The Drifter Read online

  “Hold it steady,” she commanded. “What’s her name?”

  Another hesitation. Then, “Carrie,” came the gruff reply.

  Observation. It was the most basic tenet of healing. First, do no harm. Generations of doctors had violated that rule, poking and leeching and bleeding and cupping until a patient either died or got better out of sheer exasperation. Thank heaven it was more common practice these days for well-trained doctors to stand back, to observe and ask questions.

  And so she observed. The woman called Carrie appeared almost childlike in repose. The dainty bones of her face and hands pushed starkly against translucent flesh. Nordic blond hair formed a halo around her small face. Her dry lips were tucked together in a thin line. Frail, defenseless and startlingly beautiful, she slept without seeming even to breathe.

  And she looked as if she was on the verge of dying.

  Leah unbuckled her slicker, shrugged it off, and held it out behind her. When the stranger didn’t take it immediately, she gave the garment an impatient shake. It was plucked from her hand—grudgingly, she thought. She refused to let her attention stray from the patient.

  “Carrie?” she said. “My name is Dr. Mundy. I’ve come to help you.”

  No response.

  Leah pressed the back of her hand to Carrie’s cheek. Fever, but not enough of a temperature to raise a flush on the too-pale skin. She would have no need for the clinical thermometer.

  Gently, Leah lifted one eyelid. The iris glinted a lovely shade of blue, vivid as painted china. The pupil contracted properly when the lamplight struck it.

  “Carrie?” Leah said her name again while stroking a thin hand. “Can you hear me?”

  Again, no response. The skin felt dry, lacking resilience. A sign of dehydration.

  “When was she last awake?” Leah asked the man.

  “Not sure. Maybe this afternoon. She was out of her head, though. Didn’t make a lick of sense.” The shadows shifted as he leaned closer. “What is it? Will she be all right?” Tension thrummed in his voice.

  “I’ll do my best to figure out what’s wrong with her. When did she last have something to eat or drink?”

  “Gave her some tea with honey this morning. She heaved it up, wouldn’t take anything else. Except—” He broke off, drew in a breath.

  “Except what?”

  “She asked for her tonic. She needs her tonic.”

  Leah groped in her bag for the stethoscope. “What sort of tonic would that be?”

  “Some elixir in a bottle.”

  Elixir. Snake oil, most likely, or maybe a purgative like calomel, Leah guessed. It had been her father’s stock-in-trade for years. She herself was not that sort of doctor. She found her stethoscope. “I’ll want to analyze that tonic.”

  She adjusted the ear tips and looped the binaurals around her neck. Working quickly, she parted Carrie’s nightgown at the neckline. Again, she was struck by the freshly laundered cleanliness of the garment and bedclothes. It seemed incongruous for an outlaw’s lady. A gunman who did laundry?

  Pressing the flat of the diaphragm to Carrie’s chest, Leah held her breath and listened. The heart rate was elevated. The lungs sounded only slightly congested. Leah moved the chest piece here and there, listening intently to each quadrant. It was difficult to hear. Storm-driven waves slapped the ship’s hull, and a constant flow of water trickled somewhere below.

  She palpated the areas around the neck and armpits, seeking signs of infection. Then she moved her hands down the abdomen, stopping when she felt a small, telltale hardness.

  “Well?” the stranger said. “What’s wrong?”

  Leah removed the ear tips of the stethoscope, letting the instrument drape like a necklace. “When were you planning to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” He spread his arms, looking genuinely baffled. It was probably all an act, though, she thought.

  “That your wife is pregnant.”

  His jaw dropped. He seemed to deflate a little, sagging against the wall of the hull. “Pregnant.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Surely you knew.”

  “I...” He drew his hand down his face. “Nope. Didn’t know.”

  “I estimate that she’s a good three months along.”

  “Three months.”

  Ordinarily, Leah loved to be the bearer of this sort of news. She always got a vicarious thrill from the joy and wonder in a young husband’s eyes. Such moments made her own life seem less sterile and lonely—if only for a while.

  She stared at the stranger and saw no joy or wonder in him. His face had turned stony and grim. He certainly didn’t act like a man who had just learned he was going to be a father.

  “So that’s the only thing wrong with her,” he said at last.

  “It’s not ‘wrong’ for your wife to be pregnant.”

  For a moment, he looked as if he might contradict her. “I meant, so that’s the only thing ailing her.”

  “Hardly.”

  “What?” he asked harshly. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? To begin with, your boat is on the verge of sinking.” She glanced pointedly at the aft hatch. The rudder seemed to be hanging by a thread—or by a waterlogged rope, to be more precise. Worm-eaten wooden bolts lolled uselessly along the deck. Big gaps separated the caulking of the hull. The line holding the post in place strained with a whining sound.

  “This is no place for a patient in her condition. We’ve got to move her.” Leah coiled the stethoscope and tucked it back into her bag. “As soon as it stops raining, bring her to the house, and we’ll put her to bed—”

  “I guess you didn’t understand,” the man said in an infuriating drawl.

  She scowled at him. “Understand what?”

  He stuck his thumb in his gun belt and drummed his fingers on the row of cartridges stuck in the leather loops. “You’re coming with us.”

  A chill seized her, though she took care to hide her alarm. So that was why he’d abducted her at gunpoint. This outlaw meant to pluck her right out of her own life and thrust her into his. “Just like that,” she said coldly, “without even a by-your-leave?”

  “I never ask leave to do anything. Remember that.”

  By the time Leah had finished neatening her bag, she had worked herself into a fine fury.

  With a quick movement that had him going for his gun, she shot to her feet. The old boat creaked ominously.

  “No, you don’t understand, sir,” Leah said. “I have no intention of going anywhere with you, especially in this leaky hulk. I’ll treat your wife after you bring her to the boardinghouse where she can enjoy a proper recovery.”

  Leah tried not to flinch as he trained the gun on her.

  “She’ll recover just fine right here with you tending her,” he said.

  Leah glared at the too-familiar blued barrel, the callused finger curling intimately around the trigger. “Don’t think for a minute that you can intimidate me. I won’t allow it. I absolutely won’t. Is that clear?”

  His lazy gaze strayed over her and focused on her hands, clutching the bag in white-knuckled terror. “Clear as a day in Denver, ma’am.”

  She hated the mocking edge to his voice. “Sir, if you hope to give your wife a decent chance to recover, you’ll let me go, and after the rain you’ll bring her to the house where I can treat her.”

  “You call yourself a doctor. So how come you can only doctor people in your fancy house?”

  Fancy? She almost laughed bitterly at that. Where had he been living that he’d consider the boardinghouse fancy?

  “I refuse to debate this with you,” she informed him.

  “Fine. I’m not fond of debating, either.”

  “Good. Then—”

  “Just get busy with Ca
rrie, and I’ll be in the cockpit, making ready to weigh anchor.”

  Red fury swam before her eyes, obliterating everything, even the hated gun barrel. “You will not,” she said. Her voice was low, controlled, yet he seemed to respond to her quiet rage. He frowned slightly, his hand relaxed on the gun, and he regarded her with mild surprise.

  “Lady, for someone at the wrong end of a gun, you sure have a mouth on you.”

  “Sir,” she went on, “you cannot simply pluck me from my home and sweep me away with you.”

  She gestured again to indicate all the damage. Her gaze followed the fraying rope across the heading of the room; the line exited through a scuttle and was tied somewhere above.

  “Sugar, it’s not that I want to sweep you away,” he said insolently. “It’s just that I need a doctor for Carrie.”

  He stepped forward, and for the first time, she got a good look at his eyes. They were a cold blue-gray, the color of his gun barrel, and his gaze was piercing, as if he saw more of her than she cared for him to see. Leah experienced an odd sensation—as if the tide were tugging her along, drawing her toward a place she didn’t want to go and couldn’t avoid.

  No. She would not surrender to this man.

  “You cannot force me to come with you.” She looked pointedly at the flapping hatch. The wind made a sullen roar, twanging the shrouds against the mast abovedecks. “This ship is unseaworthy. Honestly, what sort of sailor are you, to be out in this tub of—”

  “Shut up.” In one long-legged stride, he came to her and pressed the chilly round eye of the gun to her temple. “Just...shut up. Look, after Carrie’s better, we’ll put you on a ship back to the island.” He added under his breath, “And good riddance.”

  The touch of the gun horrified her, but she refused to show it. “I will not go with you,” she stated. Clearly, this man had no appreciation for how determined she could be. He’d never outlast her. “I have too many responsibilities in Coupeville. Two of my patients are expecting babies any day. I’m treating a boy who was kicked in the head by a horse. I can’t possibly come along on a whim as your wife’s private physician.”

  “Right.” He removed the barrel from her temple.

  Relieved, she brightened and took a step toward the door. “I’m glad you decided to see reas—”

  “Yeah. Reason. I know.” He gave her shoulder a shove, thrusting her back into the room. “Now get busy, woman, or I’ll make sure you don’t ever see your patients again.”

  He stepped out into the companionway. Leah heard a bolt being thrust home as he locked her in the stateroom with his wife.

  * * *

  Standing in the bow of the creaking schooner, Jackson T. Underhill looked up at the sky. A white gash of lightning cleaved the darkness into eerie shards. The thunder roaring in its wake shouted a warning from the very throat of heaven. The storm came from the sea, blowing toward the shore. It was crazy to be out in this weather, crazy to sail in night so deep he could barely get a heading.

  But Jackson had never been much for heeding warnings, heavenly or otherwise. He jammed his gun back into its felted holster, fastened the clips of his duster, and scowled when the wind tore at the backside of the coat, separating the flaps. The garment was made for riding astride a horse, not sailing a ship. But everything had happened in such a hurry, everything had changed so quickly, that the last thing on his mind had been fashion.

  Bracing himself against the wind, he hoisted the sails. They went up squealing in protest, the mildewed canvas luffing. He hoped like hell the ship would hold together just long enough to make it to Canada. He’d been working on the rudder when Carrie had gotten sick, and had only managed to keep it from falling off with a hasty rig of lines connecting it to the helm. A sailor’s worst nightmare was being swept onto a lee shore in a storm with no steering. The vessel would round up into the wind and start going backward, then go to the opposite tack as the sails backwinded. It would seesaw its way toward shore with sails flapping and no control.

  Jackson set his jaw and told himself the steering would hold. Once they were out of the country, there would be time to fix the schooner up right.

  Over the quickening breeze, he heard indignant thumps and muffled shouts from the stateroom below. Add kidnapping to his list of crimes. That, at least, was a first for him.

  Yet when a healthy puff of wind filled the sails, he felt a measure of relief. The unplanned stop at Whidbey Island hadn’t been so costly after all. He had a doctor for Carrie, and no one was the wiser. The doctor wasn’t at all what he’d expected, but he’d have to put up with her.

  A lady doctor. Who would have thought it? He’d never even known such a thing could be possible.

  Leah Mundy was a prickly female, all pinch-faced and lemon-lipped with disapproval, and there wasn’t a thing to like about her.

  But Jackson did like her. He’d never admit it, of course, and would never find occasion to, but he admired her spirit. Instead of getting all womanish and hysterical when he’d come for her, she’d taken it like a man—better than most men he knew.

  He felt a small twinge when he thought of the patients she wouldn’t see tomorrow, or the next day, perhaps even the day after that. But he needed her. God, Carrie needed her.

  Pregnant. Carrie was pregnant. The thought seethed inside Jackson, too enormous for him to confront right now, so he thrust it aside, tried to forget.

  Dr. Mundy would help Carrie. She would heal Carrie. She had to.

  Jackson pictured her bending over to examine her patient. That’s when the doctor had changed, shed her ornery mantle. He’d seen something special in her manner—a sort of gentle competence that inspired unexpected faith in him.

  It had been a long time since Jackson T. Underhill had put his faith in anyone. Yet Dr. Leah Mundy inspired it. Did she know that? Did she know he was already thinking of her as an angel of mercy?

  He figured he’d thank her, maybe even apologize as soon as they got under way. It was the least he could do for a woman he’d ripped from a warm, dry bed and dragged along on an adventure not of her choosing. The least he could do for a woman he intended to take to Canada, then abandon.

  He’d cranked in the anchor and moved to the helm when he heard a strange thunk, then an ominous grinding noise. The whine of a rope through a wooden pulley seared his ears. With a sick lurch of his gut, he looked behind him. The line he’d used as a temporary fastening for the rudder was slithering away.

  He let go of the wheel and dove for the rope. A split second before he reached it, the rope disappeared, snakelike, through a scuttle in the hull.

  “Shit!” Jackson said, then held his breath. Maybe the rudder would stay put. Maybe— A terrible wrenching sound shattered the night. Then a quiet hiss slid through the noise of the storm. Jackson hurled himself at the aft rail and looked over.

  His curses roared with the thunder. Dr. Leah Mundy, his angel of mercy, his divine savior, had just wrecked his ship.

  Two

  17 April 1894

  My dear Penelope,

  I debated quite a bit with myself about whether or not I should relate what happened to me in the wee hours of the morning. The temptation is great to stay silent.

  But since you are determined to become my partner in the practice when you complete your medical studies, I feel I owe you an unvarnished picture of what a physician’s life is truly like.

  Sometimes we are called upon to treat cases against our will. Such was the circumstance around three o’clock this morning when a man abducted me at gunpoint.

  Somehow I managed to keep my wits about me. The scoundrel forced me aboard his ship to treat his ailing wife, who is with child. His intention was to sail away with me aboard so that I could tend to the unfortunate woman.

  Naturally, such a criminal had no care whatever for my o
ther patients and would not listen to reason, so I took matters into my own hands. When he locked me in a stateroom with his wife, I used a scalpel to slice through a rope, thus disabling the steering and stopping our departure. After the mishap, my abductor burst into the stateroom, roaring with fury and actually threatening to use me as an anchor.

  He is an uncommonly large man, broad of shoulder, with a lean and dangerous face and terrible eyes, but I refused to flinch. In my travels through the untamed West, I learned early to hide my fear. Thanks to my late father and his constant schemes and intrigues, I am no stranger to gunfighters and bullies. In my heart I knew my abductor would not harm me because I have something he needs—my skills as a physician. It is a great virtue to be needed. Greater, even, than being liked. For of course, the outlaw does not like me at all. But he needs me. And this prevented him from shooting me on the spot.

  Instead, cursing so profusely I swear the air turned blue, he anchored his broken ship and together we bundled his wife into a dinghy. By sunup, we had her in a proper bed here at the boardinghouse in the main overnight guest room. Though her condition is still grave, I know she has a better chance to recover here. As for the husband, I can only wonder what sort of life it took to mold a man into such a hard-edged desperado.

  Hoping I’ve not frightened you away from joining me upon completion of your ward studies, I remain as always,

  Leah Jane Mundy, M.D.

  Leah rolled a velvet-wrapped blotter over the page to soak up the excess ink. The heavy-barreled roller with its engraved pewter handle reminded her of earlier times.

  She would have sold the ink blotter along with everything else if she could have gotten a decent price for it. But it was old and battered, and the initials stamped into the handle had meaning only to her.