The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  “Just dandy.” He pushed back his frock coat so his guns were in full view.

  Narrowing his eyes, Jackson noticed a smear of light-colored dirt on the shoulder of St. Croix’s coat. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t notice such a thing, but he was on full alert. And the sheriff, almost comically fussy about his fine clothing, was not the sort to wear a soiled coat.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” St. Croix said.

  Jackson was about to dive for safety when someone behind him said, “Sorry I’m late, sir.”

  Jackson turned to see the Gillespie boy, shoeshine kit in hand, heading toward the sheriff. St. Croix took a seat on the bench outside his office, propping his tall boot on the rail for the boy to polish. He noticed the spot of dirt on his shoulder and brushed at it, but the brushing only caused the dirt to smear the crisp black fabric of his frock coat. “Damn it, boy, hand me a clean brush,” he ordered, no longer paying the least bit of attention to Jackson.

  Pushing away from the rail, Jackson started walking again. He was furious about his own nervousness. Hell, he’d almost given himself away thinking the sheriff was onto him. Still, his sense for danger stayed on alert. St. Croix was like a snake in hibernation—looked harmless, but he had the potential to be deadly.

  Jackson didn’t like the man, didn’t trust him to keep the peace and protect the citizens hereabouts. If this place, these people, were Jackson’s to protect, he’d do a lot better job than St. Croix. But it wasn’t Jackson’s. He was pressing his luck hanging around here.

  He stepped inside the cash store and greeted the shopkeeper with a nod.

  “Still looking at that painted globe, eh?” the shopkeeper said.

  “Today I’m not looking. Wrap it up for me.” Jackson paid him and didn’t even wince at the cost. It wasn’t every day a man bought something that came all the way from Venice, Italy.

  It wasn’t every day a man said goodbye to the woman he loved.

  The shopkeeper whistled as he put the heavy globe into a large, deep bandbox.

  Armed with a parting gift, Jackson crossed the yard to Leah’s house. He hoped he’d be able to say goodbye simply and briefly with a minimum of fuss. Even though all that he wanted in the world was to beg her to come away with him. Like a knight who had captured the Grail, he would lay his gift at her feet.

  From the front drive of the boardinghouse, he saw her standing on the porch. She looked like a bride atop a fancy wedding cake, all clean and white and sweet with spun sugar.

  She gave him one of those little smiles that haunted his sleep—sort of tentative, as if she wasn’t used to doing it. In one hand, she held her leather doctor’s bag. In the other, a carpetbag.

  He frowned, sending her an unspoken question.

  “I’m glad it’s still early,” she said. “I didn’t want to get all tangled up saying goodbye to everyone.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’ve decided to come with you. Is today a good day to leave?” She waited, an expectant look on her face.

  He should have known she’d try something like this. Should have known she was too honest and too damned stubborn to stay where she belonged.

  “Leah, you’re not going anywhere.” The words came out of him, stark, simple, emotionless. He was pleased with himself. Hearing him, she’d never guess his heart was breaking.

  The timid smile disappeared altogether. “You want me to come. Don’t say you don’t.”

  “I’m not saying anything except that you can’t come.”

  She set down her valise with a thud. “We belong together. I’ve never felt this way before and neither have you, even though you won’t admit it.”

  His every instinct screamed at him to agree with her, but he wouldn’t let himself. “I know my own mind, Leah. Somehow you’ve made me into someone I’m not. Maybe because of your father, hell, I don’t know, but don’t expect me to make up for his mistakes with you.” Her face drained of color and he knew he’d touched a nerve. “Yeah, it hurts, doesn’t it? That’s all I can give you, sugar, and believe me, you don’t want it.”

  “But—”

  “There’s nothing there.” He touched his fist to his chest. “Swear to God, Leah, if there was, I’d give it to you, but...”

  She took a step back, then another. A bitter smile twisted her mouth. “I thought you were a better cardplayer than that, Jackson. You should have known that eventually I’d call your bluff.”

  I wasn’t bluffing, he wanted to tell her. But he couldn’t, of course. He couldn’t even kiss her goodbye. All he could do was set down the box, look up at her, and say, “Honey, I’d give you the world if I could. But you and I both know I can’t.”

  He turned away, shoved his hands into his pockets, and returned to the harbor. He wouldn’t allow himself to look back.

  * * *

  Leah didn’t know where she found the strength to walk back into the house, to close the door quietly behind her. She imagined the grief would come later. Could a person brace herself for heartbreak as if battening the hatches for a storm? Or would she be naked, vulnerable, letting the sorrow batter her, offering no defense?

  As she crossed the vestibule, she spied Aunt Leafy in the parlor, cleaning her birdcage. The morning light streamed in on the elderly lady, suffusing the sweetly lined face with a summer glow.

  Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Leah set down her bags and went into the parlor. “Morning, Aunt Leafy.”

  The old lady gave her a distracted smile. “Ah, there you are, dear. Could you help with this for a moment?” She slid out the bottom tray and discarded the contents in the bin. “Paper,” she muttered under her breath. “I need fresh paper to line it....”

  Leah knew Aunt Leafy had trouble concentrating on more than one thing at a time. She waited while the woman shuffled through a stack of old papers.

  “Ah! This will do just perfectly.” The little canary flitted around restlessly. “There now, Carlos, see what you’ve done. You’ve spilled your seed tray.” Without turning, she held out the old yellowed paper to Leah. “Hold this a moment, dear, while I pick up the spilled seeds.”

  Nearly burning up with the need to be alone with her heartache, Leah glanced down at the old newsprint. She expected it to be an edition of the Pioneer. Instead, it was a Wanted poster.

  And the face staring up at her from the drawing was crudely rendered, yet starkly familiar.

  “No,” she whispered, the word feeling harsh in her throat. “Oh, God...”

  “I’ll only be a moment longer, dear. No need to swear at me.”

  Leah clutched Aunt Leafy’s arm. “Where did you get this?”

  Aunt Leafy looked distractedly over her shoulder. “That? Oh, the pretty young lady gave it to me.”

  “You mean Carrie. Mrs. Underhill.”

  “Yes, I believe that was her name. She was having one of her bad spells, babbling away. Sweet little thing, but a world of troubles lived inside her, I could tell.” She eyed the bags. “Are you going away, dear?”

  “I...I changed my mind.”

  With a jerky motion, Leah turned and left the room, the paper still clutched in her nerveless hands. Words leaped out at her: armed and dangerous, fugitive from justice, murderer.

  Murderer.

  She had always known he was an outlaw. She shouldn’t be surprised. But as she stared down at the poster, the world seemed to crack in two.

  Jackson Underhill, the man who had just broken her heart, was really Jack Tower, a ruthless killer wanted for a vicious murder.

  * * *

  Leah sat down on the edge of her bed. In one hand, she held the bandbox. In the other, the Wanted poster. She felt drained. Cold to the bone. Somehow she found the strength to open the box to see what Jackson had given her.

 
Honey, I’d give you the world if I could.

  He had given her the world. It was the globe she’d admired in the shop window. So exquisite she’d never dared to ask the price. So extravagant she’d never dreamed of possessing it.

  She held it up to the light, amazed by its weight. Whimsical dragons and blowing clouds populated the seven seas. Scrolling letters and colorful flags labeled the nations of the world. She’d never owned anything so beautiful or so whimsical.

  She drew back her hand to hurl the globe at the window, compelled to destroy it, the only gift Jackson had ever given her. She wanted no evidence that she had ever known him, ever loved him.

  But when sunlight through the window touched the surface, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Standing there, gazing at the colorful globe, she finally figured out what Jackson meant in giving it to her.

  She stood in her painstakingly neat bedroom on the rag rug where Jackson had once stood holding a gun on her and let the knowledge wash over her like rain.

  All her life, she had believed herself flawed because of her father. From the time she was old enough to speak, he’d convinced her that she lacked some fundamental quality that made her worthy. She had spent years striving to please him, trying to make up for her deficiency. And all along, there had been nothing wrong with her.

  It had been her father who couldn’t love.

  When Jackson had rejected her this morning, she had been quick to assume she wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough to please him. But the Wanted poster proved that she wasn’t the problem after all.

  Fierce with determination, she dried the tears from her face, stuffed the poster into her skirt pocket, and rushed downstairs. She went to the waterfront, hurrying, getting a stitch in her side, praying he hadn’t left yet.

  * * *

  He stood in the cockpit, leaning over the back and swearing.

  “Jackson.”

  Stone-faced, he straightened up. “Leah, there’s no point in arguing—”

  “I didn’t come to argue.” Equally stone-faced, she took out the folded paper, opened it, and showed it to him.

  He didn’t move a muscle, though his face paled a shade. “Where did you get that?”

  “Apparently, Carrie gave it to Aunt Leafy some time ago. You know how absentminded Aunt Leafy is.” Leah bit her lip. “She was about to line her birdcage with it.”

  He laughed harshly. “So now you know everything.”

  “Now I have more questions than ever.”

  “Well, I don’t have any answers, Doc, so if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Jackson,” she said in a steady voice, “there’s something wrong here.”

  “What’s wrong is the damned tiller broke again. I swear, you’d think someone sabotaged the thing.”

  “I mean about this...situation in Texas.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong is a man’s lying dead, and they’re holding me to blame.”

  “That’s what I mean. I don’t think you did it.”

  He raked his hand through his hair and scowled. “A man was killed in cold blood. He was the mayor of that town. I’m to blame. That’s all there is to it.”

  “That’s not all there is. I refuse to believe you did this.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re a healer. I’m accused of murder. Can you live with that? Can you lie next to that every night for the rest of your life?” He glanced away. Her provocative, menacing outlaw, a man who thought nothing of terrorizing a woman in the middle of the night, looked as bleak and helpless as an orphan child. He turned to her, cupped her cheek in his rough hand. “You make a man dream of things he’s got no call to be dreaming, Leah Mundy. I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes, wondering how she had ever survived without his touch. Then she stepped away as stubbornness rose within her. “You’re innocent. I know it. I have no idea why you would simply stand back and take the blame for a horrible thing you didn’t do. It’s not right.” She paced up and down the deck, blessing the faulty tiller that kept his boat from sailing. “You have to go back to Texas.”

  “What?”

  “You have to go back and turn yourself in.”

  “For a smart person, Leah, you sometimes have some pretty stupid ideas.” He shrugged. “I guess, last time I checked, stupidity was legal.”

  “We live in a nation built upon justice for all. You must face your accusers and prove your innocence.”

  He snorted. “Oh, there’s an idea.”

  “I mean it. If you don’t vindicate yourself, you’ll never be free.” She grasped his hand, pressed it to her chest. “You’ll have to keep running all your life. And you know what you’ll find out?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “That it’s never far enough. You can never run far enough. You can never outrun injustice.”

  He shoved her hand away. “And you would know.”

  “I would.” She swallowed hard, preparing to tell him something she’d never told anyone in her life. “Why do you think we left Philadelphia, my father and I? We had a lovely home, friends, many comforts. But we had to keep moving on. To Cincinnati and Kansas City and Omaha and Deadwood, and I can’t even remember all the places in between. And do you know why, Jackson?” She felt almost giddy, finally shedding herself of the past. “Because we were running. My father was running, and he dragged me along. He cheated people. He was a bad doctor—dishonest, unskilled. And I was too much the dutiful daughter to bring him up on charges. Even when he caused people to die.” Awash with shame, she looked back at the boardinghouse on the hill. “He would have left this place, too, and gone God-knows-where, but a bullet found him first.”

  “I’m not your father, Leah—”

  “You’re not guilty as he was. But you have more in common with him than you know.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you—”

  “You both broke my heart,” she said raggedly. For the past several weeks, her emotions had been boiling below the surface. It wasn’t like her to be this sensitive and weepy, but she couldn’t help herself.

  He stared at her, took off his carpenter’s belt, and crossed the deck. “I have to go. It’s way past time. I know you have no admiration for this, but it’s the way I handle trouble in my life.”

  “You can change,” she said. “You have to.”

  “People don’t change.” He repositioned the tiller and shot a bolt into place with a thunk. “That poster proves I can’t ever stay in one spot. Even up here in the middle of nowhere, I’m too close to the law. You found out about the poster this morning. Who’ll find out tomorrow? And the day after that? St. Croix? The marshal in Port Townsend?”

  “That’s why you must fight to prove your innocence.”

  “You’re dreaming, Doc. Putting my fate in the hands of the justice system won’t work for someone like me. If I went back to Rising Star, they’d hang me high and let the crows pick me to the bone.”

  “But if you’re inno—”

  “Honey, I haven’t been innocent since the day I was born. Life does that to some people. Some, like you, stay innocent their whole lives no matter what happens. But it’s not that way for me.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Damn, woman, you tempt me. I lie awake at night thinking about taking my chances, staying with you. Sometimes it’s a risk worth taking. Leah, I want it so bad—”

  She stopped him with the most wanton kiss she could summon, pushing her mouth against his as if to brand herself upon him. She could feel his brief surprised inhalation. And then suddenly, he gathered her up, and she knew her boldness tempted him beyond caution.

  They half ran, half tumbled down into the stateroom, and she saw that he’d been readying the boat to leave. She thought wildly that if only she could be exciting eno
ugh, loving enough, he would fall under her spell and do her bidding. She knew it was insane, but she let herself hope anyway. She was more reckless than she’d ever been, disrobing and then pulling his clothes off.

  “Leah?” He held her away from him, looking bewildered and wildly excited.

  “Hush.” She shoved him back against the bunk, and when he sank beneath her, she unleashed everything inside her, every tender feeling, every shred of love. She had no idea there was so much bottled up inside her. She loved him lavishly, without shame, pressing her mouth to his and sweeping her tongue inside while her hands coasted over muscular flesh. She kissed him everywhere, neck and chest and shoulders, hands and fingers, down his stomach and each leg and then up again until the madness possessed her completely and she took him in her mouth. Vaguely, she heard his helpless, amazed groan, but she showed no mercy. She wanted this, wanted to give him this, wanted to take it from him. Somehow she thought this wanton abandon would bind them in a way they hadn’t been bound before. She loved him into a frenzy, and finally he lost patience and made a growling sound in his throat. Strong hands clamped around her upper arms, and she felt herself swiftly turned and parted; then he plunged into her, moving with a fast, aggressive stroke that instantly launched her into oblivion. He joined her there, calling her name and then sinking down, covering her possessively, the rasp of his breathing hot in her ear.

  “Damn, Leah,” he said.

  She smiled into the lee of his shoulder. It was hardly a declaration of love, but she felt his need for her, heard it in his rumbling voice. Wickedly, she nipped at his earlobe. “Damn, Jackson.”

  He moved off her, drawing the covers up over them both. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Would you believe medical school?”

  “No.” He propped himself on one elbow and gazed down at her in the lowering light. “You’re determined to make this difficult for me.”

  “Make what difficult?”

  “Leaving.”

  She shut her eyes. She would not cry. She swore she would not cry. She’d done too much of that already and it served nothing. “Oh, Jackson. You need to find a way to stop, to say ‘enough’ and get on with your life instead of running all the time. Yes, I want you to stay because of me. But I want you to stay because of you, too.”