Fletcher's Woman (39 page)

•   •   •

Rachel was confused, and her head ached. It was as though her mind and heart had somehow separated themselves from her body, unable to bear the pain.

There were bells clanging, in an ear-jarring chorus of panic, but she could not be sure they were real. Nothing seemed real—not the grass beneath her feet, not the Guernsey cow grazing a few hundred feet away, not the odd haze roiling in the sky.

She stopped, wondering which direction to go. Somehow, she had wandered off the main street that would have led her down the hill and into Seattle's heart. The bank was there—she had to get to the bank and then the steamboat office.

The bank. The steamboat office. She repeated the phrases in her mind, like a litany that would save her soul, and righted her course. After several minutes, she found the road again.

People were rushing past, in buggies, on horseback, on foot. Some were going down the hill, as Rachel was, while others seemed to be fleeing up it. She thought it odd that both factions seemed equally determined.

There were more bells now, and a roaring sound rose up on the June wind to rival their tolls and clangs.

Rachel walked on.

The air was hot, and the smell of it stung her nostrils and her throat. She stumbled as a man carrying a whimpering child rushed past, nearly knocking her down.

There is a fire,
she thought, mildly.

But no. It was all a part of the nightmare. Rachel raised her chin and kept going.

•   •   •

Vaulting over the O'Rileys' fence, Griffin saw the plume of black smoke rising against the placid blue sky and swore.

John appeared beside him, medical bag in hand, eyes trained on the dark cloud centering in the heart of Seattle. “Come on, Griffin,” he said. “We'll be needed.”

Griffin didn't give a damn about being needed; for the first time in his career, he turned his back on all his training and skill. Until he found Rachel, nothing else would matter.

Ignoring John, he bolted into a dead run. The distant cacophony of the firebells ringing in his ears, he raced into the O'Rileys' stables, thrust a bridle over the head of the first horse he came to, and swung onto its back.

“Griffin!” the old man roared, as he prodded the startled gelding into a run. “Griffin, stop!”

The paddock fence loomed, and Griffin urged the horse on, felt relief as it cleared the top railing and ran at full speed down the dry, rutted road.

Griffin never knew how he navigated the congested traffic clogging the street leading down toward the business district; he only knew that Rachel was not among those who scrambled up the hill, or those who scrambled down. He was in the center of things within minutes of leaving the O'Rileys'.

The Pontius Building, a two-story wooden structure, was at the heart of the disaster. Flames roared through its roof, crimson against the blue of the sky.

People milled in the streets, some captivated, others whimpering or frozen with fear. Men and boys manned a hosecart in one block, a steam-driven fire engine in the next. But the fire mocked the paltry sprays of water trickling from the hoses.

Rachel,
Griffin pleaded, searching the faces in the crowd without success.

Men were prying off the clapboards edging the Pontius Building at street level now, revealing a roaring inferno in its basement. Griffin slid off the gelding's back and abandoned it.

The flames were spreading now—moving into a liquor store. The crowd surged back as the walls went up, and then the whiskey barrels stored inside. There were explosions, and showers of flaming alcohol raged like the seas of hell, carrying the fire to two nearby saloons.

It was hot—intolerably hot—and Griffin felt sweat move down his face, gather at the center of his chest, and bead on the back of his neck. Coughing, he pushed through the crowd, searching every face.

And then he saw her. She was stumbling down the plank-lined street about a hundred yards away, looking as though she hadn't even noticed the fire.

Griffin screamed her name, over the clang of bells, the shouts of panic, the deafening roar of the fire. The crowd shifted, and she was gone.

Throat raw from the thickening smoke and the incredible heat, Griffin made his way through the throng. “Please,” he whispered, raising his eyes to the brassy glare of the sky.

The prayer was answered. He found Rachel huddled in an alleyway, clutching her handbag, staring at nothing. He grasped her shoulders, shook her. “Rachel!”

Slowly, she raised her eyes to his, and the look he saw there turned his blood to ice. She didn't seem to recognize him.

Frantic, he shook her again, again said her name.

But the lavender eyes were flat, dull. “They've locked the bank!” she said, incredulously.

Griffin wrenched her close and held her, tears mingling with the sweat on his face. “God,” he whispered, “Oh, my God—”

There were more explosions, and men shouted in the streets. Wagon wheels hammered at the planking, and bells pealed all over the city, but Griffin Fletcher did not move. He stood still, cradling the stricken girl in his arms, battling a terror not even remotely related to the fire.

And then, incredibly, Jonas was there. He looked cool, unruffled, as though he'd been out for a quiet walk, as though Seattle wasn't in imminent danger of burning down around him. He held out Griffin's medical bag in silent challenge.

Griffin clung to Rachel, trying to ignore the bag and its attendant responsibility, Jonas, the world.

Jonas's voice was even. “Give Rachel to me, Griffin. Let me take her out of here before she's hurt.”

“No.” The word was a hoarse sob.

“Griffin.”

Griffin shook his head, held Rachel closer.

“You took an oath,” Jonas reminded him quietly.

Griffin began to come back inside himself, back to everything he believed. Slowly, he released his hold on the dazed, speechless Rachel.

Jonas drew her from him cautiously, as a man might draw meat from the paws of a lion. “I'll take care of her, Griffin. I swear that by everything our mothers meant to each other.”

Griffin closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again to find that Jonas and Rachel were gone.

Medical bag in hand, Griffin reeled back into the wild confusion surrounding the fire. He had no choice but to trust Jonas——no choice. The doctor within him, for a time imprisoned in some dark part of his mind, was back in control again.

The wind was from the northeast now. The fire was sweeping toward the Commercial Mill, another business building, and the Opera House. Frantic workers were pumping water from the bay, climbing along the steaming roof of the mill with wet blankets and gunny sacks.

Griffin knelt in the river of people to tend a fireman's burned arm. “What the hell happened?” he asked, as he snapped open his bag and began work that did not require thought.

The fireman was in pain, but he was excited, too, in a ghoulish sort of way. “Somebody spilled some glue on a stove, Doc,” he said. And then, incredibly, he laughed. “And the chief's away. Guess where our fire chief is, Doc? He's in San Francisco, learnin' all the newest techniques.”

Griffin's work was finished. “Go home,” he said, standing up again, turning his burning eyes toward the wharfs. A steam engine was stationed on one dock, behind the Colman Building, but the tide was out and the pumps were drawing little more than a dribble from the bay. Worse, the hoses were too short.

Shaking his head, Griffin turned to see a firebrand carried into the sky by the shimmering heat. As if by design, it fell onto the Opera House roof and caught. There was a roar, and the Colman Building went up with a vengeance.

A woman was tugging at Griffin's shirtsleeve. “Doctor? Sir—you are a doctor, aren't you? It's my husband—”

Griffin followed her through the ever-growing crowd to find a middle-aged man slumped on the ground, against a wagon wheel. There was so much noise that, even through his stethoscope, he could hardly make out the thready beat of the man's heart.

“Mayor's takin' charge now,” someone said.

Griffin stood, faced the woman. “Your husband will be all right, if you get him out of here. He's overexcited.”

“He wanted to watch—”

Griffin was impatient; his eyes darted to the wagon. “I'll help him up. You get him away from here.”

Dynamite was being laid under the Palace Restaurant, in the hope of creating a fire gap. The horses hitched to the couple's wagon danced in panic as the blast reverberated through the acrid, hazy air, but the woman, her husband limp on the seat beside her, brought them under control.

Griffin watched in dull amazement as the fire swept across the wreckage of the restaurant, spreading to the wharfs beside the blazing mill.

Griffin wandered for a long time, helping in the hopeless battle where he could, competently treating firemen and spectators who had succumbed to the excitement and the smoke.

A boy appeared beside him, grinning at the raging spectacle. “Ain't it somethin'?” he cried, wide-eyed. “We could see the smoke clear from Tacoma!”

“Wonderful,” Griffin snapped, weak with heat exhaustion and worry over Rachel. Was she safe? Or had he subjected her to a danger far beyond that of any fire by handing her over to Jonas?

“Yes, sir!” the boy went on, undaunted by Griffin's terse reaction. “You can hear them flames snappin' and roarin' way
out on the bay. We wasn't hardly out of Commencement Bay afore we could hear 'em.”

Griffin drew his watch from his vest pocket and consulted it. Four o'clock, and the battle was lost.

Church bells tolled the news, as did the whistles of steamers moored along the waterfront. The incessant clang of the firebells echoed in Griffin's aching head.

The flight had begun. Business men were dragging their belongings outside, loading them into wagons. Some, having no wagons, carried cash registers in their arms, while others staggered under crates and bundles. Along the wharfs, ships accepted what merchandise they could, for safekeeping, and then moved out into deeper water as the docks themselves went up.

Hell
, Griffin thought wryly.
Who would have thought hell was right here in Seattle?

The thought led to other concerns. Were Field and his brand new bride lost in this inferno somewhere? Griffin strode in the direction of the courthouse; their hotel was just beyond it.

People were dragging beds and chamber pots and babies into the streets in the residential section, while the courthouse itself was embroiled in a modicum of orderly panic. Shackled prisoners were being brought from the basement by members of the Home Guard, and a small company of men were trying to water down the roof and the outside walls. Harried clerks fled with stacks of records, and merchant-jurors abandoned their call to scramble back to their stores and shops.

Griffin watched, without slowing his pace, as a young man climbed onto the courthouse roof and began drenching it with water from buckets hauled up by means of the halyards on the flagstaff.

Fawn was helping a blustering innkeeper carry account books and blankets to a waiting wagon when Griffin reached the small hotel.

He caught her arm. “Where's Field?”

Fawn's wide brown eyes were haunted with worry as she looked toward the furnace that was the business district. “He's down there, somewhere.”

Griffin's fear for his friend sharpened his voice to a razor edge. “That idiot—what a time to save souls!”

Fawn Hollister looked as though she was going to kick him. Instead, she flung her armload of goods into the wagon and
snapped, “He's helping, Griffin. Same as you were, by the looks of you.”

Griffin looked down at himself then, unmoved by the soot covering his hands, his clothes, and probably his face. “I'm sorry,”

There was another roar as the roof and bell tower of the Trinity Church, across from the courthouse, fell in. Countless rounds of ammunition went off when the fire spread into two nearby hardware companies, and the noise accentuated the feeling that some kind of vicious war was being fought.

Fawn's hand rose to touch his face. “I know you meant well,” she said, her voice rising, somehow, over the deafening clamor.

He closed his hand over hers and shouted back, “Will you be all right?”

Fawn nodded.

The streets were choked with wagons now, as Griffin made his way back toward the fire. He looked into what must have been a thousand faces, and saw a thousand different nightmares.

The battle had moved to Yesler Way now. A bystander informed Griffin that the mayor had ordered the shacks and buildings along it to be torn down or dynamited. Even the board planks were wrenched up from the street itself.

But the early evening wind was rising, and it carried the fire across the gap and onto the Skid Road. Griffin watched helplessly as the notorious center of sin blazed, driving prostitutes and barkeepers out into the clamoring confusion.

There were more cases of heat exhaustion, more burns, more accidents caused by the crushing madness of the crowd itself. Just before eight o'clock, the crimson sun fell behind the mountains.

Above, the sky glowed hellishly, the light of the fire lending garish color to wispy clouds.

Griffin worked on, forgetting time, forgetting everything but the tasks at hand. He did not encounter either Field or John O'Riley during the hours to come, but he knew that they were nearby.

By three o'clock in the morning, the fire had consumed itself. The destruction was awesome in scope; every mill and wharf between Union and Jackson streets had been reduced to sizzling rubble, and some twenty-five city blocks lay ravaged.

Bone-weary, Griffin stumbled up the hill, toward the O'Riley house. His mind, like his heart, kept racing ahead, making the long walk all the more frustrating. Had Jonas taken Rachel there?