Fletcher's Woman

by Linda Lael Miller

  Chang sighed, and his eyes were fixed on some point just above Rachel’s head. “Missy in bad trouble,” he said.

  Even though Rachel was gaining strength moment by moment, she was still very weak. “Chang, you must help me. If you’ll just find Mr. Wilkes—”

  Chang’s thin face hardened. “Not find Wilkes!” he spat. “He tell Chang go, not come back!”

  Tears of hopelessness gathered in Rachel’s eyes. “It was my fault that you lost your job, wasn’t it? It was because you and I had that argument in the dining tent.”

  The Chinaman seemed surprised by her words, but he made no response.

  Rachel groped for his arm, found it. “Oh, Chang, I beg you—don’t let Captain Frazier sell me—please. I’ll be a stranger and a slave!”

  Chang shrugged, but there was a glimmer of sadness in his eyes, a sadness that said he understood what it was to be a stranger and a slave all too well. “If Chang tell, Captain beat—maybe kill.”

  “No! Mr. Wilkes will protect you—and your wife! I know he will!”

  The Chinaman deliberated. After a torturously long time, he asked, “Missy is Wilkes’s woman?”

  A lump gathered in Rachel’s throat, but it did not block the desperate lie. “Yes.”

  Again Chang thought. He was still thinking when Rachel slipped back into the dark velvet folds of sleep.

  • • •

  At the base of the Skid Road, Griffin paused. Jonas was here somewhere, he was certain of that. But where? It would take all night to search every saloon, and Griffin didn’t have a night to spare.

  He took a cheroot and a wooden match from the inside pocket of his coat, struck the match on the sole of his right boot, and drew deeply of the smoke.

  A prostitute sidled past, looked back, and paused. “Hello, Handsome,” she drawled, her face in shadows. “You look sorta lonely.”

  Griffin was careful not to let the light of the street lamp reveal his battered face; it wouldn’t do to scare the poor girl away before he found out what he wanted to know. “I’m here on business,” he said, in a toneless voice.

  “Well, so am I!” giggled the girl. “What can Chloe do for you, Sugar?”

  Griffin pried a bill from his trouser pocket and, without bothering to look at it, held it out. “I’ve got some questions for you, Chloe. But tonight anyway, that’s all.”

  The faceless Chloe snatched the bill from his fingers. “Chloe does like easy money, Handsome. Ask away.”

  “Do you know if the China Drifter is still in port?”

  Again, Chloe giggled. It was a grating, affected sound, underlaid with a singular sort of misery. “She’s right on the bay, Honey. I’ll hate to see her sail, too; there’s some big spenders on that crew.”

  “I imagine there are,” Griffin remarked evenly. “I have another question; do you know a man named Jonas Wilkes?”

  “Land sakes, Sweetness, everybody on the Road knows Jonas Wilkes.”

  “Have you seen him tonight?”

  “He’s in the Shanghai, buying whiskey for any swabbie who’ll sit down and talk.”

  “Thanks,” Griffin said, as he turned and walked away, toward the Shanghai Card Palace and Saloon.

  Chloe’s voice rang, petulant, through the night. “Hey, Sweetness, no need to rush away—”

  “Another time,” Griffin called back, over his shoulder.

  Five minutes later, he found Jonas just where Chloe said he would—trying to get what looked like a whole damned navy roaring drunk.

  At the sight of Griffin, he shot to his feet. There was a gruesome strain in his face, in the set of his shoulders, in the nervous gestures of his hands. “It’s about time you got here!” he shouted.

  Griffin sighed. “Where can we talk?”

  Jonas dropped a sizable bill on the saloon table and left his newfound friends to drink on in prosperity. “Outside. Shit, you look bad.”

  Griffin grinned venomously. “Yeah. I got run over by a train.”

  With elaborate good manners, Jonas held open one swinging door to let Griffin pass. “Damn shame, Griff. You’re normally so good-looking—or at least presentable.”

  Griffin pushed open the other door, and held it stubbornly. “After you, Jonas. I’m superstitious.”

  “Superstitious?” frowned Jonas.

  Griffin nodded. “It’s usually bad luck to turn my back on you.”

  Jonas’s laugh was raw and guttural. “So it is,” he said. “So it is.” And then he walked out of the saloon into the starry warmth of the night, his back to his cousin.

  Chapter Twenty

  They walked along the waterfront, neither one speaking until the Skid Road was far behind them.

  “He’s got her, Griffin,” Jonas said finally, in a voice that held an eerie, plaintive note. “Frazier has Rachel.”

  Griffin was amazed at the calmness he felt. Even the ceaseless pain in his rib cage and groin was easing, as though he had somehow shifted it to another level of his mind, to deal with later.

  “Did you go to the police?”

  Jonas was leaning against a wooden railing now, glaring out at the ghostly shadows of ships anchored in the bay. “Of course I did,” he snapped.

  “And?”

  “And they boarded the Drifter. Rachel wasn’t there.”

  Griffin muttered a curse. “Jonas, are you sure Frazier has her? How do you know she didn’t leave on her own?”

  There was a stiff silence before Jonas explained. When he did, it was all Griffin could do to keep from closing his hands around his throat and squeezing the life out of him. “I came to town to find Rachel. She was staying at a boardinghouse on Cedar, and who do you think she introduces me to? Her fellow tenant—Captain Frazier. I knew what he had in mind right away, and when I offered him a price, he took it. Like an idiot, I kept Rachel in my hotel room all night—I should have known what would happen.”

  Griffin’s mouth was dry, and the muscles in his hands ached with restraint. “What happened?”

  “I didn’t make love to her, if that’s what you’re asking. But in the morning, while I was paying Frazier, his men broke into my room and took her. God, Griffin, if only I’d taken her back to Providence—”

  “Well, you didn’t.”

  In a spasm of furious despair, Jonas clenched his fists and slammed them down, hard, on the wooden railing separating the walkway from the bay. “Griffin—that isn’t all.”

  Griffin sighed, bracing himself. “Oh, good.”

  “S-She’s sick. I guess it was the rain—or everything she’s been through—I don’t know. I found a doctor and he said she had pleurisy. Like I said, when I got back, she was gone.”

  “You left her alone?” The words were only whispered.

  Jonas shook his head. “Of course not. I found a woman to stay with her while I was gone. To say the least, Frazier’s thugs didn’t have any trouble at all getting past her. Griffin, what are we going to do?”

  Griffin took a few moments to sort his tangled thoughts and feelings. It all distilled down to one grim fact: if they didn’t find Rachel before Frazier made his move, whatever it was, her life wouldn’t be worth living even if she did survive the pleurisy.

  “Get some men together, Jonas, and make sure nobody gets on or off the Drifter without your knowing it. If none of your—people—are around, I think I can persuade the crew of the Merrimaker to help.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to find out where Frazier hides his women. If she’s not on board the Drifter, she’s got to be somewhere nearby. My guess is that he’ll make a run for the Pacific just before dawn.”

  Grimly, Jonas nodded. “He’s smart, Griffin. He must know we’ll be watching the Drifter.”

  “He does.”

  “Do you think he might be planning to use another ship? He could sail while we were standing around watching the Drifter.”

  Griffin shook his head. “He’s a rogue, Jonas. I can’t think of another captain who would be
willing to drink with him, let alone cooperate in a scheme like this one. All the same, keep an eye out for anything that even looks out of line.”

  The two men parted then, Jonas remaining where he was, within sight of the spectral China Drifter, Griffin moving rapidly back toward the Skid Road.

  It took more than an hour to find the captain of the Merrimaker, but Griffin managed it.

  Standing outside a seedy crib behind the Widowmaker Saloon, he rasped, “Lindsay—get out here!”

  There was a shuffling of hastily gathered clothing. “Who the hell is that?” demanded Malachi Lindsay, captain of the clipper ship, Merrimaker.

  “It’s Griffin. Will you get your ass out here?”

  The rickety board door of the crib creaked open, and a muscular, middle-aged man appeared in the gap. “Shit,” he said, in gruff greeting. “It is you! What the hell do you think you’re doing, dragging a man from his pleasures when he’s been at sea for two months?”

  In the darkness behind Malachi’s half-naked form, a woman whined something obscene.

  “I need your help,” Griffin said flatly.

  Malachi cursed roundly as he wrenched on his shirt. “Damn your hide, Little Fletch, this here is the best gal in the place. Whatever it is, it had better be good.”

  Griffin himself was surprised by the blunt honesty of his answer. “Frazier’s got the woman I love,” he said, striking a match on the weathered board of the crib’s outside wall and lighting another cheroot.

  In the glow of the flame, Malachi’s face showed every minute of the long, hard life he’d led. “Why, that seagoing skunk, I thought the sheriff of San Mateo County put him out of business two years ago when he tried to sell that San Francisco banker’s daughter to a Pinkerton man!”

  Griffin drew deeply on the cheroot. “You didn’t see the Drifter riding at anchor? Your eyes are going, Malachi.”

  The jibe made the old seaman bristle and sputter. “I see you’ve still got the same smart-ass mouth you’ve always had! Old Mike should’ve tanned your hide more often and broke you of that.”

  “Did you see the ship or not?” snapped Griffin.

  “Hell, yes, I seen the ship!” Malachi roared. “I just figured she had a new captain—high time she did. What do you say we find Frazier and slide his features around like the furniture in an old maid’s front parlor?”

  Griffin sighed. “Just come on, will you? I haven’t got all night!”

  Over the shrill and somewhat colorful objections of the prostitute he’d engaged, Malachi Lindsay righted his clothes; wrenched his ancient, billed cap onto his head; and followed Griffin out of the dirt alleyway and onto the Skid Road.

  Barely twenty minutes later, the scattered crewmen of the Merrimaker were converging on the wharf, half-drunk and full ready to tangle with the mates from the China Drifter.

  Malachi was warming to the project. “What do you say we just board the Drifter and wait?”

  Jonas obviously liked the idea, but Griffin was already scanning the dark hillsides of Seattle. “I’m going to make sure he isn’t planning to take her overland, to Tacoma or somewhere. Malachi, you know Frazier. Where did he hide his ‘cargo’ when he worked San Francisco?”

  Malachi puzzled for a moment, rubbing his stubbly beard with one huge, muscular hand. “Probably in Chinatown.”

  “Good,” said Griffin, turning to walk away. “Let’s hope the bastard is consistent.”

  • • •

  Douglas Frazier was feeling uneasy, and he was beginning to wonder if one temperamental young woman, however enticing, was worth the risks he was taking.

  The carriage shuddered and creaked as it moved along the rutted dirt roads into the Chinese quarter. Frazier longed for the rolling shift of a deck beneath his feet.

  Jaw tight with lingering annoyance, he remembered the night he’d found Rachel wandering along the Skid Road, completely unattended. It worried him—proper young ladies avoided such places.

  Douglas closed his eyes and tilted his head back, wondering. Was she really a virgin, or had Wilkes been telling the truth? If she wasn’t untouched, Ramirez would know within minutes of being alone with her. And he wouldn’t pay the agreed price until he was sure the bargain was to his liking.

  Douglas sighed. Chang Su could be prevailed upon to examine Rachel, to determine the true state of affairs.

  The carriage rattled to a stop, and Douglas bounded out, grateful for the bracing coolness of the night air. But the doubts followed him, howling at his heels like dogs.

  Rachel had spent the night in Jonas Wilkes’s bed. To the delight of the men he’d sent to fetch her, she’d been completely naked.

  Douglas Frazier cursed. Maybe he should have taken Wilkes’s bank draft and honored the bargain. Maybe he would have been ahead. After all, the violet-eyed nymph was of questionable innocence, and she was sick, too. She might not even survive the journey.

  He tapped briskly at the door of a board hut, annoyed. The stench of spoiled fish and offal stung his nostrils; he wondered how these yellow-skinned devils could bear living the way they did. They were so damned passive—

  There was a whistling sound, and then an explosion of pain in the back of Frazier’s skull. He cursed as his knees buckled beneath him, groaned when the side of his head struck a wooden step.

  • • •

  Chang Wo dragged the captain away from the step and into the shadows; he was a heavy burden, and the task took precious minutes. When it had been completed, he knelt and bound the captain’s wrists behind him.

  There was still the carriage driver. He hadn’t heard anything, but he would become suspicious if the captain didn’t reappear when expected. Chang weighed these facts in his mind as he groped for Frazier’s handkerchief, wadded it, and pressed it between the captain’s teeth and far back into his throat.

  The man was like a great, red lion. When he awakened, his bonds would hold him only briefly, for his rage would give him much strength.

  Chang crept back into the hut where Su waited, frightened and distraught. “You have killed?” she whispered, raising her lowered eyes to the face of her brother. “You have killed the sea lion?”

  Change shook his head, impatient with her fear, yet all too conscious of its basis in reality. “Missy is ready?”

  “She be big sick. Not walk.”

  Chang had gone too far now to turn back. He had struck down Frazier, who might already be stirring in the darkness. “We carry,” he said.

  They supported the inert girl between them and crept slowly out through the one door and into the night, taking care to keep to the shadows as they passed the captain’s carriage.

  • • •

  Driving a dishonorably acquired horse and buggy, Griffin went uphill toward the Chinese community. Comprised of tumbledown shacks and poverty, it was not a place that inspired civic pride.

  They had been so welcome once, when there were railroads to be built, these quiet, yellow-skinned people. They were lauded for their ability to hang by a rope over the side of a trestle for fourteen hours at a stretch, working industriously and without complaint; and for their placid ability to lay charges of dynamite in precarious pits where other men refused to go.

  All this for a bowl of rice and a minuscule wage.

  Griffin remembered the bitter uprisings against the Chinese in the middle of the decade. Once the tracks had been laid, there weren’t so many jobs. Competition became fierce, and the yellow man’s willingness to work for next to nothing was no longer venerated—it was despised.

  Griffin spat. Such was the grateful nature of mankind. You’ve served your purpose now. Go home.

  Something inside him tensed suddenly as he rounded a corner and came into another street. In the moonlight, he could see that there was a carriage up ahead, and a man was bellowing in rage—a white man, judging by the cadence of his words and the timbre of his voice.

  Instinctively Griffin drew the buggy to a stop, hoping that its approach had gone unnoti
ced in the fuss.

  Frazier. The howling maniac was Frazier himself. Griffin held his breath.

  “There weren’t no wagon, I’m tellin’ you!” whined the dark figure in the carriage box. “Those Chinks must have sneaked past me on foot!”

  Frazier was reeling in his anger and his panic. “And I’m telling you that you’re a liar, Hudson! How much did Wilkes pay you?”

  “Cap’n, I swear there weren’t nobody by here!”

  Frazier’s big frame seemed charged somehow; he lumbered toward the carriage, flung himself up into the box, and hurled the trembling driver to the ground. Hudson crawled ignobly into the sanction of the thick darkness of a copse of fir trees.

  The moonlight was so bright. If Frazier turned in Griffin’s direction, he would surely see him, surely realize that the opposition had caught up to him. But the giant was intent on his own purposes.

  Towering like a mountain in the box of the carriage, Frazier bent, took up the reins, and stood straight again. Griffin watched with a sort of hateful admiration as he brought the panicked team under control and turned the phaeton around in a broad, graceful sweep.

  Everything inside Griffin screamed for Frazier’s blood, but he sat still in the buggy seat, waiting. After the longest minute of his life, he brought the reins down with a light slap and followed the carriage at a discreet distance.

  It was immediately apparent that Frazier was on his way back to the waterfront—probably planning to cut his losses and run. Whatever his plans were, it was highly unlikely that Rachel was a part of them.

  Griffin felt mingled relief and frustration. Where was Rachel now? Was she still alive?

  A cloud moved across the moon, blotting it out, and then passed by to reveal it again.

  A small, queued form leaped in front of the buggy, waving frantic arms. “Dr. Fletcher? Dr. Fletcher!”

  Griffin reined in the stolen horse and peered into the darkness. A shaft of silvery moonlight illuminated the Chinaman’s anxious features. “Chang?”

  He nodded vigorously. “You take Missy!” he pleaded breathlessly, disappearing into the shadows and then reappearing again, with Rachel propped between himself and a slight, terrified girl.