The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

“What on earth are you doing?” Leah demanded.

  “Shut up,” he said through his teeth, his gaze scanning the horizon.

  “But I—”

  “Just shut the hell up.”

  She went completely quiet and motionless. His chin brushed her silky hair, and he inhaled the scent of her. The misty dark quality of early dawn made it difficult to see. Then he spied a shadow moving along the rocky, cliff-topped shoreline. The dark shape wavered, then slipped up a hill and disappeared into the distance.

  “Jackson?” Leah whispered. “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I didn’t like it.” He felt trapped, hunted. It was unlikely that someone was skulking around after him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being hounded. He took Leah’s arm and helped her back to the seat beside him. “Is there much smuggling going on here?”

  “I’ve heard there is.” A sarcastic edge crept into her voice. “But remember, I have no life outside of medicine, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Don’t call me honey.”

  “Excuse the hell out of me for mistaking you for something sweet.”

  She glared obstinately ahead. He missed her easy, satisfied smile, the camaraderie they had shared after the night of travail. But her anger was his fault.

  “I had no call to say such things to you,” he said. Even if they’re true.

  “Then why did you?”

  “Because I want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I care.”

  She fell quiet, settling back against the seat with an incredulous expression on her face. Jackson kicked himself for both mistakes. He should know better than to care about a woman. He should sure as hell know better than to admit it.

  He hastened to change the subject, hoping she’d forget what he’d just said. “What sort of things could be smuggled around here? Whiskey and firearms?”

  “Are you thinking of trying it?”

  “Doc...”

  She scowled at him, then blew out a breath and cooperated. “Wool, too, or so I hear. Since we’re so close to Canada, these waters are quite busy with boats trying to avoid the Revenue Service vessels. It’s a fact of life.”

  He pointed at the distant shore. “What’s over there, around that cove to the south?”

  “Why, nothing. Unsettled land. It’s not good for farming—too many cliffs are hazardous for the animals. Sheriff St. Croix lost a good horse off one last year. The tide pools are deep, too. Some of the caves fill up at high tide. It’s a good place to pick mussels, I’m told.”

  Jackson wished like hell he knew what had spooked him. Now that the sky was brightening, he couldn’t even tell where he’d spied the flowing shadows. He wondered why it mattered. He ought to be on his way up through Deception Pass, past the San Juan Islands into Canada, maybe to Klondike country and beyond.

  Leah Mundy and this town ought to be just another memory to him. Instead, he’d spent the night helping an ill-tempered lady doctor. And he’d enjoyed every minute of it.

  As they were putting up the horse and buggy, Leah leaned her elbows on the stall door and said, “I haven’t thanked you, Mr. Underhill.”

  “Jackson,” he said automatically.

  She cleared her throat. “Thank you for assisting me last night. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  He grinned. “Knowing you, Doc, you’d have managed.”

  She tilted her head to one side. The only clue to her weariness was an untidy wisp of hair that escaped her bun. “Why do you say that?”

  He hung the horse’s bridle on a hook. “I guess it’s just your way. Figuring things out. There are some who can barely tie their shoes in the morning without help.” He shut his mouth and grabbed a curry brush. He’d said too much.

  Leah went to the other side of the horse and watched him over its broad back. “You mean your wi—Carrie.”

  “I suppose I do.”

  She clasped her hands. “You’ve hardly spoken of her since the accident. I mean, what happened—”

  “I’m all right,” he said brusquely. “I’m...all right.” Yet as he spoke, his vigor with the brush became violent, and the horse shied, shoving Leah against the wall. Jackson swore, yanking the horse out of the way as he reached for her. The disgruntled horse snapped, teeth biting the air very close to his ear. “Goddamn it,” he said, hauling Leah out of the stall and turning to the horse. “You damned nag—”

  She took his arm and gave it a tug, then closed the stall door. “Sit down!” With a none-too-gentle push, she directed him backward onto a milk crate. She put her face very close to his. “You’re not all right.”

  “I say I am.”

  “Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.”

  “I’m damned glad you know everything.”

  “I don’t know everything. But Carrie’s death hurt you. I know that. You’d be less than human if it didn’t.”

  “What are you going to do about it? Give me chloroform? Lance me somewhere and let the pus drain out?”

  “I’d like to lance that temper of yours.” She sat back on her heels and glared at him. “I just thought perhaps I could help.”

  “There’s nothing to help. She took off with a rich man and they died in a boating accident. Yeah, it’s rotten. But it can’t be changed. And it sure as hell can’t be helped by my standing around and wringing my hands.”

  Her brown eyes searched his face so intently that he wanted to look away, but pride wouldn’t let him. “You accepted what happened so easily. It just seems so...”

  “Heartless? Cruel? I’ve been called worse.”

  She gave him a bitter smile. “So have I. But how can you hide your pain? She was your wife. She was going to have your baby.”

  “It wasn’t m—” he blurted, then caught himself.

  Too late. She’d heard. Her face softened, long dark lashes sweeping down as she blinked in surprise. “You weren’t the father of her baby?”

  “That’s none of your goddamned business. And it’s sure as hell not the reason I’m not beating my chest and tearing out my hair. If the baby hadn’t—if it had been born, I’d have raised it as my own. I swear I would have.”

  “Then you did love her. With more generosity of heart than most men would under the circumstances.”

  He’d lain awake for hours wondering what he’d felt for Carrie. Was it love, or some stubborn sense of chivalry? Had she been his ruling passion or his cross to bear? Leah seemed to know better than he did. Why was that? Why was it that she helped him bear the unbearable?

  He measured the risk, wondering what it would cost him to tell this soft-eyed, compassionate woman something about himself. He had grown so used to holding back the truth that it was difficult to find the words. But oddly, once he started speaking, the story flowed like a river. “When we were kids, Carrie and I lived—if you could call it living—in a poor school in Chicago. There was no chance of me being adopted—I’d been there too long and I’d grown plenty mean. But Carrie was a pretty thing, and when she started getting prettier—if you know what I mean—she was adopted.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Leah, were you born naive or is that something they taught you in doctor school?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Carrie was adopted by a pimp—someone who procures young girls for bordellos.”

  The color dropped from her face with amazing speed. “Oh, dear God.”

  “Dear God is right. I got away from the orphanage as quick as I could, but I wasn’t quick enough. People on that side of the law tend to move around, change their identities, leave no trail. Took me years to find her again.” He looked out through the door of
the coach house. The rising sun formed a burning half circle over the waters of Penn Cove.

  “So that’s what you did with your life? Searched for Carrie?”

  “As much as I was able. I had to make some sort of living,” he said. “Did plenty of cardplaying, a little roulette. Crewed on a yacht in Lake Michigan and went on a whaling ship.” He thought about his gun. “Odd jobs for a fellow not afraid to get his hands dirty. But I was always looking. I never stopped looking.”

  “And you found her.” Leah clasped her hands together. “How wonderful it must have been for you both.”

  “Wonderful” was not the word he thought of when he remembered their reunion. He recalled Carrie’s state—the laughing red mouth and unfocused eyes, her blithe refusal to remember St. I’s or acknowledge that she recognized him until she had looked across the dead body on the floor and said, “Help me, Jackson.”

  “I guess, all along, what I wanted was for her to be all right,” he told Leah. “To be well and happy, to have someone looking after her. But Carrie never really fitted in with a regular life. No matter where I took her, what I gave her, she couldn’t be happy for long. Couldn’t feel safe. She was like a burning candle—bright, but gone before you know it.” Feeling prickly, he got up and fetched a scoop of oats for the horse. “So, are you satisfied, Doc? Or do you want to cut me open and have a look at my heart? It’s probably black as the ace of spades.”

  She stood, too, and glowered at him. “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

  In truth, he did feel the pain, but it was like the pain of having a bullet removed. It hurt like a son of a bitch, yet he knew the healing could start now. That scared him. A lot. He’d given too much of himself to Leah Mundy. He had to get it back, or he’d be lost.

  “You bring out the best in me,” he said with even more sarcasm.

  “We’re both tired. We should get some rest.”

  “Ah, another wise prescription from the lady doctor.” He could feel his control slipping, could feel the anger building up inside him, looking for a way out. Leah Mundy gave him that way. Leah with her doe eyes and her vulnerable lips and her bright mind and soft heart. “I reckon you must’ve been mighty proud of yourself, getting Carrie well like you did.”

  “I understand now,” she retorted. “You think I’m responsible for Carrie’s leaving. That’s why you’re so angry. That’s why—”

  “Yeah, right. You know everything. Well, let me ask you this. If you’re so all-fired good at healing others, why can’t you heal yourself?”

  She gasped as if he’d struck her. The stricken look on her face enraged him. “I don’t need healing.”

  “So it’s normal to be a lonely old maid, delivering other women’s babies, poking your nose in everyone’s business and pretending you don’t hear when they talk behind your back?” He could see the hurt growing as he spoke, but his rage was too intense, burning out of control, and there stood Leah, a lightning rod for his anger. “You can heal others, but you can’t heal yourself. You can’t even figure out what’s wrong.”

  She went white as a sheet, her lips outlined by fury. “I imagine you can, Mr. Underhill.”

  “It’s obvious. You don’t know how to associate with people unless there’s something wrong with them.” He hammered away at her, knowing it was his only defense against his desire for her. “You stand outside the fence, looking in, telling other folks how to live their lives, but not taking your own damned advice.”

  “I do worthwhile work,” she said, an edge of desperation in her voice. “That’s all I need.”

  “Yeah, well, take that to your lonely bed each night and see if it can keep you warm.”

  He saw the moment she snapped. She absorbed his words, and they seemed to course over her like a bucket of ice water. She balled her hands into fists and shoved at his chest. “And I suppose you have found the perfect way to live. Drifting along without wondering about tomorrow. Running away from your problems. Tell me, Mr. Know-All, have you ever truly seen anything through?”

  Now it was as if the bucket had drenched him, for the truth of her words chilled him to the marrow. He never stayed. He never saw anything through. Even Carrie. He thought he’d done his duty in taking her away from Texas. But now, Leah was holding up a mirror, and he didn’t like what he saw—a man who never stayed anywhere long enough to call a place home. A man who had been running all his life and would probably never stop.

  Putting down roots, facing up to commitments—those notions were alien to him. He wanted them, sure. He wanted to swim with Bowie Dawson and learn the secrets of the sea from Davy Morgan. He wanted to watch another baby being born. He wanted to look at a place and say “This is home. I’m home for good.” But he’d never do that. He didn’t have the guts.

  Even last night, as he was putting the finishing touches on the rudder, he had already been planning to sign onto a merchant ship, leaving the Teatime behind as he’d left behind everything that was ever worth having. He’d missed the Sea Fox on account of Leah. Was he sorry? He had no idea.

  “I’m glad you’re so damned smart, Doc. I hope all those brains keep you company in your old age.” He turned on his boot heel and stalked out of the coach house.

  “I can do without your lectures,” she said, hurrying after him.

  “Then why are you following me?”

  The question flustered her. She slowed down, and he sped up, intent on getting back to the boat. Away from Leah Mundy of the soft eyes and the hard questions. Away from the truth she made him face. And most of all, away from the shameful hurt he’d dealt her.

  Eight

  For the next week, Jackson worked on his boat. It was the damnedest thing. He’d been all prepared to hightail it. Hell, on a clear day, he could walk to the west side of the island and see Canada. See freedom. All he had to do was get on a mail boat or a passenger steamer, and in a matter of hours, he’d be out of the country.

  But running away wasn’t that simple, he was finding out. The lure of the sea wasn’t so powerful anymore. Whether he liked it or not—and he didn’t much like it at all—Leah Mundy had thrown down a challenge. He surprised himself by taking it up.

  Her words taunted him as he tinkered and tied and stitched and varnished. Have you ever truly seen anything through?

  Her voice ran through his head like a melody he wanted to forget, but couldn’t. Damn her. Damn her to hell. Damn her for making him want to do something right for once in his life.

  The Teatime became his challenge. By God, he would fix this old mud bucket. He would sail away on this boat that belonged to him and him alone. He would do it. He would make it work, no matter how long it took.

  “Mr. Underhill?”

  He had climbed the mast; a creaking leather belt beneath his hips held him in place while he fitted a block and pulley through a high mast band. Looking down, he recognized Sophie Whitebear, her broad, olive-toned face turned up to him.

  “Up here,” he called. “Is something wrong? Does Lea— Does the doc need something?” As he spoke, he shinnied down the mast. “Is that horse doing all right?” After the near disaster on the way to the Amity farm, he had made a point of spending an hour every evening harness training the Morgan. He landed on the deck with a barefooted thump and felt the boat list with his weight. “Well?”

  Sophie’s wide brow pleated with worry. She toyed with the end of her braid. “I came to ask you something.”

  He flashed her a grin and a gentlemanly bow. “Ask away.”

  She seemed distracted, looking left and right, a furtiveness about her manner that made Jackson’s hackles rise. “The night you went with Dr. Mundy, I was away.”

  “She said you went to your people. There was some sort of trouble.”

  “A murder.”

  The word chilled his blood. A murder. The tak
ing of a life. He could see his feelings reflected in Sophie’s haunted eyes. The sudden shock of murder set the world on its side, yanked it around in a different direction, and no matter how hard a person tried, he could never get back to the way things were.

  “What happened?” he asked in a low voice.

  “On Camano Island, where many of my people live, there was a shooting. It was over something stupid. Firewater, of course. Ever since the Français trappers and the Bostons came here from the East, there has been this trouble with whiskey. It makes my people stupid and angry and careless. One man shot another over a matter no one can remember now.”

  “So you’ve told someone, right? Told the authorities?”

  “The Indian agent in Port Townsend has been told.”

  “So I guess he’s looking into it,” Jackson said.

  “When one Indian murders another, the white man doesn’t care.” Sophie spoke without malice, but with a matter-of-fact acceptance that tore at Jackson’s conscience. “One man is dead,” she said, “and his murderer escaped. We will never see him again. He will probably get drunk and fall to his death or drown. Perhaps he already has.”

  “So what is it you need to ask me?” Even as he spoke, he felt himself being drawn to the problem. He didn’t like it a bit, didn’t like knowing other people’s business, didn’t like caring about it.

  She looked around briefly, then held out her hand and dropped something into his. “There is the shot that killed him,” she said. “I want to know what it is.”

  Jackson stared at the spent rimfire, copper-headed bullet. The slug was slightly bent, and he wondered what vital part of a man’s body the bullet had entered, what resisting bone had put the dent in the metal. “It’s from a pistol,” he said.

  “But what kind of pistol?”

  He turned the bullet over in his hand. “Damn,” he said through his teeth. He stuffed the bullet into his pocket. “Who else have you shown this to?”

  “Captain Faye, the Indian agent. And Sheriff St. Croix. That’s how I know white men don’t care. He said it was out of his jurisdiction, and that I should stop bothering people about a dead Indian.”