“That’s cocky.” Travis laughed.
“Not if you know ‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker,” Rosecrans said, also laughing. “He means it. As soon as the spring winds dry the dirt roads so the armies can start moving, he’s going to head for Richmond with more men than McClellan ever had. He’ll move along the Virginia countryside on the south side of the lower James River, apparently aggressive to the enemy to hold them in check and keep that part of the country open so that its bacon and forage can be used. But he won’t repeat Burnside’s mistake and butt head-on against the Confederate defenses at Fredericksburg. He’ll leave a third of his army there to hold Lee’s attention, and then swing up the rest of his men along the Rappahannock and cross the river to march on Lee’s unprotected left and rear.”
Kitty held her breath. Dear God, if she could only get this information to the Confederates! It could save the capital! But how far away was Fredericksburg, Virginia? She was in Tennessee!
“I’d rather return to General Grant, sir,” Travis was saying.
“No,” came the booming reply. “Grant says you are one of the best qualified cavalrymen and officers in the whole Union army, and a sharpshooter besides. You head on out and join Colonel Grierson’s troopers like Grant wants you to do.”
“And you’ll look after the lady?”
Rosecrans chuckled. “So that’s it. You’re worried about your lady. A pretty thing she is, too. Yes, I’ll see that she’s taken care of, and if she’s as good a nurse as you say, she’ll be desperately needed. You haven’t gone and fallen in love with a Rebel prisoner, have you?”
“Her father left her and her mother to join our side, sir,” Travis spoke up quickly. “Kitty’s changed. I’m pretty sure of it. As for love, guess my reputation hasn’t reached you, sir. I love no woman.”
“Such a reputation is not important enough to reach me.” Rosecrans’s voice was cold and intimidating. “But I will see to it that she is taken care of. You can be sure of that. Now I want you to prepare to leave first thing in the morning to go get your men and head for La Grange. It’s on the Mississippi line and you need to get started right away.”
But Travis was not intimidated by the higher-ranking officer. “Sir, a few days can’t matter that much if the Colonel has to wait for the roads to dry up. It’s only mid-February, and my purpose in bringing Kitty down out of the mountains was to give her a respite from the hard winter. You don’t understand what she’s meant to me and my men. She’s saved many lives, and she’s gone without her own rations to give to a sick soldier who needed the nourishment, such as it was.”
“I’ll see that the lady is treated well…entertained…”
“No, sir.” The voice was firmer, and Kitty felt a strange little shudder rippling through her body. “You don’t understand. It’s me she wants to entertain her, and if I’m to leave her behind…”
There was a moment of silence. Kitty tensed. Then there came a loud, surrendering sigh. “All right. Take three days’ leave, Captain. I suppose you and your men are quite deserving.”
Kitty hurried back to her room. She was a mixture of emotions. Travis had stood up to a man like Rosecrans, demanding that he be given time to spend with her before leaving her—and now an unfamiliar emotion was sweeping over her. Could he actually have fallen in love with her? Could she actually be in love with him? It was time to admit that the thought of escaping and never seeing him again caused a gentle ache deep within. But no! It hadn’t happened—and it couldn’t happen. The cause was greater! She was promised to Nathan. More than that, she owed a debt to her people—to Doc Musgrave and the thousands of other Southerners who had died for something they believed in.
And Poppa? Did she owe him a loyalty, too? “A man has to follow his heart,” he had said that to her many times. “A man has to have the courage of his convictions.” He was following his—if he was still alive—and she had to fellow hers. Travis was handsome, dashing, exciting, and he could make her body come alive in a way she never dreamed existed, But love? No. It couldn’t be. Underneath the aura, there lay the coldness, the brutal savagery, of a man with no heart. Any emotion that existed between them was physical, and anything physical is fleeting, decaying like the flesh when committed to the grave. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the Good Book said. And so would their feelings for each other be committed.
She did not have to wait long. The door opened softly. Kitty lay naked from the hurried bath. Travis undressed, stretching out beside her. He reached for her with a gentle hand, but his lips were hungry. He caressed her, touched her, made her body sing with a chorus of a thousand voices in joyful unison. And then they crested together, her head tucked against his shoulder, as she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
Travis dressed, tiptoed from the room. He would be joining his men downstairs for drinks and revelry. She would have a few precious hours to attempt her mission.
Someone had left a clean Union uniform, and she dressed hurriedly, moved to the end of the empty, silent hallway, then crept quickly down the outside stairway. The streets were almost deserted. The sounds of music and laughter from inside the saloons along the way gave evidence that the soldiers were relaxing and enjoying themselves with the loose camp women who abounded.
She hurried along to the railroad stockade, picking her way through the shadows of the dark buildings. She paused just across the street to look over the situation. There seemed to be only two guards, and as Kitty watched, they passed a bottle between them. She could not distinguish their conversation but heard enough to tell that the speech was slurred. They were drunk!
Someone walked by, and she pressed herself fiat against the doorway of the building and held her breath. The person went on by. It would be difficult to explain why a woman wearing a baggy uniform of the Federal army was spying on the Confederate prison stockade in the middle of the night.
The guards were soon slumped against the gate. Kitty moved across the street after checking to make sure no one was around. She kept a safe distance from the stockade where the prisoners were lying on the ground. Some of them were asleep. Others were sitting up mumbling and cursing. If they spotted her, they might give her away.
There was a deserted-looking building at the side, with a narrow pathway between it and the wire stockade. She slipped inside, and the first prisoner she reached was leaning back against a fence post, his head nodding.
“Please, don’t make a sound,” she whispered nervously, her voice quivering as she reached through the wire, gently touching his shoulder.
Whipping his head around, he gasped, “Well, I’ll be damned…”
“Please, not a sound!” It was a dark, cloudy night with no illumination from the moon. He could not see her face but could tell she was a woman by her voice. “I’m a Confederate like you and I’m held prisoner by a Yankee officer. I need help to get back to our people.”
He turned around, straining to see her face. “I’m afraid I can’t help you none, lady. I’m a prisoner, too, as you can see. You better not let them catch you here, either.”
“I want you to ask questions of the other men. When do they say the train will come for you?”
“Dunno. Some say tomorrow. Some say day after. Nobody knows for sure.”
“Listen carefully.” She moved closer to him. “I’ll come back here tomorrow night. You be sitting right here. You ask around. Find out if anyone knows anything about a Confederate officer—a Major, the last time I heard—Major Nathan Collins of the Wayne Volunteers, assigned to the North Carolina State troops under a Colonel named George Anderson. The last I heard, they were at the battle of Shiloh.”
“Glory, woman, that was almost a year ago. There’s been a hundred battles since and thousands of men killed. He probably ain’t even alive now,” he added caustically.
Her heart wrenched painfully. “He has to be. Please, ask about. Someone might have heard something…know where he is. I have information that is vital to the South.”
&nb
sp; “And what do you aim to do, lady, if someone’s heard of this man?”
“Go to him. I can slip away. They trust me. I have some freedom now, and I can get away.”
He was almost shaking with interest. “And you’d let us out of here? There’s almost a hundred of us, lady, and we’d make a strong band to take you where you want to go.”
It didn’t take Kitty long to agree that with a hundred men to help her, she would have a better chance of getting to wherever Nathan was. “All right. You find out what I need to know, and tomorrow night I’ll find a way to free all of you.”
“Find out where the horses are stabled. We’ll need those. Now go before someone hears us talking.”
She slipped away, across the street, through the shadows, and by the time she was back upstairs in the hotel room and beneath the covers, her whole body was trembling. It was happening! It was finally happening. She was going to be free. She was going to return to Nathan. Oh, please, God, she prayed, let someone know where he is!
Finally, she slept, and she did not know when Travis had come in during the night, but when she awoke, he was holding her tightly against his strong chest. For a moment, she could only lie there, her pulse pounding as she told herself she was only doing what must be done, Travis did not love her. He could never truly love any woman. There was no need to feel any guilt. Hadn’t he humiliated her? Used her?
Her body tensed, and the movement awakened Travis, who was trained to be alert to any move while sleeping. His eyes flashed open, and when he saw her staring at him, his lips spread into a lazy smile. “What a nice way to wake up,” he murmured, reaching for her; and she gave herself to him wholly, completely, for what she prayed would be the last time.
Closing her eyes, the scorching thought pulsated through every fiber of her being: she was a whore, using her body willfully. But no, there was a purpose, and that purpose was to obtain freedom for herself and for almost a hundred Confederate prisoners and to take information to the Southern army that might very well save the capital of the Confederacy! Other women did what she was now doing for no reason at all, save their own lust and pleasure, so why should she feel any guilt?
That afternoon, Travis took her to a store where a few women’s dresses were available. He bought her a beautiful gown of red lace and satin, whirling her about approvingly. “You are the most damned beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” He grinned. “I swear, Kitty Wright, you’re too damned beautiful!”
The woman clerk standing nearby watched curiously, then asked cautiously, “Are you sure you want a red wedding dress, ma’am? I know with the war that dresses are scarce, but I could come up with something perhaps, ah, more conservative…”
“A wedding?” Travis threw his head back and laughed, and Kitty felt her cheeks flaming. “Ah, my innocent woman, marriage is for fools. The princess and I merely love to make love, isn’t that right, my lovely?”
Kitty was seething with rage. How could he embarrass her so? How could he dress her in flaming red like a harlot, then publicly announce that they were merely lovers with only scornful thoughts for the sacredness of marriage?
Stalking into the curtained-off dressing area, Kitty almost ripped the dress taking it off. Walking back into the main room of the store, she flung the garment across the counter and snapped, “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from this man!”
And then she hurried out into the muddy street, not caring that her ankles sank down into the mud and slush and ice. A few soldiers yelled at her, but she held her head up and kept going. She did not stop until she was back in the hotel room, stamping the slush from her feet.
Suddenly the door banged open. Travis walked in, seemingly filling the room with his anger. “Just what in the hell was that all about?” He flung the red dress he was carrying across the bed.
He was wearing a poncho, which he yanked off and threw to the floor. He stood with booted feet wide apart, the shirt of his dark blue Federal uniform open to expose his massive, hairy chest. His mud-spattered blue trousers had a stripe down each leg, and he was rumpled and unkempt. Even his beard looked shaggier, Kitty realized, if that was possible. Did his ruggedness, his callousness, have anything to do with the mission he was about to undertake? She did not know and, at the moment, did not care.
“How dare you shame me so in public? Just who do you think you are? How dare you?”
She could have slapped him, but the gleam in his eye told her plainly that the move would not go unrevenged.
“I never promised you anything, Kitty, except to be kind to you, which I have been. If you’re so damned sensitive that you can’t stand a bit of jest.
“Jest. You call it jest when you tell a total stranger that we are no more than lovers?” Her purple eyes were flashing, and her whole body trembled with rage.
“You’ll never see the woman again. What difference does it make what she thinks? Every man in my company knows we’re lovers, that we sleep together as man and wife, and you haven’t minded them knowing it. Why make a big scene over a total stranger? Woman, I’ll never be able to figure you out!”
He looked at her and shook his head. Would he never be able to figure her out? What had happened to make her behave so? Yesterday they were friends and now they were enemies once again.
She whirled and sat down on the sagging bed, turning her back to him. “Just get out, Travis, and leave me alone. And take that harlot’s dress with you! I never want you to touch me again. You can beat me, kill me, but I’ll never give in to you again. I should have known you were no better than that scoundrel, Luke Tate, except that you’re worse, because you’re a…a damned Yankee!”
There was such a long silence that Kitty finally snapped her head around, thinking he might have actually left without her hearing him.
But he was still standing there, staring at her in such a puzzled way that she cried, “Well? Why do you stare at me that way? Get out and leave me alone!”
“All right.” His voice was calm, quiet, almost ominous, as though he had figured out something was very wrong. “But this will be goodbye for now, Kitty. I have a mission that will take me somewhere you can’t go. Rosecrans will see to it that you’re sent to a medical unit and kept as safe as possible. I wish you well. Perhaps one day we’ll meet again…”
He stood there a moment as though waiting for something. Finally, Kitty stuck her chin up a bit higher, giving her long hair a flip as she turned her face to the wall. Travis was almost out into the hall when the question came in a whisper, “What of Andy?”
He paused, then said gently, “Kitty, Andy is one of us now. I think you’ve realized that. He pledged his allegiance in his heart to the Union a long time ago. Don’t fret about him. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
He stepped into the hallway, closing the door quietly. Kitty almost called out to him. Her lips parted and her hand moved toward the closed door. This was not the way they should say goodbye, but then her hand fell to her lap, her lips closed. What difference did it really make? They d never loved each other. It was better this way, better that they part in anger.
And, yes, she thought with painful remembrance, it was best he did not know that the crumpled red dress lying in a heap upon the bed had brought back memories of another dress—also red—and the happiness with winch she had first modeled it, and the love she’d felt for Nathan. Could it be that she was experiencing similar emotions back there in that shop and that Travis’s caustic remarks to the clerk had made her realize that she was a fool for even thinking love between them might be possible?
And then she heard the footsteps, finally retreating down the hail, and with the sound came the realization that he had been standing there, waiting for her to call out to him! Oh, the nerve and the conceit of that…that animal!
Travis Coltrane would never love anyone but himself and his precious Union. And she would never love anyone except Nathan—and the sooner they were married, the better.
She lay down on the bed and
waited—for nightfall, for escape.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kitty opened her eyes to darkness. She did not know how long she had slept, but after groping her way to the window, she could see that all was quiet below. It was late. A supper tray had been brought and left by her bed. No sound came from the hallway.
It was time to act.
She put on the heavy boots, which she hated—but they were all she had to wear—then the blue trousers, and the shirt. There was a woolen cape hanging on a nail, and she slipped that on also. It was bitterly cold. They would be traveling at night until they were safe behind their own lines. But where were the lines? Who knew where the war was being waged anymore?
Opening the door gently, she peered outside. The corridor was empty. Tiptoeing, she moved to the end, opened the outside doorway, then started descending the stairway. Once, she had to press herself against the side of the building and hold her breath as two drunken Union soldiers moved below her, slurring the notes of their song.
She made her way down the street cautiously, eyes ever alert for any movement. Finally, she was once again crouched in the darkness directly across from the stockade which held the Confederate prisoners. She noticed that most of them were sitting up or walking about, and she cursed silently. Word had spread! Didn’t they know that the guards might be more alert if they felt the tension?
Her eyes watched the two guards sitting in front of the entrance gate, heads nodding. A cold wind was blowing, and they huddled together for warmth. She stood there for perhaps a half hour without moving, just watching, making sure that the guards were truly asleep. Every so often, one of their heads would jerk up, shake, then promptly the chin would fall to the chest.
Finally, she moved across the street and down the alleyway toward a soldier who sat propped against the same fence post. She knelt down, and in the dim light from a campfire, she realized it was not the same soldier she had talked with the night before. This soldier’s right sleeve was doubled up and pinned to his shoulder—his right arm had been amputated!
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 33
