Fletcher's Woman (19 page)

“How about keeping your job?” Jonas shot back. “Is that a good idea?”

“I'll get your horse,” replied McKay, reining his own mount toward the wooden stables behind the house.

Calmly, Jonas looked up, scanning the blue, cloudless sky. It was a good day for repaying debts, old ones and new alike.

An image of Rachel writhing in Griffin's arms sprang, unbidden, into his mind. He put the picture aside; it was better to think about the beating he'd taken over Fawn Nighthorse.

And much less painful.

•   •   •

When Rachel woke up, Griffin was not beside her. For the merest portion of a moment, she was panic-stricken, bolting upright on the itchy straw bed, ready to cry out.

Dobson. Griffin was surely in the bunkhouse, looking after Dobson.

Rachel scrambled into her clothes and straightened her hair as best she could. Memories of the night before made her cheeks burn.
Rachel McKinnon,
boomed a thundering voice within her.
You have been sullied.

She smiled to herself and quietly opened the shed's thin door.

The camp was virtually deserted. From higher up the mountain, Rachel could hear the rasping squeak of saws, the shouts of the workmen, the bawling of the oxen.

After a brief visit to the woods, Rachel drew water from the well near the cookhouse and splashed her face repeatedly.

“Mornin', Miss,” beamed Swenson, from the shack's sagging porch. “Fine day, ain't it?”

Ignoring the lewd knowledge in the old man's eyes, Rachel agreed that it was, indeed, a fine day.

Griffin was in the bunkhouse, but the situation there had improved considerably. As Rachel came in, she saw that Dobson was not only awake, but laughing at some story Griffin was telling.

She felt distinctly uneasy. Was it her shameless surrender they found so amusing?

Griffin rose from his seat on the cot next to Dobson's and turned to smile at her. And in spite of the smile, his face bore the same tight, grim look she'd seen when they arrived.

Wounded, Rachel lowered her eyes and clasped her hands together. “Are we leaving soon?” she asked, hating herself for the tremor in her voice.

The side of Griffin's index finger lifted her chin. “Can you swallow another of Swenson's meals first?” he countered, gently.

His touch and the reassuring approval she saw in his eyes made her feel much better. “I can if you can,” she said briskly.

Minutes later, Rachel and Griffin sat across from each other, at Swenson's table, and exchanged silent laughter as they choked down soggy oatmeal.

Later, Griffin commandeered two horses from the camp remuda, hitched them to the same buckboard they had brought up the mountain, and gallantly lifted Rachel into the wagon seat.

The trip down was long and treacherous, even by daylight. At the halfway point, they could look out over a breathtaking expanse of Puget Sound's Hood Canal, pine trees interspersed with shimmering cottonwoods, tall cedars, and squat firs, even Providence itself.

“Look,” Rachel whispered. “I can see Field's church.”

Griffin was looking in the same direction, but his expression was suddenly very intense. “Did you see that?” he asked, after an ominous pause.

Rachel stared hard at the church and, as she did, she saw a flash of silver light. “A mirror?” she asked.

Griffin secured the brake lever and sprang to the ground without answering. Quickly, he unhitched the horses.

“What are you doing?” demanded Rachel, her wonder turning rapidly to dismay.

“Can you ride?” Griffin snapped, swinging onto the bare back of one of the geldings that had been drawing the wagon.

“I guess I'll have to,” retorted Rachel, who had never been on a horse's back in her life.

Grasping the mane of the remaining horse, Griffin guided it to within easy reach of Rachel's perch in the wagon box. “Get on,” he said.

Rachel lowered herself onto the animal's sweaty back, stretching her skirt to nearly disastrous limits. “What—”

But Griffin had somehow prodded his mount into the thick
underbrush that carpeted the mountain. Rachel's followed, with no urging from her.

The descent was slow, but hair-raising. They'd been traveling for at least a half an hour before Rachel's frustration made her call out, “Griffin Fletcher, if you don't tell me what's going on—”

He turned, grinned at her over his broad shoulder. “It's a long, involved story, Miss McKinnon. Suffice it to say that Field once used that same trick to warn me that my father was on his way up the mountain with a razor strap in his hand and blood in his eye.”

Rachel wrinkled her nose. “He couldn't have said all that with a mirror!” she scoffed.

“He didn't. My father caught up with me and beat the hell out of me. It was
after
that that Field explained the signal.”

Rachel's laughter bubbled into her throat and escaped in a delighted burst. “What did you do that was so terrible?”

Griffin grinned again. “I wrote a composition for school—all about how my dear old grandmother came over from the old sod, got a job as a housemaid, and broke up the master's marriage.”

Rachel laughed once more. “Did she?”

“Yes, but I wasn't supposed to tell,” Griffin answered, and then he turned his attention back to the steep incline before them.

They saw the flash of the mirror twice more before they reached the base of the mountain and rode slowly into the woods behind Field Hollister's churchyard.

He came bounding out of the parsonage as the horses paused to drink from the pond, his face red with annoyance and relief. “Confound it all, Griffin—” he sputtered.

Griffin laughed as he swung one leg over his horse's neck and slid to the ground. “Relax, Field. I got your message. This time.”

In spite of himself, Field laughed, too.

•   •   •

Inside the parsonage, Griffin's friend politely pointed out a room where Rachel could freshen up. The moment the door had dosed behind her, Griffin folded his arms and leaned back against the kitchen wall.

“Where were they waiting, Field?”

Field shook his head and gestured toward the tiny parlor at
the front of the house. There, he spoke in normal tones. “Probably at the base of the mountain,” he replied. “Molly's boy brought me a note this morning. According to her, Jonas's men had been posted outside your house all night. That bore some looking into, so I rode by Jonas's place and happened to notice that he was assembling a small army. I guessed the rest.”

“You probably saved my neck.” Griffin said, even as memories of the wondrous night just past flooded his mind. He turned away, pretending a great interest in Field's perfectly ordinary brick fireplace in an effort to keep the sordid facts from shining in his face.

He hadn't been quick enough. “Damn it, Griffin,” Field hissed, circling Griffin to stand in front of him. “You did it, didn't you? You compromised that girl!”

The shame Griffin already felt was beyond anything Field could engender in him. “I didn't think she was a virgin!” he snapped.

Field's soft answer was hoarse with outrage. “You idiot, Griffin—you thick-headed idiot. You were trying to spite Jonas!”

Griffin shrugged, carefully avoiding his friend's eyes. “And I succeeded,” he said, with a lightness he didn't feel.

•   •   •

Rachel stood, frozen, in the middle of Field Hollister's small, spotless kitchen.
You compromised that girl. You were trying to spite Jonas.
The words echoed cruelly in her mind, but not so cruelly as Griffin's response.

And I succeeded.

After what seemed like an eternity, Rachel was able to move again. Bearing her outrage and her pain in silence, she crept out of Field's back door and ran until she reached the sanction of the saloon's kitchen. During the flight, she noticed that the steamer, Statehood, was in port.

“Mamie!” she cried, leaning, trembling and exhausted, against the inside of the back door. “Oh, Mamie, where are you?”

The kindly woman bustled in from another room, her round face perplexed and worried. “Why, Rachel, what in heaven's name . . . ?”

Rachel's breath came in short, frantic gasps. “I—there's a steamer in port—I need my money—”

“Well, my goodness—”

Rachel was bounding across the kitchen
floor,
now, tears pouring down her face. “Please, Mamie, there's no time—there's no time. . . .”

She scrambled up the stairs, ignoring the questioning looks of the idle dancing girls and the few Monday-morning drinkers lounging in the saloon. In her mother's room, she found a sizable suitcase and began crumpling the clothes she'd brought from Griffin's house into it.

The level, unruffled voice went through her like a sword. “You don't have to hurry, Rachel. The steamer doesn't sail for an hour.”

Slowly, a blue muslin camisole crushed in her hands, Rachel turned to face Griffin Fletcher. Just the sight of him caused her fathomless, raging pain. “You—” she began, “You—”

But her voice fell away. There were simply no words terrible enough, wounding enough. She forced herself to turn back to the soothing mechanics of packing her clothing.

“I'll see that the trunks you left at my place are on board in plenty of time,” he said rationally.

And then he was gone.

Rachel sat down on a bench upholstered in red velvet, covered her face with her hands, and cried until there were no more tears inside her.

When the steamer made its way out of Providence harbor, Rachel McKinnon was aboard it. She stood gripping the railing with both hands, memorizing the wharf, the saltbox houses, and the graveyard at the top of the green knoll overlooking Tent Town.

“Good-bye,” she said softly.

•   •   •

Mamie Jenkins didn't think she'd ever seen more misery in a single face than she saw now, in Griffin Fletcher's. He looked broken, somehow, sitting there at Becky's table and pretending to drink the coffee she'd set before him.

My Lord
, she thought,
He loves that girl
.

“Why don't you go after her, instead of sitting there like a fool?” Mamie burst out, running her huge, workworn hands down the front of her apron in agitation, remembering the anguish in Miss Rachel's face when she'd given her the money Becky left.

Griffin shook his head, but his eyes didn't quite meet Mamie's. “It's better to let her go, Mamie. Believe me.”

“Mule,” rumbled Mamie, as she turned to pluck gnarled
potatoes from a bin and drop them, with resounding thuds, into her colander. “Damned, cussed, thick-headed mule!”

“Thank you.”

Mamie began to pare the potatoes with savage motions. “How many times do you think love's going to happen to you, Griffin Fletcher?”

He took a draught of his coffee, made a face that fell far short of the nonchalance he was probably aiming for. “If I'm lucky, it will never happen again,” he said. And then he drained the coffee cup and left.

•   •   •

It was dark outside. Billy Brady didn't like the dark; it was too full of unfriendly things. Just like the town was full of unfriendly people.

He was grateful for the light glowing in Field Hollister's parlor window. If it hadn't been for that, he might have been afraid to knock on the door.

Field answered quickly, so quickly that Billy wondered if God told him things that were going to happen, right out loud. He even had his coat in his hand, and he only said one word. “Griffin?”

Billy nodded. “Ma says please come quick, ‘cause we can't manage him.”

“Nobody can,” Field said, sighing like Billy's ma did when her bread didn't rise right. But then he set right out to do it anyway.

None of it had any substance for Rachel—not the deck of the
Statehood,
slick beneath her feet, not the white, painted handrail she leaned against, not the lush, tree-choked beauty of the verdant shorelines.

The sternwheeler made two stops: one at Kingston, another at Bainbridge Island. Rachel paid no attention to the ports themselves, or to the people who boarded and disembarked.

Instead, she fixed her eyes on the snowy, unconquerable
slopes of Mount Rainier. It rose like a bastion in the eastern skies, its descents traced with pearlescent purple shadows and aglow with the gold and crimson rage of the retiring sun opposite it. Nothing else in Rachel's world, besides that magnificent, cloud-crowned peak, seemed larger and more profound than the pain and shame tangled within her.

The dazzling fierceness of the late afternoon sun was interspersed with the first shadows of twilight by the time the vessel steamed into Elliott Bay and progressed confidently toward Seattle.

Some of Rachel's remembered fondness for this rousing, adolescent city came to the fore. She looked away from Rainier, at last, and allowed her burning, aching eyes to focus on the rambunctious town that would now be her home.

Except for a limited area along the waterfront, Seattle was a hillside city. Its wood frame buildings, interspersed only here and there with structures of brick, clung to the landscape like bold children playing king-of-the-hill. On the western side of the shoreline, the tents and shacks that housed Skid Road brothels and saloons stood precariously on their tide flats, almost arrogant in their determination to exist as a part of Seattle proper. The raucous voices of their customers and employees already echoed out, past the gray warehouses and the creaking wharfs, over the water.

Rachel closed her eyes for a moment, against the many memories she had of venturing there, to the Skid Road, to fetch her father and bring him home. Was he there, even now, swilling whiskey and regaling other lumberjacks with his tall stories?