Her words were cut off by the sharp blow to the side of her head. Dizzily, she fought to focus her eyes on the man straddling her. Wiley stood laughing down at her. “So it’s just a damned oath that doesn’t matter, eh? Suppose you take it, Rebel whore. Suppose you stand up now and take the oath of allegiance to the North. It’s time you started getting treated like a prisoner, like the Rebel dog you are.”
She could smell the rot-gut whiskey on his breath as he leaned over to yank her to her feet as the other men stepped back. Dear God, where were Sam and Travis? How long had they been gone, and why didn’t they return?
“Say it!” he commanded. “Repeat after me…”
Andy had ripped his hand loose from the tree and sat crumpled on the ground, crying as the blood rushed from the wound. “I’ll say anything you want,” she said then. What did it matter? She was no match for them. Whatever she said would be meaningless, anyway. Play their stupid game. They were drunk. When Travis came back, there would be the devil to pay, and she would have her revenge then.
Wiley said the words, and Kitty repeated them, spitting out each word with hatred smoldering, eyes flashing fire. The men laughed as Wiley reached out and ripped her shirt open, her breasts tumbling forth. She did not move to cover her nakedness as their eyes devoured the sight hungrily.
“Look all you want!” she said defiantly, facing them, holding her arms above her head. “Look and see…touch… I don’t care…do what you will…because the more you do to me…the more Bucher and Coltrane will do to you when they get back! And I’ll enjoy watching them cut you to pieces!”
Several of them realized the wisdom of her words and stepped back, unwilling to participate in the fun any longer. But not Wiley. He reached out and grabbed one of her breasts in his hand and twisted so hard she winced at the sharp pain. “Well, if I’m gonna get cut up, I might as well go ahead and have me some fun.”
He started fumbling with his trousers, reeling in his stupor. “I’ll make it good to you…”
No one had seen Andy reach for the carbine. No one saw him point it straight at Wiley’s back. There was an explosion, and the Yankee soldier pitched, forward, blood and intestines gushing from the gaping hole. No one moved as they watched Wiley’s body jerk convulsively in the dirt and blood beneath him. And then he was still, eyes staring upward, a trickle of blood and mucus oozing from his gaping mouth.
Kitty moved quickly for another carbine propped against a tree, and she backed toward Andy, who was reloading. “No one move,” she ordered. “I’ll shoot the first one of you that moves.”
“Hey, look.” One of them held up his hands. “We were just drinkin’, foolin’ around, we never meant for it to go this far. There won’t be no more trouble, honest…”
But Kitty wasn’t taking any chances. She and Andy made them all toss their handguns to the ground, along with their bowie knives. Then they were made to lie down on their faces, hands behind their backs.
“Kitty, what do we do now?” Andy whispered nervously.
She looked at his bloodied hand. “I’ve got to see to that hand. That’s a bad wound.”
He was staring at her thoughtfully, oblivious to his torn palm. “Kitty…” he said in wonder as the idea came to him. “We can escape…”
Her eyes widened. Yes, they could escape. There were horses, and they had the guns they needed. They could ride out right now, before Sam and Travis got back, and they would ride until they hit Confederate lines. It was over! They were going to be free.
“Get some rope and tie their hands while I keep a gun on them. Then we’re riding out of here. I’ll bandage that hand as soon as we get a little ways from here.”
Andy moved as quickly as he could with his hand on fire with pain and bleeding badly still. When they were all tied, he went and brought back two horses. Mounting, they turned the horses toward the woods—and that’s when Kitty realized that Travis was riding straight toward them.
“Don’t come any closer,” she cried, pointing the gun at him. “Travis, I mean it. I’ll kill you if I have to, but we’re riding out of here.”
Travis looked at the men tied on the ground, the body of Wiley Burns, the blood dripping from Andy’s hand. His expression was one of serious contemplation—not anger—not bewilderment. He just stared as though deep in thought, eyes narrowed. “All right,” he said finally. “Go ahead. I’m not going to try and stop you.”
Kitty was surprised, but grateful that there was not to be a showdown. Digging her heels into the horse’s flanks, she moved forward, Andy right behind her, both their guns trained on Travis, who sat watching them intently.
When they were right beside him, he spoke. “Aren’t you going to ask where Sam is?”
For the first time, Kitty realized Sam was not around. “If he’s hiding, I’ll get you by the time he shoots me,” she warned.
“We would have been back sooner, Kitty, but Sam’s horse got spooked by a rattler. He got thrown, and the rattler got him. He’s bad off. I came to get you to help. With my leg like it is, I couldn’t get down off my horse and back up again by myself, much less try to lift him up in the saddle with me. If you don’t go back with me, he’ll die. You should know how to treat a snake bite.”
“I do,” she said anxiously. Sam Bucher was her friend. He’d never done her any harm, and now cold terror was once again coursing through her veins as she thought of him lying out there in the night, rattlesnake poison rapidly spreading through his body. “But couldn’t he get on his horse himself?” she persisted.
“He thinks his ankle’s broken. He can’t move. I came back here quick as I could to get you.”
“Kitty,” Andy spoke softly, frowning with pain from the nail wound in his hand. “We can go see to Sam, and I’ll hold a gun on the Captain, and then we can ride out.”
She nodded. That was the answer. “You ride ahead,” she ordered Travis. “And don’t make any sudden moves, or we won’t have any choice but to shoot. We’re getting out of here and going back to our people, and nothing is going to stop us.”
He said nothing as he reined his horse and started back into the woods, moving as quickly as possible through the dense undergrowth and foliage. Travis knew she probably would shoot him, but the most important business they had to face was getting to Sam and doing everything possible to save his life.
He had shot the snake right after he struck—a Cane-break rattler—extremely poisonous he’d heard. Telling Sam to take off his belt and tie a tourniquet around his leg to stifle the flow of poison, there hadn’t been much left for him to do but go for help. He knew if he had gotten down off his horse, he would never have been able to mount once again.
It took about fifteen minutes to reach the point where Sam lay on the ground, and while they were riding, Travis asked Andy what had happened to his hand. The boy told him, and Travis swore under his breath. “I’m glad you killed the son of a bitch. I knew the first time I laid eyes on him, he was a troublemaker. I’m sorry it happened, Andy. If I’d been there, believe me, it wouldn’t have.”
“Why weren’t you there if you knew those men were so dangerous?” Kitty snapped irritably. “Why did you go off and leave us unprotected.”
He laughed, looking at her over his shoulder in the dim moonlight. “I never consider you in danger, Kitty. I always pity the people around you.”
“Just keep moving. I want to do what I can for Sam and then be on my way.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, and as soon as they reached Sam, Kitty told Andy to keep his gun trained on Travis and shoot if necessary, and she slid off her horse and ran to his side. “Sam, are you hurting?” she asked him anxiously, reaching for the knife he held in his hand and cutting the pants leg away from the wound. Two pinhole fang marks oozed blood and yellow serum. Already it was beginning to swell.
He moaned softly, his head leaning back against the trunk of the tree he’d managed to drag himself to. “It hurts powerful bad, Kitty, and I think my other le
g is broken. I think I’m a goner…” Through glazed eyes he looked at Andy pointing a gun at Coltrane. “What the hell’s going on around here, anyway?”
“We’re escaping. Just as soon as I do what I can for you. Now don’t talk. Rest so that the blood won’t pump the poison through your body so fast.” She took the tip of the knife and stabbed down into first one fang mark, then the other, slicing open the flesh, then crossing it with another mark. He bit his teeth to keep from screaming, but the moans in his throat were agonizing. She knelt and began to suck out the blood and poison, spitting it out of her mouth.
Sam began to vomit, his whole body heaving convulsively. “He isn’t going to make it, is he?” Travis asked quietly from where he sat on the horse. To Andy he said, “Boy, get me a limb or something for a crutch and let me down off this horse so I can be with my friend.”
Andy did as he was asked, still holding the gun, and Kitty did not protest. She was working feverishly to suck out the poison. And when she had done all she felt she could do, she rocked back on her heels and looked at the now unconscious man before her. “We won’t know for a while whether or not he’ll make it. He’s strong. He didn’t jump and run around and move the poison to his heart, and I did get a lot out by sucking it. With God’s help, he just might make it.”
They all sat down to wait. The night wore on. Ever so often Kitty would reach to touch Sam’s forehead, feeling that it was burning hot with fever. He would moan incoherently, and when his eyes fluttered open momentarily now and then, the look was glassy, dazed. The poison was working on him. Kitty knew that he might die in agony—or he might just go through this terrible period of sickness and then come out of it. There was nothing to do but wait.
“So you’re going home,” Travis said quietly, sitting beside her.
“I certainly am—back to North Carolina—back to wait for the man I love and want to marry.”
“We’re going to find winter quarters to train those men and get me and Sam back on our feet, and when spring comes, we want to get this war over with.”
“I’m sick of hearing about the war.” Her voice was weary.
He ignored her indication that she didn’t want to discuss the situation. “A lot of good men have been killed so far—a lot more will die before it’s over.”
“How many have you killed?” she asked accusingly.
“By myself, maybe twenty, by my men, maybe a hundred.”
“Are you proud of yourself?” She shot him a hateful glance.
“I’m not proud of much of anything, Kitty.” He spoke in a tone of voice she’d never heard him use before—soft, tender, as though maybe, somewhere behind that shield of protection he wore, he might actually care about the dying and suffering that was going on all around them. “It’s a sad war. Brother against brother. Father against son. It’s hard to even pinpoint the exact reason that men are killing each other. Up North, I hear there have even been riots because of the new conscription law, and you know what the rioters do after they shout and bum and demonstrate?”
She shook her head. It really didn’t matter. All she wanted was for Sam to come out of this so she and Andy could be on their way.
“Well, they go out and kill hundreds of blacks, sort of like they’re saying ‘Take the black man and get him out of the way…kill all the blacks and we won’t have a war. If they weren’t one of the issues, I don’t think Johnny Reb would even fight. What does the average Southerner care about government anyway? He cares more about God than government.”
She had to laugh in amusement at his thinking. “And just what do you know about the Southerner and his religion?”
“I don’t think there are any people on earth who are more religious than the Southerners. And they’re basically kind people—but then they can turn around and be the meanest. A Northerner will most likely hurt a stranger before his own people, but a Southerner will hurt his father, brother, sister, wife, friends. He just hasn’t learned to separate love and hate. He even blends his belief from the Old Testament into the New, saying one testament is thick with racial pride and war—yet the other is filled with love and forgiveness. They sort of think of themselves as chosen people in the promised land. And your father, he loved you, but yet he walked out on you to go fight for the North. That hurt you, didn’t it?”
She really wasn’t paying any attention to what he was saying except to wonder why he was rambling on so. And then, just as she realized Andy had fallen off to sleep, Travis reached out and whipped the gun from the boy’s limber hand, laughed, and said, “Now it’s a whole different story, Kitty. The South will have to wait a long time for your return, because you’re still with us.” And his voice was no longer soft or soothing—but harsh and mocking.
Kitty did the one thing she swore she would never do in front of Travis Coltrane. She put her head in her hands and wept—wept for her plight—once again a prisoner, her chance of escape now a thing of the past. It was hopeless. She would never be able to go home. She would never see Nathan again, or Poppa, or her mother. She would probably be killed by a stray bullet in some battle in some unknown town or field. And what difference did it make anymore what happened to any of them? The world as she had known it—and loved it—and lived it—was destroyed. There was nothing left.
Travis reached out and touched her long, silky hair, glistening with golden highlights in the moonbeams that filtered down through the leaves above. “Kitty…” he whispered her name. “Kitty, look at me…”
She turned her face to his, tears glistening on her cheeks. What did he want from her now? What new thing had he thought up to hurt her, destroy her?
He was not smiling. His eyes were burning into hers, his mouth only inches away. “I know you are a temptress, a lying, deceitful Rebel witch who would like to see me dead. I know you’re like all other women, out to use a man, make a fool of him, but yet, you’re so goddamned beautiful that I can’t let you go…can’t get you out of my blood. I know I’ll hate myself for letting you go. I’ll probably hate you, maybe even wind up killing you for betraying me…but for now, I want you as I’ve never wanted a woman before, and I think, if you’ll be honest enough to admit it to yourself, you want me, too.”
She watched, wide-eyed, struggling with the emotions churning within her, as he struggled to his feet, then drew her up against him. Hobbling along, he led her away from where Sam lay, breathing gently now, and Andy, who was still sleeping. He took her through some bushes, where a pine-needle carpet lay, closing them out from the rest of the world. He fell to the bed Nature provided, and she let him draw her down beside him. Wordlessly, he began to unbutton the shirt she wore, his hands warm, touching, seeking. His lips pressed against hers, and she received his probing tongue, yielding, her body aflame with the emotion, the passion, driving within.
He was gentle, loving, taking his time to arouse her and make her moan beneath him. But he did not torture her. For the first time in many years, he wanted to give a woman pleasure, not tease her into begging for his pleasures. And when he took her, they rocked together, murmuring sighs and words of love, and Kitty could not believe it was really happening—she could not really be receiving him this way. Was he right? Did she, deep down, want him this way—or was her body merely seeking animal pleasures?
And when they touched the stars together, he held her close for a long time afterward. “I think it would be proper to tell you I love you,” he whispered against her ear. “But I won’t, Kitty, because I can’t be sure, and I don’t want to lie to you. But I will say that you mean a great deal to me, and I desire you as I’ve never desired another woman, and if you’ll let me, for the time we’re together, I’ll be good to you—I’ll be gentle to you.”
“I can’t say that I love you either, Travis,” she spoke honestly, her mind twisting with agonized memories of the love she was sure she felt for Nathan. “But remember this, in all honesty, I will not take an oath against my people, and when the day comes that I have the opportunity
, I’ll go to them.”
He released her and sat up, and in the soft light of the first rays of dawn, he smiled that arrogant smile. “Then we understand each other, Kitty. We’re honest with each other. And we can’t ask for more than that, can we?”
“I guess not.”
They adjusted their clothing and then returned to where Sam was propped against the tree, staring at them with clear, alert eyes. “Where the hell have you two been?” He greeted them. “Damnit, a man could die around here and nobody would care.”
Kitty touched his forehead. The fever was gone. She looked at his leg. The swelling was down. “Sam, I do believe you’re going to be just fine.”
“Hell, if the whole Rebel army can’t kill me, I sure as hell ain’t gonna let no damned rattlesnake take me to glory! Now how about fixing my busted leg so we can get back to camp?”
“There’s something you need to hear about what went on in camp while we were out last night.” Travis sat down and started rolling a cigarette. “And I reckon Kitty needs to tend to that nail hole in young Andy’s hand. Then we’ll get around to that leg of yours.”
Kitty and Travis exchanged looks, and Sam saw and chuckled. “Well, I guess you two have seen what I been knowing all along.”
Kitty had moved out of hearing range, and Travis asked him, “And what might that be, you old codger?”
“You two love each other,” he said simply. “You might wind up shootin’ each other before this dadblamed war is over, but for right now, you sure as hell are in love with that girl.”
Travis looked to where Kitty was leaning over Andy, shaking him awake, telling him she had to see to his hand. She was beautiful. She was the finest-looking woman he had ever seen, the lushest, most appealing body he had ever held in his arms. And for the moment, until their world finished exploding around them—she was his. But love? No—he couldn’t admit to love, not the way he felt about women, and if ever a treacherous woman lived, it was Kitty Wright.
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 29
