by Sharon Ihle
But Luther laughed even harder. Then he turned to Rayna and said, “Honey, you might have been better off with me. Gant here is just another Luther Gantry, Jr. Some would say that he’s worse than the lot of us put together.”
Seven
As the first performance began, Gant stood cloaked in the shadows behind the last row of seats. He watched as the entertainers formed a single line and began filing out of the show ring, and wondered if he hadn’t seen his first and last processional. Much like the earlier parade, practically everyone aboard ship participated. As the last clown disappeared behind the huge curtain, applause from the crowd swelled in the arena, joining in with the boisterous circus tunes radiating from the orchestra circle. Joyful, uplifting music filled the air, but even if Gus’s band had sprouted wings, they couldn’t have lifted Gant out from under his dark thoughts. Everything he held dear, everything he coveted, seemed to be slipping just out of his reach. All because of his Gantry blood.
Not that he hadn’t tried to send those visible reminders of his past away. After Rayna had gone back to her fortune-telling, Gant had strongly suggested to Luther and J.R. that they head on back to the settlement. Or better yet, saddle up and head right on back to where they came from. Luther had scoffed at the idea, insisting that he and J.R. had as much right to attend the circus as anyone. Short of causing yet another scene, Gant had no choice but to allow them to purchase tickets to the show. Even when he’d insisted that they check their weapons, something he was certain Luther would never agree to, they hadn’t been dissuaded.
Following his only recourse—standing in the shadows and keeping his brothers in view—Gant found that no matter how hard he stared, he saw not Luther and J.R., but the dead woman in Texas. Flashes of the past splashed against the banks of his memory even as his dreams for the future ebbed away. If the old images rose like a tide in his chest, the look in Rayna’s eyes when she realized that he was one of the Gantry brothers practically drowned him. She’d been shocked and sickened. Her full roseate lips had gone pale at Luther’s words, and her gemlike eyes grew incredulous with the kind of speculation Gant hadn’t seen since his trial.
And why not? Hadn’t he and the members of his family earned at least that kind of reaction from the general public? He’d been a fool to think that a change of heart would automatically guarantee a change of reputation, or that somehow he, Gus, and Mollie could keep his past a secret. A blind fool.
Grumbling to himself, Gant forced his thoughts back to the arena and the show ring where the circus had begun. Glancing just beyond the ring, he checked on his brothers again. Sitting in front row seats at the dress circle, their full attentions were on the Travis twins.
The petite blondes were gowned in identical pink frocks of frothy organdy, and they rode their draft horses at opposite sides of the ring, mirror images of one another as they went into their act. Twirling batons one moment, changing position on the horses’ backs the next, the girls were real crowd-pleasers. Gant hardly noticed their performance. He was far more interested in the audience than the entertainers. And that audience was grating on his nerves.
At the sight of Luther ogling thirteen-year-old Maureen and Mavoureen, Gant’s stomach rolled and his hands curled into fists. Luther would think nothing of ravishing these young girls, of using them, and then tossing them aside like so much trash. God, he thought, sickened all over again, why did they have to show up now? Had he been kidding himself when he actually believed that he could escape from his own family? Carrying the Gantry name, even if he didn’t own up to it, made him just as much a prisoner as barred windows and mortar walls.
*
Rayna, who had been one of the first performers out of the ring after the processional came to an end, ducked out of her dressing room and tiptoed into a spot behind the last row of seats where she could watch the circus unnoticed. As she unbraided her hair and removed the coins in preparation for her Gypsy dance, she spotted Gant in the shadows across the aisle from where she stood. His handsome features were twisted with disappointment and anger, and his shoulders, usually so broad, so proud and confident, were rounded. Rayna didn’t need her crystal ball to know why he looked so dejected. She had, after all, met his brothers. If even one of the atrocities she’d read about the Gantry Gang were true, she had no trouble understanding his humiliation.
Sensitive to his mood, Rayna silently slipped up beside him and whispered, “Surely our entrance wasn’t that bad. You look like you’ve been sucking on a lemon. Didn’t you see anything you enjoyed?”
He glanced her way, and then back to the spot where his brothers sat. “Everything was fine.”
“Fine? That’s it?”
Gant sighed. “Good, then. It was good.”
Following his gaze out to the front row of the dress circle, Rayna could see the leer in Luther’s eyes even from a distance. The younger brother, J.R., was the complete opposite. He seemed almost childish in his delight as he watched the twins stand on the backs of their horses in preparation for the grand finale.
Rayne swung her gaze back to Gant, who was still brooding. “It looks like at least one of your brothers is enjoying the show. In fact, he seems to like it a lot more than you do.”
Gant was not going to discuss his family of thieves with Rayna, now or ever. “Why don’t you go tell someone’s fortune?” he suggested. “I’m not in much of a mood for talking.”
“Well I am.”
Gant shot her a look that brooked no further discussion, but Rayna went on. “Are your brothers part of the same Gantry Gang I’ve been reading about?”
When he turned on her this time, for a moment Rayna thought he might wrap his hands around her throat. Instead, he gave himself a moment to calm down, and then quietly said, “I don’t see why it’s any of your business, but if you must know, yes, they are. Reporters have a way of distorting the facts to suit the story they want to write, so I wouldn’t believe everything you read. The gang, if that’s what you want to call it, is my family, but I haven’t ridden with them for ten years.”
She whistled softly. “It must be something having your family written about that way.”
“It’s not something I ever wanted,” he assured her. “As for what you’ve been reading, I don’t know what the newspapers say about us and I don’t care. I’d just appreciate it if you’d forget you ever heard that name connected to me.”
Interrupting the conversation, Gus’s voice suddenly boomed out from his speaker trumpet. Announcing the next act, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please. The Bailey Circus is proud to present Miss Maria and her troupe of little people.”
The music began again, this time a nice easy waltz by Strauss, and then Maria and Mollie’s three daughters skipped into the arena, their menagerie of poodles leaping and bounding along beside them.
As the new act got underway, Rayna said, “I was not referring to newspaper articles, but to the tales I read in some little novels I picked up. If I remember correctly, the stories were set in the early 1850’s.”
“Novels? You mean someone wrote a book about us?”
“Someone wrote several books about a gang of outlaws called the Gantry Gang.” Rayna thought a moment, recalling some of the titles. “One was called, Blood Along the Abilene Trail, another, Shootout at Broken Stump, oh, and Death Rides Shotgun. I remember that one best. It was set in a Mexican town near Laredo.”
Gant grimaced and turned away. Laredo, Abilene, Broken Stump. Good Lord, had the gang been toting a writer on a packhorse all those years, and he simply hadn’t noticed? Where else could the man have gotten his information?
Keeping his voice low, Gant said, “I don’t know where the author of those stories got his information, and I sure can’t verify or deny them right now, but it doesn’t sound like the kind of reading a lady would be interested in. Where did you find those books?”
They had been left behind in the Pierre jail cell by the previous occupant. Even though Gant’s past li
fe was beginning to sound a heck of a lot more checkered than her own, Rayna decided it would be wiser to keep that information to herself.
“It doesn’t matter where I got them,” she said. “All of the stories were about five brothers who were all named Luther Gantry, Jr., and their father, Luther Gantry. That is your family, isn’t it?”
Instead of answering her right then, Gant took Rayna by the elbow and led her farther into the shadows. About then, Gus’s waltz evolved into a raucous polka, signaling the end of the dog act.
Speaking as loudly as he dared, Gant tried to put an end to the conversation. “Forget the family. What I was, I was. I’m not the same man now. I spent seven years behind bars paying for my past sins, and now I just want to be left alone about it.”
“I understand comletely,” she whispered, eyes moist.
The words, the way Rayna was looking at him, touched something deep inside of Gant. They were two of a kind, he realized, more alike than not, even though her true past remained a mystery. Needing something he suspected only Rayna could give him, needing her, Gant pulled her close, closer than he meant to, and brushed against her body. Rayna’s breasts, nipples erect, burned a path across his chest. If he’d glanced down at that moment, Gant wouldn’t have been surprised to find his shirt smoldering.
Forcing himself to do so, Gant held her at bay. “What did you mean, you understand completely? Is there something from your past that I ought to know about?”
“Absolutely not,” she said with a crooked smile.
Fairly certain she was hiding something, Gant said, “I hope you’re not suggesting that hearing about my past will make me forget about yours. Mollie and Gus know all about my family and the things I did as a member of the gang, and it doesn’t matter to them because they trust the man I’ve become. If you’re thinking of blackmailing me, think again.”
“No, no,” she insisted. “All I want is the same thing you have here. Respectability and a fresh start.”
Gant gave himself a moment to think about that, knowing exactly what she meant, not at all ready to trust her. At length, he said, “I didn’t earn my second chance with the Bailey’s so easily. I was fresh out of prison and a few days enlisted in the Confederate Army when I first met Mollie and Gus. They came up with what sounded like a perfectly insane idea for spying on the Union Army—selling cookies to Yankee soldiers dressed as old, crippled peasants—and they wanted me to go with them. As it turned out, the plan worked amazingly well, and they learned that they could trust me with their lives. Maybe if you can prove the same thing to me, you can have that fresh start you want so badly.”
“I don’t know how I can do that now,” she said with a sigh. “I was hoping you might rely on something more like honor among thieves.”
He laughed. “Proverbs, huh?”
A self-taught man, Gant had learned to read by picking up anything and everything during his incarceration, including a book of proverbs that he’d read several times over. He doubted that Rayna had learned them the same way, but it touched him to know they had this much in common.
“All right,” he said, finding reason to smile. “We’ll start fresh from here. Just remember this—a thief knows a thief as a wolf knows a wolf. You can disguise yourself any way you like, but never forget that I’ll know exactly who and what you are behind the mask.”
Gant had leveled her with that devastating smile again. Rayna almost didn’t hear his promise over the glare of that smile. She considered telling him about her time in jail, and just as quickly dismissed the idea. He already thought her a cheat and a thief. Why compound that opinion? Instead, Rayna leaned against him, pressing her palms to his chest, and reached up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his skin. “You won’t regret trusting me.”
Then, breaking away from him, she turned on her heel and disappeared into the shadows.
Full up with as much trouble as pleasure, is what Gant thought as he watched Rayna sidle away. How much longer could he pay heed to the troublesome side of her nature while the pleasurable aspects of Rayna Sebastiani seemed so within reach? Hesitating a moment longer to calm himself and shake off the desires of the flesh, Gant finally resumed his journey toward the dress circle.
As he caught sight of J.R. cheering wildly in the front row, a biblical passage sprang into his mind, an addendum he took as a serious omen; Am I my brother’s keeper?
God knew someone had to be, at least in J.R.’s case. Earlier at the landing, Gant had seen that the kid was cracking, coming apart at the seams like a grain sack full up to bursting. It was a feeling that Gant knew well, but it’d come on him a little younger, when he was twenty-one. J.R. had already lost an additional three years of his life running with the gang.
Could he face himself, Gant wondered, really enjoy his future if he didn’t at least try to help J.R., to show him a way to improve his own life? Maybe he was his brother’s keeper.
*
When the circus closed down that night, Gant was waiting near the doors, a plan and a speech at the ready. He watched as Luther and J.R. followed along behind the small crowd filing out of the arena and down the gangplank.
As they drew near, Gant waved them aside and said, “I’ll go get your guns.”
Then he ducked behind the curtain, slipped around a false wall to the hidden office where he and Mollie would go over the night’s receipts, and took Luther’s pistol down off of a narrow bookshelf. He purposefully left J.R.’s weapon behind. When Gant returned to the arena, close to a dozen members of the audience still milled around the cage where Hans had left Hannibal on display. Gant’s brothers were among that small crowd. As he approached, he clearly heard Luther firing a barrage of rude questions toward the lion-tamer.
“That animal don’t look so all-fired mean to me. He got any teeth? How about claws? I’ll bet he’s just a worn out pussycat who couldn’t bring down that prancing pig if’n he was starving to death.” He followed this statement with a burst of boisterous laughter.
As he came up behind Luther, Gant said, “Why don’t you just climb inside that cage and find out for yourself?”
He then laid his brother’s gun in his palm and held it up. “Without this, of course.”
Luther immediately snatched up the weapon.
Hans, who was used to skeptics, waved Gant off. “There is no problem. I am happy to show you how fierce Hannibal can be.”
Hans strutted over to the removable steel cage that was attached to the show ring, reached into the leather cup he kept strapped to his belt, and pulled out a chunk of raw beef. Taking his time, he positioned the meat at the sharpened tip of a thick walking stick he always carried when working the beasts. Then, and with a great flare, Hans poked the stick, otherwise known as the persuader, through one of the small openings in the cage. The few spectators, Gantry boys included, backed away a few steps, and then a few steps more as Hannibal attacked the stick and roared for more.
Since Luther was still preoccupied with the beast, Gant tapped J.R. on the shoulder and said, “I didn’t recognize your gun in the back room. Come with me and pick it out, will you?”
Luther, who was listening to the conversation, jerked his head as if giving his younger brother permission, and then focused his attention back on the lion.
Gant, half-dragging an equally fascinated J.R., finally managed to wrest him back stage where he immediately set his plan in motion.
“I didn’t bring you back here to pick out your gun,” he admitted, lifting the weapon off of a nearby table. “In fact, here it is. I want to talk to you private-like without Luther interrupting us every damn minute.”
J.R. cocked his head as he slipped the pistol into its holster. “Yeah? What about?”
“I don’t exactly know how to go about this, kid, but I thought maybe you’re getting tired of running with the gang and I know you’re damn tired of taking orders from Luther. Am I wrong?”
J.R. glanced up at his ol
der brother, those hound dog eyes more haunted than ever. He sucked his lower lip under his two front teeth, a nervous habit he’d had since his permanent teeth had bucked-out on him, and then gave a modest shrug.
“Luther’s about as mean as a rattler on a hot skillet, all right, and I am kinda sick of the way he treats me,” J.R admitted quietly. “The gang is family, Gant. I reckon I do get a little tired running from the law now and again, but it’s all I know how to do.”
“That part of the family doesn’t care about you. Ever think of leaving them like I did?”
J.R.’s head snapped up. “You mean go to prison?”
“No, not that way. I just wondered if you ever thought of living a different kind of life. Respectable-like.”
Slowly, miserably, J.R. shook his head. “Don’t matter if I want that or not. Pa’d never let me go, Gant. He wouldn’t a let you go neither if you hadn’t got yourself tossed in jail.”
