Dance With A Gunfighter
by JoMarie Lodge
Copyright 2012 by JoMarie Lodge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.
This is a work of fiction. Any referenced to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
Chapter 1
Jackson City, Arizona Territory, 1876
Disappointment rolled over her like dark thunderclouds, but sixteen-year old Gabriella Devere refused to acknowledge it. The same stiff smile that had been fixed to her sun-bronzed face throughout the music playing remained, even as she stood alone at the edge of the outdoor dance area and watched Johnny Anderson, the handsomest boy in school, kick up his heels with Molly Pritchard.
Gabe squeezed her arms tight against her waist and thrust out her bottom lip.
Johnny Anderson was nothing but a scrawny turkey, and she didn’t give a darn who he danced with. Yet she couldn’t tear her gaze from him, and every skip he took vibrated in the pit of her stomach.
Two weeks and five hours ago she had begun to count the minutes until this dance. She had returned home from riding her gray, Maggie, and was walking her into the stables, just as she’d done day after day, year after year.
She had been looking back at Maggie, pulling the mare’s head around, and giving her a tug as she’d reached out blindly to open the stable door, only to find that it had been opened for her. Standing inside, smiling at her, was Johnny Anderson. He was tall and thin with light brown hair. The sleeves of his shirt seemed to have too much material in width and too little in length because skinny brown arms jutted out from the ends of the cuff.
"Hi, there," he said.
Her eyebrows popped up high in surprise, and her heart fluttered strangely. His eyes had a sparkle to them, and his teeth, she noticed when he smiled, were pearly white. "Nice mare, you got," he added. She felt herself go hot and cold, and her tongue seemed to choose that very moment to attach itself securely to the roof of her mouth.
"I’m all set, Johnny!" Her brother Chad barreled out of the stable leading his gelding. Chad’s hair was black, his skin tanned a golden hue. Gabe knew the older girls whispered about his being handsome. She couldn’t see it. Especially not when he stood beside Johnny Anderson. "Gabe, get out of the way!"
She stepped back. "Where’re you going?"
"Quail-hunting." They mounted their horses and started toward the road. "Be back at dinner."
"Can I come?" She chased after them, unsure where she found the boldness to ask to go anywhere with Johnny Anderson.
Her brother laughed and waved her off as he broke into a canter. Johnny smiled and shrugged. She watched until the two boys disappeared at the bend in the road.
Her breath was short, her head giddy, all because of Johnny Anderson’s smile.
Now, she stood at a section of the dusty street just past the church where the edge of the town met the desert had been roped off for the dance. Tables filled with canned peach and custard pies, prickly pear candy, plum preserves, molasses and sugar cookies, lemon punch, and apple cider were set up along one edge, and near them, on a raised platform, four fiddlers played. Paper lanterns ringed the area, casting a warm, festive glow into the summer night.
Gabe was certain Johnny would ask her to dance soon. The excitement, the anticipation that had seized her when she awoke that morning continued to course through her. Finally, Jackson City was holding a dance she had looked forward to instead of wanting to avoid. Finally, she would have a chance to talk to, and dance with, Johnny Anderson.
o0o
Jess McLowry pushed open the slatted wooden half-doors of the Red Lizard. He needed a bottle of Jim Beam, a high-stakes game of five-card stud, and an accommodating woman. Eventually he might eat, but he was a man who kept his priorities straight.
A plank oak bar stretched along one wall, gleaming like a snake caught in a hailstorm. A white-haired, ruddy-faced prospector stood at one end, his clothes baggy and his skin powdered with rock dust. Shaky hands gripped a shot glass, and the old codger seemed to be concentrating hard to aim it at his mouth. Behind the bar, over rows of liquor bottles and beer kegs, a gilt-framed portrait of a bare-assed woman smiled onto the room. She was the liveliest thing in it.
Wooden tables with empty chairs filled the space between the bar and the opposite wall. No hurdie-gurdie music. No cards. No women. Not even a raucous crew of drunken cowhands.
The barkeep, a balding man with reddened skin and a bulbous stomach squared his shoulders and nodded a quick, cautious greeting. His gaze darted from McLowry’s tied down holster, to his black satin vest, to his butter smooth black walking boots.
McLowry moved with a deceptively slow and easy stride. He plunked a gold dollar on the bar. Hard blue eyes scanned the liquor bottles. There wasn’t a label in sight. "Whiskey." He watched as it was poured. The moonshine was raw and harsh, but he drank it down fast, needing to wash away the sour taste of his last job. He was a hired gun. He had learned one thing long ago about his kind of work, the men hiring him were every bit as bad as the ones he was paid to fight against. The only difference was that they were rich bastards instead of poor ones.
The barkeep wiped down the bar over and over with a blue-checkered cloth, not that it was wet or dirty, but as a means to give him something to do while keeping an eye on McLowry.
"This place looks like a morgue." McLowry pushed his empty glass forward.
"Town dance down the street. Regular customers are all there." Tossing the cloth over his shoulder, the barkeep poured another drink. "This isn’t the kind of town you’d be interested in anyway, gunfighter. You might think about moving on." He stepped back quickly, as if ready to duck if the man before him took offense at the suggestion.
Instead, McLowry ignored him. He took a sip, then put one elbow on the bar, easing against it as he scoured the place. The old man hunched over the bar nodded at him, then picked up his drink, one-handed this time. The hand shook and some rye sloshed onto his fingers. From the shadows, a dance-hall woman slowly strolled toward McLowry, swinging her hips. She stopped a little ways from him, answering his bored gaze with a feigned smile.
Her face was heavily powdered, her eyelids covered with kohl, and the thick orange cream on her lips had smeared and run down along the corners of her mouth, giving her the appearance of a sad-faced clown.
&nb
sp; McLowry pushed aside his drink and slapped more money on the bar. Holding the barkeep’s eye, he pointed at the rye bottle then the old man. As the barkeep nodded, McLowry cleared out of there. He’d come to town for action, not a wake.
With his thumbs hooked on the heavy cartridge belt that held the greased open holster the barkeep had found so fascinating, he surveyed Main Street from one end to the other. The town was smaller than most. General store. Barber. Tobacconist. Saddle shop. Tin shop. Livery stable. Hotel. But there wasn’t another saloon in sight. What kind of shit hole town was this, anyway? The only commotion along the entire street was at the far end, near the church.
A town dance. They were too damn sissified for him. Still, he was sick of doing nothing but counting stars at night. His empty hotel room was uninviting, its smell musty and dank from stale sex and rotgut liquor of patrons past. Maybe at the dance he would get lucky and find a woman wise enough not to take him to heart when he whispered the sort of words women liked to hear. Right now, he didn’t care if she looked like a schoolmarm, as long as she was warm and willing.
He spun the cylinder of a snub-nosed Remington single-action pistol to make sure it was fully loaded, then tucked it into the small, flat shoulder holster he wore hidden under his black satin vest. He might be asked to check his six-shooter at the dance, but that didn’t mean he would let himself go unarmed.
His boot heels made a hollow sound on the empty boardwalk as he turned down the street, toward the dance.
o0o
From the time Gabe had sprung out of bed early that morning she had done her best to hide her excitement from her father and brothers. Chad was seventeen, and Henry was already nineteen. Being the only female in the family wasn’t easy, and with two older brothers who enjoyed nothing quite so much as teasing her, Gabe had learned to do all she could to give them as few chances for ridicule as possible.
She had been cool as a night breeze in the desert as she fired up the cookstove, ground some coffee, and then fried eggs, sausage and cornmeal mush to have hot on the table when the men came in from tending to the horses and milking the cows. As soon as she finished cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast, she ran into her small back bedroom and changed to the new dress she’d worked on from the time she decided to attend the dance. Her pa knew what she was up to, but so far she had managed to keep the dress a secret from her prying older brothers.
The house had four rooms--a kitchen, a bedroom for Pa, one shared by Chad and Henry, and a tiny room, scarcely bigger than a closet, for her. Long ago her pa had planned to add a parlor and maybe even a dining room, but after her ma had died, his heart went out of the idea. Instead, he focused his attention away from homey things, and put all his energy into running the ranch and growing his stock each year. Household chores were left to Gabe.
As had happened each of the past two years since Jackson City was founded, the celebration would start with the mayor and councilmen giving speeches, followed by games, a picnic supper, and finally, the town dance. Gabe would need to somehow keep her dress nice for the dance throughout the long, hot afternoon. Normally, she didn’t much care how she looked, and would join in on the fun and games. Last year, she had surprised everyone--including herself--by winning the long rifle shooting competition. This year, though, she decided not to enter. She had better things on her mind than shooting cow pies.
The day was already warm and the buckboard loaded with the supper basket when time came to leave the ranch for the five-mile ride to Jackson City. She knew her pa and brothers were waiting for her. Usually, she was the first one ready to go. Usually, she wore denim trousers and a chambray shirt. But then, other girls wore dresses--especially to dances--so why shouldn’t she?
When she awkwardly stepped out of the house onto the front porch wearing her new yellow dress, thin-soled brown leather shoes, and with a yellow ribbon in her hair, her brothers gawked at her in silence. That was a real bad sign. As she suspected, when they got over being speechless, they pointed and catcalled, and Chad laughed so hard he tumbled right off the buckboard. Her cheeks flushed red and she gave serious thought to running inside and hiding under the bed when she heard her pa shout, "Stop it, you two!"
Then he climbed down off the buckboard, and walked to the bottom step of the porch. He looked at her a long moment and then held out his hand. The proud beam in his eyes made her throat tighten. "My baby’s growing into a beautiful young lady," he said softly. "Just like your ma was."
She smiled, and clutched his hand tight as he led her to the buckboard. Her brothers simply gaped from her to their pa. She was sure they were trying to decide which was the more addled.
Her pa hied the horses and they were off. The anticipation that had crackled through her and filled the morning air swelled even more. She felt like a cat whose back had been rubbed over and over with velvet until the fur stood on end. Tonight something special was going to happen, she just knew it. Something new and exciting. Something like--if she was very, very lucky--Johnny Anderson asking her to dance.
Her father had been the first to comment on her grown-up looks, and she had been touched and even a little overwhelmed by his compliment. Her heart had filled with love, as it always did, for the hard-working man who had been both father and mother to her almost as long as she could remember, and who always knew the right word to say.
Her pa’s words and a sense of expectation stayed with her throughout the afternoon ceremonies dedicating Jackson City’s new town hall and through the games and picnic afterward. She could hardly wait for the dance, for Johnny Anderson to take notice of her. Her tumult over what was to come grew into a full-fledged uproar as the day wore on.
Until the day of Johnny’s smile, no boy had ever bothered to take notice of her unless his horse was ailing. The whole town knew she had the touch with horses and often came to her for help. She hadn’t cared if the boys were mindful of her or not. That is, not until Johnny noticed her that day.
Would Preacher Carson be angry if he were to learn she’d prayed to dance with Johnny Anderson? How could emotions like Johnny stirred in her be sinful when they felt so divine?
But now, as she stood alone at the dance, she wondered if such passions had been wicked, because she surely was facing retribution. So far, Johnny hadn’t even glanced her way.
Even worse, her pa had been the only person to ask her to dance. Dancing with one of her brothers, Henry or Chad, was the only thing that would have been more humiliating. Her worst enemy in school, Louisa Zilpher, must have been as pleased by this embarrassment as a donkey with a bucket of fresh oats.
Not that she cared a hoot what a prissy fluff like Louisa Zilpher thought anyway.
The music ended and Johnny Anderson gripped Molly Pritchard’s elbow as he escorted her back to her mother’s side. He was such a gentleman! He spun on the heel of his polished boots, surprisingly free of dust despite whirling about on the dirt dance floor. Even dust knew better than to grime up Johnny Anderson.
To her astonishment, he started walking toward her.
She felt her breath rush into her lungs, but it didn’t come back out again. Her heart hammered against her ribs and she leapfrogged between blushing and shivering with each approaching step he took.
He was so close she could almost see the chip on his otherwise perfect front teeth. She was sure she would keel over in a dead faint. All the witty words and gentile mannerisms she had planned for their meeting flew from her head. What should she do? What should she say?
"Hiya," he said, and continued right past her to the refreshment tables behind her. There, two girls rushed to his side.
Her breath came out all at once. The crowded dance floor shimmered and blurred. When it cleared, she saw Molly Pritchard staring at her. Then Molly’s whole body began to shake with laughter.
Gabe’s cheeks blazed. She turned around and ran from the dance before Molly or anyone else saw the tears that fell.
o0o
Near the dance, lit by la
nterns, a proud banner stretched across the dust of Main Street, from the peaked roof of the tobacconist to the false-front roof of the dry goods store. "Jackson City, Arizona Territory, September 5, 1876."
McLowry gave a snort of ridicule. He’d seen a number of two-bit towns come and go in this barren wilderness. Mostly go. The foolish optimism of men never ceased to amaze him.
As he neared the dance, he noticed some movement near the livery stable. He eased from the moonlight into the darkness of a doorway, his palm against the ivory handle of his six-shooter.
The silhouette of a dress came into view. A woman, out here alone. She stood at the entrance to the stables. He mused as to whether she had come out here to meet someone. Stables made great trysting places. He had known a few rolls in the hay himself. Or maybe the woman was just hoping a stranger might come along....
Gabe stood outside the stable door. She wasn’t hiding from the revelers at the dance. Not at all. She was simply anxious to go home. The dance had bored her, that was all. No big surprise, there. The past two weeks she had been fooling herself with childish high hopes and bewildering anticipation about tonight. Hah! She would know better next time--if there’d ever be a next time. Her pa and brothers would show up here at the family’s buckboard eventually, and she could go back to the ranch where she belonged. At least her pa’s horses wouldn’t laugh at her, even though everyone else seemed to.
Absent-mindedly, she reached for the pocket where she always carried a few oats for the horses at the ranch, but stopped herself when she felt the thin, cotton material of her dress. When she wore trousers, shirts and vests like her brothers, she could carry all the things she needed. She despised this dress and she hated herself for bothering to get gussied up like one of those town girls with all their lady-like airs. She felt like a roadrunner sporting eagle feathers.
Tears stung her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. The thought of how she had run, crying, from the dance made her mad enough to spit. She would never demean herself that way again. Never!
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