the sight of bloodied stumps, and the wide-eyed, gaping faces of the soldiers that died on the slimy, bloodied operating tables. “What about you? What kind of life do you go back to when this war is over?”
“I’ll go back to the bayou with Travis, I imagine. I got me a wife there, and three young’uns. I’ll go back, I hope, to the quiet, sweet life on the water, where there’s nobody to answer to but God.”
“It’s always puzzled me how you ever got yourself involved in this war. Travis told me about his sister being kidnapped into slavery, then killing herself, and I guess he feels he’s got a grudge to settle. But how about you? Do you have any grudges that brought you out to face death every time you go into battle?”
“Well, I guess it’s hard for you to understand, Kitty, but you see, I’ve known Travis since he was small. I was a good friend to his daddy. I saw all the suffering and hell he went through first-hand, and I felt like I owed it to his daddy, Deke Coltrane, to look after his family after he was dead. I’ve never told anybody about this before, but it might help you understand a bit better why he’s like he is if you know about his past…”
Kitty stiffened apprehensively. “I don’t have a need to know anything about Travis’s personal life, Sam. I’m not trying to be rude, but I just don’t care.”
He ignored her protest. He went on to tell her about Deke Coltrane finding his wife in the arms of another man and killing that man and then dragging her home and beating her to death while Travis and his sister cowered in a closet. And when he told her about Deke finally killing himself, she shook her head in horror.
“That was terrible for a young boy to experience,” she whispered, shocked. Sam was right. She could begin to see why Travis was so bitter, so hard.
Sam reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a plug of tobacco, bit off a chew, then said, “Yep, it was terrible, and it was even worse when we come in from fishin’ that day and he found out some slave traders had ridden through and carried his sister off. He just went crazy then—’specially when he finally tracked her down and found out she’d killed herself. The things those men must’ve done to her…” He, shook his head, spat, unable to go on for a minute. “Anyway, Travis has been through hell. He don’t trust nobody. He’s working out his fury in this war, and I just hope that when it’s all over, the fury and the rage will be out of him, and he can live a normal life. He sure deserves it.”
They were both silent for a moment. Kitty was beginning to fully understand the arrogance, the smoldering rage that filled Travis, made those steel-blue eyes glint so savagely when he was riled. “Sam, I’m grateful you told me all this. If I’m to be forced to be your Captain’s prisoner for God knows how long, maybe it will make it a bit easier knowing he’s got a good reason for being the bastard he is.”
He looked at her and laughed. “Dang it all, Kitty, you just ain’t got sense enough to realize that deep down, where you don’t want to see it, you really do care about him—just like he cares about you.”
She got to her feet, annoyed. “You’re wrong, Sam. I still hate him, and I always will, and nothing is ever going to change that.”
“War changes everything.”
“And it looks as though this one is going to go on forever.” She sighed wearily, looking toward the hospital tents. It was time to return to the blood and the suffering and the dying.
“Well, the Rebs whipped us yesterday, but we’re doing all right today. Their casualties are high, and so are ours, but the word is that the Rebs are falling back.”
“You take care of that hand,” she said in parting, “and it should be all right if you don’t let it get infected. Pour some of that old ‘red-eye’ on it that you keep hidden in your haversack. That’s enough to kill anything.”
She heard him laughing as she walked up the hill toward the tent, her skirt swishing against her ankles. Suddenly she spied the body of a Yankee soldier, his throat blown open by the crashing thud of a Rebel ball. Keeping her eyes away from the raw, gaping wound, she quickly worked to remove his trousers, which were in good condition. Then she searched the bodies waiting for mass burial until she found one with a decent-looking shirt. Stepping behind the shelter of a large oak tree, she changed clothes. Now she felt better prepared for the long hours ahead. Travis would never approve, but what did s
he care? He only wanted her in a dress to remind her she was a woman, and supposedly that made her humble to a man! Hogwash, she thought defiantly, using one of her father’s favorite expressions.
She stepped into the tent, the scene before her garish and horrifying in the swaying light of the lanterns above. The surgeon she was supposed to be helping was standing beside a blood-slick table, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, bare arms, as well as the linen apron he wore, smeared with blood. He was holding a knife between his teeth as he helped Andy lift a wounded soldier onto the table. She stepped forward, watching as he quickly examined the wound and decided to amputate.
“No, Doc, God, no…” the soldier shrieked, wrestling with Andy, who was trying to hold him down.
“Chloroform,” he snapped to Kitty. To someone else he yelled, “Hold him in position.”
Kitty reached for the chloroform and a paper cone that contained a sponge in its apex. Gradually, she lowered it toward the soldier’s nose and mouth as someone tried to hold him steady. She began to drip the anesthetic into the cone, as he shrieked with pain and terror over what was about to happen to him. She judged him to be seventeen or eighteen years old—and if he lived, he would go through life with only one leg.
The doctor snatched his knife from between his teeth, wiped it quickly a couple of times across his bloodstained apron, and then began slashing into the mass of damaged, torn flesh. Holding out his hand to no one in particular, someone slapped a bloodied saw into his grasp. The grating noise began, followed by the awesome sound of bone cracking, breaking—then the thud of a leg falling into the dirt below.
A few more minutes to suture the wound, and the weary doctor stepped back and motioned them to move the boy on as he yelled, “Next…”
God, Kitty thought in anguish. How much longer? How much longer will this hell go on?
She watched the procession—the two-way march that split at her table—some to the table, others to wait for death—and burial. If they were too badly wounded, with no hope at all to save them, they wasted no time on them. And it was a pity, Kitty thought with a wrench of her heart—to just lay them outside to wait alone for death. It was cruel, heartless—but they owed their time, their skills, to those who had a chance to live.
Someone stepped into the tent, glancing about wildly. Kitty recognized Sam through her weary gaze. He charged over to where the surgeon was amputating an arm at the elbow. “Doc, Captain Coltrane’s hit bad, and he can’t be moved…”
Kitty felt a stab go through her chest. Coltrane was hit. She shook herself. What difference did it make? She wanted him dead—didn’t she? Forcing herself to look downward, she did not want to meet Sam Bucher’s eyes.
The doctor waved his bloodied knife in the air, impatiently dismissing him. “I can’t help your Captain Coltrane, whoever he is, soldier. Can’t you see I’ve got hundreds of soldiers waiting outside? You think I can leave them for one man? Now get out of here. You’re blocking my light.”
“Doc, you’ve got to come.” He grabbed his arm, shaking him, and Kitty looked up to see that tears were flowing from the big man’s eyes. The doctor signaled to his attendants, who stepped forward quickly to grab Sam by his arms and struggle with him, pulling him away from the table. Then he looked up and saw Kitty, and he brightened, “Kitty, you’ll come with me and help him, won’t you?”
“She isn’t qualified to do much but damnit, man, take her and go if it will get you out of here!” the doctor cried.
Kitty froze. Help Travis? Again? After the way he had made a fool of her?
“Kitty, come on.” Sam stood there, disbelief starting to show on his face. “He’s in a ravine. A shell took his horse, maybe part of his leg. He’s hurt bad, and he’s dying…”
It had to be done, she told herself, looking around for a bag and starting to throw instruments into it, Travis was hurt, and she had to go to him, but he was no more than just another soldier, she told herself. That was the only reason she was going. Yankee or Rebel, she would help anyone who needed her. That was why she was here. That was what had gotten her into the war to start with, because she believed in helping those who suffered, the way Doc did—the way Doc would want her to feel.
He took her arm, leading her out of the tent and into the woods. “I went looking for him, didn’t know the Rebs had gotten this close. He was out looking for me. We always stick together. Then I got to this ravine and heard someone yelling, and I crawled down and found him beneath his horse. I didn’t know what to do—he said not to move him. Said to bring you there.”
“Me?” She stumbled, and he righted her. “It’s a wonder. He knows I don’t care if he lives or dies.”
“Oh, stop lyin’, Kitty.” He gave her arm a jerk. “And hurry. He might already be dead, for all I know.”
“Is it far?”
“Almost a half mile or so, I reckon. Let’s just hope we get to him before those damned Rebel ghouls do. Ever seen the way they strip a Yankee soldier? They think he’s a goldmine—especially a cavalry man. They know we’ve got unpatched boots and more supplies in our haversacks, and I think they kill us more for what they think we’ve got on us than because we’re Yanks.”
They passed a group of soldiers, and Sam yelled to them that Coltrane was hurt. They seemed to know him, Kitty thought. At least they didn’t hesitate to follow just in case they were needed, or if any Rebels were in the area.
“We’re almost there,” Sam said, knocking the brambles and foliage aside. It was dark. Kitty wondered how he found his way, then reminded herself that he and Travis had tramped around the swamps of Louisiana all their lives and were quite adept at making trails and finding them again—even in the hysteria of war.
“Okay, we’re almost there.”
The sun was just starting to break through the haze of smoke and darkness, and now they could make out clearly the land around them.
“Here we are…just ahead.”
Kitty stopped. There was no mistaking just where that Rebel shell had burst. They stood at the edge of the ravine and looked down to where Travis lay beneath the blasted bag of skin and bloody pulp that had once been his horse. The grass in the clearing where they’d fallen was burned a little bit, and probably would have blazed up to burn the captain to death had it not been soaked from the early dew.
“Move him gently from beneath the horse and get him up here,” Kitty ordered. “Someone else get me a torch going so I’ll have more light until the sun gets up a bit higher.”
Sam took two men and slid down into the ravine. She heard Travis moan painfully as the shreds of the great horse were moved away.
Just then someone came crashing up behind them. “Wait! Stop! Dr. Gordon sent me!” He was yelling at the top of his lungs. “I’m a surgical assistant. He said there was a cavalry officer here wounded.”
“That’s right,” Kitty said, looking at him curiously. He was young—probably a medical student when the war broke out. He was thin, wild-eyed, and nervous, and when he had first spoken she had felt relief at having the responsibility of treating Coltrane removed, but now, as she surveyed him, she began to feel a wave of apprehension.
Sam and the others brought Travis up from the ravine and laid him on the ground. The young doctor, or assistant, as Kitty decided was all he could be, knelt down. She did, too, fighting to keep from gagging at the stench. Travis had been soaked in the discharge from the horse’s entrails as they had wallowed under the first impact. The assistant was pulling out a knife to rip open the uniform, baring the wound from thigh to knee.
He examined it quickly, then ordered in a high-pitched voice, “I’ll have to operate here. Build up a fire…”
“Hell, no, you aren’t cutting off my leg,” Travis raised his head to look at him, and Kitty saw that his face was smeared with blood, his eyes glowing with the intense pain he must be feeling.
“Well, that’s my decision to make,” the assistant snapped. “Do you want to die? Men, hold him down. I don’t have time to
argue.”
No one moved.
“Did you hear me? I said hold him down! I don’t have any chloroform. He’s still bleeding. If we don’t act now, he’ll bleed to death…”
Still no one moved. The nervous-looking young man got to his feet, dancing impatiently, fists clenched at his sides. “Damn you, hold this man down. Build up that fire. We’re supposed to save lives when we can—not deliberately stand by and allow them to die!”
Kitty turned to see that Travis was watching her intently, his eyes now burning into hers with an unspoken message. What was he privately trying to convey to her? That he would rather be dead than spend his life on a wooden leg?
“Kitty, examine my leg and tell me what you think,” he spoke quietly, no evidence of pain or apprehension in his voice. He was quite calm. “And whatever you say, I’ll go along with.”
“What? How dare you pass over my judgment for that of a woman!” The assistant’s face was turning a fiery red in the early morning light. “How dare you? How dare you? I forbid this.”
“Fuck you, jackass!” Sam shoved him aside roughly. He nodded to Kitty. “Go on. Do what the Captain wants.”
Kitty probed her fingers into the gaping flesh. Look for the artery, Doc had told her. Look for the artery and see if it’s severed. If it is, then there’s no hope but to cut.
There did not seem to be deep, penetrating damage to the muscle and tissue, and the blood that was oozing forth was not spurting. Of course, if it had been, and the artery had been severed, there was a good chance he would have bled to death by now. So it appeared that the artery was still intact. The next thing was the extent of the damage. If the flesh was hopelessly torn and shredded, the bone shattered and splintered, then the leg would have to come off.
“Give me more light,” she whispered feverishly. She could feel Travis wincing with pain, but he did not cry out. She parted the torn, mangled flesh, saw the exposed bone of the thigh. Intact. Not injured except for a slight crack. Fracture. That was what Doc said it was when the bone is found to be cracked, not broken.
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 27
