"There's a rig that swivels on the belt so you never have to clear leather at all. Only a coward resorts to such."
Fancy saw a change had come over Ford—his movements had altered, legs slightly bent, arms loose, hands poised in perfect control. A power that hadn't been evident a moment before emanated from the man; he was lighter, freer, and infinitely more dangerous.
"Take the gun in your hand, Fancy. Treat it with respect. A gun is as good or bad as the one who holds it—just a tool, like a scythe or hoe or hammer. A gun wasn't meant for killing people; it was meant for hunting game to feed a family...or killing rattlesnakes to keep your loved ones safe." He moved his body toward the target, not facing it head-on, but turned a little to the left.
"You stand your ground, like you were part of the earth. There's a sight on the end of the barrel so you can line up with the target... after a while you'll just remember to point the barrel like it was your finger." Ford raised the heavy pistol as he spoke.
"You pull back the hammer with your thumb as you draw, Fancy, then all that's left to do is pull the trigger." He showed her it was the first pad of her finger that was to work the trigger action.
"All one motion, Fancy. Grip, cock, raise, aim, fire. All one swift simplicity." He said it as if it were easy to accomplish.
"You move like the gun is part of you, Ford," she said, awestruck.
The dark eyes raised slowly to her face—were they filled with bitterness, or endurance? The unreadable expression unnerved her so she had to look away.
Fancy tried to emulate Ford's easy stance. She closed her hand on the pistol grip and was surprised to feel how agreeable' its solidity seemed; the gun was heavy, yet it nestled comfortably in her hand. She felt Ford move behind her, to help lift her arm to the proper position.
"Men's arms are stronger, Fancy. This pistol weighs near five pounds." She wondered for a fleeting moment if he would put his other arm around her, taking liberties, as most men longed to do. But he simply steadied her grip and then moved away to let her fire. When she did, the shock wave traveled up her arm and the muzzle rolled skyward.
"Hold the pistol looser in your hand, to give the butt ease to roll back a little, when you fire. If you take the recoil in the palm, it protects your arm."
Fancy raised the pistol a second time. She held it looser and it rolled back smoothly; she hit the last can cleanly.
"That's fine, Fancy, that's just the way." His husky voice was strangely gentle. I wonder what he's like to make love to, she thought fleetingly, there was such strength and tenderness in the man.
Fancy let the pistol hand fall to her side, grateful for the praise, and turned to look at her teacher, but he was staring out over the meadow to the mountains beyond, his gaze on something Fancy could not see.
She raised the muzzle of the gun and, aiming carefully, fired again and again and again. She had the oddest sense that this was something she was going to be very good at.
"How does a man learn to be a gunfighter?" Fancy asked Ford, after watching him execute a Border Shift for her, cross-tossing the guns in the air and catching them effortlessly. He'd been in the Gulch over a month now and she'd grown fond of him.
"You can't learn it, Fancy. You just get born with the gift and Fate does the rest."
Fancy took her target stance, raised her Colt, and fired; she'd grown more than proficient under his tutelage, and easily shattered the empty bottle twenty-five yards away. Ford didn't smile exactly, but she could see he was pleased with her progress.
Fancy released the cylinder latch and pushed out each spent cartridge from the chamber with the ejector rod, carefully hoarding the spent brass casings so they could be reloaded with powder and lead later. She handled the weapon competently now, confidently; she liked the feel of it in her hand. She glanced up at the shootist as she pulled new cartridges from her belt and inserted them expertly into the empty chambers.
"How did you and Jewel get to know each other, Ford?"
"We were kids together once... on a wagon train, about a thousand years ago. Known each other 'most all our lives, I guess."
"You more than know each other—you're like a matched set of tinderboxes when you're together. Sparks fly—everybody notices them." She smiled to see that he was already setting up another set of targets—this time, considerably farther away. She had a hunch he enjoyed the time he spent teaching her.
Ford shrugged, his dark eyes fastened on the ground. "Julia and I share history, Fancy. We've come a long way together."
"Why can't you stay with her, then? So you can both be happy." Fancy took aim and fired, making the tins jump as she hit them neatly; she wanted, needed, to earn his respect with her shooting.
When he spoke again, she sensed he wanted to tell her something of consequence. "Sometimes you think you can stay. People say love loosens its ties with time but that's not true, Fancy, the bonds grow tighter with the years. The history you share only binds you closer.
"Trouble is, if you settle in, you lose the edge. Happiness does that. It tames you." He turned toward her and fastened Fancy with his eyes to make sure she understood. "It's the edge that keeps you alive."
"I'm so sorry, Ford." Her voice was full of caring.
"Don't fret for Jewel and me, Fancy. We have more than some." He actually smiled when he said it.
"I'd like to teach you something you might need to know one day," he said suddenly, as if he'd made an important decision. "Take my guns from me."
He withdrew both Colts from their leather and grasped them by the barrel, as if to surrender them. Fancy reached out to take the pistols from the man, but in a gesture so swift it seemed a blur, the guns were whisked from her startled grasp, twirled magically around in Ford's hands and she found herself staring down the business end of both six-shooters.
"God Almighty, Ford! How'd you do that?"
He grinned at her surprise; it rendered his face boyish.
"They call that the Roadagent's Spin, Fancy. It's a real good trick to know if you're ever in a tight spot." So he is having a good time teaching me, she told herself with satisfaction. I knew it.
Ford performed the trick again, and this time she saw that his trigger finger remained locked inside the trigger guard like an axle, so he could spin the gun around completely, grasping the grip in his palm as it twirled into firing position.
Fancy laughed gleefully. What a shock that maneuver would be to an assailant who tried to disarm you. It was just the kind of self-protective knowledge that was truly valuable.
"Show me again. Slowly this time, if you please, professor."
Ford did so indulgently, for Fancy was a talented pupil; she could imitate nearly anything she saw. She tried again and again until she'd gained a semblance of proficiency; he knew that until she perfected the difficult maneuver she'd keep on practicing; he liked that trait in her.
Fancy beamed at her friend with unfeigned admiration. "You are absolutely astonishing, Ford. It's hard to believe anyone could ever shade you with a gun."
Jameson never answered her, just slipped the revolvers soundlessly back into their holsters and walked away on the pretext of setting up another target; but Fancy knew in her heart that his thoughts had slipped away again to the dark, unapproachable place where he really lived.
I'm going to learn the Roadagent's Spin, she told herself with conviction, if I have to get up two hours early every morning from now on to do it. Just so I can make him proud of me.
Fancy tried to concentrate on the script, but the words kept fading into reverie. She was lonely, and all because Chance hadn't come to call as she'd expected he would. It had given her time to brood about what she really wanted from him. Even if he did come courting now, she wondered, could it ever be the same as before? She was so different from the girl who had fallen in love on a mountaintop, long ago. Her needs were so voracious now, her sense of her own abilities so strong—could she really live at the whim of any man... even Chance?
She
'd spoken to Ford about her odd turn of mind during their morning practice, sensing he would understand her ambivalence.
"We've been homeless, Fancy, you and I," he said. "Outcasts don't think like other people. We sense danger before it comes— we protect ourselves, or we die. Ambition is part of it. If we're not better at what we do than the others—we're done for." He'd hesitated, then raised his eyes to hers.
"It's harder for a woman, Fancy. You're supposed to let a man take care of you. People like us can't do that."
"Oh, but I wish I could! I wish I could ever just feel... satisfied. Content, like other women seem to be."
Ford smiled at her self-deception. He knew she didn't want to be like the others; truth was, she held most women in contempt.
"You aren't like other women, Fancy. Once you live by your own resourcefulness you can't ever let that competency go. Shouldn't ever. They'll kill you if you do."
"But I could make mistakes if I do it all myself, Ford. All those other women don't have to fear that."
"Nothing for nothing in this world, Fancy. If you never dare anything, you never fail. Could you live a life where you never dared?" She saw there was amusement and kindliness in his stare. There was a graze of bullet scar on his chin, and an unevenness of texture that might have been from a burn or even a pox; the imperfection made the face stronger, more memorable. The long black lashes rested on his cheek when he looked down again; there was something boyish in that, but the permanent furrows between his brows were old and world-weary. If he didn't belong to Jewel... she pushed the heretic thought away.
"Fancy."
"Yes?"
"Worst thing can happen to folks like us is we lose the edge. Get lazy. Or complacent. Or satisfied. They can go from being at your feet to being at your throat real fast, if you lose the edge."
"But I don't want to have to live on the edge forever."
"No choice, Fancy. That's what you give up in return for doing it all your own way."
Fancy sighed at the remembered conversation. Ford was right, of course. But that didn't mean she couldn't try to prove him wrong and get to be content like other women.
The big man wore a canvas raincoat tied up over his horse's flanks, exposing both the Sharps he carried in the saddle scabbard and the Winchester that spanned the blanket roll behind him.
He rode easy for so big a man, easy but wary, as if he searched incessantly under the wide-brimmed Stetson that shaded his darting eyes. Marshal or bounty hunter, the men in Leadville who noticed his arrival, catalogued him mentally as one or the other, even before he took out the tattered poster with Ford's picture on it and showed it around.
Ford had been tracked down often enough before so that what happened next had been well choreographed in advance by those who cared about him. Jewel packed his things wordlessly as Rufus kept the stranger at the bar in earnest conversation. Fancy saddled two horses, stowed Ford's gear and held his mount, while he dropped down from the half-roof over the rear porch to the waiting animal's back.
"Did you do what they want you for?" she asked the man who had become her friend.
"Yes. But not the way they say, or for the reasons they think."
"Will they hang you if they catch you?"
"Never get the chance to hang me, Fancy. It says 'dead or alive' on that poster he's carrying."
Her eyes widened. "You mean that man'll kill you instead of taking you in?"
"Only if he can, Fancy," Ford said, but the hollow sound of running was in his tone, the sound of a man who was, once again, alone.
Chapter 60
"You get any time to see that kid of yours lately or to have any fun?" Jewel closed the ledgers; business was spectacular but Fancy was not.
"What do you mean by that?" Fancy snapped. She'd been performing every night, and by day overseeing the other enterprises, and the strain was beginning to show.
Jewel cocked her head and pushed the last of the ledgers across the table. "I ain't never seen a woman work like you, Fancy. It's all you think about. How much money's coming in, how to invest it, what new business to start next. Between that and your shows at the Crown, you're burning the candle at both ends. Don't you believe in fun anymore?"
Fancy took a deep breath and tried not to be angry, for there was truth in what Jewel said.
"I'm so afraid of being poor, Jewel. I've been without, and I hated every minute—now that I know how to make money, I feel as if I have to tuck away every penny I can, fast as I can, like the devil's on my tail."
Jewel pursed her lips deciding whether or not to argue.
"I think there's more to what's wrong with you than that, kid. I think you're still carrying a torch for Chance McAllister and you damned well better put it out or do something about it, because he is gettin' to be a major fact of life around Leadville." She'd seen the longing in Fancy the night the boys and Ford had come to the Crown, and the disappointment that followed when he didn't return.
"Look, kid, McAllister is going places. Now they've struck it rich, that boy is makin' a name for himself six ways from Sunday. Some little gal is gonna up and grab him, and if you don't want that to happen 'til you get your licks in, I think you'd best get your head out of the sand and start movin'."
Fancy looked at Jewel, all the confusion she felt about Chance clear in her eyes.
"I don't know what to do about him, Jewel. I ran away from him because I was afraid he wouldn't ever have anything—now he's got it all and I still don't know what to do. I can't tell him about Aurora—"
"Why the hell not?"
"Because I don't want him marrying me out of obligation, that's why. You've got to swear to me you'll never tell him. That's my secret and no one else's."
"For God's sake, kid, I won't give him the time of day if you don't want me to, but I think you're a damned fool not to get this straightened out one way or the other. And it's not just your secret, either."
"What do you mean by that?"
"What about Aurora? Don't she have any rights in this? She might like to know who her daddy is one of these days."
"Her daddy's dead. How can I suddenly resurrect him?"
"Damned if I know, honey. I'd just hate to see somebody else snap him up, before you figure whether or not you're through with him. Not that I think he's such a great prize, by the way... I ain't once met a gambler who was a passable husband."
Jewel gathered up the ledgers and rose to go.
"Whatever you decide, kid, have a little fun for yourself. All work and no play makes a woman flat-chested and squinty."
Jewel was right that you only get what you want by going after it. The trouble was, Fancy wanted Chance to be the one to make the first move.
Jewel rode up into the mountains for the express purpose of meddling. It wasn't in the least like her, but Fancy needed help and maybe the McAllisters would know how to give it. Hart was the steadier of the two, she'd start by getting to know him better. Bandana had been her friend a lot of years, and not all of them plump with good fortune; if he liked the McAllisters well enough to be their partner, there had to be substance to them.
She hailed Hart from the distance and eased her palomino to a walk in his direction. He reached out a hand to help her dismount and Jewel, charmed by the courtly gesture, tossed her leg up over the saddle and slid down into waiting arms.
She tilted back her Stetson and Hart noted the straggles of bright orange ringlets, stuck to her skin by sweat from the band. She looked sketchable standing there, easy beside her horse, womanly and full of vigor.
"I come with a business proposition for you, Hart," she said. "I want me that big bold nude to go over the bar at the Crown—just like we talked about years ago. Somethin' real fancy with a curlicue gilt frame that'll be the talk of the Gulch. Fancy says you're the man for it. Are you still game to paint me a masterpiece?"
"Fancy said that?''
"She did and more."
"I'd really like to help you out, Jewel, but Chance and Band
ana'd raise hell at losing their mine manager to portrait painting."
"Bandana owes me more'n one favor and Caz can handle things around here for a week or two. Besides, I've set my heart on this picture and I don't give up easy. I come to tell you I'll do whatever you say, so's we can get it done. If you want me to come up here to pose for it, I'll even do that. Now, I know you're rich and all, so you don't have to do this kind of thing, Hart, but I'm hoping you'll do it out of friendship and a desire to see good art in Leadville."
Hart regarded the woman for a moment, with considerable amusement; the idea of Jewel's body unfurled on a mountain filled with woman-desperate men was almost too much for his funny bone. Of course, most men knew she could outshoot them six times running, but even that might not deter them at the prospect of seeing that body in its natural state. The idea of being near Fancy was seductive as hell, even if he was a damned fool to consider it.
"Tell you what, if you can talk my brother and McBain into giving me a two-week dispensation from this hole in the ground, and you can give me a place to work undisturbed, and you won't hold it against me if it isn't the masterpiece you deserve... I'll give the painting a try for you."
Jewel eyed the huge man with amusement of her own, deciding he had one of the nicest faces she'd ever seen, all strength and amiability.
"I'll answer for Bandana and Chance, Hart. You can work at the Crown and I'll shoot the kneecaps off'n anybody that disturbs you." She paused. "One thing I know about in this life, Hart, it's men. Rich or poor, you'll never do less than your best, is my bet. And with me for your model, how could you go wrong?"
What a pity it was that Fancy had her heart set on the lesser of the two men, Jewel thought, as she hugged Hart on impulse, in farewell.
Hugging Jewel Mack was one of the nicer things could happen to a man, Hart mused as he boosted her into the saddle; then he watched her ride away, wondering what had really prompted her' visit. Could it be that Fancy wanted to renew old friendships after all, but didn't quite know how, any more than he did?
Paint the Wind Page 41