Dance With A Gunfighter
Read Dance With A Gunfighter Online
Authors: JoMarie Lodge
Dance With A Gunfighter
by JoMarie Lodge
Copyright 2012 by JoMarie Lodge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including
information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from
the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This
book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.
This is a work of fiction. Any referenced to historical
events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names,
characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination,
and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Jackson City, Arizona Territory, 1876
Disappointment rolled over her like dark thunderclouds,
but sixteen-year old Gabriella Devere refused to acknowledge it. The same stiff
smile that had been fixed to her sun-bronzed face throughout the music playing
remained, even as she stood alone at the edge of the outdoor dance area and
watched Johnny Anderson, the handsomest boy in school, kick up his heels with
Molly Pritchard.
Gabe squeezed her arms tight against her waist and thrust
out her bottom lip.
Johnny Anderson was nothing but a scrawny turkey, and she
didn’t give a darn who he danced with. Yet she couldn’t tear her gaze from him,
and every skip he took vibrated in the pit of her stomach.
Two weeks and five hours ago she had begun to count the
minutes until this dance. She had returned home from riding her gray, Maggie,
and was walking her into the stables, just as she’d done day after day, year
after year.
She had been looking back at Maggie, pulling the mare’s
head around, and giving her a tug as she’d reached out blindly to open the
stable door, only to find that it had been opened for her. Standing inside,
smiling at her, was Johnny Anderson. He was tall and thin with light brown
hair. The sleeves of his shirt seemed to have too much material in width and
too little in length because skinny brown arms jutted out from the ends of the
cuff.
"Hi, there," he said.
Her eyebrows popped up high in surprise, and her heart
fluttered strangely. His eyes had a sparkle to them, and his teeth, she noticed
when he smiled, were pearly white. "Nice mare, you got," he added.
She felt herself go hot and cold, and her tongue seemed to choose that very
moment to attach itself securely to the roof of her mouth.
"I’m all set, Johnny!" Her brother Chad barreled
out of the stable leading his gelding. Chad’s hair was black, his skin tanned a
golden hue. Gabe knew the older girls whispered about his being handsome. She
couldn’t see it. Especially not when he stood beside Johnny Anderson.
"Gabe, get out of the way!"
She stepped back. "Where’re you going?"
"Quail-hunting." They mounted their horses and
started toward the road. "Be back at dinner."
"Can I come?" She chased after them, unsure
where she found the boldness to ask to go anywhere with Johnny Anderson.
Her brother laughed and waved her off as he broke into a
canter. Johnny smiled and shrugged. She watched until the two boys disappeared
at the bend in the road.
Her breath was short, her head giddy, all because of
Johnny Anderson’s smile.
Now, she stood at a section of the dusty street just past
the church where the edge of the town met the desert had been roped off for the
dance. Tables filled with canned peach and custard pies, prickly pear candy,
plum preserves, molasses and sugar cookies, lemon punch, and apple cider were
set up along one edge, and near them, on a raised platform, four fiddlers
played. Paper lanterns ringed the area, casting a warm, festive glow into the
summer night.
Gabe was certain Johnny would ask her to dance soon. The
excitement, the anticipation that had seized her when she awoke that morning
continued to course through her. Finally, Jackson City was holding a dance she
had looked forward to instead of wanting to avoid. Finally, she would have a
chance to talk to, and dance with, Johnny Anderson.
o0o
Jess McLowry pushed open the slatted wooden half-doors of
the Red Lizard. He needed a bottle of Jim Beam, a high-stakes game of five-card
stud, and an accommodating woman. Eventually he might eat, but he was a man who
kept his priorities straight.
A plank oak bar stretched along one wall, gleaming like a
snake caught in a hailstorm. A white-haired, ruddy-faced prospector stood at
one end, his clothes baggy and his skin powdered with rock dust. Shaky hands
gripped a shot glass, and the old codger seemed to be concentrating hard to aim
it at his mouth. Behind the bar, over rows of liquor bottles and beer kegs, a
gilt-framed portrait of a bare-assed woman smiled onto the room. She was the
liveliest thing in it.
Wooden tables with empty chairs filled the space between
the bar and the opposite wall. No hurdie-gurdie music. No cards. No women. Not
even a raucous crew of drunken cowhands.
The barkeep, a balding man with reddened skin and a
bulbous stomach squared his shoulders and nodded a quick, cautious greeting.
His gaze darted from McLowry’s tied down holster, to his black satin vest, to
his butter smooth black walking boots.
McLowry moved with a deceptively slow and easy
stride. He plunked a gold dollar on the bar. Hard blue eyes scanned the liquor
bottles. There wasn’t a label in sight. "Whiskey." He watched as it
was poured. The moonshine was raw and harsh, but he drank it down fast, needing
to wash away the sour taste of his last job. He was a hired gun. He had learned
one thing long ago about his kind of work, the men hiring him were every bit as
bad as the ones he was paid to fight against. The only difference was that they
were rich bastards instead of poor ones.
The barkeep wiped down the bar over and over with a
blue-checkered cloth, not that it was wet or dirty, but as a means to give him
something to do while keeping an eye on McLowry.
"This place looks like a morgue." McLowry pushed
his empty glass forward.
"Town dance down the street. Regular customers are
all there." Tossing the cloth over his shoulder, the barkeep poured
another drink. "This isn’t the kind of town you’d be interested in anyway,
gunfighter. You might think about moving on." He stepped back quickly, as
if ready to duck if the man before him took offense at the suggestion.
Instead, McLowry ignored him. He took a sip, then put one
elbow on the bar, easing against it as he scoured the place. The old man
hunched over the bar nodded at him, then picked up his drink, one-handed this
time. The hand shook and some rye sloshed onto his fingers. From the shadows, a
dance-hall woman slowly strolled toward McLowry, swinging her hips. She stopped
a little ways from him, answering his bored gaze with a feigned smile.
Her face was heavily powdered, her eyelids covered with
kohl, and the thick orange cream on her lips had smeared and run down along the
corners of her mouth, giving her the appearance of a sad-faced clown.
McLowry pushed aside his drink and slapped more money on
the bar. Holding the barkeep’s eye, he pointed at the rye bottle then the old
man. As the barkeep nodded, McLowry cleared out of there. He’d come to town for
action, not a wake.
With his thumbs hooked on the heavy cartridge belt that
held the greased open holster the barkeep had found so fascinating, he surveyed
Main Street from one end to the other. The town was smaller than most. General
store. Barber. Tobacconist. Saddle shop. Tin shop. Livery stable. Hotel. But
there wasn’t another saloon in sight. What kind of shit hole town was this,
anyway? The only commotion along the entire street was at the far end, near the
church.
A town dance. They were too damn sissified for him. Still,
he was sick of doing nothing but counting stars at night. His empty hotel room
was uninviting, its smell musty and dank from stale sex and rotgut liquor of
patrons past. Maybe at the dance he would get lucky and find a woman wise
enough not to take him to heart when he whispered the sort of words women liked
to hear. Right now, he didn’t care if she looked like a schoolmarm, as long as
she was warm and willing.
He spun the cylinder of a snub-nosed Remington
single-action pistol to make sure it was fully loaded, then tucked it into the
small, flat shoulder holster he wore hidden under his black satin vest. He
might be asked to check his six-shooter at the dance, but that didn’t mean he
would let himself go unarmed.
His boot heels made a hollow sound on the empty boardwalk
as he turned down the street, toward the dance.
o0o
From the time Gabe had sprung out of bed early that
morning she had done her best to hide her excitement from her father and
brothers. Chad was seventeen, and Henry was already nineteen. Being the only
female in the family wasn’t easy, and with two older brothers who enjoyed
nothing quite so much as teasing her, Gabe had learned to do all she could to
give them as few chances for ridicule as possible.
She had been cool as a night breeze in the desert as she
fired up the cookstove, ground some coffee, and then fried eggs, sausage and
cornmeal mush to have hot on the table when the men came in from tending to the
horses and milking the cows. As soon as she finished cleaning up the kitchen
after breakfast, she ran into her small back bedroom and changed to the new
dress she’d worked on from the time she decided to attend the dance. Her pa
knew what she was up to, but so far she had managed to keep the dress a secret
from her prying older brothers.
The house had four rooms--a kitchen, a bedroom for Pa, one
shared by Chad and Henry, and a tiny room, scarcely bigger than a closet, for
her. Long ago her pa had planned to add a parlor and maybe even a dining room,
but after her ma had died, his heart went out of the idea. Instead, he focused
his attention away from homey things, and put all his energy into running the
ranch and growing his stock each year. Household chores were left to Gabe.
As had happened each of the past two years since Jackson
City was founded, the celebration would start with the mayor and councilmen
giving speeches, followed by games, a picnic supper, and finally, the town
dance. Gabe would need to somehow keep her dress nice for the dance throughout
the long, hot afternoon. Normally, she didn’t much care how she looked, and
would join in on the fun and games. Last year, she had surprised
everyone--including herself--by winning the long rifle shooting competition.
This year, though, she decided not to enter. She had better things on her mind
than shooting cow pies.
The day was already warm and the buckboard loaded with the
supper basket when time came to leave the ranch for the five-mile ride to
Jackson City. She knew her pa and brothers were waiting for her. Usually, she
was the first one ready to go. Usually, she wore denim trousers and a chambray
shirt. But then, other girls wore dresses--especially to dances--so why
shouldn’t she?
When she awkwardly stepped out of the house onto the front
porch wearing her new yellow dress, thin-soled brown leather shoes, and with a
yellow ribbon in her hair, her brothers gawked at her in silence. That was a
real bad sign. As she suspected, when they got over being speechless, they
pointed and catcalled, and Chad laughed so hard he tumbled right off the
buckboard. Her cheeks flushed red and she gave serious thought to running
inside and hiding under the bed when she heard her pa shout, "Stop it, you
two!"