Drew slipped a two-bit coin from the pocket of his work trousers and flipped it to his brother, who caught it with one hand. “Tell you what. Take the wagon down to the mercantile and get yourself a sarsaparilla. Ask Mr. Quentin to load up the supplies we bought. I’ll meet you there.”
Levi was still boy enough that he grinned over the treat as he climbed over the backboard for the bench.
Drew continued on to the post office, but he found nothing waiting for him. He wasn’t surprised. Most of his mother’s and father’s relatives didn’t write often. They couldn’t understand why his father had left Wisconsin for the far West. They thought themselves pioneers already. But his father had wanted more than the lakes and hills.
He’d wanted a town of his own.
So instead of settling in the hamlet that had been early Seattle, he’d claimed a parcel along Lake Union’s shores for himself and his wife. As each Wallin son had come of age, he, too, had laid claim to an adjoining parcel. Drew and his next brother, Simon, had put in the five years of hard work necessary to prove up their own claims, building cabins, tapping springs and clearing land for crops they had yet to plant. John and James were a few years from doing the same. Someday, they all might even have the town his father had dreamed of building.
If Drew could see them all safely raised first.
He headed back toward the mercantile his mother favored. Several wagons were crowded in front, but none of them were his. Where had Levi gotten to now? With a rattle of tack and the rumble of hooves, the wagon pulled up beside him in the street, his brother at the reins, eyes wild. “Come on! Jump in!”
Drew slung himself up on the bench, but he hadn’t even settled in the seat before Levi whipped the reins and whistled to the team. Drew grabbed the sideboard to steady himself as the wagon careened out of town.
“At least tell me you loaded the supplies,” he called over the thunder as the two horses galloped up the track that lead north.
“All squared away,” Levi shouted back. “Yee-haw! Go!”
Drew was afraid to ask, but he had to know. “You tick off the sheriff again?”
“Naw,” Levi yelled. “Just in a hurry to get back to Ma.”
Drew felt a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t as eager. In truth, he dreaded what he’d find at Wallin Landing, about a two-hour ride from Seattle.
He’d watched, helpless, the past two weeks as his mother had sunk beneath a virulent fever. At first he’d kept his brothers and sister away to prevent the disease from spreading and neglected his work to tend her. The past few days, Levi and Beth had served beside him. Only the combined insistence of his family that they needed help had driven him from Ma’s side today.
He hated having to relay the news that Doc Maynard wasn’t coming. But he hated more the thought that his mother might not be alive to find out.
So Drew let Levi drive the team more than four miles, until the road petered out to a narrow track near the south of the lake, before he insisted on stopping and giving them a rest. Only when the horses had quieted did he hear the muffled cries from the back of the wagon.
“Now, don’t get angry, Drew,” Levi said, edging away from him on the bench as Drew frowned toward the sound. “You know we have to have help.”
Drew felt as if one of the firs he felled had toppled into his stomach. He stared at his brother. “What have you done?”
“Ma needs a nurse, and you need a bride,” Levi insisted. “So I got you one.”
Drew jerked around and yanked the canvas tarp off what he’d thought were only supplies in the bed of the wagon.
Rag stuffed in her mouth, hands trussed before her, Catherine Stanway lay on her back, her bun askew and hair framing her face. She had every right to be terrified, to cry, to swoon.
But the blue eyes glaring back at him were hot as lightning, and her look was nothing short of furious.
He’d have to do a lot of talking if he hoped to calm her down and keep Levi from ending up in jail for his behavior. But he feared no amount of talking was going to keep his brothers from interfering in his life, especially when Levi had just gone and kidnapped Drew a bride.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Catherine demanded the moment Drew Wallin set her on her feet and pulled the rag away. Her mouth felt as dry as dust, every inch of her body bruised by bouncing around on the wagon bed. “I am a citizen of the United States. I have rights! Untie me and return me to Seattle immediately, or I shall report you to the sheriff!”
“Bit on the spiteful side, ain’t she?” the young man who had grabbed her said, sitting on the wagon’s tongue, safely out of reach of both her and Mr. Wallin.
“Release her, Levi,” Mr. Wallin said to him, jaw tight. “And apologize. Now.”
The youth jumped down and hurried to Catherine’s side. He didn’t look the least bit contrite about snatching her out of the hospital, treating her as if she were no more than a bag of threshed wheat. She held out her hands toward him, and his fingers worked the knot he’d made in the rope that bound her wrists.
He’d looked so innocent when he’d appeared in the dispensary—a mop of curly blond hair, eyes turned down like a sad puppy’s, cotton shirt and trousers worn but clean. He’d bounded up to her and seized her hands.
“Please,” he’d said, lips trembling. “My ma’s real sick. You have to come and help her.”
She’d thought he’d had an ill woman in a wagon outside. He wouldn’t have been the first to pull up to the hospital begging for help. It seemed Doctor Maynard tended to at least one logger a day with a broken arm or leg or a crushed skull. As soon as Mr. Wallin had left, her employer had gone into surgery with his wife, Susanna, assisting him. Catherine had known she couldn’t call him away from that until she knew the severity of this young man’s mother’s illness.
“Show me,” she’d said to the youth, taking only a moment to dry her hands before following him out the back of the hospital.
But instead of an older woman huddled on a bench, she’d found a long-bed wagon partially filled with supplies and tools and no other person in sight.
“Where’s your mother?” she’d asked.
“About eight miles north,” he’d said, wrapping one arm around her and pinioning her arms against her. “But don’t you worry none. I’ll get you there safe and sound.”
She’d opened her mouth to call for help, and he’d shoved in that hideous rag. Though she’d twisted and lashed out with her arms and feet, his whip-cord-thin body was surprisingly strong. He’d tied her up, tossed her in the wagon and covered her with a tarp.
She supposed she should have been afraid, being abducted from her place of work with neither her employer nor any of her new friends to know what had become of her. In truth, she’d been furious that anyone would treat her like this. What, did he think her friendless, an easy victim? When Doctor Maynard realized she was gone,
