The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  He covered her hand with his. “I aim to be the first one to find out, soon as we land.”

  “I’m right with you,” Armstrong assured him.

  “So am I,” Dr. Penny said.

  “That’s too dangerous. You stay away from the fire.”

  “I’m a doctor. They might need me,” she said stubbornly.

  Though he hardly knew her, he knew better than to argue. The moments seemed like hours as the steamer docked, even though the crew worked with frantic haste to tie up and lower the gangway.

  True to his word, Joel went first, hurrying to the fire. Adam and Dr. Penny followed, racing up the hill. She matched him stride for stride, and they reached the house at the same time.

  Adam made a strangled sound in his throat. “Carrie!” He sank to one knee beside a slim young woman with yellow hair.

  By God, it was her, Joel realized. Carrie. Caroline Willis.

  “Is she all right?” Dr. Penny asked, bending to look at her.

  “My wife is going to be fine,” Adam said. “Aren’t you, honey?”

  “This is your wife?” Penny asked.

  Carrie looked up unblinkingly. “I used to want to marry Jackson, but we only pretended. I wish he would burn in hell, he and that bossy Leah Mundy.” She released a thin, eerie laugh. “My wish is coming true.”

  “They’re inside?” Joel demanded.

  “Trapped.” Her strange, fey laughter echoed in his ears as he ran toward the house.

  He almost made it into the inferno. But the moment he put his foot on the bottom step to the front porch, something inside collapsed in a deadly rush of heat and a shower of sparks.

  “Get back, mister!” A man wearing a badge grabbed his arm. “No way to get in now. It’s too late.”

  “You’re just going to let him burn?” Joel demanded.

  “He was scum anyway. Too bad about the doc, though.” The sheriff flinched as smoke belched from the front door.

  God, thought Joel. To come all this way— The round window above the door exploded outward. Joel jumped back and shielded his eyes. The crowd on the lawn raised a chorus of amazed babbling. Through the window, clinging to a burning rope, came Jackson Underhill clutching a woman in a nightgown.

  They landed heavily on the lawn in a heap of smoldering clothes. People rushed forward with blankets and buckets of water. “It’s Dr. Leah!” a boy in the crowd yelled. “He saved her.”

  “Let me through!” a voice called. “Let me through. I’m a doctor!” Dr. Penny had her skirts hiked up over her plump knees as she ran toward them. Her unmistakable air of authority parted the crowd, and within seconds she had the two victims laid out, examining them for mortal wounds.

  The man groaned and stirred, restless until his hand touched the woman’s cheek. Then his eyes opened to slits. The woman coughed and inhaled with a harsh gasp.

  “Amazing,” Penny said, gingerly checking them. “They’re both exhausted and bruised. He’s probably broken some ribs. Minor burns and asphyxiation from the smoke. But I don’t see a mortal injury on either of them.”

  Joel swallowed hard, stunned to feel his eyes smarting. His hand went automatically to his gun even though he knew he didn’t need it. His other hand went to his badge and credentials, kept as always inside his leather waistcoat.

  “I’m Joel Santana,” he said, his gaze fixed on the man’s sooty, sweating face, “U.S. Marshal. You’re under arrest.”

  * * *

  The hard landing on the lawn had knocked the wind out of Jackson, but his hearing was fine. The old desperado instincts reared up, but he knew he wouldn’t fight his way out of this one. Wouldn’t even try.

  A babble of voices started after the marshal made his statement. Leah choked violently, then clung to him, her eyes looking huge in her soot-stained face. “Jackson,” she whispered so only he could hear, “run for your life! I can create a diversion, and then you can run—”

  “Honey, save your breath.” Jackson’s voice was quiet with weary resignation. He felt something worse than physical pain when he had to let go of her, had to stand on his own two feet.

  “I guess you’d be the marshal who tailed me all over kingdom come,” he said.

  “That’d be me. I tracked you all the way from Texas.” Santana looked battle worn and tired the way Jackson felt. He studied the serious-eyed, craggy-faced man who had followed him across the country only to have him-almost literally—drop into his lap. Santana had a reputation; Jackson wondered if he knew that.

  “Now what happens?” he asked.

  “We have a lot of talking to do.” Santana clearly took no joy in the prospect. “It’s my job to do this by the book. But if you dare to try one blamed thing, I’ll forget what’s in that book and hang your sorry ass.”

  Jackson heard Leah begin to weep softly. He caught the eye of the red-haired woman who had declared herself a doctor. “See to the lady,” he said. “You take damned good care of her, you hear?”

  * * *

  “Leah Mundy, you get right back in that bed,” Dr. Penelope Lake scolded.

  Clutching the edge of the door frame, Leah heard a pounding noise and thought it was her throbbing head. “Where am I?”

  “In the coachman’s quarters over the carriage house.”

  “How long have I been asleep?” She pushed a mass of tangled hair out of her face and stumbled to the window. Amber light streamed through the wavy glass. “Is that sunrise or sunset?”

  “Sunrise. You slept through the day—and then through the night.”

  “What is that pounding noise?”

  “They’re repairing your house and surgery.”

  “They?”

  “The whole town. From your letters I got the impression folks weren’t too neighborly toward you. But everyone’s pitching in.” Penny led Leah back to the bed. “Sit down, Leah. Honestly, I never dreamed my very first patient would be you.”

  The moments after the fire flowed through Leah’s mind in a blur. Both of her hands stole to her midsection.

  “I think the baby’s all right,” Dr. Lake said. “I’ve been watching that more closely than anything.”

  A lump formed in Leah’s throat. “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Of course not. It’s your baby. Your business.”

  Leah managed a dry-lipped smile. “I like you already.”

  “I would say the feeling is mutual, but you’re a terrible patient. Wouldn’t calm down for a minute until you finally collapsed.”

  “They arrested Jackson. Took him away.” Leah plucked at the unfamiliar robe she wore. “Are there some clothes here? I’ve got to go to him.”

  “Of course you must.” Leah liked the tall red-haired woman even more. Most people would have argued with her; Penny Lake seemed to understand what was important as she rifled through a carpetbag. “My things will be far too big on you—”

  “They’ll do.” Leah put on a shift and a plain cotton gown. She winced at the ache in her muscles. Pain seared her burned hands and arms, but she didn’t hesitate. Penny bit her lip and said nothing.

  In the lower part of the coach house, Leah found a pair of paddock boots and put them on. Hearing Penny behind her, she turned.

  “I look a mess.”

  “You had a bad night.”

  She almost smiled at the wry understatement. “I never even asked how your journey was.”

  “Long. And hot. I’ll tell you all about it after we straighten out the business with Jackson and Joel.”

  “You call him Joel?”

  Penny’s plump cheeks flushed. “We’ve been...traveling companions since Seattle.”

  Leah studied her partner, whom she knew only through their long correspondence. Penny had the look of a woman in the first flush of new love. Leah
knew it, recognized it, because not so very long ago she had looked at herself in the mirror and seen that very same starry-eyed expression.

  “Joel Santana is the man who placed Jackson under arrest,” Leah said. “I cannot possibly approve of any association with such a person.”

  “He is doing his duty.”

  “He is taking an innocent man to be hanged!”

  Together they walked outside and started down the road toward town. “If Jackson Underhill is innocent, then Joel won’t allow him to be hanged,” Penny stated.

  Leah set her jaw and plunged on, past the houses of people who had scorned her and only embraced her when Jackson had forced Leah to see her own worth. God, what would she do without him? What in heaven’s name would she do?

  The sheriff’s office was a hive of activity, men rushing back and forth between the telegraph office and the jail, a reporter from the city nagging everyone with questions.

  Leah pushed past Deputy MacPhail, Joel Santana and Marshal Corliss from Port Townsend. “Dr. Mundy!” MacPhail said loudly.

  Instant silence blanketed the area. She stopped in the middle of the office, craning her neck to peer toward the jail cell. She could see the silhouette of a man sitting on a bench behind bars.

  With a strangled cry, she stumbled toward him.

  He looked up in weary resignation.

  Jackson’s name died on her lips. “Sheriff St. Croix,” she said dully. He merely grunted and hung his head. Santana took Leah by the arm. She wrenched away. “Where’s Jackson?”

  The marshal lifted his hat and raked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “He took off.”

  Thank God he was free, she thought. But pain shot through her gratitude. The inevitable had finally happened. He was gone from her life.

  “His boat is missing, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what they tell me.” He rubbed his jaw, which was swollen and livid with a bruise.

  Grim satisfaction tasted bitter in her mouth. “You didn’t really think you could hold him, did you?”

  “Dr. Mundy, I did my best, but he wouldn’t listen. He—”

  “Nothing can hold Jackson Underhill,” she said cuttingly as she turned to leave. “Not a blessed thing, and anyone who dares to think otherwise is a fool.”

  * * *

  “I will not break bread with that man,” Leah said to Penny later that evening.

  “I think you should,” Penny insisted. “I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say.”

  “What can Mr. Santana possibly say to me to convince me that running Jackson off was the right thing to do?”

  “He didn’t run Jackson off. Jackson punched him unconscious and escaped.”

  “Because Joel would have locked him up, for God’s sake,” Leah said in exasperation.

  Penny sat down on the bed beside Leah. “You used to write to me about how frustrating it was sometimes, being a doctor in a town full of people who wouldn’t give you a chance to prove yourself.” Penny’s broad hand patted her knee. “Give Joel a chance, Leah. If you don’t like what he has to say, then you can condemn him.”

  Leah let out a sigh and placed her hand over Penny’s. “I started out liking you. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  “You’re the only one who can do that. Now, you’re sure you don’t want to rest?”

  “I’m starved.”

  “Then the pregnancy is fine.”

  Leah swallowed past the thickness in her throat. This was Jackson’s baby. She would take such good care of it.

  She and Penny Lake walked across the lawn. Long boards had been set up on sawhorses and a huge feast had been laid out for the workers. Her heart filled as she greeted them all, the people who had come to help rebuild her house: Mrs. Cranney, gossiping and cutting pies and looking plump and lovely without her corset; James Gillespie the butcher, whose children were busy serving ham and smoked salmon to everyone; Hume Amity, up on a ladder while his wife looked after their baby. Even Bob Rapsilver greeted her properly, calling her Dr. Mundy loudly enough for everyone to hear. Countless others took the time to say hello and promise her house would be back in order in no time.

  Jackson had given her this, she realized, her throat tight once again. He’d come to town a stranger, a drifter, and had shown her how to be a part of the heart and soul of the community, not just an outsider looking in.

  Joel Santana was just putting the finishing touches on a new rolling chair for Bowie when Leah found him. She felt torn. It was hard to hate a man who was busy helping a little boy.

  Santana saw her coming and sent Bowie off to show his new chair to the boarders. “Dr. Mundy,” he said, seating her at a small table rescued from the parlor.

  Leah took a sip of lemonade. “Penelope says you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am. First to say how sorry I am about Jackson Underhill or Jack Tower—he went by both names. I tried to explain to him that he didn’t have to worry—”

  “Didn’t have to worry? You were hauling him off to jail.”

  “Well, yes and no. But he coldcocked me before I could explain.”

  Leah sat mute and numb, absorbing the shock of what she’d just heard. She swallowed hard, then found her voice. “I knew he couldn’t have killed anyone.”

  “You were right.”

  “But if you knew he was innocent, why did you hunt him down?”

  “Because that’s my job.”

  “Why did you arrest him?”

  “So he’d quit running. Some marshals I could name prefer to bring their fugitives in dead. I didn’t want that to happen in this case because I knew I was chasing an innocent man. Christ, I thought I’d never catch up with him. And then once I did, I made the mistake of thinking he’d thank me for finding him before it was too late.”

  Leah refilled her lemonade glass from the pitcher. Her hand shook, and some of the liquid spilled. “Too late for what?”

  “He didn’t know Caroline Willis. He didn’t understand what she’d done, what she was capable of.”

  “So why didn’t you arrest her?” Leah said, exasperated.

  “Because I had to follow the letter of the law. But there’ll be a warrant for her soon enough. She had a reputation. Killed four men that I know of, maybe more I don’t. That night in Rising Star, it was Carrie who did the shooting.”

  Leah leaned back against her chair. “She all but admitted it to me before she set the fire.”

  “That’s one of her favorite things, setting fires.”

  “But Jackson has no faith in the justice system. He thinks he’ll be condemned and convicted regardless of what really happened.”

  “That might have been true, except for a couple of things. The weapon used was a single-shot pocket pistol. Not the sort of gun you’d expect from a man like Jackson.”

  “It was Carrie’s gun,” Leah said. “I figured that out myself.”

  “And another thing.” Joel took a paper from his vest pocket and unfolded it. “A sworn statement from a witness named Hale Devlin. He saw Carrie do the shooting. Saw it all.”

  “So why was Jackson held responsible?”

  “The witness didn’t come forward. He and Carrie go back a ways, and he didn’t want to draw any suspicion on himself. So it took some convincing to persuade him that it was the right thing to do.”

  Leah studied Joel’s big, callused hands and figured she knew how he’d done his convincing. “But why arrest Jackson? Why shame him in front of everyone the way you did?”

  “Because I knew he’d get spooked and take off before I could explain.” He shaded his eyes northward. “I just wasn’t quick enough. Why would he believe a lawman anyway? What with the sheriff and all...”

  “What about St. Croix?”

  Joel blew out
a weary breath. “When we got to the jail, we found him loading up his gasoline carriage with more money than he could explain having. Turns out he’s a gunrunner. In the scuffle to stop him, Jackson nailed me and took off.”

  “And what will become of Carrie?”

  “She’ll be taken to Texas. Her husband, Mr. Armstrong, will go with her.”

  Leah’s head throbbed with all the new information. She felt satisfaction but no joy in the fact that Jackson had been vindicated, that he was free of the law and of Carrie and even of the past, because there was a hole in her heart. Jackson didn’t know any of this. If he was as good at running as he had been in the past, he might never find out.

  Joel selected a slice of ham and chewed thoughtfully. “How many islands are out there?”

  She looked out across the water where the islands rose, dozens of them, tree spiked and growing smaller with the curve of the earth. “No one knows. Hundreds, really. Most of them don’t even have names.”

  “Would you excuse me, Dr. Mundy?” He paused, watching her expectantly.

  She hesitated, studied the rock-faced older man until she saw it—the spark of complete, decent honesty in his eyes.

  “You’re excused, Mr. Santana.”

  Nineteen

  30 October 1894

  “Don’t scream or I’ll shoot,” warned a low-pitched masculine voice.

  Leah Mundy jerked awake and found herself looking down the barrel of a gun.

  Sheer panic jolted her to full alert.

  “I’m not going to scream,” she said, dry-mouthed. In her line of work she had learned to control fear. Lightning flickered, glancing off the dull blue finish of a Colt barrel. “Please don’t hurt me.” Her voice broke, but didn’t waver. After the extraordinary events of the summer, nothing could frighten her.

  Thunder pulsed in the distance, echoing the thud of her heart. She squinted into the gloom. Beyond the gun, she couldn’t make out anything but a dark shape.

  Yet her heart knew the truth before her mind was fully awake. “Jackson.”

  “Yeah, honey. It’s me.”

  She almost laughed. Or wept. Or screamed. She pushed the gun away. “That’s not funny.”