Dance With A Gunfighter

by JoMarie Lodge

  She put her arms around his shoulders. He sat, gripping the arms of his chair tight, and then gave up, and wrapped his arms around her. She sat on his lap, holding him tight and crying, while he stroked her hair and looked as if his own heart would break. Finally, she regained her composure, and stood, wiping away her tears. He gripped her arms, drew her close and placed an innocent, tender kiss on her lips. Then he nodded.

  She hurried to her horse and mounted. Sitting straight, she looked as if she were burning into her mind and soul the image of him sitting in his chair, the small white house behind him, the lonely desert stretched out all around. Finally, she turned and nodded to Gabe and the two rode toward town.

  Chapter 26

  The ride back to the ranch from Jackson City went by in a blur for Gabe. So did preparing dinner and cleaning up afterward.

  Earlier, as she and Susan had waited for the stagecoach’s departure time, they’d overheard the driver telling one of the passengers that Will Tanner and Luke Murdock were in Tombstone.

  Susan and Gabe’s eyes had met.

  "You can’t," Susan said. "You’re going to marry Jess."

  Gabe was numb. "I think this is why I’ve never set a date. I knew this time would come."

  "Don’t." Susan placed her hand on Gabe’s arm. "Chad needs you."

  Gabe squeezed her eyes shut. "He’s a reason I’ve got to go. Look at him--look at what those scum did to him. Everyday I look at him and remember how he used to be."

  Tears fell from Susan’s eyes. "I’ll go, too, then."

  It was on the tip of Gabe’s tongue to tell Susan she was too young or just a "girl" or to say to her one of the trite things people had said to her when she announced her decision to go after Tanner’s gang. "You aren’t a good enough shot," Gabe said bluntly and truthfully. "I don’t intend to get very close, so I’ll have to be sure to be accurate."

  "I could practice."

  "Not in Boston--and that’s where you need to be!" Gabe hugged the girl as the stagecoach driver called out that it was time to board.

  "Are you going to be all right?" Susan asked, a worried frown marring her face.

  "I’ll be fine."

  "Forget about Tanner," Susan said again. "If something happened to you..."

  "You’re saying we should let him go? After what he did?"

  Susan nodded, her tears falling harder. "You’re right. But be careful!"

  "I will. You, too."

  Gabe watched until the stage disappeared in the horizon. She felt as if she’d been walking through molasses ever since.

  Jess sat in the kitchen after dinner as she cleaned up the dishes. Chad had already gone to his room to write a letter to Susan.

  "Is anything wrong?" he asked. "You’ve been very quiet tonight."

  "I guess I’m sad that Susan left." She dried the pan she had cooked the home fries in and put it away.

  "You and Chad both," Jess added.

  "Yes." She wiped down the sink and spread out the washrag on the drain board.

  "Having her here must have stirred up a lot of old memories."

  She faced him. "They were never far away."

  "Susan’s moving on with her life," Jess said, his voice firm. "So is her mother. It’s time for you to do the same."

  They weren’t there. She wanted to shout the words to him. They didn’t stand by and watch as Tanner killed their family. Her breath started coming faster and faster.

  "Forget about Tanner, Gabe. Live your life."

  "I can’t!" She hit the table then sat across from him. "Why this constant harping for me to forget Tanner? Why does any talk, any mention of him, make you so jumpy?"

  He leaned back in the chair, his face pale.

  "What happened between you two, Jess? You said you’d encountered him in the past."

  "It’s nothing to do with you, Gabe."

  "Don’t shut me out! Tell me. Did you find out that he’s faster than you are, is that it? Maybe you’re the one who’s afraid of him?"

  "Damn it, woman! When will you get it through your head. This isn’t about me. It’s about you. You’re no match for him."

  "You hung up your guns, Jess, before we met in Bisbee. You were a big, scary gunfighter, then you stopped. You never told me why. It had something to do with Tanner, didn’t it?"

  "No! Not at all."

  "Oh? What was it, then? Did you lose your nerve?"

  He stood so fast the chair toppled over. "Watch out, Gabe. You’re getting into territory you know nothing about."

  "I don’t know because you won’t tell me!"

  "I’ve told you enough."

  "You told me nothing. It’s got to be Tanner. That’s why whenever you hear his name you get spooked. You’re afraid of him."

  He looked angrier with her than she’d ever seen him. Somehow, he held his fury in check and righted his chair. He sat down, facing her. "It’s not Tanner. I wish it was. That would be easier--" He stopped, his eyes haunted.

  "Tell me."

  He tightened his jaw. "It was about a child. A little boy in Mesa Verde. A child who died because of me."

  She stared at him, scarcely able to believe his words.

  "It’s all of a piece, Gabe. The killing. The waste. It’s all--" He drew in his breath. "About three years ago I was given a job to do. To protect a cattle rancher. He claimed there were four rustlers after his herd, and that when he tried to stop them, he ended up killing one of them. The other three vowed revenge against him. I was to be his protection.

  "Sure enough, the rustlers came after him one night, and I killed two. There was only one left. The rancher, me, and everyone else on the ranch assumed he’d run far and fast. I took the money the rancher gave me and went into town to celebrate. There, I learned the truth. The so-called rustlers had been a family of four brothers who had owned a small ranch near that of the cattleman I was hired to protect. The brothers had a few head of cattle. The cattleman stole their water, stampeded their herd, and did everything he could to destroy them. The first brother who was killed had been trying to get back the cattle that had been lost to them in the stampede, those that belonged to them as could be seen by the brand they were wearing. He was culling his own cattle away from the cattleman’s herd, and trying to drive them back to his own land when he was killed."

  "My God," Gabe cried.

  "Now, I have to tell you, I knew better than to believe the kind of men who’d hire a gunman. I knew they weren’t the cream of society, and for the most part were nothing but lying bastards themselves. But the ones on the opposite side were just as bad. This time, though, I had allowed my gun to be used against a family who sought revenge for the murder of their brother, and I had killed two of them."

  "You were hired to protect, and you did," Gabe said, trying to defend him even against himself. "The brothers didn’t have to take revenge on their own. It was their choice. Just like I’m making my choice."

  His eyes had turned dull, his face drawn. "It gets worse," he whispered.

  She bowed her head, afraid to heard what she sensed was coming.

  "In town," he continued, "when I heard this story it made me sick, disgusted with mankind and everything about it. I decided to leave. I walked out of the saloon onto an old warped boardwalk. Mesa Verde’s just a small town. It makes Jackson City look like a thriving metropolis. I remember how quiet the streets were. On the opposite side of the street, a young woman was looking in the window at the mercantile. With her were two little kids--they must have been hers because they both had her butter-yellow hair. One was a little girl, and she carried a baby doll wrapped in a blanket. The other was a little boy. He had a wooden pistol and he was running around his mama shouting ‘Bang, bang.’ The first time I heard him, I jumped half out of my skin and reached for my gun. Then I saw that it was just a kid and relaxed my guard.

  "Maybe that’s why what happened, happened. I’ll never know."

  Gabe held her breath, waiting.

  "My horse was hitched
to the post in front of the saloon. When the little boy saw me step onto the street toward the horse, I became his target. He ran into the street, yelling ‘bang,’ much to the dismay of his mother, who began shouting for him to stop. I saw a movement from the corner of my eye, and coming around the corner, behind the mercantile, was the last surviving brother. He raised his gun, pointing it at me. I shouted for the boy to get back, but it was too late. The bullet hit him." McLowry shut his eyes, as if trying to stop the vision before him. "I fired back at the brother, emptying my gun into him. The little boy died there on the street, his mother screaming as she held him. The bullet he took...it was meant for me. It would have gotten me if he hadn’t run in front of it." He shuddered. "It’s my fault he died, Gabe. I should have been the one to die, not that child."

  His anguish chilled her to the center of her being.

  "The little girl stood alone, watching her mother. I went up to her and put the money I’d been given by the cattleman into the blanket and then wrapped it up again around her doll. I told her to take good care of it, and then to give it to her mother the next day. She nodded. I can only hope she understood."

  "I’m so sorry," Gabe cried.

  "Then I rode back out to the cattleman’s home. I killed him. After that, I just gave up. I didn’t want anything to do with anyone, or anything. I wanted to die--I waited for it. I drank, I drifted, I played cards now and then to get enough money to buy more liquor. As far as I was concerned, the sooner this life ended the better." He met her gaze. "Until I decided to take a mountain pass around the town of Bisbee to avoid a hanging, and everything changed."

  "Oh, Jess," she whispered. She stood and wrapped her arms around him as he sat. "I didn’t know." She kissed his hair, his forehead. "I didn’t know, Jess."

  He drew her closer, kissing her stomach, her breasts. "I want you, woman, here beside me on this ranch. As my wife, the mother of my children. Choose life, Gabe, and forget about this revenge. The toll is too high."

  She couldn’t speak. She shut her eyes, allowing herself only to feel the things he was doing to her body, only to think about the love she felt for him, of the way they needed each other. But warring with her determination, in the deepest recesses of her mind, thoughts of Will Tanner lurked like a cancer, evil and malignant, a constant reminder of the need for revenge, and of her guilt.

  She swayed from the force of the battle raging within her. He stood and pulled her closer to him. She put her arms around his neck, her kisses desperate. As he picked her up and carried her to her bed, then lay down beside her, she prayed for a way to believe that staying on the ranch with Jess and Chad would be all right, and that justice--for Pa, Henry, Roy Flint and all the others--just didn’t matter.

  o0o

  Gabe barely slept at all that night for thinking about Tanner and Murdock in Tombstone and whether she should try to find them and to have justice, or to give up and live her life as if nothing had happened. The next night, she faced the same torment, and again the night after that. During the days, she stopped eating. The fourth morning, she arose from another night of agony and vomited a watery bile. Each day found her weaker and more tired.

  Jess was worried about her. He asked time and again what was wrong, but she always made the same reply, "Nothing." He looked skeptical, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Tanner and Murdock in Tombstone. She knew what his reaction would be, and she couldn’t face another argument.

  Even Chad noticed something was wrong, although he was lost in missing Susan, and feeling foolish for doing so. He was twenty-two, after all--and confined to a wheelchair--and she was only sixteen.

  Gabe saw how bothered he was and one afternoon, as she baked bread and Chad sharpened her kitchen knives and scissors, she said, "Sixteen can be plenty mature."

  "What brought that on?" he asked with a frown.

  "You did. By the look on your face," she replied. "I think Susan knows exactly what she’s all about. You have two years to figure it out."

  He slid the knife against the whetstone. "So you regard this as my problem and not hers?"

  "I regard you as the more unsettled of the two, yes," she admitted.

  "Unsettled? How much more settled can I be than here in this damned chair! I know exactly where I’ll be in two years--going from the house to the stable or the barn." He put down the stone. "It’s not enough for me, Gabe. How can Susan imagine it would ever be enough for her?"

  She remembered how, when they were young, Henry was the one who had planned to own a ranch someday. He loved ranch life and loved cattle herding. He also loved Louisa Zilpher and had from the time he was twelve years old and she was nine and hit him in the face with a dish of ice cream.

  Chad was quite the opposite. He had wanderlust. He wanted to see the world, to go to school and to make something of himself. A whiz at his schoolwork, he once wrote an article about the need for a more active school board that was published in the Jackson City Star--which came out every two weeks, give or take a few days. Everyone had assumed Chad would go far. And now, he couldn’t even go from the ranch into town without help.

  Confined the way he was because of his legs, and yet with his head and his heart as adventurous as they’d always been, had to be torture for him.

  "You’ll come up with the answer, Chad. I have faith that you will. You’ll come up with what’s right for you and Susan both--whatever it is. Just be sure you give it lots of thought, and lots of time."

  He pondered her words a moment, then nodded. He picked up the whetstone and another knife, and began to sharpen it.

  Her gaze settled on Chad, sitting in the kitchen with her sharpening knives instead of being out on the ranch with Jess, riding Thunder, and enjoying his life and the wonderful possibilities ahead. As she watched him, her heart hardened further against Tanner and his ilk, and she knew sleep wouldn’t come to her again that night.

  o0o

  Two days later, Jess rode out to the back pasture to move the cattle. Gabe stood on the porch and watched him go. He’d be gone all day. If she wanted to, she could leave now for Tombstone and would have a ten or twelve-hour start before he learned she’d gone.

  If she wanted to...

  She didn’t want to. To leave Jess, Chad, her ranch...that was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

  Her head had a strange buzzing sound she couldn’t shake. Last night, exhausted though she was, again she could only sleep a couple of hours. She had gone into the barn to join Jess in his cot--he had told her many times such skulking around was silly, that they should just marry or explain to Chad what was going on, but she wasn’t ready to do either. After he fell asleep, she got up and stared at the stars. At dawn, she went back to the house and her own bed.

  During those awake hours, she worried over whether she had waited too long and Tanner and Murdock had left Tombstone. She imagined that she went there only to discover they had disappeared once again...that they were lost to her once again.

  And that they had killed once again.

  Another girl’s father, like Roy Flint or Pa.

  Or a young man, like Henry.

  Or a gunfighter, like Jess.

  That morning when she got up, she vomited again. It was worse this time, and left her even more weakened. She could see Jess’s worried frown as he watched her. He offered to take her to the doctor, and thought that perhaps he shouldn’t leave her that day.

  She almost told him, then, about Tanner and Murdock being in Tombstone, and about all that torment she was feeling. But in the end, she merely sent him on his way.

  She didn’t need a doctor, she needed to be able to rest, to stop seeing Will Tanner’s face every time she closed her eyes...or every time she looked at Chad in his wheelchair, or at the flappy-tongued saguaro where Henry had played, or at the rock cistern her pa had built. There was only one way she could ever find peace.

  She blinked hard, trying to stop the ringing in her ears, the light-headedness that dogged her
from the time she’d heard the stagecoach driver say Tanner was in Tombstone.

  Waiting for her...

  Swaying slightly, she went into the kitchen and got day-old biscuits, jerky and dried apples and put them in her saddlebags. She loaded her pockets with cartridges and picked up her rifle. Before leaving the house she wrote a note to Jess and Chad. There was no harm in it, she decided. She would have a ten-plus hour start. By the time anyone caught up with her, one of three things would have happened--the men she sought had already left Tombstone, she had killed them, or she was dead.

  Chapter 27

  Rumor had it that the famous actress, Lotta Crabtree, would make a surprise appearance at Tombstone’s Bird Cage Theater in about two hours. Men and women from all over the territory were in town to see her, despite the theater management’s insistence she wasn’t coming.

  Gabe couldn’t care less if Miss Crabtree showed up or not. Will Tanner was the one she hoped to see. Like one sleepwalking, she wandered through the crowd searching for him or Luke Murdock. On the ride to town, she didn’t allow herself to rest, or think, or feel. Especially not feel. Because she knew what it would mean when Jess discovered she’d gone. She could only pray that once her revenge was complete, once she had finished what she needed to do, that he would find it in his heart to forgive her.

  A thick, boisterous crowd milled around the Bird Cage Theater. Hopefully, someone would be gossiping about Tanner and give her some idea where to find him. Gabe squeezed between two men, and one of them shoved a whiskey bottle in her face. "Want to join me, little lady?"

  She jerked out of his reach, and stumbled over a woman with a long turkey feather in her hat. "Get off my foot!" the woman shrieked, giving Gabe a push into an old cowboy who was so drunk he didn’t even notice.

  A loud roar went up and all eyes turned toward the west end of the street as a dark-haired woman wearing an emerald green satin dress appeared. The woman stopped, terrified, and clutched the arm of the man who escorted her.

  "You sow-kissin’ mule heads!" An old, wrinkle-faced man’s voice cut through the crowd. "That ain’t Lotta Crabtree. That’s the new hotelman’s wife."