Dance With A Gunfighter

by JoMarie Lodge

  When his hand cupped her breast, she felt as if dynamite had exploded inside her. Her back arched, telling him, with her every pore, every nerve, how much she ached for him.

  Never lifting his mouth from hers, he pulled her down beside him onto the ground, then held her close as they stretched out, his legs intertwined with hers. He began to lift the overblouse Kaiya had given her. She must have pulled back, startled, for suddenly she found herself looking into wide blue eyes. "I wouldn’t hurt you," he whispered.

  She nodded her complete trust in him. As she touched his chest, she felt a tremor course through his body.

  He lifted the blouse off her. Her body was tanned from having bathed in the stream with the Apache women. Her breasts were small and the long necklaces she wore lay between them. She saw his eyes cover her and she wondered what he thought--particularly compared to the white, lush breasts of Clara and so many other women he’d known. She wondered if he found her disappointing, or as ugly as the people in Jackson always implied that she was. She stared at him, waiting.

  A flicker of surprise seemed to touch his eyes, and then she thought he must have looked right inside her head and saw all her doubts and worries because he suddenly whispered to her, "You’re a beautiful woman, Gabe. A very beautiful woman."

  She kissed him hard, as his hands caressed her breasts, her stomach, her ribs. He found the bare skin along the waist of her skirt then his hands skimmed over the many yards of material that covered her hips, her belly, between her thighs.

  Her fingers tugged at his shirt, pulling it from his trousers so that she, too, could feel his flesh.

  His kisses grew to a hungry flame as she ran her hands from his collarbone along his chest, to his waist, his hipbone, and to rest on the soft skin of his abdomen. Knowing the burning pleasure that she felt when he touched her lower, she wondered if she should do the same for him, if she should be so bold--and if she dared.

  Before she had a chance to try it, he wrapped her tight in his arms and held her still, his breathing ragged. "I vowed to see you home safe and sound," he said firmly. "And damn it, we’re going to make it. If I do nothing else right in my life, I’ll do that."

  Then he kissed her gently before reaching for her overblouse and helping her put it back on. She wanted to say stop. If this was safe and pure, she wanted no part of it. But she was feeling too addled and confused by his kisses to do anything but go along with him. She lay back down again, not wanting this moment with him to end.

  "Thoughts of you, Gabe," he whispered, as his hand rested gently against her stomach, "thoughts of you...like this...are what kept me going--kept me from fighting and lashing out. You made me want to live."

  He took her hands and pulled her up to a sitting position, then he cupped her face with both hands and kissed her gently.

  She gripped his wrists. "I love you, Jess," she whispered. She didn’t know where the words came from, or how long ago she first realized the depth of her feelings, but she had to tell him how she felt.

  He stared at her, his expression troubled, and bleak, and yet heartbreakingly soft. He kissed her again, and almost immediately, the fire between them sprang to life again. Drawing back, gazing at her, he seemed at war with himself, as if facing some sweet agony. "We’d better get moving," he said finally, buttoning his shirt, "before it gets too tempting to stay here all day with you."

  o0o

  The sun was directly overhead as they rode, but since they were still on a plateau, it wasn’t as hot as in the desert grasslands. The sky was clear, the wide land dotted with sage and tamarisk, and all around them was emptiness and peace, as if they were the only two people on the earth. McLowry wished it could always be this way. His chest filled as he looked at the strong, courageous woman beside him. How long, he wondered, before the world intruded on him and Gabe? As much as he wished it wouldn’t, experience had taught him otherwise.

  They traveled all day, taking only short rests at watering holes. When the sky turned a fiery red, anticipation of nightfall brought color to their cheeks as they stopped to make camp, a smile to their lips as they gathered dried twigs for a fire, and a tingling down to their very toes as they tore into dried jerky and squash.

  As McLowry watched Gabe sitting at his side, the light of the fire dancing over her features, he remembered the soft, youthful, rounded face of the carefree girl he’d met a few years ago. Now, her face was lean, and her body conditioned. The way she walked, the way she simply moved, showed a graceful strength most women have never known. Just thinking about her body did things to his. She was so special to him, it was almost more than he could bear. He felt he should be old enough and wise enough not to feel this way about a woman, but it seemed this was one area that even age and wisdom couldn’t help.

  The sun set and soon the stars hung near. "Do we head for Dry Springs tomorrow, Jess?" she asked.

  He took long time answering. "Only if I can get you out of there quickly. We’re going back to Jackson."

  "Jackson? There’s nothing there."

  "Your home is there. It’s time you went back to see what you can make of it."

  "I don’t have a home." She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.

  "Your father worked hard for that land. How would he feel if you simply abandoned it?"

  She didn’t answer, but stared at him, shocked and hurt that he still failed to understand. How could she go back there and face the destruction of all she’d ever known? How could she bear to remember the way it used to be? She didn’t want to see it again, ever.

  "I’d say you’re not one to criticize, Jess. You abandoned your land."

  His head jerked up in surprise. His gaze hardened, not wanting to talk about his past. "The Confederacy lost the war, darlin’." His voice was deceptively light. "Losers don’t have a choice in things like that."

  "But you didn’t ever return. You didn’t try to get it back."

  "It’s true. I left the South, and didn’t want to go back." He rubbed his face as thoughts of those days returned. How could he even begin to explain that War to someone like Gabe? Out here, life was hard and could be ruthless, but it was easy to know who the enemy was, and why--whether right or wrong. Here, the "wars" were against the Apaches--fierce men who had a whole different way of life, different gods, a different culture. The War he knew, however, pitted brother against brother, cousin, neighbor; states’ rights against federal; ideas against ideas. And just like a family feud gone out of control, the destruction and the retribution inflicted on the losing side were worse than he could imagine this country ever imposing on any outside enemies. Maybe that was why the bitterness ran so deep.

  "If you wouldn’t mind talking about it, Jess, I wish you’d tell me about that part of your life."

  He lay back with his hands clasped beneath his head, and looked up at the sky as he slowly began the story he needed to tell so that Gabe could understand.

  "There were a lot of ex-Confederates, like me, after the War. A few of them had a home and a family to go back to, but many of us had nothing left. After the carpetbaggers took my father’s land for unpaid taxes, I met up with a group of men, some were even family. We traveled through the South, then went down to Mexico for a while when there was talk of starting a new Confederacy down there. Nothing came of it but more disenchantment.

  "I rode with trail herds, and fought rustlers, desperados and Comanches before I started to shave. The first man I killed in a gunfight was only nineteen--and he was four years older than me. I’ll never forget the shocked look on his face when the bullet hit him."

  "You were only fifteen?" she said, horrified.

  "And I was twelve when I joined the Confederacy. I was too small when I was eleven, and a year later, they were desperate enough to take anyone who could pull a trigger. I watched men and boys drop around me. I learned to fire back, hoping to kill."

  She bowed her head.

  "The gang I rode with turned bad. We robbed some stagecoaches, telling ours
elves it didn’t matter any since no one got hurt.

  "I was in a bar in Dodge when I got into an argument with a mean cuss. He was young--only twenty-one. By then, I was nineteen. He drew on me, but I was faster and killed him. I later learned that he had a reputation as a gunfighter. His revenge was that the reputation attached to me.

  "Around that time the gang I’d been with turned to banks. I split from them. Men got killed, innocent men. I told them to stop, but who was I to try to tell anyone how to live? I was a killer."

  She didn’t reply.

  "I joined up with some cattle drives--trying to lose the reputation that I’d suddenly been given. I made the trip back and forth to Abilene a few times. Life was cheap on the trail and liquor, cards and women even cheaper.

  "The gang wanted me to join up with them again. They needed my gun. I wouldn’t join, but just having them around me was enough that I wasn’t wanted on the cattle trails after that. They didn’t hire on trouble, as they put it."

  "What did you do?" she asked.

  "I realized the only thing I had of value was the ability to shoot fast. So I took jobs hiring out my gun. I was paid to protect people or property, never to kill--but sometimes to protect meant that someone was killed.

  "Now, there’s no going back. No undoing what was done. The reputation that kid gave me in Dodge City stuck, and grew. Now, I have to constantly watch my back for the next kid interested in making a name for himself."

  Blue eyes, intent and fierce, captured hers. "My life’s been a waste, Gabe. At first, I thought if I traveled far enough westward, I might find something to replace the home and family I lost...but all I found was more emptiness."

  She kissed him, understanding, finally, the desperate loneliness of this man’s life.

  Her arms went around him and she pledged to do all she could--once her revenge was settled--to make it up to him, to give him a home once more.

  He left her, then, to lay on his bedroll and sleep.

  When he pulled away, her arms felt empty. As if without him, she was incomplete. She turned to face him, imagining she could see him in the darkness. Her mind was filled with how good it had felt to hold him, to have him touch her. Despite herself, she kept thinking back to that afternoon, to his touch, his kisses. She wished she could see him better against the flickering campfire light. Her handsome Jess.

  She didn’t know how it was possible to fall in love at the same time as carrying a consuming hatred and spirit-crushing guilt, but that was what she felt. She shut her eyes and tried to sleep. She loved him, and the feeling was heavenly.

  McLowry watched the dying embers of the campfire, and listened to the sound of wind in the mesquite. He shut his eyes tight against the memories of his hands against her skin, the taste of her lips. Not since the first time he ever made love and was green and excited, had any woman come as close to making him lose control as this girl had.

  He rolled onto his side, his back to her, and tried to set aside thoughts of the woman who lay much, much too close. The way he felt about her was more than physical. It wasn’t love, though. He’d given up loving. There was too much pain in loving.

  She’d told him she loved him. In the past, women had said those words easily to him, more times than he could count. But Gabe meant it in a way he’d never known before. Thoughts of their afternoon lovemaking shook him. He’d shown her the barest glimpse of what it could be like between them. He wanted to show her much more.

  He’d grown so hard with desire it had nearly killed him. He hadn’t been a man to deny himself anything in a long, long time. Life was too short to wait for tomorrow. He’d learned that lesson early. He could have convinced her to let him do whatever he wanted. She’d wanted him, too, even if she hadn’t known exactly what it was she wanted. He knew that as surely as he knew the rhythm of the desert. She’d have allowed him to take her, fill her, and explode until he felt drained.

  She trusted him, loved him, openly and innocently.

  If he had made love to her, would he then be free of the hold she’d had over him since he first looked upon her as a woman? When had it happened? When he saw other men dancing with her at Dry Springs? When he pulled her out of that water trough in Tombstone? When he watched her take off her boots and stockings in their hotel room in Bisbee? Or was it a lifetime ago at a simple town dance?

  He shut his eyes, reliving the feel of her, the scent, the pulsating ache of wanting her. But she was innocent, and he was quite the opposite. He had to take her home to Jackson and then get out of her life.

  There was just one problem with all his grandiose plans, with his big ideas about her future. He loved her.

  He loved her...and the feeling was hell.

  o0o

  Three days later, they reached Dry Springs. They were treated like ghosts reappearing from the dead. Mrs. Huckleby greeted them with open arms, and they filled each other in on what had happened over these past months.

  When they didn’t return to the dance the night they were taken, Mrs. Huckleby said, people had assumed they wanted to be alone. No one had been fooled about their so-called familial relationship, not after seeing the way the two looked at each other. The next day, though, when they couldn’t be found, people began to search. They discovered the tracks of horses around the back of the town hall, and saw that they were headed away from town, toward the Dragoons.

  The town folk had assumed Tanner had taken them, and had made them pay for stopping him from stealing the money from the silver ore’s sale. A posse had searched for them, but the tracks disappeared on the granite and shale of the foothills, and after a couple of days, the riders gave up and returned to town.

  Dick Thompkins at the livery had kept McLowry’s sorrel--he was using the horse himself until, or if, McLowry showed up to reclaim him, and little Susan Flint had asked to keep Gabe’s gray until Gabe returned to claim her. Susan never gave up hope that some day Gabe would return.

  They told Mrs. Huckleby about Tack Cramer, and how Black Cloud and his warriors had saved McLowry’s life. That shocked Mrs. Huckleby. It seems troubles had broken out with the Apache once again, and the entire Larkin family had been killed just before winter in an attack.

  Gabe was saddened and horrified, remembering Patty’s vivaciousness and her sweet, bashful brother--the first young man who had asked her to dance at the rancher’s hall that fateful night in Dry Springs. Poor Mrs. Grimes had lost her friend, her inseparable friend.

  Gabe also learned that one of the children she’d cared for, Danny Graham, came down with scarlet fever and died. The good news was that a young couple, Sam and Ellen Jeffers, had their first child, a healthy baby boy. Also, a family from Ohio had staked a claim for some land and was moving in next month.

  Gabe nodded, suddenly weary. Such was life throughout this territory--harsh and sometimes far too short in its cycles of birth and death, ever changing and yet ultimately unchanging.

  She and McLowry spent the night at Mrs. Huckleby’s. McLowry didn’t even complain about taking a long, relaxing bath this time. The next morning, Mrs. Huckleby gave them a box filled with their old clothes. She’d also saved the money Jess had received from helping sell the silver ore in Tucson. She had hidden everything away, hopeful she could return it to them one day. Gabe hugged her red skirt and white blouse to her--her treasures from Jess.

  In the morning, they packed their belongings. McLowry tried to pay Thompkins for boarding his sorrel these past months, but the liveryman refused. Soon, they left Dry Springs for the Flint farm.

  Already, Gabe could see deterioration in the farm. The weeds were overgrowing the front yard and some slats in the face around the vegetable garden had come off. The chicken coop listed badly. She wondered how long the family would be able to stick it out here.

  She hugged Mrs. Flint and the children like dear old friends, especially Susan. They spent a few hours together, then saddled up Maggie for the long ride back to Jackson City. To Gabe’s surprise, while she was visi
ting, McLowry had fixed the fence and the chicken coop, and even put a coat of white wash on them both. He amazed her more each day, that was for sure.

  "I wish you would stay with us," Susan said to Gabe. In the nearly four months since she’d seen her, she was sure Susan had grown at least six inches taller. She had just turned sixteen, and Gabe could discern the beautiful, intelligent woman she would become.

  "Thank you," Gabe said, giving the girl a hug. "But I have a ranch in sore need of my attention back in Jackson City."

  "What about Tanner?"

  Gabe drew in her breath. "I haven’t forgotten him. I’ll make him pay for all his crimes."

  "When you’re all done in Jackson City and ready to go after Tanner again, let me come with you. The two of us will find him. We’ll take revenge together."

  Gabe shuddered at the girl’s words. She recognized the innocence of thinking a person could go and try to take another’s life without facing any consequences. She thought of how she had almost lost Jess. "The price might be too high, Susan."

  "Nothing’s too high to get Tanner."

  Gabe winced at the girl’s brashness. She ran her hand along Susan’s flaxen hair, then rested it on her shoulder. Susan was a person to marry and raise a fine family one day. All the things Gabe would have liked for herself, truth be told. But McLowry was the man she’d fallen in love with, and he wasn’t one to settle down. And Tanner was like a spirit drifting over this territory, touching all aspects of it and turning them evil. She felt she was chasing the devil himself, and she knew that anyone who wrestles with the devil gets burned.

  Her life was quite different from what she’d expected as she was growing up. She would never have the comforting settled-down way of life she’d wanted. But she didn’t want Susan to miss out on them. "To lose a chance at happiness--that’s too high a price, Susan."

  "I don’t understand."

  "No, but someday, I think you will." Suddenly, Gabe felt very old. She remembered being told "someday she’d understand" by her father, and how much she’d hated that. She had gained a lot of wisdom these past few months, but the toll had been terrible. "Look for what’s beautiful around you, Susan, and be thankful for it. It can disappear so quickly."