The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  “No. Hale didn’t die.”

  Leah struggled to make sense of Carrie’s listless talk. “Who was it, then?”

  “Max Gatlin. The mayor.” She shuddered delicately.

  “And what happened with the mayor?”

  “Hale made me go with him.”

  “Go where?”

  Carrie leaned back against a bank of pillows. She waved her arms as if making a snow angel. “Upstairs,” she said with an excess of patience. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to figure out what happened that night.”

  Leah cautiously touched Carrie’s hand. “I know there are two sides to every story. Maybe no one ever listened to your side before.”

  Carrie blinked slowly, sleepily, but in the depths of her eyes, anger flickered. “He was an animal.”

  “Max Gatlin? He hurt you?”

  She shuddered, pulling her hand away from Leah. “He deserved what he got. Deserved to be shot like a dog.”

  “So that’s what happened?” Leah helped her lie down and tucked the covers beneath her chin. “You’re sure that’s what happened?”

  “I was there,” Carrie said. “I saw.”

  “What, Carrie? What did you see? Do you remember what the wounds looked like?”

  “Of course I do. Once right in the chest.” She started to shiver, and Leah knew she was losing her to the oblivion of the drug.

  “A bullet wound.”

  “Yes. Blood. All that blood. I’m tired. So tired...”

  “Just one.”

  “It’s only a single shot.” Carrie’s trembling increased and tears filled her eyes.

  Leah thought of what Zeke Pomfrit had told her earlier—Carrie had a gun. A little .41 pocket derringer. A single-shot weapon.

  “Did anyone else see?” she asked, whispering.

  Carrie crawled under the covers, shivering violently. “I need more medicine. Need more.”

  Leah put a hand on her shoulder. “Finish telling me, Carrie. You’ll feel better after that.”

  Carrie lay silent for a long time. Thinking she’d drifted off to sleep, Leah went to the door.

  “I’m glad the baby didn’t live,” she said, her voice muffled by the quilts and pillows.

  Leah stopped short at the door. “Oh, Carrie. You mean—”

  “Yes.” She hid lower beneath the covers. “He made me pregnant that night.”

  * * *

  “So you’ve come all the way from back East.” Joel Santana eyed his supper companion with amazement and growing conviction. It’s her, it’s her, it’s her... “That’s a long way for a lady to come alone.”

  “It’s a long way for anyone, Mr. Santana.” Dr. Penelope Lake helped herself to a second roll, slathered it with butter, and took a bite.

  He even liked her way of eating. None of this pretending she had a bird’s appetite. She’d had a long trip, she was hungry, and by God she was going to eat.

  “True enough,” he said, thinking of the trek across Texas, the desert, up through California. “True enough.” He cut into his steak. “But what’s even truer is you make me as nervous as a schoolboy at an ice-cream social, ma’am.”

  She laughed. “Do I?”

  “That’s a fact.” You scare the hell out of me.

  “I suppose I should be intimidated by you, as well,” she admitted cheerfully. “I’ve never known a man who carried such a variety of weapons on his person.”

  He tried to be discreet, but she had noticed everything—the pocket pistol in his vest, the gun belt, the knife strapped to his thigh, the dagger in his boot. “Truth is, I’d prefer to pound all this hardware into plowshares, so to speak. In fact, I intend to one day soon.”

  “How soon?”

  How soon will you marry me? He couldn’t believe the thought that whirred through his mind, yet once established, the notion wouldn’t leave him alone. In all his years of travel and struggle, he’d come across plenty of women, good and bad, and not a single one of them had ever inspired such an idea.

  “Soon’s I find a spot to farm.”

  “Oh. Is that why you’re going over to Whidbey Island?”

  He hesitated, hating the thought of his mission. Then he said, “I guess I’ll be looking around.”

  “It’s supposed to be lovely. My friend, Dr. Mundy, swears it’s heaven on earth.” She sampled her steak, nodded appreciatively. “I’m joining Dr. Mundy in Coupeville. We’ve been corresponding for some time.”

  Joel’s heart sank. That could only mean one thing. She was going to marry this Mundy fellow. “Congratulations,” he said dully. “I wish you both great joy.”

  “Thank you. Leah and I have been planning this partnership for over a year.”

  “Leah?”

  “Leah Mundy. She’s going to be my partner.” Penelope Lake spoke slowly, enunciating every word as if she was speaking to an idiot.

  Which of course she was, Joel conceded. “Another lady doctor,” he said.

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “Hell—er, heck no, ma’am.” He glanced ruefully down at his gun belt. “World needs more healers in it, if you ask me.”

  She smiled, her plain face lighting up with a brilliance that warmed his heart. “That’s terribly sweet, Mr. Santana. And you know, you won’t be the only fellow from Texas to stop in at Whidbey Island.” With a playful wink, she said, “I believe Dr. Mundy is being courted by a Texan.”

  Joel almost choked on a bit of potato. “From Texas, you say?”

  “Yes. Really, I shouldn’t gossip, but I’m hopeful that it’s happy news. In her last letter, she was avidly hoping Mr. Underhill would stay.”

  Underhill. Joel relaxed, but just for a moment. He was after Jack Tower. Not some Underhill fellow.

  Then he remembered something. It was one of the few clues the fleeing pair had left behind in Rising Star. A tin of Underhill Fancy Shred Tobacco.

  “Mr. Santana, are you all right?” Penelope Lake asked, leaning forward, her ample bosom brushing the edge of the table.

  He used his napkin like a gentleman, as his mama had taught him forty years before, dabbing at his lips and then setting the cloth aside. “No, ma’am,” he said grimly, “I don’t guess I am.”

  * * *

  Unable to sleep that night, Leah turned down the lamp and left her bedroom, tiptoeing to the surgery. This time of the night had always been hers alone, a stolen time when all the house was quiet and even the midnight breeze seemed to be holding its breath. It was time she could give to herself with nothing to interfere.

  She had plenty on her mind. The man she loved was in jail on false charges. Yet he refused to say anything in his own defense. She was carrying his child, and Carrie had emerged from the past more beautiful and more dangerous than ever before. Though Carrie’s conversation had been disjointed, Leah had gotten a glimpse of that night. Blood and fire and panic. They seemed to follow Carrie wherever she went.

  Leah sat down at her desk. Ordinarily, she would put her thoughts in order in a letter to Penelope Lake. But Penny had been traveling across the country, would be here soon.

  “Oh, Penny,” Leah said aloud into the night quiet, “I’ve revealed so much of myself to you.”

  She kept thinking of Carrie, of the eerie blankness in her eyes, the hollow laughter of a person with no soul. And she thought of Jackson all alone in a cold stone cell, neither admitting to his crime nor denying it.

  Once right in the chest...it’s only a single shot... Carrie’s words nagged at Leah. She heard them over and over in her head like a melody that wouldn’t go away.

  Once right in the chest.

  Leah’s fist clenched around the pen she was holding. She swept aside the notes she’d been making. With a trembling hand, she took out a fresh shee
t of paper imprinted at the top with Leah Mundy, M.D. Coupeville, Whidbey Island, Washington.

  It was Carrie. There could be no doubt. Carrie—not Jackson—had committed the murder. But Jackson had shouldered the blame, and true to form, he would not accuse her in order to save himself.

  He would not. But Leah had no such compunction. Trying to calm her racing pulse, she dipped her pen in ink and began to write. If St. Croix could be trusted, she would have gone straight to him, but he—like everyone else—seemed blinded by Carrie’s beauty, her childlike manner. In the morning, Leah would send the message by telegraph to Seattle and Olympia. She would— The sound of breaking glass startled her. She jumped, spilling ink like black blood across the desk. “Who’s there?” Clutching the neckline of her robe, she stood up quickly. She raised the flame of the gaslight, then opened the door. “Who is it?” she asked.

  The soft white light illuminated Carrie standing next to the medicine cabinet. Its door hung askew, pried open. A large bottle lay broken at her feet. The slender woman stood with a tiny white-handled derringer in one hand and a steel wagon iron in the other. Her golden hair tumbled in disarray down her back, and her pretty features were blurred by sleep.

  “There you are, Leah,” she said. “I went to your room to find you, but you weren’t there.”

  Leah kept her gaze trained on the pistol. My baby, she thought. Please don’t hurt my baby. “Are you...ill? Do you need something?”

  Carrie looked down at the shattered glass on the surgery floor. Her feet, bare and bleeding, stood amid a seeping dark pool of liquid. “It’s broken,” she said. “I didn’t mean to break it.”

  Judging by the smell, Leah realized the liquid was camphor. She smelled something else, too. Smoke. “What are you doing, Carrie?” she asked, her voice steely calm.

  Carrie tossed her head and took a step forward. Leah winced as glass cracked beneath Carrie’s bare foot, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Where do you keep the morphine?—There must be another medicine cabinet somewhere.”

  Leah realized that she’d known, from the moment she’d heard breaking glass, what was happening. Carrie’s craving consumed her. She would not rest until she got what she wanted.

  Warring instincts raged inside Leah. The doctor she had trained all her life to be wanted to reach out to the patient. But the woman Jackson had made of her felt a primal need to protect the baby growing inside her.

  The baby won out.

  “I’ll get it for you,” she said. Yes, that was the thing. Buy time, then summon help, figure out where the smoke was coming from, send the telegraph she knew could save Jackson. Lord, so much to do. So much depended on Leah’s ability to handle this disturbed woman.

  “You keep it locked in your desk?” Carrie brushed past Leah, shoving her aside with surprising strength. She walked to the desk, glancing down at the spilled ink, then frowning intently at the letter Leah had been writing.

  Leah took a step forward. “Carrie—”

  “You’re writing to the authorities about me.” The snub nose of the derringer came up. It was a Colt Number 3 with a sheathed trigger. A single shot. That, at least, was in Leah’s favor.

  Holding the gun rock steady, Carrie leaned over the desk, overturning the small candle stub. A pool of wax gathered on the letter, but the candle flame didn’t go out.

  Leah forced herself to hold firm. “You can’t let Jackson hang for something you did.”

  “He keeps me safe. He promised he’d always keep me safe.” Ignoring the widening pool of flame on the desk, Carrie broke the lock with a one-handed blow of the wagon iron and jerked open the cabinet, her eyes widening when she saw the hypodermic needles Leah used on rare occasions. “I’ll take the morphine through a needle,” she said.

  Leah felt sick, keeping her eye on the gun in Carrie’s hand. Bit by bit, Carrie was coming apart at the seams. It was like seeing a perfect tapestry unraveling before her eyes, and she was powerless to stop it. “Let me put out the flames. There are people asleep upstairs. If you were to cause a fire—”

  Carrie laughed, that hollow, hungry sound that was more malice than mirth. She grabbed something else from the cabinet. A clear bottle. “Is this it? Is this the morphine?” Still holding the gun, she uncorked it with her mouth.

  “That’s ether,” Leah said quickly. “Be careful, it’s flammable—”

  Even as she spoke, Carrie hurled the bottle away from her. The liquid spewed out, covering the desk, then meeting the flames from the candle and exploding upward.

  Seventeen

  Night was never darker than in a jail cell.

  Jackson lay wakeful, staring at nothing while thoughts tumbled over and over in his mind. The thin, straw-filled ticking covering the rough wooden bench was too short to contain his height. He had progressed beyond discomfort, though. If physical torment was all he had to face, he’d count his blessings.

  But he was alone in the dark, and the torment came from within, closing in like nightmare demons, circling him, choking him. Everything lay in ruins—his life, his plans, his hopes. It had seemed so simple all those years ago. He would find Carrie, rescue her from her dangerous way of life, take her somewhere safe, and reinvent himself as a man who could hold his head up, who could sail the seven seas with nothing but the wind at his back.

  Somehow everything had gotten mixed up, like metal poured into a crucible and then reemerging, made of the same substance yet immeasurably different. It was wrong, all wrong. Nothing had turned out as he’d planned. He’d discovered things about himself he’d never suspected—honor, ambition, commitment. And a love so great it made his chest hurt just thinking about it. Leah made him want things he’d never even considered before—a home, a family, respect.

  He could have none of it because the past wouldn’t leave him alone. He thought of Carrie, thankful beyond measure that she was still alive, but at the same time wincing as he recalled the wide-eyed, needy way she had stared at him. Maybe she had never healed because he hadn’t cared enough, hadn’t loved her the way she so desperately needed to be loved.

  Could you make yourself love someone?

  No. He knew that now. A man couldn’t make himself love someone any more than he could make himself not love someone.

  Leah. She had known the truth long ago—that all the love and commitment in the world couldn’t fix what was wrong with Carrie. Jackson realized now he’d grown up with a skewed, romanticized view of love. Lacking it all his life, he had idealized the notion as some sort of spiritual balm that healed all ills. Leah had taught him differently. She had taught him that love was difficult. It didn’t just rain down on a man, bathing him in a mist of perfect happiness. It brought pain as well as joy.

  But Christ, he wanted it, wanted her—wanted those quiet moments awakening with her beside him, looking up at the supper table and seeing her face, sitting across from her in the parlor and peering over the top of a book to find her smiling at him.

  These were not thoughts a man should be having when he was about to die. Jackson knew he’d be better off if he just resigned himself to his fate. His future had been sealed that rainy night in Rising Star, and nothing he could say or do would change the outcome. Only Leah had faith. Leah, Leah. But it wasn’t enough to have her believe in him. He had to believe in himself.

  He’d never been able to do that.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but the darkness made no difference. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, didn’t want to think or dream. He almost welcomed the loud thumping sound that brought him leaping to his feet.

  Caspar MacPhail, assigned to guard duty for the night, started bumping around outside. MacPhail seemed a little sheepish around Jackson, as if he should have known better than to consort with him. Every lawman harbored the conviction that he had a sixth sense for spotting criminals. Jackson was living proof
that he was mistaken. Living, hah. He was dead meat.

  “MacPhail!” Jackson called out. “What’s all the ruckus about?”

  “Never you mind, Jackson.” Another thump, as if he was stomping his foot down into his boot. Clearly, MacPhail had been sleeping on the job.

  Shouts and clanging came from the street. Jackson gripped the rough iron bars of the cell. “Give me a break, partner. What’s going on?”

  The door opened, and yellow light from a kerosene lamp crept across the floor in an elongated triangle. MacPhail was jamming a Stetson hat down on his head. “Fire,” he said.

  Jackson felt a jab of fear. “What’s burning?”

  “The Mundy boardinghouse.” MacPhail took his gun belt from a hook and held it, preparing to strap it on. The rawhide thigh strings hung down into the pool of light.

  Acting on an instinct that struck as swiftly as lightning, Jackson snaked his arm between the bars. He grabbed the rawhide laces and yanked the gun belt out of the deputy’s hands. The heavy leather clanged against the bars as he unholstered one of the pistols. The gun felt weighty and familiar in his hand as he aimed and cocked it.

  The deputy stood motionless with shock, but just for a moment. He inhaled deeply, no doubt gathering breath to shout for help.

  “Now, MacPhail,” Jackson cautioned, “I’m probably not going to shoot you. I sure as hell don’t want to. But I need you to let me out of here.”

  “Damn it, Jackson—”

  “Do it now. I’m in a hurry.”

  MacPhail flexed his hands as if readying himself for a fight. “If you shoot me, you’ll never get out of there,” he said.

  “If I shoot you, you’ll never do a lot of things, my friend. Like kiss your wife in the morning or see that baby she’s expecting—”

  MacPhail bolted.

  Jackson squeezed off a shot before the deputy reached the doorway.

  MacPhail froze, shoulders tucked up against his ears. Then he relaxed. “You missed.”

  “No, I didn’t, MacPhail.”