Dance With A Gunfighter (18 page)

McLowry stared at the man as if he couldn't believe his
ears. He was so used to being run out of towns that he didn't know how to
respond when faced with a welcome.

Josh Larkin, a big man, leaned in front of Brainard and
held his hand out to Jess. "Thanks, McLowry. It was a pleasure to ride
with you."

McLowry clasped his hand and shook it. "Thank
you
,
Larkin."

"Call me Josh."

McLowry looked more than a little stunned for a moment,
then smiled and nodded at the man.

Other men gathered around McLowry to shake his hand, and
those who couldn't just called their thanks from their cots.

Gabe heard "Job well done" and "Saved our
town" more than once. She proudly watched McLowry as he stood in the
middle of the group.

She was still smiling broadly when she left the doctor’s
house with him. On the boardwalk, as they headed back to the rooming house, she
slipped her arm around his waist and he draped his good arm across her
shoulders. McLowry was silent, as if he didn't know what to make of all this.

Gabe knew. He had found a home. Now, she was truly on her
own.

Chapter 14

McLowry fingered his string tie and wished the ceremony
would end. He hated funerals. When a man died, a bottle of whiskey passed
between a few close friends seemed like plenty. Here, the whole town turned out
to remember the victim of Tanner's attack.

He stood inside the cemetery, a purple sage-covered knoll
overlooking the town to the east and the mine to the south. It was a pretty
spot. Popular, too, McLowry thought with a grimace as he surveyed the number of
grave-markers. Typical mining town.

He glanced at Gabe, standing behind the Flint family. Even
at a funeral he couldn't help but think how pretty she looked, a slight figure
in her dark red skirt and white pleated cotton blouse, with a short black shawl
draped over her shoulders and with a wide-brimmed straw bonnet, both loaned to
her by Mrs. Huckleby. She raised her hand to her throat and shut her eyes a
moment, and he felt a heaviness in his chest at the memories this funeral must
be causing her. He wanted to take her away from here, to hold her, to see her
smile again. But the eulogies continued.

The first verse of "Shall We Gather At the
River" sounding over the baked, dry desert was almost eerie. Years had
passed since McLowry last heard it. Strangely out of place, and yet so right,
it evoked memories of far-away places and times, and seemed to bring some
comfort to those who were here. McLowry watched Gabe lift her head to sing with
the others. He was surprised to see that her eyes were dry. But then, she never
cried. Some things, he knew, were beyond tears, but that meant, too, that she
was a long way from healing.

The drumming song pulsed through his body. He was again in
the small, white clapboard church with his mother, father, brother and little
sister at his side...

Yes, we will gather at the river,

The beautiful, the beautiful river...

He ached with a loneliness he wouldn't admit to, and
inhaled shakily, needing to blot out the image of a past that time and war had
erased so completely. But he couldn’t.

Gather with the saints at the river,

That flows from the throne of God.

The group fell silent, heads bowed, as the last note
echoed over the quiet desert and then died.

People began to leave the cemetery. As Gabe stood, lost in
thought, McLowry hesitated to disturb her. But this was a time for the family
to be here alone, and he lightly took hold of her arm. She started, then her
eyes softened as if in appreciation that he was beside her.

He wanted, more than anything, to shower her with
happiness; to bring her somewhere with no more hurting, no more misery, no more
desire for vengeance; to a place where she could be the smiling, carefree girl
he'd once known. But it was a land beyond the reach of a man like him.

Her fingers touched his hand and she lifted her face to
his. "It’s hard, Jess," she whispered, her words echoing his own thoughts.
"I still miss them so."

He swallowed back the lump in his throat and his grip
tightened on her arm as he slowly began walking toward the horses. He kept his
gaze riveted on the distant, craggy mountains and his lips firmly clamped.

o0o

"I hope you’re both going to be here a week from
Saturday for our celebration," Mrs. Huckleby said as she served dinner
that night.

"Your
what
?" Gabe asked, believing she
must have misheard.

"There's been a death," Lew Huckleby explained,
"but we saved the town. Now we mourn, but by next week it'll be time to
look to the future."

"We’re going to have a picnic and games and a
dance," Mrs. Huckleby added.

Gabe glanced at McLowry. "We do need to move on,
don't you think?"

What he thought was that to stay would be a good way to
keep her from looking for Tanner for a while. Maybe seeing a town pull together
the way this one was doing would make her miss home enough to finally agree to
return to Jackson City. But saying so would cause her to fight him every step.
He lightly touched his wounded arm and winced. "You're right," he
murmured. "We should leave."

The color drained from her face as her eyes practically
embedded themselves in his shoulder. "On second thought," she said,
"we could wait until after the celebration. That way, we can stay here and
rest."

"Who needs rest?" McLowry asked innocently,
knowing Gabe would suspect something if he gave in too easily. A twinge of
guilt struck him, but not much of one.

"I do!" she balked. "It’s been a long,
wearying journey. What are a few more days?"

McLowry nodded, trying to keep hidden how pleased he was
with himself. He put a forkful of stew meat in his mouth and chewed. Dry
Springs was a nice town, with good people. A few young, single men, too. The
kind of man a young woman like Gabe should pay some attention to, instead of
some no-account like him. Maybe he shouldn’t be trying to talk her into going
back to Jackson City at all, but should convince her to stay here. If he really
cared about her welfare, he would make himself scarce the rest of the week.
That way, she would be even more receptive to a kind word from a good man at
the dance.

These later bites of stew didn’t taste as good as they had
earlier. He pushed back his plate. He suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.

o0o

The fiddlers began to tune up, and lanterns were lit. In a
little while, the dancing would start. It was time for Gabe, who had been
helping Mrs. Huckleby set out cakes, cookies and punch for the festivities, to
go back to the boarding house to change into the dress Mrs. Larkin’s daughter,
Patty, had helped her sew. She’d spent the week styling and fitting it.

"You’ll have to excuse me, Jess," she said,
leaving him standing alone outside the meeting hall where the dance would be
held.

His brows were raised and questioning. She smiled
secretively, then turned and ran back to Mrs. Huckleby’s, so excited she
couldn’t stop grinning.

She took a quick sponge bath to get off the dust of the
day, then put on the fancy petticoats and waist cinch that Patty had lent her.
She scarcely needed to cinch her own waist, but she had been told it would be
indelicate have men touch her while dancing and feel a soft body beneath their
fingertips instead of corseting and whalebone. That is, if any man even asked
her to dance.

Before dressing, she needed to style her hair. It was
still fairly short. Not as short as when she was home, where she had made sure
to cut it so that it stayed cool and out of her way when she worked on the
ranch with her pa and brothers. As she brushed it, trying to come up with
something that would make her look a little less hideous, she remembered a
circular she had seen in Tombstone about Lillie Langtry, the beautiful actress.
Suddenly, she knew how to style it.

She swept the sides and back upward, toward the crown, and
held them in place with combs. Then she heated Mrs. Huckleby's curling iron to
make curls that fell all over the top of her head and onto her forehead. She
also used the hot iron to form little ringlets out of wisps of hair on her
neckline that were too short to be caught in the combs. Last, she wove a thin
blue satin ribbon, the color of her dress, through the curls and over the
combs, tying it into a small bow behind her left ear.

She put on the sky blue dress and studied herself in the
mirror. The dress was simply cut, but in a recent style she had seen in a
magazine brought to Dry Springs from San Francisco only six months before. The
front of the dress dipped lower than anything she had ever worn, while the
waist cinch pushed her breasts up, tight against the material. For the first
time in her life, she had a noticeable cleavage.

The upswept hairdo gave her height, making her neck appear
long and delicate, and the curls that framed her eyes set them off in a way
that made them look larger than usual. The excitement of going to the dance had
brought a pinkish glow to her cheeks.

She stood there in front of the mirror for several
minutes, trying to become accustomed to this new Gabe. Or was this, perhaps,
Gabriella?

She sucked in her breath, then let it out slowly. What
would Jess's reaction be when he saw her?

Patty Larkin waited for her in the parlor and the two of
them walked together to the dance. Gabe started off briskly, taking her usual
long steps, and quickly realized that if she kept that up, she would leave
Patty well behind. She slowed down and measured her pace to Patty’s, moving
along in the lady-like way she’d seen other women affect. She even took a
couple of sashaying-type steps, but had to stop. She felt too silly.

Music from the danced filled the night air as she
approached the meeting hall, anticipation gnawing at her stomach. She stepped
through the doors. Smoke from lanterns and cigarettes floated above the
dancers. From miles around, miners, ranchers, cowpunchers, their wives and
daughters had come to join the day's festivities.

Gabe looked for McLowry but didn't see him. Almost
immediately, a young man asked Patty to dance. Gabe waved her off. No sense in
Patty being a wallflower just because Gabe was. She was heading toward a wall
to hide against and wait for McLowry to arrive when a tall, pleasant looking
young man with straight brown hair and a long, droopy mustache, stepped up to
her.

"Good evening, Miss Devere," he said.

Did she know him? "Hello."

"My name's Tommy Larkin. Patty’s brother. The one who
lent you the...er, I mean..."

Gabe watched the young man's face turn so many shades of
red at the thought of her waist cinch she feared he would burst into flame.

She held out her hand to him and smiled. "Tommy, how
nice to meet you."

He tugged on her hand like a water pump. "I been
wanting to meet you. My ma and Patty talk about you all the time." He ran
the sleeve of his jacket over his forehead to wipe away the perspiration.

"Thank you."

"Do you...uh...that is, would you, uh...like
to...uh..."

"Dance?" she offered.

He gave a smile of great relief. "Yeah. Want
to?"

Gabe regarded him a moment. The last dance she had gone to,
no one looked at her twice except for McLowry. And he was only being nice. Now,
this poor boy was nervous as a bridegroom just asking her for a mazurka. Her
heart went out to him. She knew what it was like to be rejected. "Of
course," she said with a smile.

He strutted onto the dance area, leading her as if she
were a princess. She glanced around the room for McLowry, wanting him to see
this with his own eyes, but he still hadn’t arrived.

Tommy turned to her, then smiled awkwardly, as he raised
his right arm, and lowered his left, then switched the other way, looking more
like a railroad flagman than a dance partner. Gabe helped him out, and they
soon stepped in time with the music. She hadn't spent all those years being
partners with her brothers for nothing.

A pang touched her heart at the thought. The last time she
went to a dance they were with her, Henry never leaving Louisa Zilpher's side
and cocky Chad never dancing with the same girl twice.

She forced her attention back to Tommy who was busily tripping
over his own feet when he wasn't standing on hers. He smiled. "You must be
the prettiest girl here, Miss Devere," he said.

Gabe felt her cheeks redden at the compliment. Tommy
twirled her around the dance floor and when the music ended, three other young
men immediately surrounded her, each demanding their turn.

o0o

After Gabe had gone off to change her clothes for the
dance, McLowry, too, decided to dress up a bit. He put on a clean cream colored
shirt and black slacks, with a small black string tie. He knew she and Patty
Larkin planned to meet and walk to the dance together, so he went on ahead. He
stood around waiting for her to return, smiling foolishly in response to others
who saw him. Hanging around town socials wasn't his style. He was more comfortable
with men and women in saloons, especially during a card game. He decided to go
for a walk.

At the edge of town he built himself a cigarette, and
after smoking it, decided to kill a little more time by returning to the dance
by way of the back streets.

Maybe Gabe would have arrived by the time he returned.

One of the two dance hall girls in town, Lucky Meacham,
stood on a small second floor balcony. McLowry had met her a week earlier when
she had helped out during the night hours at Doc Shannon's. She leaned her
elbows against the balcony railing, her head turned toward the fiddler's music
coming from the dance, a wistful expression on her face.