Dance With A Gunfighter

by JoMarie Lodge

  By evening, the painting was completed. Gabe took one look at McLowry and laughed. He’d nearly put more paint on himself than on the house. He pointed at her clothes and hair--she was just as bad.

  They washed themselves out by the barn, near his temporary quarters. Gabe glanced at the house in the sunset.

  "It looks like a dove," she said wistfully.

  "It will be a good home for you and your brother."

  She looked back at him. "Big enough for you, too."

  McLowry couldn’t stop himself from kissing a spot of dried paint on the tip of her nose. "Whatever would the good people of Jackson City say about such an arrangement?"

  "I don’t care."

  The way she looked at him made him ache inside with wanting to do what she suggested. But thoughts intruded of nameless men like the one in Tombstone who’d challenged him, plus all the other gunfighters who still sought him out. "I wish it could be," he whispered.

  "I love you, Jess. When will you learn to accept that?"

  His throat felt thick with unspoken words. How many hours had he spent weaving foolish dreams about Gabe and himself? About living on this ranch? Particularly at night, alone in the barn, he would pretend he was here building a home for the both of them. He had planned how he would help her run the ranch, how he would watch it grow big and profitable. In those dreams, they would live together in the little house. Mornings, he’d wake up to hot coffee and a big breakfast, then he’d kiss Gabe good-bye as he went off to work in the barn or the stable, or ride the fences, or tend the cattle. Later in the day, she would bring him a lunch and sit under a cottonwood, talking with him as he ate. Each evening, he’d return to a big supper and afterward... afterward would come the best part, when he and Gabe would sit and talk in the cool of the evening, and share their thoughts and dreams. Then, when night fell, they’d go to bed and love each other all night, every night. To have such a home, to have such love in his life...

  Instead of speaking, he took her in his arms and, without music, they waltzed away the sunset. Jess’s eyes never left her face, etching it in his memory for the lonely days and nights ahead.

  o0o

  Gabe and McLowry stood at the train platform in Tucson, waiting for the train from Denver to arrive. They were there to meet Chad and take him by buckboard back to the ranch, a half-day’s ride.

  The owner of the home where Chad had been staying, Robert Weylach, turned out to be a gracious and kindly man. He had taken a liking to the young man, and had personally seen to it that he was delivered safely to the train station in Denver.

  When the train stopped, the porter got off and put down a block step to help the passengers descend. As travelers deboarded, friends and relatives met them with great bustle and fanfare. Before long, it seemed everyone who was supposed to get off had done so. As Gabe and Jess still waited on the platform, the porter walked up to them.

  "Are you here for the boy in the wheelchair?" he asked.

  "He’s my brother," Gabe said.

  His long face was sorrowful. "Right. I’ll get him, and we’ll help him off the train together."

  He went into the car. The moment Gabe saw her brother in his chair was both a joy and so devastating she wasn’t sure she could bear it. She forced herself to smile.

  His eyes were downcast, not looking up to greet her or to see where he was being taken. His hair was the beautiful jet-black color she remembered, and much longer than he used to wear it, but nothing else about him was the same.

  His face and neck and hands were frightfully thin and bony. His shoulders seemed to have shrunken within themselves, and his chest was all but concave. His legs were covered with a red and black blanket. The dark brown clothes he wore looked like hand-me-downs from someone six sizes larger. Somehow she managed to move her legs forward towards him.

  McLowry got there first. He grabbed the wheel axle of the chair, while the porter held the handles. Together, they lifted the chair and Chad, and eased them through the narrow doorway onto the platform. Still, Chad didn’t look around, as if he didn’t care where he was, or with whom.

  As the porter stepped back, McLowry gave him a generous tip. He nodded his thanks, and with a touch of his cap to Gabe, said, "Good luck." Then he was gone.

  Gabe stared silently at the stranger before her.

  "I’ll go get his bags," McLowry said, and left the two alone.

  She crouched down in front of her brother. His arms were on the armrest, his hands drooping off the ends, and his head bent forward. He paid no attention to her. Lightly, she touched his wrist. "Chad," she whispered. "They told me you were dead. I’m so sorry! I never would have left you at that place. I just didn’t know!"

  He seemed lost in his own world.

  "We’re going home now," she said. "I won’t fool you and say it’s the same. It’s not. It’ll never be the same for us. But at least we’re together." She kissed his forehead. "I love you so much, Chad. I love you, big brother."

  He paid no attention to her, and that hurt most of all.

  When McLowry returned, her hand was clutching Chad’s. Her brother’s hold was limp, his eyes still directed at the ground. She tried to smile, but she could see that Jess wasn’t fooled. "I loaded his bags into the buckboard," he said. "We should get going so we’ll make it back home by nightfall."

  She pushed her brother’s chair. It wasn’t nearly as easy to do as she’d assumed, with the ruts from rains and big rocks that men and horses just ignored. More than once, Jess had to help her out.

  Getting Chad onto the buckboard was another problem. They were able to rouse enough of his attention that he helped. Gabe was glad to see his arms were strong, even though his legs were useless. He was so thin now, she imagined she could probably carry him herself in an emergency. He sat between her and Jess, and his wheelchair was tied onto the back with his bags. Throughout the ride home, Chad never said a word.

  They circled past Jackson City--Gabe didn’t want him confronted with curious people, even though most were friends. He needed time to settle himself, and his thoughts.

  She felt him stiffen as they passed the old flappy-tongued saguaro. She put her hand on his knee and smiled. He didn’t look at her, but Jess did. She could see the concern in his eyes, and once again she was glad he was with her. She didn’t know how she could have handled Chad without him.

  Chad bowed his head as they approached the house. He didn’t look at the new ‘white dove’ as Gabe called it. He didn’t look at the old barn, or the corral, or the stable areas. Not at their father’s old chuck wagon or the well or the chicken coop or the vegetable garden. Jess lifted the wheelchair onto the ground. Chad helped as they lowered him to it, but he made no indication of knowing where he was or why.

  "You’re home, big brother," Gabe said. "Your room is all set up for you. Do you want to go inside now?"

  He didn’t respond. She started to walk around behind him, to push the chair indoors, when he suddenly jerked it around and wheeled fast and hard away from the house. Gabe watched horrified, and started after him when Jess caught her arm. "Give him time," he advised.

  Chad continued to the dry arroyo, and stopped. It was a favorite spot for him when he was a child. To see him there, now, in a wheelchair was hard.

  There were times during winter rains, or in summer when the monsoons came, that the wash would overflow or flash floods would barrel through and the whole area would be under water. That was when the desert trees and shrubs would turn green, and the land would team with frogs and toads and snakes and all manner of wildlife. Other times, like this one, the white rocks of the bottomland gleamed dusty and dry in the hot sun.

  Gabe loved both sights. It was nature. It was home.

  Perhaps Jess was right, and she should leave Chad alone a while, but she worried about him, and what he was feeling. She knew how difficult it had been for her to come back here. For him, it must be even worse.

  After a fifteen minutes or so, she walked to his side.
Tears glistened in his eyes, and they nearly broke her heart.

  o0o

  The next day, word began to spread throughout Jackson City that Gabe had brought her brother back home again. People came out to the ranch to visit, bringing cakes and pies, casseroles and stews. Gabe found it all eerily reminiscent of a get-together after a funeral, but she couldn’t object to having fine food available in the house for once.

  Jess stayed out of the way of the townspeople. He told her that if he let the people of Jackson City gawk at him as well as at Chad, they might be in danger of wringing their necks from swiveling them around so much. Keeping out of the way was, he suggested wryly, a public service.

  After a few days, the hubbub died down. Life settled into a dull roar until two weeks later when McLowry told her he was going to leave for a few days. He wouldn’t say why, or where he was going, just that he wanted some time on his own. Gabe hadn’t realized how completely she’d come to depend on his assistance at the ranch, and how much she expected him to be nearby, until he wasn’t there.

  She knew that one day he would leave the ranch for good, and had tried to prepare herself for it. She couldn’t imagine him finding this life very interesting.

  Even knowing that, she couldn’t keep him from her thoughts. Even as she milked the cows, she found she kept one eye on the teats and the other on the barn door, expecting him to stroll through it any minute.

  It surprised her, too, as she rode over the ranch, doing the chores McLowry usually attended to, how so much of what had been done there was due to him. He’d put in a big water tank, weeded, straightened the posts and tightened the fence of the corral, put cactus and wires around the chicken coop to protect the hens from coyotes, and put fresh hay in the barn. He’d made plans for adding a windmill and a cistern near the stables. He was everywhere she looked, in the very air she breathed.

  Three days later, when he still hadn’t returned, she was beginning to worry, having no idea where he’d gone or why or if he would return. After breakfast she rode into Jackson City to see if anyone there had seen him. No one had.

  While in town, she stopped off to visit with Mrs. Beale and to talk with her about Chad.

  "I remember after the War Between the States," Mrs. Beale had said, "a number of our soldiers came home that way. Some of them stayed lost in their own worlds forever, but in time, many of them grew stronger and their minds came back to us. Now, you’ve got to remember, they couldn’t ever return to the way they were before the war. But they spoke, they loved their families, and they learned to live again."

  "So there is hope for him." Gabe said, as she anxiously glanced at the grandfather clock. She had left Chad alone to come here, and she was worried about him.

  Mrs. Beale poured more tea. "There is always hope, Gabe. Don’t ever give up on him, and also, give him some time. It’s good you’re here, now. You need to allow him to be alone without you constantly hovering over him, watching his every move, his every expression. You’ve got to let him come around on his own."

  Uneasily, Gabe sipped her tea.

  When she returned home, she went into the house calling Chad’s name. There was no answer. She checked his bedroom, and he wasn’t there.

  She hurried outside, looking all around. He wasn’t at the arroyo. She ran into the barn, trying not to panic. Maybe Jess had returned, and the two were together somewhere. They seemed to like each other--Chad would follow Jess around, not speaking, while Jess would talk in that slow drawl of his about all kinds of things and seem to keep Chad interested.

  There was no sign that McLowry had returned, and Chad wasn’t in the barn.

  She ran out the barn’s back door and stopped. Tottering on the very edge of his wheelchair seat, Chad was at the corral, gripping the topmost rail and reaching inside to pet his old roan, Thunder. She stared at his lips, unbelieving. He looked like he was talking to the horse. He’d had Thunder since he was sixteen, and he’d raised him from a colt. Gabe often felt he loved that horse more than anything else in the world. Now, he’d found him again.

  She tiptoed backwards into the barn where he couldn’t see her. She watched, her heart in her throat as he pulled himself out of the chair to reach Thunder’s neck and pat it, his strokes long and slow and loving against Thunder’s snout and neck. Chad’s face had a look of contentment he hadn’t worn since he’d come home.

  Chapter 25

  Two nights later, Gabe awoke to see a dim light outside her bedroom window. For a moment she thought the barn was on fire.

  It wasn’t. Someone was inside the barn with a lantern.

  She prayed Jess had returned. Throwing a shawl over her long nightgown, she grabbed her Winchester just in case it was some prowler, though she couldn’t imagine one so dull-witted as to light the way as he stole from her. Not that there was much in the barn worth stealing. Barefoot, she quietly made her way across the yard.

  Peeking inside the barn door, she let loose a sigh of relief, lowered the gun and walked in.

  She must have made some sound because Jess suddenly swung toward the door, his hand reflexively hovering over his sidearm. He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe she was there, then his face softened with an expression she had never seen before.

  She ran to him and their lips met.

  "Where did you go for so long?" she murmured between kisses.

  He held her close. "No place special."

  "I was worried I’d never see you again!"

  He drew back from her. "Now, little one," he drawled mischievously, "surely you don’t think I’d desert you, do you? Not when there’s that terrific bed waiting for me right there in the corner." He angled his head toward the hard army cot. "Besides, what would that pretty cow who shares this side of the barn with me say if I wasn’t here to lullaby her to sleep each evening? We’re quite the twosome, you know."

  Her arms tightened around his neck. "Well, I’m sure ol’ Bossy is overjoyed to see you. I’m glad, too, by the way."

  His face grew serious. "Are you?" he asked.

  "Yes. Oh, yes!" She kissed him hard.

  "Are you sure?" His intensity rocked her, he looked as if his life depended on her answer.

  He was acting very strangely, she thought. "I’m sure."

  He kissed her again, then looked hard at her for a long time. Finally, he said, "I don’t know if I should speak now. It seems the setting should be better than a barn. I should have brought some flowers, and maybe a guitar player to strum a slow Spanish song."

  She frowned. "Whatever are you talking about?"

  His face crinkled into a lop-sided smile, then he shook his head. "Now I know I’m going about this all wrong."

  She’d never known Jess to be tongue-tied or to act so happy and confused and...and almost scared...all at the same time. "Spit it out, McLowry."

  He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and took out a billfold and handed it to her.

  Her gaze jumped from him to the leather square in her hand.

  "Open it," he urged. "It’s for you."

  She unfolded the leather, and pressed it back so that the stack of greenbacks inside could be seen.

  "My God," she cried. "Where did all this come from?"

  "Poker. I went to Tucson. I thought about going to Tombstone, but decided against heading there because I figured I was too well known. Turns out to have been a good decision. Anyway, I joined a big game. Had a lucky streak, and high-tailed it out before I lost it all back again. Those boys are probably still trying to find me."

  The fear his words caused her was so great she didn’t know whether to cry or to slug him. "You didn’t, Jess! What if they come after you?" she cried. "What will we do?"

  He grinned. "Relax, woman. I won this money fair and square--and they don’t even know who I am. A cowboy at the game said he thought I was McLowry, but another cowpuncher said not to worry, that McLowry was dead. He went on to explain that Tanner’s men had been chasing McLowry, but before they caught him som
e Apaches did. They killed him, poor bastard."

  "They think you’re dead?"

  "Word spread from Tombstone to Tucson and beyond. Since neither Jackson City or Dry Springs is high on the gunslinger-gambler circuit, none of them had heard I was living on your ranch."

  As she thought about it, a smile spread over her face. "That’s wonderful. That means they’ll leave you alone--the gunfighters, the ones seeking to build their reputations will find someone else to go after."

  "I finally confessed to those boys I was playing poker with that my name was Martin Bulfinch."

  "Now you are just joking with me."

  Blue eyes twinkled. "Am I, darlin’?"

  She laughed aloud. "Martin Bulfinch?" She laughed again. "Well, I suppose no one would think the dangerous desperado Jess McLowry would take a name like that. Perhaps your secret is safe."

  Their eyes met. With word getting out that Jess McLowry, gunfighter, was supposedly dead, he could stay here in Jackson City in relative safety. The people of Jackson City would know to keep his secret. He clasped her hands around the money. "There’s over two thousand dollars here," he said. "Enough to buy a few more head of cattle and more supplies."

  "It’s your money, Jess," she said. "I can’t take it."

  "It’s for you, Gabe. I had hoped it would be for us, if you would have me." He took a deep breath. "Marry me."

  "What?" she gasped.

  He took her hand, and to her complete surprise, got down on one knee. "Let me try that again. Gabriella, will you marry me?"

  Her heart was pounding. She grabbed both his hands and pulled him to his feet. "Now I know you’re just joking."

  "I mean it, Gabe." He put his hands on her shoulders, his eyes intense. "I’m just a broken-down gunslinger, but I’ve got a strong back, and I’ll work hard to build a good home for you, for us, and...I love you, woman."

  She stared at him. For how many months had she dreamed of him saying these words to her? But now that he had, she had to give pause. She had obligations to Pa and Henry, and to Chad. If she were to marry Jess now, to allow herself the happiness that would come from being his wife, how could she ever find the strength to leave him, to act against Tanner and Murdock when the time came? Or would she simply give up on her hope for revenge and justice? Would she, once again, do nothing just as she’d done nothing the day Tanner came to her ranch? Nothing but watch from the safety of the kitchen as Tanner killed her family...