Walking on Air (25 page)

Concerned, Nan set the pot on the warming shelf so the contents wouldn’t scorch, and followed her husband to the bedroom. Whatever was wrong, she sensed it was serious. It wasn’t in Gabriel’s nature to get in a black mood over anything trivial.

She found him sitting on his side of the bed, his elbows braced on his knees, his head in his hands. The dejected slump of his strong, broad shoulders made her heart pang. She closed the door softly behind her and then went to sit beside him.

She chose to say nothing for a moment, giving him the opportunity to shoo her away if he didn’t want her there. When no rejection occurred, she said, “Something is troubling you, Gabriel, and has been for days. Won’t you please tell me about it? A problem shared is often a problem solved.”

“The problem isn’t one I can solve, Nan, or you either.”

Studying the side of his dark face, every line of which had been etched upon her heart, Nan saw him grimace, as if he wished he might call back the words. Then he straightened and released a long breath.

“It’s just that a lot of people have gotten sick, and more people are bound to come down ill over the next week.” He slanted her a quick glance but failed to meet her gaze. She was reminded of how often he’d said during games of poker that a woman should never believe a man who wouldn’t look her dead in the eye. “We were so lucky with Laney. She’s strong, and getting sick was barely a hitch in her get-along. But not everyone has been or will be that fortunate.”

Nan had learned of Mrs. Barker’s death, and despite the fabulous news Gabriel had given her last night about Barclay being alive, she’d spent the morning engaged in a battle with tears. She’d loved that old lady, and accepting her death hadn’t been easy. Now Nan kept Mrs. Barker and the family in her prayers, hoping that her dear friend was in a better place and that her loved ones would recover quickly from their grief.

“And that’s what is troubling you?” she asked, strongly suspecting that Gabriel was circling the truth. “Contagions strike towns all the time, sometimes taking lives, sometimes not. We can only hope we don’t get sick ourselves and pray for our friends and neighbors. There’s little else to be done. Getting in a dark mood surely won’t help.”

“What if you could do more?” He swung around to look at her, and the intensity in his dark eyes made her nape prickle. “If you knew how to save someone else from dying, but in the doing, you knew you’d catch this ailment and die yourself, would you risk your own life to save that person?”

Nan took a moment to mull that over. “Gabriel, why torture yourself this way? If not even Doc Peterson, with all his knowledge and tonics, can save those with weak constitutions, you and I surely can’t. It’s a purely hypothetical question you’ve asked me.”

“Well, hypothesize, then! If you had the cure for this and could save someone, but you knew—if you were absolutely convinced—that going into the person’s home would end up killing you, would you go anyway?”

His expression was so tortured that Nan yearned to cup her hand to his lean cheek, or pull him into her arms as she often did Laney. But tension rolled off him in waves, and she knew any sympathetic overture from her would be unwelcome.

“If I had a cure I’d go in a heartbeat, and then, after leaving the house, I’d have a dose myself.”

He stared at her for an endlessly long moment. “Sweet Christ, the way your mind works could drive a man mad. What if you had only enough cure for that one person, Nan, and if you went to administer it, you knew you were going to die? Is that defined enough for your linear-thinking brain?” The moment he finished speaking, he closed his eyes and held up his hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” His lashes fluttered back up. “I admire your mind, and your thinking patterns don’t really irk me. It’s just that I need you to answer the question, and you’re dancing around it.”

Nan could tell that he truly did need her to answer him. She simply couldn’t understand why. There was no cure for this illness, and even the town doctor was at his wit’s end. That said, she thought carefully, trying to imagine herself in the situation Gabriel had just described.

“To protect myself from the miasma, I suppose that I would cover my face with a cloth soaked in camphor and go to save the person’s life.”

“Even if you knew the camphor wouldn’t work and you’d die?”

Nan lifted her shoulders high and held them rigid. “It’s a very difficult question, isn’t it?”

“You’re telling me.”

Nan gave herself a little body shake. “I don’t know why you’re torturing yourself with what-ifs that can never possibly happen, but hypothetically, it is a commonly held belief that all decent, God-fearing human beings would, under certain circumstances, sacrifice their own lives to save another’s.”

He sighed, tipped his head back, and closed his eyes. Nan stared at the muscular column of his arched throat, fascinated by the bob of his large Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

Nan stifled an urge to laugh, wondering even as she did how they had come to switch roles. She was supposed to be the serious one who worried about silly things. She rested a comforting hand on his arm, her fingertips immediately feeling the heat of his skin through his shirtsleeve. “I did say ‘hypothetically.’ It would take an incredible amount of courage to die in order to save someone else, Gabriel. While we all like to believe that we possess that kind of courage, the reality is that most of us do not.”

He lowered his chin to search her face. “People commit heroic acts all the time.”

Nan allowed herself to smile again—only slightly, so he wouldn’t think she was laughing at him. “Yes, but do they have an opportunity to consider the consequences first?”

His mouth tipped into a mere shadow of the wide, slightly crooked grin that she’d come to enjoy so much. “In other words, you hold with the belief that most of us have a yellow streak and wouldn’t sacrifice our own lives to save someone else if we had so much as a second to think about it first.”

Nan nodded. “It’s sad, isn’t it? But I think the only man who possessed that kind of courage died on a cross nearly two thousand years ago. The rest of us are sorry excuses compared to him.”

He blinked and raked his fingers through his black hair, which had been longish when she met him and was now in desperate need of a trim. “Thank you,” he told her. “I really needed to hear that.” He winked at her. “Sometimes I get to thinking I’m the only coward in a whole world of heroes.”

“You, Gabriel Valance, are no coward,” Nan informed him, inserting a stern tone of absolute certainty into her voice. “You’ve faced death fourteen times without even getting the shakes. If someone aimed a gun at me, I’d be so scared I’d fall to my knees on the spot, begging for my life.” Remembering that supper was only half-finished, she stood. “As for a whole world of heroes?” She finally found the courage to cup her palm lightly over his hard jaw. “I’ve yet to meet one—unless, of course, I count you.”

“Me?”

Nan drew her arm back. Her fingers tingled from touching him, and little zings darted up her arm. “You’ve had many men try to kill you, and you remain ever ready to defend yourself against the next one who tries.”

“Defending myself is a natural human instinct.”

“True, but a lot of men would live in constant fear. You don’t. Instead you live in the moment and find things to laugh about. At least, you did until sometime last week.”

He rotated his shoulders as if to work out the kinks. “You’re right. I’ve been downright gloomy, haven’t I? I’m sorry. I’ll try to brighten up.”

“Please do. I sorely miss your laughter.” Nan went to the door, then paused with her hand on the knob to look back at him. “This whole conversation—it was hypothetical, was it not?”

He’d gotten up to follow her, and as he closed the distance, she admired the loose, masculine swing of his stride. “Purely hypothetical.”

“So you’re not thinking about dying in order to save someone else?”

He tweaked the tip of her nose. “No, honey, I’m not thinking about dying to save someone else.”

Nan was relieved to note that he looked her dead in the eye as he said it.

•   •   •

The evening that followed was, in Nan’s opinion, glorious. Gabriel jumped in to help finish making supper. He gave her lavish compliments on the food. Laughter rang out in her sunny yellow kitchen again. After cleaning up the cooking mess and washing the dishes, the two of them packed sandwiches for the boy. Laney, having already enjoyed one outing, was busy at the table, hurrying to complete her makeup work, which had been sent home to her by the teacher via a classmate.

“Don’t dawdle,” Gabe cautioned the girl. “If you’re not finished when we get back, we’ll play poker without you.”

“No, sir! I’m nearly done.”

A few seconds later, Nan took a deep breath of the crisp night air. “I can’t believe you’ve been plopping that boy’s food down on the boardwalk!”

“He’s afraid of me, I told you. He didn’t suddenly get over it simply because I was the only person who could bring him his meals.”

While Gabriel paused some distance from the staircase, Nan went ahead without him. In the shadowy darkness beneath the steep plank steps, she could barely see the boy, but a picture of him had been imprinted in her mind, because she’d seen him of a morning. Aside from wearing rags, being filthy, and needing someone to shear off his long brown hair, he was a handsome child with beautiful blue eyes and nice features. So far, Nan hadn’t been able to get him to talk much. He mostly said thank you and then grunted when she ventured questions. She’d yet to learn his name.

“It’s Mrs. Valance with your supper,” she said as she approached him.

“No need to say that every time. Who else do you think brings me food?”

The answer to that question was a torment to Nan’s heart. How could people she knew and counted as decent pretend not to see this child? If she lived to be a hundred, she would never understand it. Most of her customers were good, generous women, yet not a single one had brought the boy as much as a slice of bread. Perhaps, Nan decided, it was more a case of the child’s location than a lack of caring. Nan was unafraid to slip under the brothel staircase because she had Gabriel standing guard. Her female acquaintances might not have such gallant husbands.

“Well, here it is, then.” Nan bent forward to plop the makeshift sack on his lap. “We had pan-fried pork tonight, and your sandwiches are still warm. I hope you enjoy them. And, of course, I brought you milk.”

“Thanks,” he said with an unappreciative grunt. “Where the hell have you been? The last few nights only that gunslinger has come. I don’t like him one bit. I bet he’d just as soon shoot my ass off as look at me.”

Nan guessed him to be about Laney’s age, possibly a bit older. His language shocked her, but not quite so much as it might have before she’d met Gabriel, who had a colorful vocabulary himself at times. “In truth, it was that gunslinger who told me about you and encouraged me to bring you food. He is deeply concerned about you.”

Even in the darkness, Nan saw the boy’s head snap up. “Why does he care? I’m nobody to him.”

Nan sighed inwardly. Preacher Hayes was going to have a hard go when it came to convincing this young sir to accept help. “Just like you, my husband was once a boy who lived under staircases and went hungry. No one ever brought him food. I guess he thinks someone should have, and he has no wish to see history repeat itself. It was despicable then, and if it happens now, it will still be despicable.”

“You talk a lot,” he informed her, “and use big words. Are you highfalutin or somethin’?”

Nan bit back a smile. In some strange way she couldn’t define, this boy reminded her of Gabriel. “Let us just say that I was raised in a totally different environment than you. I don’t intend to sound highfalutin. I make hats and dresses for a living. I have a daughter about your age.”

“I’ve seen her.”

This was the most the boy had ever said to her, and Nan hugged the realization close, hoping it meant he was starting to think of her as a friend.

“Too fancy for me,” he said around a mouthful of food that slurred his words. “All them ruffles and such, with bows on her pigtails. She’s a fussy little snot, I bet.” He stopped chewing to peer through the darkness at Nan. “Like mother, like daughter.”

Nan bristled but managed to guard her tongue. Instead of responding in kind, she said, “That fussy little snot could clean you out in a poker game, young sir. Don’t judge a girl by her ruffles and bows lest others judge you just as quickly.”

“I’ve already been judged, lady. My mama is a whore.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I bet you don’t even know what that means.”

Nan’s heart broke for him. Little wonder he reminded her of Gabriel. She could only hope he grew up to be as fine a man. “Yes, I do know what it means, and I think you have the makings to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and put all of this behind you if you get half a chance.”

“I don’t got any boots. Hell, lady, I don’t even have shoes. I outgrew them until my toes poked out the ends and they squeezed my feet so hard they ached.”

Nan couldn’t see what covered his feet now, but she wondered if he’d stolen a sheet from someone’s drying line and cut it into strips to create makeshift footwear like Gabriel once had. Now that she came to think of it, a sheet had gone missing from her own line a couple of weeks back. She’d believed some dog had dragged it off, but now she suspected the thief had been an angry, two-legged boy. If so, he was more than welcome.

“What size shoe do you wear?” she asked.

“How should I know? My mama bought me my last pair from a peddler two years back. She never said what size, and even if she had, that’d be wrong now.”

Nan felt saddened as she left the boy to his supper. When she reached Gabriel, she said, “He has no footwear. I think he may have stolen my good sheet off the line a couple of weeks ago. It went mysteriously missing.”

“Smart boy.” Gabriel grasped her arm. The touch of his hand radiated warmth through her cloak and set her skin to tingling again. “I know a lady with ten thousand dollars in the bank. Maybe she should get the kid some boots.”