Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (17 page)

“It’s
my
life, Doc. Not Nathan’s…not my father’s. They didn’t ask
my
permission to go off to war, did they? I can shoot as well as any man, and I don’t scream or faint at the sight of blood. I’m able to help you as well, if not better, than any man you can find in this county.”

Doc swore under his breath in exasperation, then wadded the sheet of paper into a tight ball and flung it across the room. “All right, damnit, let’s get busy. This is what I get for taking on a bull-headed snip of a woman to start with.”

Kitty gathered up the necessary supplies while Doc went in search of more assistants to accompany them. She packed instruments, ligatures, chloroform, morphine, tourniquets, bandages, lint, splints—and whiskey. She was just finishing when Doc returned with two men named Silas Canby and Paul Gray.

They were big, husky men, and Kitty knew them only as dirt farmers. “They were good enough to say they’d come,” Doc explained. “They don’t know much about medicine, but then we can’t be choosy. We never figured on being called on to do anything like this so soon.”

The two men shifted their weight uneasily, and Kitty, sensing that they didn’t particularly care for Doc’s apologies, quickly said, “They’ll do fine, Doc. When a man is hurt, you get help from God, not past experience.”

They smiled at her gratefully.

Once the wagon was loaded they started out, down the road east toward Kinston. Giant black thunderclouds were gathering on the horizon, warning of a dreaded summer storm, Lightning flashed across the sky now and then, followed by deep rumbles of thunder that shook the ground beneath them. The two horses pulling the wagon snorted and pawed the ground nervously, and Silas held the reins tightly, trying to keep the excited animals under control.

As light turned to darkness they reached Kinston and moved on toward the northeast and the little town of Washington, which they hoped to make before morning, but Doc surmised it would be closer to midday, as the rain had started to fall, and the road was soon muddy. The horses were having difficulty moving through the muck, and several times they were forced to get down out of the wagon and push it when a wheel was mired in.

The blackness turned to dull gray as morning came with no evidence of a rising sun in the overcast sky. They were soaked to the skin, but still they pushed onward. At Washington they stopped at a depot for dry clothing, and the men stretched a tarpaulin across the top of the wagon. The supplies were already covered by canvas, but the new covering would afford them some protection from the relentlessly driving rain.

Having eaten, they plodded onward, into the marshy swamplands of Pamlico Sound. Kitty looked around her at the majestic trees with hanging moss that towered above the gloomy waters. Before them on the road a rank growth of juniper, nightshade, and all manner of climbing and creeping shrubs and vines seemed to choke their path and render it all but impenetrable. The land on either side was low and marshy, a bed of quicksand and morass with broken and tangled weeds and vines that twined about gnarled roots. The forest looked dreary and ominous.

Doc was right. It was unlike anything she had ever seen back in Wayne County. That country she knew. She had grown up in it. This was new and dangerous, and she shivered with the dampness and gloom of her surroundings.

Paul Gray was driving, and Kitty and Doc and Silas huddled together beneath the sagging tarpaulin. “Doc, how much farther before we reach the camp?” Silas asked wearily.

“I have to admit that I don’t know,” Doc answered quietly. “All I know is that we’ll run into it somewhere along this road. That man back at the way station said they’d had a report early this morning that some wounded soldiers were being brought across the sound from Fort Hatteras.”

Kitty had noticed that Doc had been strangely quiet since leaving the way-station. Reaching to touch his huddled shoulders lightly, she asked, “Doc, what’s wrong? Did you hear something back there that you haven’t told us about?”

Sighing, he closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “No one likes to talk about defeat, Kitty. I heard at the station that Fort Clark ran out of ammunition yesterday and had to spike their guns and abandon the fort. They’ve withdrawn to Hatteras. The rough weather and high seas are all that’s kept the Yankees from moving onto the beach at Hatteras.”

A chill rippled up her spine. The Yankees might take Fort Hatteras and move into North Carolina inland from the sea. Doc’s grim fear might become a reality—they might be captured…or killed.

He was watching her thoughtfully as he said, “I could send you back on one of the horses, Kitty…”

“No!” She all but screamed the word. “I’m not running, Doc. I intend to go where I’m needed, and I wish you’d just stop thinking of me as a woman.”

“I delivered you, young lady, remember? I knew you were a girl before you did!”

She almost laughed, and she probably would have, because the peppery old doctor’s eyes were twinkling with humor in spite of the tense mission—but just then Silas, who had been watching her quietly ever since they had left Goldsboro, blurted out, “You heard anything from your pappy since he high-tailed it to join them goddamn Yankees?”

Kitty caught her breath. “No, I haven’t,” she said evenly, meeting his defiant gaze. “I pray that he’s well.”

“Even if he’s fightin’ for the Yankees and shootin’ at our men? Maybe even firin’ balls at that soldier boyfriend of yours, Nathan Collins?”

“Silas…” Doc nudged him with his foot. “Let’s not talk about it. We’ve got other things on our mind right now.

“Oh, let him go on, Doc.” Kitty was unable to keep the biting anger silent. “Maybe he’s concerned because he knows who the cowards were that hid behind those masks the night the Vigilantes whipped my father and killed three people.”

A slow smile spread across his face as Silas nodded. “I might. I say they all got what they deserved. No telling how many slaves your pappy helped get away. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t go with him when he ran away. I reckon that fancy-pants rich boy, Nathan, has you right where he wants you.”

“Now I’m not going to stand for this.” Doc leaned forward and pointed a stubby finger at Silas. “I asked you to come along because there was no one else I could ask, but I’m not going to tolerate your badgering this young woman.”

“Know what I heard?” Silas said to no one in particular. “I heard that Luke Tate is riding with the ‘Buffaloes’.”

“And what, pray tell, is a ‘Buffalo’?” Doc asked.

“Oh, some say they’re Confederates—and some say they’re really Union men. Nobody knows for sure. I guess they fight on whichever side is armed the heaviest.”

Kitty gave an unladylike snort. “And you call my father a traitor? At least people know which side he’s on.”

“I think the Buffaloes are smart,” Silas went on, almost reverently. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plug of tobacco and bit off a chew, his eyes never leaving Kitty’s face. “They don’t have to worry about getting their heads blown off if they don’t go with a winner, now do they?”

Doc shook his head. “I don’t understand you, Silas. I thought you were really concerned about the fighting on the coast. You said you wanted to come along and do your part. Now you’re taking up for men who are obviously outlaws with no principles at all.”

“And condemning my father,” Kitty reminded him.

“Oh, I reckon I had my reasons for coming along.” He was smiling again. He leaned over to spit out the back of the wagon before saying, “Luke’s a distant cousin of mine. I don’t like the way he got run off the Collins plantation because of
you
.”
He all but snarled at Kitty as his eyes narrowed maliciously.

Doc started to say something, but just then Paul Gray turned to yell, “Hey, I don’t know where the hell you think we’re going, Doc, but I’m lost. I can’t see the road, and we just ain’t gettin’ nowhere.”

“It was your idea to turn at that fork back there.” Doc turned to Silas accusingly. “Suppose you tell us where we are since you claim to know this part of the country. We should have reached the camp an hour ago.”

“And you would have,” he laughed, “if you’d been goin’ in the right direction, but you weren’t.”

“Just what the hell…”

Doc gasped into silence as Silas’s smile disappeared as he brought out a pistol that had been concealed inside his jacket, and pointed it at them.

“Now you just sit quiet. Old Luke and his men should be along any minute now. Everything’s worked out just fine so far, even the weather. He got that telegram to you, and I played the part of innocent country boy wanting to help the wounded soldiers and got invited along. And now Luke’s got the supplies he needs for some of his men, and I’ve got a special surprise for him.” He looked at Kitty and grinned meaningfully.

Realization of the hoax washed over Kitty, and anger overcame any fear she might have felt. For here they were, being held at gunpoint by a traitor, while somewhere nearby wounded Confederate soldiers needed their attention. Even if the telegram had been a trick, the battle raging on the nearby outer banks was a reality.

“You filthy scum!” She spat out the words furiously. “Some of our soldiers may die for lack of the supplies and attention we can give them, and you dared to condemn my father? Just how low do you crawl, Silas?”

“As low as I have to, so long as I don’t love slaves like your pappy!” His eyes had narrowed. Gone was the pretense of friend and neighbor. “I rode with them Vigilantes, and I helped beat your daddy and kill them runaway slaves, and…”

That’s all he had time to say when Kitty exploded. Here, before her was a man admitting that he had helped to nearly murder her father and had a hand in the killing of three people—she could control herself no longer. She lunged for him, oblivious to the gun, the shouts now sounding outside the wagon—nothing else mattered except the sudden unleashing of the animal called revenge that she had carried in her body ever since that dreadful, unforgettable night.

Unaware that the young girl possessed such fury, Silas was caught off guard. Doc leaped at the same moment, and the gun slipped from his hand as the two fell on top of him, both pummeling and hitting at the same time.

“What the hell…?” Paul turned to see the three of them thrashing against the sides of the wagon, knocking into the cartons of supplies.

The men who had ridden out of the swampland had encircled the wagon, and, hearing the commotion from within, several of them leaped from their horses to scurry inside. Kitty felt herself being dragged away, strong fingers twisting into her hair to yank her painfully back.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Doc trying to scramble away, his arm reaching out, fingers closing around the gun that Silas had dropped.

Something exploded. He screamed and crumpled as Kitty fought for consciousness. Swaying against the one who held her, she struggled to get to Doc, her eyes bulging with terror at the sight of the blood seeping from beneath his body, his back torn open and gaping by the ball fired at such close range.

The man holding the smoking gun laughed…an ugly, taunting sound.

Kitty raised her eyes from Doc’s body…to meet the triumphant gaze of Luke Tate.

Chapter Thirteen

Luke had slung her up on the rump of his horse as casually as though she were just another saddlebag, carrying her to his camp deep in the swamp where there was a cave hidden in a steep dirt bank. She had begged to be allowed to dig a grave for the man she had loved almost as much as her own father, but her pleas had been answered by taunting laughter. She had hovered beside the body while they loaded the supplies onto their horses, then had to be dragged away.

She had been thrown to the ground beside a campfire, and the men shot anxious glances her way as they moved about to bring the supplies inside the cave. Kitty was terrified, but she told herself she could not let them know it. She had to be brave. Animals like these could never be allowed to think they had the upper hand. Over and over she told her screaming brain to stop her body from trembling, make her eyes glare with anger—not fear.

Suddenly, Luke Tate was squatting down in front of her, hands rubbing together in satisfaction between his hunched knees. “Well, well, Kitty, we meet again. I’ve waited for this time.”

“Just as you waited for the time when you could beat my father and have plenty of help from your hooded friends?” She stared at him, unwaveringly defiant, proud of her control.

“Oh, I didn’t get in on that.” He grinned, showing his yellowed, chipped teeth in the glow from the firelight. “I got run off by that fancy-pants boyfriend of yours, remember? I’ve been waitin’ for the chance to give him his, too, and it’ll come. Wait long enough for something, and it comes to you, I always say.”

His hand snaked out to clamp down on her left breast, squeezing painfully, and he laughed as she cried out and struggled to escape his grasp. “Stop struggling, and I’ll stop squeezing…” he taunted her.

She bit her lip and forced herself to be still, eyes glinting with hate and loathing.

“Now then…” He began to knead the flesh gently. “I’ve been waiting on you for quite a spell. It worked out just fine, too. I figured out a way to get the supplies and get you, too.”

“And you killed Doc,” she cried painfully, “and he was a good man—a
needed
man! You’ll pay for it, Luke Tate—the same way you’ll pay for what you had them do to my father.”

Suddenly his face twisted evilly, and he reached to rip open his shirt, pulling the cloth down from one shoulder to expose the gouged pock-hole where the ball she had fired had ripped into the flesh. “And what about you paying for what you did to me, you little slut?” He sprang forward to twist the fingers of one hand into her hair, yanking her head back painfully as his other hand ripped her clothes to her waist.

He gasped as the perfectly formed mounds of flesh tumbled forward, and he quickly took one pink nipple between grimy nails to pinch, watching it turn to fiery red as it tightened against her will. Laughing, he leaned forward to duck his head and fasten his lips around it, and she jerked her head quickly to sink her teeth into his ear, biting down with all her strength.