Banner O'Brien

by Linda Lael Miller

“He’s hurtin’,” said Sean.

  “But not dead?”

  “Not yet.” Sean paused, folded his brawny arms. His hands still ached to finish his work, to close around Corbin’s throat and squeeze. “Tell me something, Royce. What do you have against Corbin?”

  Royce’s features looked chiseled in the crimson glow of his cheroot’s tip. “Adam? Not much, really. Our association is marked by a sort of scathing indifference. It’s Jeff I’d like to see stretched out on a slab.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say that we’re—competitors, Captain Corbin and I. He’ll come after you, you know. And that’s what I want—one chance at him.”

  Sean considered the weeks he’d spent crewing on the Sea Mistress, against his will, and the rage moved in him again. He hadn’t been mistreated on that ship, that was true, but he’d been shanghaied all the same, and that was something a man couldn’t overlook.

  “It won’t be easy, handlin’ that one,” he observed.

  “I’ll have help, Malloy. You just draw Jeff Corbin into my reach, and I’ll settle your debt and my own, too.”

  “That leaves the doctor and me wife.”

  Temple’s shoulders stiffened in the darkness. “Wait a minute. I’d like nothing better than to drop Jeff’s head into the sound, tied up in a sack, and I don’t really give a damn what you do to Adam. But the woman—”

  “The woman is mine, Royce. Mine to deal with.”

  “Hold it, Malloy. Bedding Banner is one thing, but killing her is another. And she isn’t your wife—not anymore.”

  “She is.”

  “No, Malloy. I’ve seen the papers—the daughter of a—er—friend of mine showed them to me. Banner divorced you in New York, several years ago. Her marriage to Corbin is legal.”

  Divorce? Banner had dared to divorce him, defying not only her rightful husband but God Himself? “I don’t believe it!”

  “It’s the truth, Malloy. Corbin’s within the law when he beds the woman, and bed her he does.”

  Sean considered killing Temple Royce where he stood; given the man’s size and build, it would be easy. But he needed a way out of Port Hastings, a place to hide until it was time to strike again. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “You’ve heard the talk, Malloy, just as I have. One of my girls tells me that Adam all but took her in one of the hallways on the Silver Shadow, Christmas Eve. It was the night they were married, in fact.”

  A headache grasped the nape of Sean’s neck like the claw of some giant beast. “They ain’t married—not in the eyes of God.”

  “God doesn’t seem to mind much, Malloy. And Adam Corbin has the look of a man well-serviced. I suppose she—”

  “Why are you doing this? Why the hell are you telling me these things when you know—”

  In the fetid gloom, Sean saw the flash of Royce’s even teeth. “I want you to be angry, Malloy. Mad enough to kill.”

  “I’m that, all right. And it’s you I’ll be killin’, Royce, if you don’t stop talking the way you are.”

  “You won’t do that. I’m all that stands between you and a long stay in the territorial prison, and we both know it. You killed that redheaded whore, Malloy, and then you assaulted a leading citizen. If you weren’t leaving here tonight, on the Jonathan Lee, the Corbins would have your ass on a platter before sunrise. That family is close, Malloy, and they look after their own.”

  Everything Royce had said was true, and Sean offered no argument. “You want something more than the captain’s head in a bag, don’t you, Royce?”

  The nod of the dandy’s head was almost imperceptible, but his words had all the impact of a sledge hammer. “I want a turn at Banner,” he said calmly.

  Sean closed his eyes, reminded himself that he needed this man, for the time being. “She’s me wife,” he breathed.

  “She’s Corbin’s wife. Let me have her for one night—just one night—and then, as long as you don’t kill her, she’s yours.”

  “Aye? And how will you know if I kill her or not?”

  “I’ll know, Malloy. And if anything happens to that woman, I’ll have you hunted down and dealt with in a manner that isn’t pleasant to think about, let alone endure.”

  At that moment, Temple Royce’s real plans were as clear to Sean as if they’d been written across the night sky in stars. He meant to have his vengeance on Captain Corbin, dump Sean himself over the side of the Jonathan Lee, and with the fancy man dead, have Banner for his own. Not just for one night, but until he tired of her.

  Sean chuckled to himself. Royce’s idea, as it happened, wasn’t so very different from his own. There were variations, of course, but not many.

  * * *

  “First,” Jeff went on, as Banner sipped her potent coffee, “I’ll get some of my crew to stand guard here, look after both you and Adam. Jenny and I will go to the Klallum camp and put a stop to this steam hut business, whatever it is.”

  Banner looked at her unconscious husband. He would have to be moved from the examining table to one of the ward beds. “The Klallum won’t listen to you,” she said to Jeff, at reflective length.

  “Maybe not, Banner,” Jeff retorted. “But you’re not going near the place. If Malloy didn’t get you, the smallpox would.”

  “I am immune to smallpox,” reasoned Adam’s wife. “I’ve treated it before.”

  Jeff looked quietly explosive, and his eyes swept over the battered, carefully mended form of his sleeping brother. “I can’t believe you would even consider leaving Adam now,” he marveled angrily. “Damn Malloy and everything else—don’t you care about your own husband?”

  “You know I do!” cried Banner, shooting off the stool, upsetting her coffee and spilling it down the front of her wrapper. “Jeff, Adam would want me to go!”

  “Bull,” replied Jeff.

  They moved Adam into the ward in stiff silence, the three of them, by means of the same wooden door he’d been carried inside on. Until his ribs had a chance to mend, in fact, he would remain upon it.

  “Take care of my brother,” Jeff ordered in a terse whisper once they’d covered Adam and put the special railings on the sides of his bed into place. “Lock the house,” he added, on his way to the outer office, “and don’t let anyone in except me.”

  “Jeff!”

  He was gone.

  Banner fell into a chair, her eyes fixed on Adam. How broken and vulnerable he looked, lying there. Suppose Sean did get in somehow? Suppose—

  “It’s true, Banner,” whispered Jenny, breaking into her thoughts. “You can’t leave Adam now. Not if you love him.”

  “Do you think I want to?” hissed Banner, trembling in her shock and her weariness and her outrage. “Good God, Jenny, do you seriously think I want to turn my back on him even for a moment, let alone go ‘traipsing off,’ as Jeff put it, to some Indian camp?”

  Jenny lowered her eyes.

  Banner regretted speaking so sharply, and she gentled her tone. “I want you to tend Adam for me, Jenny—please. He should sleep through the night, but if he doesn’t—”

  “What? You’re—you’re leaving now?”

  Banner stood, bent to tenderly kiss her husband’s forehead. “Yes, as soon as I’m dressed. If I wait, I’m sure Jeff will stop me.”

  “Banner!”

  But she was already tearing herself away from a man she couldn’t bear to leave, rushing through the walkway to the main house. When Banner returned, fifteen minutes later, she was fully dressed and carrying a rifle from a cabinet upstairs.

  “Sean Malloy is a big ape of a man,” she told a wide-eyed Jenny in flat, matter-of-fact tones. “He has light, curly hair and hazel eyes. If he comes into this ward, shoot him.”

  “Sh-Shoot—” stammered Jenny, trembling again.

  “Dead,” confirmed Banner. And then she hurried out into the night, where the April wind lashed at her skirts and the fear of Sean Malloy tore at her heart.

  Appropriating a horse was easy—the
stable hands had evidently gone to bed, for the dark, shadowy barn was empty. Banner didn’t bother with a saddle; she needed only a bridle and the gentle, intrepid beast that usually drew Adam’s buggy.

  Light was gathering, gray and weak, in the eastern skies, when she rode over the ridge and down into the heart of the Klallum camp, the handle of her medical bag looped over one wrist.

  There was smallpox here, all right—Banner could smell it niggling under the other odors of fish oil and dung and wood smoke. The squaws went about their early morning work, making a wailing sound as they moved, barely sparing a glance for Banner in their loud grief.

  Near the infamous steam hut, a hot fire was burning, and large stones were being heated in the embers, to be carried inside.

  She slid from the horse’s damp, heaving back and raced toward the scene, stumbling on loose rocks and upraised roots as she went. “Stop!”

  An old woman looked up from the blaze, keening mournfully, as the others did. Then, with placid movements that made a ludicrous contrast to her cries, the squaw took up a red hot stone, using bits of tanned hide to shield her hands, and started toward the hut.

  Banner searched her mind for a viable word of Chinook, but all she could remember was kloochman— “woman” or “wife.”

  “This is bad medicine!”

  The squat woman waddled to the doorway of the hut, pushed aside the buckskin covering, stooped to go in. There was a loud sizzling sound as the stone was dropped into ice cold water.

  Clearly, the Klallum weren’t going to listen to Banner the way they did to Adam; except for the old man striding toward her, the tribe seemed bound to ignore her completely.

  “You must stop this now!” she enjoined the emissary, who wore white man’s trousers and a buckskin shirt. “This is very bad medicine—”

  “Doctor’s kloochman?” asked the elderly man, somewhat archly. “Where Big Doctor?”

  Banner sighed, drew a deep breath, brushed a tendril of dark red hair back from her forehead. “Big Doctor is very sick.”

  The man spoke loudly, to be heard over the cacophonious grief of his tribe. “We have sickness here. Death. Big Doctor come, make better.”

  “Big Doctor cannot come,” Banner argued patiently. “I am here to help you, but you must make that woman stop carrying those stones into that hut!”

  The Indian man spread his hands. “Do this to kill bad tamanous.”

  Tamanous. Now there was a word Banner recognized. “The disease your people are suffering from does not come from an evil spirit—it is a virulent bacteria.” A virulent bacteria.

  Banner could almost hear Adam laughing at her choice of words. Are you addressing an Indian, O’Brien? he would say, Or an assemblage of medical students?

  She was comforted, just by imagining that Adam was beside her now, sure and strong and full of gentle irony. “There is no bad tamanous,” she began again. “Not at the moment, anyway. I am Big Doctor’s kloochman. I make better.”

  The Indian looked skeptical, even testy. “Fire-hair go home to own lodge. That make better.”

  Banner flushed. “I will not go home until you stop what you are doing! I—”

  The woman came out of the steam hut then, carrying a limp, half-dressed child in her arms. She marched toward the frigid waters of the sound, and Banner stumbled after her, grappled for the tiny, sore-covered form she held.

  “Stop—give me that child!”

  “Kill bad tamanous,” muttered the squaw, tears rolling down her wide red face.

  “No! Don’t you see—it’s the child you’ll kill—”

  Banner’s words were broken off by the crack of a rifle shot, as was the wailing of the tribeswomen. The squaw stood stock-still, and the only sounds in the next few moments were those of restive horses and the tide on the nearby shore.

  Slowly, Banner turned to face what she knew she must—the cold, quiet rage of her brother-in-law.

  He looked like a giant, Jeff did, sitting atop his great, dark horse, and his breath came in ominous plumes from his nostrils, giving him a satanic appearance. The leather of his saddle creaked as he bent to replace his rifle in its scabbard and then dismount.

  With him were two other men, probably crewmen from the Sea Mistress, but they remained on their horses, watching the peaceful Klallum with wary eyes.

  The tribe seemed to know Jeff, to be in awe of him as they were of Adam. The man Banner had been arguing with was the first to rush toward the imperious, rock-jawed visitor, babbling in petulant Chinook, but the others followed, adding their own unintelligible complaints to the uproar.

  Jeff answered them in the jargon, his fair head towering above their dark ones.

  At some order from him, two very young braves caught Banner’s arms at the elbows and began propelling her toward one of the long wooden lodges she had been so curious about during her first visit here, with Adam.

  She was too stunned and frightened to protest in earnest, but she did fling one look back over her shoulder and see that Jeff was striding along behind, through the waves of annoyed and chattering Indians, his face set and hard.

  Banner was flung past a mangy bearskin that served as a door and into the close, smelly darkness of the structure. There was a firepit in the center of the dirt-floored lodge, but the embers glowing there gave off very little light.

  Outside, there was another swell of angry voices, Jeff’s among them, and then the bearskin moved and she knew that he had come in.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” her brother-in-law growled, keeping his distance.

  “I had to come,” said Banner, with tremulous dignity, straightening her cloak and squaring her shoulders. “How is Adam?”

  “What do you care?”

  “I care a great deal, Jeff Corbin! Adam is my husband, and I love him very much!”

  “I can see that,” mocked the captain, in a sardonic drawl. “No doubt he’ll be thrilled to learn that you’ve left him to walk into the middle of a smallpox epidemic! Banner, the Klallum have been a peaceful tribe for generations, but you have them ready to take scalps and wear warpaint—”

  “You make it sound as though I insulted them!”

  Jeff drew nearer, to stand at the edge of the firepit. The crimson light moved on the planes of his face, giving him a forbidding, pagan look. “They are insulted, Banner. The chief, in fact, wants you properly beaten.”

  Alarm leaped in Banner’s throat, and she retreated a step. “Beaten?” she echoed.

  “I wouldn’t do that, of course—though I can’t speak for my brother. Adam may be moved to violence when he hears about this.”

  Banner was still reeling from his earlier statement. “They sent you in here to beat me?”

  “Or otherwise subdue you. You see, Banner, things are quite different here. Brothers share their women. Therefore, I have as much right to deal with you, in their view, as Adam would.”

  “You—you wouldn’t . . .?”

  “Of course not. But we’re going to have to make them think I did. Which will it be, Banner? Do we convince them that I’m beating you, or—”

  Banner blushed and hugged herself, snapping, “Well, we’re certainly not going to pretend that we’re making love!”

  A grin lifted one corner of Jeff’s heretofore taut mouth. “Darn,” he said. “I knew you’d choose the beating.”

  “This is ridiculous! I came to try to avert disaster, not stand in this wretched, smelly lodge and playact! Don’t you understand that those—those people out there are parboiling children in that hut of theirs? And do you know what they’ll do after that, captain? They’ll plunge the poor little things into the water!”

  Jeff shook his head slowly, smugly. “No, they won’t. I told them that Adam had threatened to conjure up a very big, very bad tamanous if they proceeded, and they believed me.”

  Banner sighed. She had tried to reason with the Klallum, to no avail. But one word from Adam—even secondhand—and the purpose was accomplis
hed!

  Jeff seemed to be reading her mind. “Does it matter what made them stop, Banner?”

  Slowly, she shook her head. “There are still patients to see to—”

  “I’m afraid not, Banner. While the Klallum might let you help if Adam were here, they’re not about to permit it now. The medicine man is raising hell.”

  It seemed that Banner was to be thwarted at every turn. A tear slid down her cheek and her knees quivered, as though they might give out. “Well, then,” she sighed, with resignation, “let’s go home. I want to see Adam.”

  Incredibly, Jeff was removing his belt. He chuckled as Banner’s eyes widened, then indicated a shadowy heap of something near the lodge’s rear wall.

  “Timing is all, Mrs. Corbin,” he said. “Every time I strike those hides with the belt, you holler.”

  Color ached in Banner’s face. “Oh, Jeff, I couldn’t—”

  “It’s that or the real thing, sweetness. In another minute, the chief and half his braves will be in here, demanding that their honor be satisfied.”

  “Honor? What honor is there in beating a woman?”

  Jeff shrugged. “None. The right or wrong of it is irrelevant, Banner—and things could get very nasty if we force them into insisting.”

  “Y-You mean they’d—they’d want to watch?”

  “Or participate.”

  Banner closed her eyes. “Let’s get it over with, then,” she said.

  Jeff shouted something, probably a severe reprimand, in Chinook, and the belt struck the hides with a hard thud.

  On cue, Banner shrieked.

  “That was pretty good,” remarked Jeff, in a whisper, “But you’re supposed to be suffering, not finding a mouse in the potato bin!”

  Banner recalled what Sean had done to Adam, and this time, when she cried out, there was much pain in the sound.

  Twice more, Jeff assaulted the hides, twice more Banner whooped in theatrical agony.

  Finally, her brother-in-law caught her elbow in his hand and started toward the door of the lodge. “Keep your head down,” he ordered in a brisk undertone. “And try to look submissive and meek.”

  “Eat a root,” Banner whispered back. “There is a limit, you overgrown—”