The Drifter. Сьюзен Виггс

you ill?” she asked the gunman.

      “Hell, no, I’m not sick,” he said. “It’s…someone else.”

      For some reason, his hesitation took the edge off her anger. Another thing she’d learned about bullies—they almost always acted out of fear.

      “I’ll need to stop in the surgery, get some things.”

      “Where’s the surgery?”

      “Downstairs, adjacent to the kitchen.” She pushed open the door, daring to flash one look down the hall. Mr. Battle Douglas was a light sleeper, but despite his name, he wouldn’t know the first thing to do about an armed intruder. Adam Armstrong, the newcomer, probably would, but for all she knew, the handsome timber merchant could be in league with the gunman. Aunt Leafy would only dissolve into hysterics, and Perpetua had her young son to consider. As for old Zeke Pomfrit, he’d likely grab his ancient rifle and join her abductor.

      The gunman jabbed the Colt into her ribs. “Lady, don’t go doing anything foolish.”

      Leah surrendered the urge to rouse the household. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t put any of them at risk.

      “You may call me Dr. Mundy,” she said over her shoulder. Her hand slipped down the banister as she made her way to the foyer. The man wore a long, cloaked duster that billowed out as he descended, sprinkling rainwater on the carpet runner.

      “You’re not a lady?” he whispered, his mouth far too close to her ear. His voice had a curious raw edge to it.

      “Not to you.”

      She led the way along a hall to the darkened surgery. In the immaculate suite that occupied the south wing of the house, she lit a lamp. Her hands shook as she fumbled with a match, and her anger renewed itself. As the blue-white flame hissed to life, she turned to study her captor. She noted a fringe of wet hair the color of straw, lean cheeks chapped by the wind and stubbled by a few days’ growth of beard. An old scar on the ridge of his cheekbone. He pulled down his dripping hat brim before she could see his eyes.

      “What sort of ailment will I be treating?” she asked.

      “Hell, I don’t know. You claim you’re the doctor.”

      Leah told herself she should be hardened to doubt and derision by now. But some things she never got used to. Like someone—even a dangerous man hiding behind a gun—thinking gender had anything at all to do with the ability to heal people.

      “What are the symptoms?” She lifted the flap of her brown leather medical bag, checking the contents. Capped vials of feverfew, quinine, digitalis, carbolic acid disinfectant. Morphine crystals and chloroform. Instruments for extracting teeth and suppurating wounds. A stethoscope and clinical thermometer sterilized in bichloride of mercury, and a hypodermic syringe for injecting medicines into the bloodstream.

      “The symptoms?” she prompted.

      “I guess…fever. Stomach cramps. Babbling and such. Wheezing and coughing, too.”

      “Coughing blood?” Leah asked sharply.

      “Nope. No blood.”

      It could be any number of things, including the dreaded scourge, diphtheria. She tucked in some vials of muriate of ammonia, then took her oiled canvas slicker from a hook on the back of the door. “I’m ready,” she said. “And I might add that forcing me at gunpoint isn’t necessary. It’s my calling to heal people. If you want to put that away, I’ll still come.”

      He didn’t put the gun away. Instead, he pushed the flap of his duster back to reveal a second gun. The holster—darkened with grease for quicker drawing—was strapped to a lean, denim-clad hip. The gun belt, slung low around a narrow waist, bore a supply of spare cartridges in the belt’s loops. Clearly, he was a man unused to being given what he asked for. He jerked the barrel toward the back door, motioning her ahead of him.

      They passed through the waiting room of the surgery and stepped out into the night. She could feel him behind her, his height and breadth intimidating, uncompromising.

      “Is it far?” she asked, indicating the coach house, a black hulk in the sudden gloom. “Will we need the buggy?”

      “No,” he said. “We’re going to the harbor.”

      A seafaring man, then. A pirate? Whidbey Island saw its share of smugglers plying the waters of Puget Sound and up into Canada. But this man, with an arsenal of weapons concealed under his long, caped coat, had the look of an outlaw, not a pirate.

      As frightening as he was, he needed her. That’s what was important. The oath she had taken compelled her to go. What a peculiar life she led. In the back of her mind, her father’s voice taunted her: Leah Jane Mundy, when are you going to settle down and get married like a normal woman?

      The rain drummed relentlessly on her hood. Her booted foot splashed into a puddle and stuck briefly in the sucking mud. She looked back at the boardinghouse. The tradesman’s shingle hanging above the front porch flapped in the wind. In the misty glow of the gaslight Leah always kept burning, the white lettering was barely legible, but the stranger had found it: Dr. Mundy, Physician. Rooms To Let.

      “Get a move on, woman,” the gunman ordered.

      The light in the surgery window wavered. There was nothing beyond the lamp glow but blackness. No one in sight but the stranger holding the gun on her, pushing it into her back to make her hurry.

      Just who the devil was this man?

      Rising Star, Texas

       1894

      “He called himself Jack Tower,” the sheriff said, taking off a pair of ill-fitting spectacles. “Course, there’s a good possibility it’s an alias.”

      “Uh-huh.” Joel Santana stroked his hand down his cheek, the skin like shoe leather beneath his callused palm. Damn. He’d been looking forward to hanging up his gun belt and spurs, and now this. Many was the evening he’d spent thinking about a parcel of green land, maybe a flock of sheep, and a good woman with broad hips and a broader smile….

      He crossed one aching leg over the other and absently whirled a spur with his finger. “And you say the fugitive took off six weeks ago?”

      Sheriff Reams laid his spectacles atop the hand-drawn map on the desk. “Six weeks Saturday.”

      “Why’d you wait to call me in?” Joel held up a hand. “Never mind, I know the answer. You and your deputies had the situation under control. This is the first time your posse ever let one get away, am I right?”

      “As a matter of fact, Marshal, it’s true.”

      “Uh-huh.” It always was. These greenhorns always waited until a criminal had hightailed it across state lines and the trail had grown cold; then they called in a U.S. Marshal. “I guess we’d better get down to it, then. You say this man—this Jack Tower—murdered the mayor of Rising Star?”

      Reams narrowed his eyes. “Damn right he did. Probably wasn’t the first. He had a hard look about him. A mean look, like he didn’t have a friend in the world and didn’t care to make any.”

      “Who witnessed the murder?” asked Joel.

      Reams hesitated just long enough to rouse his suspicions. “No one’s come forward. You need to bring that desperado back and hang him high.”

      “Hanging folks is not my job, Sheriff.” Joel lumbered to his feet, fancying he could hear his joints creak in protest. Too many years on horseback had ruined his knees.

      “What in blazes do you mean?”

      Joel pressed his palms flat on the desk and glared at the map. The shape of Texas formed amutated star, its pan-handle borders so artificial—yet so critical when it came to enforcing the law. “I bring in fugitives, and I’ll bring in this Tower fellow. But his guilt or innocence isn’t up to us. That’s for a judge and jury to decide. Don’t you