Dance With A Gunfighter (4 page)

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. "Then why are you so mad? He’d dead. What difference does it make
how?"