"Not bad," he said. She glanced up at him in surprise and pleasure at his words, and smiled.
The music sped up and so did McLowry. He used to dance schottisches at family picnics and parties at neighboring plantations when he was a little boy. It was a dance for young people and joyous times. He could recall spinning round and round, while tilting back and forth, trying not to get his feet tangled up with his partner’s and trying not to crash into some other couple, yet at the same time laughing so hard it was inevitable something would go amiss. Even as a boy, he was a hell-raiser, and it was a hell-raising dance, which was why he didn’t mind when his mother would make him dance it with a cousin or with his little sis.
With each fancy step and turn he made, this young girl was with him. It had been years since he had danced with such a good partner, one attuned to his steps and, to his surprise, able to keep up with every one of them. Soon, he found himself caught up in her laughter, joining in as they whirled, astonished that his good deed in asking an awkward young girl to dance was actually fun. Fun...he scarcely remembered the meaning of the word. Looking at her face and hearing her laughter brought back those days of his youth when the world was bright and the future full of hope. He let himself remember and pretend, for just the few moments of this dance, that he was home again.
Then the tune ended. He dropped his hands and stepped back, away from her. He thanked her and was ready to escort her from the dance floor when he noticed that the fiddlers had begun a waltz and that the other couples had, without a break, continued to dance. It seemed the custom here was to continue the set with the same partner.
He looked back at the girl. He could see her uncertainty about what to do next, but he noticed her quick, wistful glance at the other couples, the slight squaring of her narrow shoulders as she waited for him to stop their dance here, in mid-set. He knew that would be an embarrassment to her, but he really hadn’t come here to spend his time dancing with a too-young wisp of a girl.
He touched his string tie. "Well," he said.
She rubbed her palms against her skirt. "Well," she responded.
He couldn’t just abandon her, though. What the hell. Giving an uncomfortable glance at the people around him, he took her in his arms again, holding her far from him. If anyone laughed at him for dancing with this child, that person wouldn’t laugh for long. They began their dance.
Their steps carried them to the edge of the dance area. McLowry felt the warm gaze of the girl. Freshness and purity shone in her, purity untouched by bitterness and disappointment, untouched by the harsh realities of life. Her future would be a happy one with a brood of kids and a loving husband. She smiled shyly, and even in the dim lights he could see the blush on her cheeks as her big, brown eyes peered up at him.
Despite himself, he smiled back.
Once, when he was a boy back in South Carolina, in those long, lazy, warm days before the War came and ended the world he knew, he was playing on a hillside and found a baby fawn that had slipped into a crevice and couldn’t get itself out. He had used a rope to climb down and haul it out of there, but he never forgot how it felt and looked. It was strong and healthy, yet so light and thin he was afraid he would crush it with his bare hands if he weren’t careful. He had wanted to keep the fawn and care for it and protect it, but it was a small, wild thing, and young. He had to let it go.
He felt the same way now. Her waist was so tiny he felt he could span it with his hands. The bodice of her dress was chastely cut, scooping barely below her collarbone, yet he could see the shape of small, high breasts. Her lips were full and he was sure they had never been kissed. She sparkled with fun and feistiness, joy and good humor. The kinds of things he hadn’t known for years. And she looked at him as if he were someone special, someone good, and someone she could trust instead of the way the rest of the world saw him--as a man to be feared and avoided.
They twirled around and around on the edge of the desert, the ground turning bright as they neared a lantern, then dark as they spun away again.
The boys who ignored her in this town had to be simple-minded, he decided. For the first time in his life he thought he wouldn’t mind being a little younger.
They circled away from the lights.
Her hand tightened on his shoulder. As she danced, she inched closer. He could feel her gaze upon him, and tried to ignore its pull, for she was a young girl and innocent, and shouldn’t be looking at a man the way she was doing now. But despite his best intentions, his eyes sought hers. And met. And locked.
She was oddly beautiful--her face; her slim, dancer’s body; her spirit; her fire. All of her, here, now, in his arms. They spun into the darkness.
She stopped dancing.
He waited. He saw the question in her eyes, the curiosity about him and the feelings he aroused in her, and at the same time, the need to bolt like a scared young filly who found herself too close to something she couldn’t control and didn’t yet understand.
But she was a brave one, and curiosity won the day as she leaned even closer, tilting her face upward, mere inches from his. He took a dance step backwards, away from her. She followed, again precisely in tune with his moves, his rhythm. Slowly, they took another step, and another. Their gazes joined and coupled, as the other dancers fell away, and the world was made of music.
"Gabe!"
The girl jumped at the gruff sound, then dropped her hands and backed away from him.
A large, barrel-chested man loomed out of the darkness and glared at him. "I seen you over in Tucson, mister," the man said. "We don’t want your kind around here. ‘Specially not around sixteen-year old girls. Now git out!"
McLowry’s gaze hardened with stirring anger, his body tense, alert and ready. He might have checked his Peacemaker and holster, but in the way of gunfighters, he had a pistol hidden under his vest, and a stiletto in each boot. As he took in the measure of the big man before him, from his heavy-jowled, balding head to thick, work-hardened hands and worn-down boots, he saw that the girl’s father was just a rancher. No match for him.
Normally, he wouldn’t let anyone talk to him, order him, the way this man had, but as he glanced at Gabe, she seemed even younger than sixteen. He didn’t know what strange spell had taken over his reason as they danced, but one thing he did know, if he were her father, he would have shot first and asked questions later.
The hell with it. He had to get up to Phoenix anyway. He had a job waiting for him there.
"Thank you for the dance...Gabriella," he said. He gave a slight bow, and then walked away.
Gabe’s father grabbed her arm and half dragged her through the crowd of gawkers. She turned around, stumbling as her father refused to stop, but she watched as her gunfighter put on his hat, tugged it low on his brow, then tossed his holster over his shoulder and walked into the night.
As she followed her father blindly away from the dance and through the familiar streets, the only sight she saw was a vision of the handsome stranger, and the only music she heard was the sound of her name when he called her "Gabriella."
Chapter 3
Bisbee, Arizona Territory, 1880
Jess McLowry reined in his sorrel at the crest of a high, narrow pass through the stark, rocky Mule Mountains. From the saddle, he peered down on the busy mining town far below. A couple of years ago, Bisbee was no more than a scattering of mining claims in a small, bowl-shaped valley. As word of the copper find spread, hard-working men, heavy equipment and fast-built shanties filled the valley and dotted the hillside like needles on a cactus.
McLowry took off his old, black Stetson and slapped it against his leg to knock away some dust and sweat. The polished gunfighter he had once been was long gone now. His hair reached his shoulders, his beard thick and scraggly, and his clothes worn and faded. Hot, filthy and tired, he wiped his brow with his arm. The time had come to face a town again, to get cleaned up, and make a few dollars at cards, mining or grunt labor. Afterward, he would buy some supplies and drift
once more, avoiding towns and people.
The more he had come to know the solitude of the desert, the more he had learned to appreciate it. He found a kind of naked beauty and a rare, elusive peace in fields of saguaro on yellow seas of sand and gravel, in precarious red rock piles, and in orange sunsets; or in the haunting howl of a lone coyote, in flashes of lightening across the night sky, and in the way the ground sprang to life after a hard summer rain.
There were times the loneliness of it made his chest tight with a strange longing, but for what, he didn’t know. Or didn’t want to know.
He hated it, those times when his own emptiness sought to overwhelm him, to suck him into a deep, black void. All he could do then was to struggle to become one with this land, with its endurance, its harshness, and its indifference. Indifference above all else he welcomed ever since Mesa Verde, ever since the sight that haunted his days and destroyed his nights.
But even drifters needed to stop in rowdy places like Bisbee now and then to seek a glass of solace and companionship. If nothing else, to remember all the reasons they kept drifting.
He nudged his sorrel down the steep trail into the valley, keeping an eye on what lay ahead, while always alert to what was at his back.
At the edge of town, he stopped. The air crackled with tension. Women as well as men milled about the streets.
Cautiously, he inched closer. Ahead stood a gallows, the wood so clean and raw the sap still oozed. He stopped, then led his sorrel away from the town.
If a man deserved it, McLowry had no problem watching him swing, but too many of the hangings he had seen in these mining towns were no more than vigilantes acting on hearsay. Finding out which kind of hanging this one would be held no interest for him.
A parched, hard-packed trail led through the chaparral and shrub-oak dotted hills and circled the town. He would take it, then enter town from the opposite side. Even with avoiding the gallows area, though, seeing that mob and thinking about riding down the main street made his insides tense. He struggled to focus on the comforts he would find in town--a clean bed, a hot bath and smooth whiskey.
Despite his efforts, other memories of towns intruded--memories of being challenged by madmen wanting to build a reputation, of going up against a stranger in a gunfight simply because he had been paid to do it, or of watching a child die.
He lifted the dented tin flask from his saddle, unscrewed the top, and took a long swallow. There wasn’t even two fingers’ worth of whiskey left inside, reason in itself to go to town. Strong rye was the only cure he had found for too many memories...even though it failed him far too often.
On the hillside where he rode the sky was blue and cloudless, the air spiced with sage, squaw bush and the sweet smell of wild flowers. Far below, a black-frocked hangman emerged from the jailhouse. With him, the sheriff and three other men surrounded the prisoner--a hulking man, hatless, with long, brown hair. They took somber, slow steps, as if in a procession, down the dusty main street to an awaiting throng.
McLowry paused a moment, struck at how the beauty and the ugliness of life in this territory were captured together in the view that lay at his feet. Wresting his gaze from the death scene, he concentrated on the rough trail, guiding his horse over the rock-strewn path to the other side of the valley. A slight movement on the hillside caught his attention. Near the edge of a cliff, a small, skinny man wearing a wide-brimmed hat crouched on one knee behind a boulder, his rifle pointed toward the gallows.
The man peered into his gun sight, and then turned his head toward the procession as if checking the distance they would travel to their destination.
McLowry’s anger flared. The rifleman planned to dry-gulch someone in the hanging party--probably the sheriff or a deputy--giving no word of warning and no chance for the victim to fight back. Damn little coward didn’t even stop to think of all the other people in town, innocent people, women and children, and what might happen to them if his bullet went astray. He couldn’t let it happen. Not again.
He slid from his horse and ground-tethered him, then crept silently down the sandy slope. The rifleman’s attention was riveted on the hanging party. McLowry leaped.
He fell on the small man, knocking him face down on the ground and sending the rifle clattering against the rocks. The man tried to slither free. McLowry grabbed his ankle and lunged forward. To land a smashing blow right in this weasel’s yellow-livered face would be infinitely satisfying. Twisting the man around and slamming his back down hard against the ground, McLowry raised his fist.
A woman’s face, not a man’s, glared up at him. He froze, her large brown eyes strangely familiar.
"Who are you?" he demanded, lowering his fist.
The woman blinked, confusion filled her eyes as they leaped from his long hair to his beard, to the drawn, haggard lines of his face. Then her eyes connected with his and the awareness that they had met before struck him with renewed force.
"Go to hell!" She spat out the words and pushed him away. He grabbed her wrists, pinning them to the ground as he loomed over her. He studied her face, her small defiant chin, the unusual short, curly hair.
"Do you know me?" he asked.
He saw her mouth tighten with what? Disappointment?
"I don’t know no interfering mule rats." She spat the words at him.
A distant memory flickered then grew, reaching back to a moonlit night in a grim little desert town, to a saucy-tongued child-woman with an odd, foreign sounding name. A strange name that, remarkably, had stayed with him throughout the ugly days that followed. Throughout the years. And the anguish.
"Gabriella," he whispered.
"Get off me!" She bucked, trying to free herself.
He rolled to the side and sat on the ground. Fuzzy memories of her floated back to him. "I see you still haven’t learned how to be a lady," he said. "But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing."
She slowly sat up, rubbing her head and neck. "I was going to stop that hanging, damn it! What did it look like I was doing?" Suddenly, her face paled. She scrambled to her feet and stumbled toward the edge of the cliff to look down onto the town. "No," she cried. "No!"
McLowry walked to her side. The condemned man dangled from the noose.
She spun toward him, fury lashing her face. "He’s dead! Damn you!" Curling her hand into a fist, she swung her whole arm toward his head.
He caught her wrist in mid-air, only to have her land a hard left hook into his stomach. He jerked forward, but managed to grab hold of her left wrist as well. "Stop it," he ordered.
"You interfering jackass!" she screamed, doing her best to bite, scratch, and kick him. With his booted foot, he swept her legs out from under her while tightening his hold on her wrists to soften her fall. Then he let go of her and stepped back, rubbing the spot where she had tried to bite a chunk out of his arm.
She lay quiet, waging some internal struggle, then sat up. Her head bowed, and her hands covered her face. For a long time, neither spoke.
"Gabe?" he whispered.
"Damnation!" she said finally, in that funny, husky voice she had. "He was mine."
"Instead of cussing, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?" As she stood, he offered his hand to help her.
She brushed it away. "I told you to go to hell!" Not looking at him, she picked up her hat, squeezing the brim while staring down at the gallows once more. Deep shadows lined the underside of her eyes. A haunted desperation filled them.
He waited a moment, then moved beside her. "Before, when a woman’s tried to slug me, I at least knew what I was guilty of."
She folded her arms and said nothing. Her pinched, drawn face watched as the hangman cut the dead man from the rope.
"You said that fellow was yours," McLowry said, trying again for some explanation. "Your what? Boyfriend?"
"Good lord," she yelled. "I didn’t want to save him. I wanted to shoot him."
He grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him instead of the gallows. "The
n why are you so mad? He’d dead. What difference does it make how?"
She glared at him as if ready to make another sharp retort, but no words came. He watched her harsh expression slowly crumble, watched her eyes fill with pain. "It makes..." Her voice broke, losing its anger and suddenly sounding young, young as the girl he met at a desert dance. "It makes all the difference to me," she whispered.
A jolt drove through him as the memory bloomed in full of the girl-woman he had once met. Which little cow town he had been in, he wasn’t sure. But for some reason, the memory of this girl was clear and sharp, made all the more acute by the change in her, the look of sadness and despair that marked her now. She was certainly older, perhaps a bit taller, and maybe even a little shapelier than he remembered, but the change ran deeper still.
"Tell me what’s wrong, Gabe." He let go of her arm and waited.
Her breathing was strained and heavy as she struggled to reign in her emotions.
"Gabe?" He reached out to touch her shoulder.
"No." She shrugged his hand away and stepped back, turning to look down at the dead man again.
She’s still scarcely more than a child trying to act tough, he thought. The idea of this girl pointing her rifle at that man...of how she would have felt if she had shot him...
"I hope I didn’t hurt you," he said softly.
She flinched, but he didn’t know if it was because he had hurt her or due to something else, to whatever it was she wouldn’t tell him about.
"Look at me." He wondered if she would snap and snarl again. Her bottom lip trembled and she bit down on it, as if trying to hide her weakness, to hide the hurt that so obviously filled her.
Something within him clutched and pulled at the sight, something he hadn’t believed was there anymore. She seemed so forlorn, so completely alone. A fleeting memory of the openness and trust she had greeted him with in...Jackson City, was it?...came back again; a memory of the time she took his hand without fear or condemnation for what he was, and of how he had felt when she had done it. He remembered, too, the spirited good will that had seemed to fill her.
Dance With A Gunfighter Page 3