Dance With A Gunfighter

by JoMarie Lodge

  He wondered what had happened to bring her to this. How could her father, so obviously protective, have allowed her to come here alone? Where was he?

  She walked over to a large rock, tossed her hat on it and then sat, her palms butted together, and her hands between her knees. "I’m sorry, Mr. McLowry."

  He could see her struggle to gain composure, to raise a shield against her pain. He moved her hat and sat beside her, his legs spread wide and his forearms resting on his thighs. "I think when you hit, swear at and dance with a man, you can call him by his first name. If you remember it."

  She regarded him a moment and a bleak smile touched her lips. "I’m sorry, Jess."

  She stared out over the valley. He touched her arm, but she wouldn’t face him again. Finally, he dropped his hand. As much as he wanted to learn why she was angry enough to kill a man, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. He might learn enough to make him care. Or feel. And he didn’t want that.

  Yet he couldn’t help but ask. "Will you tell me what happened?"

  Her dark eyes were haunting. "It’s a family matter."

  "I don’t see any of your family around here helping you."

  Her face drained of color. "No," she whispered. She became so still he could have heard the wind touch a sand pebble.

  He began cautiously. "The man who was hanged, had he hurt you?"

  "Me? No. He never touched me."

  "Good," he whispered.

  Her lips tightened. Her hands pressed hard against her knees and he saw the desperate loneliness in her face, and the grief.

  A cold, prickly fear went through him. "Who died, Gabe?"

  Surprise filled her eyes that he knew, but then she nodded. He was a gunfighter. He had seen the sorrow, the shock, the anger that sudden, violent death brings to the victims’ families. He had recognized that pain in her.

  A long time passed before she could speak, and when he heard her whispered words, he almost wished she hadn’t. "My pa. My brother Henry. And Chad--" Her voice broke.

  "It can’t be." He hadn’t even realized he had spoken aloud until he saw her stiffen. Her eyes flashed with a hot, furious anger for an instant before a staggering agony seemed to fall on her again. "Can’t it?" she murmured.

  He could see the words bottled up inside her like gunpowder ready to explode. Her fisted hands shook, and he knew then how much she needed to talk to someone, even if only to a broken down gunfighter.

  "Gabe," he said in a voice he barely recognized, "I’m sorry."

  Again, she walked to the edge of the cliff and peered down at the mining town. "The man who was hanged today, Sly Colton," she said finally, "was one of five men who came to our ranch." She looked back over her shoulder at Jess. "I wanted to kill him myself."

  So that was it. Sly Colton. He knew the man. Knew he was the kind of human garbage that preyed on innocent people for money, food and sport. His mind flooded with the possibilities of what might have happened to her if a jackal like Colton had gotten his hands on her. "At least Colton was strung up for what he did."

  "But he wasn’t! He was hanged because he killed a man in Bisbee! The sheriff in Jackson City said he had no evidence against Colton or the others. Just my word. But I saw them; I saw what they did. And later, when I saw their pictures on Wanted posters, I was able to put names to the sickening faces of the filth that came to our ranch that day."

  She folded her arms tight against her stomach before continuing. "Despite all that, the sheriff wouldn’t listen to me. No one in that town would listen; none of them would help. The sheriff said I was hysterical, and young, and a woman." She tossed back her head with fierce determination. "He’s afraid of them; the whole town is afraid of them. But I’m not. There’s only four left now."

  The enormity of her plan hit him. He stood, too. "Gabe, you can’t."

  "Can’t I?" She picked up her Winchester and hoisted it to her shoulder. "Do you see the broken stalk on that cholla?"

  The bristly, pale green cactus with branches like deer antlers was farther away than most men could shoot. He nodded.

  She fired. The stalk was cut in two. Defiance filled her eyes. "Now tell me I can’t."

  He looked out over the land, then to the townspeople drifting away from the gallows now that the excitement was over. "It’s different," he said flatly, "shooting a man."

  Her eyes hardened. "My pa told me you were a hired gun, that you’d killed lots of men, and if you ever came to Jackson City again, I should stay clear of you. I want to kill only four. Only four."

  Yes, he wanted to tell her, he had killed...too many. But no more. He had made that vow after seeing a little boy die in Mesa Verde. No more. "It’s not the same, Gabe," he whispered.

  "I guess not." Her voice sounded old and weary. "I want justice, while you were paid for killing. And none too well, from the looks of you." As her eyes raked over him, for the first time in an eternity he thought of the changes she was seeing--the unkempt hair, ragged clothes, the smell of whiskey on his breath.

  He let her barb pass. "Your pa wouldn’t want you to do this."

  "Well, you know what, gunfighter? He’s not around anymore to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do!" She lifted anguished eyes to him, eyes that once had looked upon him as something more than a hard, callous gunfighter. She seemed to expect his understanding, but no matter how much he understood, no matter how much he, too, had felt the bitterness and heartache she was feeling now, he couldn’t agree to her plan. It would be agreeing to her suicide.

  He made no reply. Disappointment dulled her eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, was hushed and raw. "I know what I’ve got to do."

  She put her big man’s hat on her head, the soft, wide brim falling forward around her face like a bonnet, and began to walk away from him. He took her elbow, stopping her. A small, detached part of him cried out not to get involved in this, warned that she wasn’t his problem or concern. He had only met her once before, after all, at a pathetic little town dance. She was nothing to him. Nothing.

  Yet he couldn’t forget the girl he had met under the desert moon, or the smile she had given him while they danced. To see her now, eaten with hatred and grief on a blind, self-destructive mission, was more than he could ignore.

  "Who are these four men? Where are they?"

  He watched a shudder ripple through her small frame, watched her struggle to compose herself, to pull her emotions tight within her. "All I know are their names. Will Tanner was the leader."

  McLowry’s stomach felt as if it had been knot-fisted. "Are you sure?"

  Her gaze studied his. "You know him?"

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. "I hadn’t heard he was this far south. You’re sure it was Will Tanner?"

  "You sound like the so-called law!" She spat out the words with disdain. "They didn’t want to believe me either."

  Tanner led a gang of outlaws, but McLowry had never heard of the gang attacking a family for no reason, at least, not until now. "Who was with Tanner?" he asked.

  She raised her chin. "Blackie Lane, Tack Cramer, and Luke Murdock--along with the newly departed Sly Colton. I’ll kill them, one by one. But most of all, I want Will Tanner."

  He knew the men she named, and knew they had been connected with Tanner from time to time. McLowry’s throat felt dry at the danger she faced. "The odds are stacked against you. More than you could ever imagine." He suspected his words stung, but she had to face reality. Every one of those men was a cold-blooded murderer, and she was an innocent girl.

  "I’ll find my chances," she said, lifting her chin. "Sneaking up on them is one way."

  His voice was soft. "Men like them stay alive because people can’t sneak upon them."

  She stiffened. "You seem to know a lot about these men, gunfighter."

  His lungs seemed to empty. "I know their type. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be alive either."

  "Then I’ll just have to learn, won’t I?"

  The thought of her going after Tanner
and his men gnawed at McLowry, even while he admired her courage.

  She picked up the rifle that had slid a little way down the rocky hillside, then her hat.

  "Where’s your horse?" he asked finally.

  "Around the ridge." She pointed up ahead.

  "Mine’s on the trail," he said, damning himself for a fool as his words fell from his lips. "Wait for me."

  A long silence fell between them. "Why?"

  "I’m going in your direction," he replied simply.

  Her eyes fastened onto his with shock and the slightest hint of hope, before she lowered them, as if unwilling to let him see her weakness. "You don’t know where I’m going."

  "Sure I do. You’re going to find Tanner," he said. "And until I can talk you out of it, so am I."

  Chapter 4

  The promise of a hot bath and soft bed in Bisbee wasn’t the reason Gabe finally had agreed to stop there with McLowry. It was his suggestion that the other men in Tanner’s gang very likely had come to town to watch Colton hang, and that they still might be there. She had to agree they were the sort of rabble who might well be drawn to such a scene.

  He led her along the trail over the hills behind Bisbee to enter on the side of the town far from the gallows. She figured he had done it so that she could be spared the scene of Colton’s hanging. He needn’t have bothered. She had welcomed seeing Sly Colton dead--had rejoiced in it, in fact.

  Her eyes settled on McLowry’s back as his sorrel walked along the trail up ahead. Once upon a time, in the fairy tale life that had been hers before Tanner’s gang ripped it apart, her wildest hope, her fondest dream, was that someday she would meet him again. She had lost her heart to him that night at the dance. Through the years of helping her father and brothers run the ranch, do the cooking, and take care of household chores, she hadn’t forgotten him. No one else had ever caused her head to spin, her skin to tingle, or her heart to melt the way he had. How ironic that he had scarcely recalled meeting her, while she would have remembered him to her dying day.

  Over the past year or two, a few young men had come to her house with hopes of courting her, but they had seemed like brown wrens pecking at grub after she had soared with an eagle. Nothing they did could compete with her memory of the handsome stranger.

  She wasn’t bothered by not having a fellow, though, because her pa and brothers had needed her help with the running of the ranch. Situated in the foothills, an arroyo cut through it. Dry most of the year, at times it overflowed from rains or flash floods. The water nurtured the oaks and pinyon and juniper to shade and cool the earth, and the scrub and grasses so vital to raising cattle in the territory. While some people, especially those from the north, complained that this land was far too hot and dry and spindly, to Gabe it possessed a rare and vital beauty in the sculpture of its red and granite rocks, in the brightness of its sky, and in its very stillness on a summer’s day.

  She had been raised with the idea that one day she would grow up and marry and leave the ranch. Instead of filling her with joy, she had always been saddened by it. Now, she didn’t know what the future held, if anything. Nor did she care.

  Her throat tightened and she focussed her thoughts away from her family and back to the gunfighter.

  He had changed. Where his clothes had once been sleek and polished, they were now scruffy. Where his demeanor had once been one of smooth, polished deadliness, it was now as hard and blunt as rough-hewn stone. His face was thinner and more angular and weathered chestnut brown by the desert sun. But his firm mouth was the same, as was his straight nose, and his eyes were still so blue they must have made heaven jealous.

  The differences, though, dug deep. The cockiness and ready smile were gone, and his eyes held a distance she hadn’t seen before. Of course, when she had first met him she was but a child, and had seen him with a child’s joyful, innocent eyes. Now, her eyes were old.

  Gabe and McLowry hitched the horses to the tie rail in front of the Bisbee Hotel, her gray, Maggie, beside the sorrel he called Blaze for the white spot on its brow. Gabe eyed the expensive-looking hotel and mentally tallied her money. She didn’t know how long it would take to find Tanner and the others, and she had to be prudent.

  "You go ahead, McLowry." She patted Maggie’s neck. "I’ll meet you inside later."

  McLowry had reached for the ties on the saddlebags. His hand stilled. "How’s your money? Do you have enough for this place?"

  "Of course I’ve got money. But I don’t intend to waste it on frivolities. I like sleeping outdoors."

  "Right," he muttered, tugging at the ties to unfasten them. "Get your things and come on. I can’t keep an eye on you if I’m in there and you’re out here." He lifted the bags from the saddle and tossed them over one shoulder.

  "Nobody’s asked you to keep an eye on me," she reminded him.

  "Nobody’s asked me to do a lot of things I’ve done. But it’s never stopped me before." He started walking toward the hotel.

  God, but she was tempted. After hearing about Colton’s arrest in Bisbee, she had made camp in the desert for each of the five nights since leaving Jackson City. Night sounds and night animals were a lot more frightening when one was alone instead of inside one’s home or with one’s family. But then, she no longer had a home or family to listen with.

  The first and second night after leaving Jackson City, she had dreamed that she attacked Bisbee’s gray adobe jailhouse single-handed, forced the sheriff to turn Colton over to her and the minute they had stepped into the street, she had shot him dead. In the dreams, she had managed to get away clean.

  By the third night, she realized her dream had more holes in it than a gold panner’s sieve.

  Once in Bisbee, she decided she would try to angle a rifle shot through the window bars, nailing Colton straight between the eyes as he watched the setting sun. She had waited for him, to the consternation of a few of the townspeople, who had looked askance at the wild-eyed girl holding a long rifle and staring at the jailhouse. But Colton never came to the window. He was a man who didn’t hold store with nature.

  That night, she had come up with her plan to pick Colton off as he walked to the gallows. She hadn’t slept in anticipation of carrying it out.

  So, she had schemed and planned and worried, and it all came to nothing. She could take satisfaction in one thing, though. Colton was dead.

  She watched McLowry head toward the hotel. Maybe she could afford a nice room one night. Just one night. Yanking the saddlebags off her horse, she hurried after him.

  At the entrance, she paused, wide-eyed, taking in the fancy lobby with its green and red floral carpet on the floor and polished carved wood and mirrors on the walls. The cherry-wood chairs were so spindly, she didn’t think they could hold a full-sized man and not crack in two, but they were covered in the most beautiful shiny red material she had ever seen. She hurried to stand beside McLowry as he faced the desk clerk.

  "I need two rooms," he said.

  The clerk, a thin-lipped, soft-fleshed man, dragged his gaze from the top of McLowry’s hat, down over his long hair, beard, worn flannel shirt and denims, over to Gabe’s dusty boots, up to her equally mangled and dirty trousers and man’s shirt, to her floppy hat. By the time he had finished, his mouth was so puckered he looked like he had bitten a green prickly pear. "Sorry, can’t help you," he announced.

  "Wrong answer, Mister." McLowry’s voice was silky smooth, his drawl thicker than Gabe had ever heard it, but it also held a deadly undercurrent a deaf man wouldn’t have missed.

  A silver-dollar-sized red spot colored each of the clerk’s flabby cheeks. "There was a hanging today. We’re all booked up."

  McLowry reached across the desk, grabbed the man’s jacket lapels, and pulled on them until the clerk was nearly lifted over the desk. "The lady needs a bed and a bath."

  "McLowry!" Gabe touched his arm, not wanting him to get into trouble on her account. He let go of the clerk, but his expression stayed fierce.

  T
he man backed up against the wall behind him, carefully fingering his throat. "You...you’re Jess McLowry?"

  McLowry’s eyes narrowed. "You got a problem with that?"

  "Oh, my, no!" His skin turned so white Gabe thought he might pass out. "In fact, I...I do have a room for you. Only one, I’m afraid. But it’s large, and we’ll do all we can to make it comfortable for you both."

  "We’ll take it." McLowry slapped money on the counter before Gabe had a chance to open up the saddlebag to find hers.

  "I’m paying half," she announced. The clerk’s fearful eyes darted from one to the other.

  "We’ll settle it between ourselves later," McLowry replied, taking the key. Then, back to the clerk, he said, "Send someone up right away to prepare a bath for the lady."

  She grabbed her bags and followed him up the stairs. He unlocked the door and stepped aside for her to enter.

  Their hotel room was scarcely larger than her tiny quarters back home had been. A brown-painted iron double bed, a short, boxy dresser, spindle-backed wooden chair and pine wash stand topped by a blue pitcher and bowl took up most of the floor space. Instead of a wardrobe, pegs jutted from the wall for hanging clothes.

  McLowry stood in the doorway, peering uncertainly into the room. She wondered if he was the sorrier for having gotten involved with her in the first place, or for offering to share his room with her now. When he stepped inside, his broad-shoulders seemed to reach from one wall to the opposite, and she was sure his black, flat-topped hat nearly touched the ceiling. His gaze wandered over the small area then settled on the bed. Her gaze followed his.

  Somehow, the room seemed to shrink even further. Gabe dropped her saddlebags in a corner and crossed the room to the window. She pushed open the dark blue drop curtains, and lifted the bottom half of the double-hung window all the way up. Sunshine and fresh air poured into the room. She huddled near the window, feeling as if she needed to be there to breathe.