“Please…don’t make a sound,” she said, repeating her warning of the previous night. “I’m here to help you escape.”
The soldier turned slowly, and a voice filled with such pain that it wrenched her heart, spoke quietly. “Hello, Kitty.”
For a moment, she felt herself swaying as she fought to hang onto reality. She had to be dreaming. Could it really be?
“David…” she whispered, tears starting to stream down her face as her fingertips reached through the fence to touch his dear face. “David Stoner.”
“God, Kitty, we thought you were dead,” His own voice was breaking. “When that soldier passed the word through the stockade that a woman held prisoner by the Yankees was trying to find Nathan Collins, I knew it had to be you.”
“Oh, David…” She put her face in her hands and wept, for the moment forgetting the dangerous situation she was in. To see someone so dear was like being home again. But she was not home, she reminded herself, far from it, and her head snapped up as her teeth bit into her lower lip to check the tears.
“David, do you know where Nathan is? I’ve got to get to him. We’ve all got to get out of here.”
“I’ve got a general idea, Kitty, but our company took a licking in a skirmish a few weeks back, and we got spread out.”
“Is that how you lost your arm?” she asked cautiously, not wanting to remind him.
“No, that happened at Shiloh.”
“A year ago? David, you could have gone home. The war was over for you.”
“I didn’t want to go home. If I can’t do anything but help tote supplies with one arm or give a wounded man a drink of water, that’s better than going home and not doing my part, Kitty. Then I had to go and get myself captured and hell, none of us want to rot in a Yankee prison for the rest of the war.”
“Then let’s get moving,” she said quickly. ‘What about the guards? Are there only two of them?”
“Yeah. They figure since we’re stripped of weapons and the whole town is crawling with Yankees, they don’t need more’n two. Besides, Rosecrans is having a time keeping his men sober. But we’ve already talked about how we’re going to work this. You find us any kind of a weapon—something to bust their heads with—and we’ll do the rest. There’s a pen full of horses not far from here, and we’ll get to those and then ride out of here before they know what’s happening.”
“But what about guns?” she asked, frightened. “The other soldiers will hear the commotion and come running, and we’ll be gunned down before we can get out of town.”
“We’re going to be quiet about it,” he assured her. “We talked about it all night last night and all day today. We’re going to be quiet—slip out a few at a time. Now you do as I say. Go find us a club or something and then try to find a couple of horses for me and you. We’re going to leave the others. We won’t attract as much attention traveling in a pair. Everyone will think we’re husband and wife, me an amputee out of the war and you my wife, just riding along. I’ll wait right here, and you go find us two horses. Now hurry, Kitty.”
Kitty’s heart throbbed as she darted through the night. Several horses were tied in front of a darkened store used now as a barracks. Untying two, she led them to the rear, down the side of the railroad track, retying them in the shadows. What David said made sense: with David an amputee the two of them could travel almost safely. With the entire group of escaped Confederate prisoners, they would make an easy target.
It was not hard to find two large rocks, which she passed over the fence to the waiting prisoners. Then she pressed herself against the building alongside the alley and waited.
There was the sound of loud thumps and sudden groans, and then—dear God, no—the men were shouting and screaming and running from the stockade in wild panic! They were fighting each other for horses tied along the streets, and Union soldiers, awakened by the noise, were stumbling out of the buildings and saloons.
Shots rang out. Confederates were falling in the street. Others were grappling for guns, returning the fire. Kitty crammed her fist into her mouth and tasted blood as her teeth bit down. It was over before it even began. Terror constricted her, froze her where she stood. She would be shot down like the others. Why did they have to run screaming through the streets in hysterics?
She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up in the shadows to see David standing there. “I was afraid it would be like this,” he said quickly. “Kitty, where did you tie our horses? There might still be a chance for us to escape.”
She was unable to move. She was staring beyond him at the street where a Confederate lay writhing in the slush and ice, clutching his stomach. The Union soldiers had reacted quickly. It was a massacre!
She felt the sting of his remaining hand across her face, and she snapped back to reality. “Kitty! We’ve got to move. This way.”
She turned in the opposite direction, toward the railroad track. In the shadows, the horses waited, pawing the ground impatiently. With his one good arm, David gave her a boost onto the saddle, then hoisted himself atop the other horse.
“Move easy,” he ordered, “and when I give the order, dig your heels in and ride like hell, Kitty. I know you can do it. And if I get hit, you keep on going.”
“But where? What direction, David? I don’t know where to find Nathan.”
“Find Pemberton, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, and you’ll find Nathan. Head for Richmond.”
Out in the street, the fighting was still going on. The Confederates were being slaughtered, but a few had reached horses and were riding away into the night.
They moved slowly, behind the buildings. Suddenly, two men stepped out in front of them, one of them carrying a torch. “Now!” David screamed, spurring his horse, leaping across the railroad track and disappearing into the darkness.
But Kitty was frozen and could not move.
“Kitty, ride!” She could hear David yelling above the thundering hooves of his horse. “Ride!”
A gun was pointed right at her, and the gun was held by Travis Coltrane.
“You did this, didn’t you, Kitty?” he asked quietly.
In the background, there was the sound of guns firing, men screaming, horses charging through the night in pursuit of the Rebels who had managed to escape.
Kitty’s lips moved, but she could not find her voice.
“All of it, it was part of the plan, wasn’t it?”
In the maddening, dancing flicker of the torch, his face looked wild, maniacal. The gun was trained straight at her, and at any moment, a bullet could go tearing right into her body, ending her life.
“I never swore allegiance to your cause, Travis,” she said finally, wondering in the panic of the moment why she felt like crying. Was it because death was so near or because Travis was looking at her with such hate and disbelief in his steady gaze?
“Shoot her, Coltrane,” the soldier holding the torch cried as Kitty dug her heels into the horse’s flanks and reined him to a sharp right in the direction David had taken.
Tears blinded her eyes. Let the bullet rip into her flesh. She would not turn back now.
“Goddamn it, Coltrane, shoot her! She’s the cause of all this.”
“Kitty, stop!” The voice was cracking, almost pleading, but Kitty dug her heels in harder. The horse started to trot, then broke into a full run just as she heard the scuffle behind.
Giving the horse full rein, she whipped her head about just in time to see Travis wrestling with the man who had held the torch and dropped it—grappling for the gun. He was trying to keep the soldier from shooting her!
For one brief instant, she snaked her hands out for the reins to bring the horse around. But for what? To help Travis? To give herself up?
“Kitty, please, hurry.”
In front of her, in the night, David was calling to her, waiting. He would see that she got to Richmond and to Nathan. Behind her, two men were grappling for a gun. One of them, she had foolishly thought she mi
ght have loved—and had dared to think he might love her. Go back? Back to what? Helping the Yankees? Give her body and soul to a man who only wanted to use her?
But then cold realization washed over her, and she yanked the reins so hard that the horse reared up on his hind legs, pawing at the air wildly. Had she not been an expert horsewoman, she would have gone sprawling to the ground, but she held on, brought the horse back down on all four legs and turned and started back. Travis was fighting at this moment for her—for her life—to keep his own man from shooting her to halt her escape!
And then the explosion came. One of the men was clutching his stomach as he fell to the ground.
“God, Captain…” She heard the mournful, agonizing cry. “I didn’t mean it…”
And then the body pitched forward to the ground.
She wheeled the horse around, dug her heels in harder and harder as the tears blinded any vision she might have had in the darkness, the terror constricting her throat, making her gasp for breath. She galloped right past David who was waiting for her, and he had to spur his own horse in pursuit.
How long they rode blindly in the darkness Kitty did not know. Finally, when the horse stumbled and almost fell, she reined up, leaped off before her mount had come to a complete stop; tripped, lost her balance, fell to the ground on hands and knees, and felt the flesh being torn away.
And only then did she give way to the great, gulping sobs that racked her body.
“Kitty, Kitty, for God’s sake…” David was right beside her, “What happened back there? Why’d you stop? What happened to make you act this way? Why were those two men fighting?”
“Please,” she gasped, feeling a knife-like pain in her side as she pressed her hands against the flesh there. “I…I don’t want to talk about it…not now.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face, then took his remaining arm to hold her against his chest. “It’s going to be all right now. We’ll find shelter and rest, and then we’ll head for Richmond. We’ll find Nathan there with Pemberton’s army, I’m sure. He thinks you long dead, Kitty, and he’ll praise God for sending you to him.”
“And I’ve thought him long dead,” she said, swallowing her tears. “I never thought I’d see anyone from home again.”
They had reached deep woods, and David led her and the horses into a thicket where they sank to the ground, exhausted. For a while, they were silent, then Kitty asked, “How many of our men do you think got away?”
“Maybe twenty. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. It was dark. They just panicked. I was afraid it would happen that way. The thoughts of escape—the gate finally opening—they just went crazy. Can’t say as I blame them. I just wish it hadn’t happened that way. Maybe we could have all gotten away.”
“Have you been back home?” Kitty asked suddenly, thinking of her mother.
“Yeah, I went home after I lost my arm. I got married, too.”
“Married?” Kitty’s eyes widened in the darkness. “David, I never knew you were seriously interested in anyone…”
“Except you.” He laughed softly, teasingly. Kitty felt herself blushing. Reaching out with his one hand, David touched her face, tracing his fingertips along her cheek. “It’s all right, Kitty. I never made much of a secret about the way I felt about you. But I knew it was Nathan you really loved. I think I knew it even before you did.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, then Kitty asked, “Do I know your wife?”
He snorted. “Doesn’t everyone?” He lapsed into another mood of silence, and this time Kitty did not prod him to speak. She waited.
“I went home on leave after I lost my arm, like I said. Nathan went with me. It was after the battle of Shiloh. Everybody made a pretty big to-do over me, made me out to be a hero and all. Of course, Nathan’s a big officer now and made a good name for himself, and everyone was paying a lot of attention to him, too. Well, we both asked a lot of questions about you, but nobody had ever heard any more about you once they found Doc’s body. We figured you’d been killed, too, only your body wasn’t found.”
“Well,” he went on after a long sigh, “Nancy Warren really made it known to Nathan that she was after him, but he was taking it pretty hard about you. She turned to me to try to make him jealous, I realized later. At the time, I had my own sorrow to bear—realizing you were gone. I’d lost my right arm, and I came home to find out my pa had been killed in the Shenandoah Valley. I reckon I was about the most miserable man in the whole world. Nancy made me feel like somebody cared. The next thing I knew, I’d asked her to marry me and she’d accepted. Nathan went back to the war, and I tried to settle down to married life and working some land to try and grow enough to keep us from starving.”
Nancy Warren and David Stoner? Kitty shook her head in disbelief. It didn’t seem possible. David was so sweet and kind and gentle, and Nancy was—well, Nancy was just a witch, that’s all, a snobby, conceited little witch who would make any man miserable.
“It didn’t work out,” David said, confirming Kitty’s thoughts. “She said my stump bothered her. Said she didn’t like being married to a dirt farmer. Next thing I knew she was running off to Raleigh to dance with the officers on leave. I just upped and walked out. Found my way back to the war—and Nathan. Then I got myself captured and was headed for a Yankee prison till God sent you to me.”
“My mother…” she said then. “Is she well? David, it’s been almost two years! Is she still alive? How does she get by all alone? Did Jacob stay with her?”
She was trembling with anxiety. This was the first chance in so long to hear any kind of news at all about her mother.
David was strangely quiet, and she reached out and gave him a shake, apprehension coursing through her veins. “Tell me, please. It’s bad, isn’t it? She’s dead…”
“No, she isn’t dead,” he sighed. “She lives in town now. Works there. Manages to keep herself from starving, I reckon. Every soldier that comes through, she asks about you and your pa. You should write to her, Kitty. Let her know you’re alive. No one’s ever heard a word from your pa except that he’s one of the fiercest Yankee fighters alive. In fact, when word spread back home, some of the men who’d lost arms and legs and gone home to stay put a bounty on him. They got together and raised over five thousand dollars to bring him in—dead!”
“Oh, my God,” she whimpered, and David quickly apologized for repeating such news. She shook her head. “No, I’d rather know the truth, David. I’ve heard the same tale about him being such a fine soldier for the North, and I’m not surprised to hear about the bounty.”
“I know you’re hungry,” he said then, anxious to change the subject. “I’m going to look in the haversack on that horse’s saddle and see if there’s anything inside.”
He returned with some corn dodgers and a canteen of water. “It’s not much, but it will do till we can find better. We’ve got quite a ride ahead of us to find Pemberton’s army—and, we hope, Nathan. I feel like I should just take you right on home. I can find some way to get you there. Nathan won’t like you going into the thick of battle, even as glad as he’ll be to find out you’re alive. I can take you home, and you can write to him. It might be better that way.”
“No!” she said sharply. “I’ve got to find Nathan. And I have to find General Lee and tell him about a Yankee named Hooker who plans to march on Richmond and about how he plans to do it. I overheard someone talking to Rosecrans back there.”
The way she said “someone” with a certain touch of tenderness to her voice made David speak up and ask gently, “Would that someone be the soldier who died for you back there, Kitty?”
For a moment, she could not find her voice. Oh, Lord, the confusion flowing through her veins! Was Travis dead? Had he died for her? And if so, was the ache, the pain, that she felt inside genuine? Would the gnawing demon eat into her very soul to destroy her with grief? Or was she actually numb because it did not matter that Travis Coltrane might be dead?
“Travis Coltrane, a cavalry officer in General Grant’s army,” she said finally when she could trust herself to speak. “He…he rescued me from Luke Tate, but he wouldn’t let me return south, not when he found out I knew something about medicine.”
“Luke Tate?” He was shocked. “What’s Luke Tate got to do with any of this?”
And then she realized that David did not know the whole story—how she had actually been kidnapped by Nathan’s former overseer and held prisoner. She had to tell him the whole terrible story from beginning to end. And when she had finished, she could feel him beside her, shaking with fury.
“And he escaped?” he asked between clenched teeth.
She could only nod and mumble a feeble yes.
“I’ll find him and kill him!”
He spoke so fiercely, so furiously, that Kitty reached out to touch him, to try to soothe some of the anger. “He’s probably dead by now, David. And it’s in the past. I try not to think about any of it anymore.”
It was bitterly cold there in the thick Tennessee woods. “We’d better try to get some sleep and be on our way as soon as it’s light.” David got up and went to the, horses, grateful to find a blanket laced onto the rump of each. “This isn’t much cover, but if we huddle together, we won’t freeze.”
They curled in each other’s arms. Kitty did not think about the propriety of such closeness. It was a necessity to try to keep warm. She snuggled with her back against David’s body as they lay beneath the blankets. In only a few moments, she heard his even, gentle breathing and knew he was sleeping from exhaustion. A long journey lay ahead—a dangerous, long journey.
Kitty tried to sleep also. Closing her eyes, she listened to the night sounds—a gentle singing wind that moved through the longleaf pines above, an owl hooting mournfully from somewhere deeper into the woods, now and then the shriek of some wild animal in search of prey. Her eyelids grew heavy. She was exhausted, both physically and mentally. Even her jumbled thoughts could not keep her awake.
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 34
