Dance With A Gunfighter (29 page)

Gabe also learned that one of the children she’d cared
for, Danny Graham, came down with scarlet fever and died. The good news was
that a young couple, Sam and Ellen Jeffers, had their first child, a healthy
baby boy. Also, a family from Ohio had staked a claim for some land and was
moving in next month.

Gabe nodded, suddenly weary. Such was life throughout this
territory--harsh and sometimes far too short in its cycles of birth and death,
ever changing and yet ultimately unchanging.

She and McLowry spent the night at Mrs. Huckleby’s.
McLowry didn’t even complain about taking a long, relaxing bath this time. The
next morning, Mrs. Huckleby gave them a box filled with their old clothes.
She’d also saved the money Jess had received from helping sell the silver ore in
Tucson. She had hidden everything away, hopeful she could return it to them one
day. Gabe hugged her red skirt and white blouse to her--her treasures from
Jess.

In the morning, they packed their belongings. McLowry
tried to pay Thompkins for boarding his sorrel these past months, but the
liveryman refused. Soon, they left Dry Springs for the Flint farm.

Already, Gabe could see deterioration in the farm. The
weeds were overgrowing the front yard and some slats in the face around the
vegetable garden had come off. The chicken coop listed badly. She wondered how
long the family would be able to stick it out here.

She hugged Mrs. Flint and the children like dear old
friends, especially Susan. They spent a few hours together, then saddled up
Maggie for the long ride back to Jackson City. To Gabe’s surprise, while she
was visiting, McLowry had fixed the fence and the chicken coop, and even put a
coat of white wash on them both. He amazed her more each day, that was for
sure.

"I wish you would stay with us," Susan said to
Gabe. In the nearly four months since she’d seen her, she was sure Susan had
grown at least six inches taller. She had just turned sixteen, and Gabe could
discern the beautiful, intelligent woman she would become.

"Thank you," Gabe said, giving the girl a hug.
"But I have a ranch in sore need of my attention back in Jackson
City."

"What about Tanner?"

Gabe drew in her breath. "I haven’t forgotten him.
I’ll make him pay for all his crimes."

"When you’re all done in Jackson City and ready to go
after Tanner again, let me come with you. The two of us will find him. We’ll
take revenge together."

Gabe shuddered at the girl’s words. She recognized the
innocence of thinking a person could go and try to take another’s life without
facing any consequences. She thought of how she had almost lost Jess. "The
price might be too high, Susan."

"Nothing’s too high to get Tanner."

Gabe winced at the girl’s brashness. She ran her hand
along Susan’s flaxen hair, then rested it on her shoulder. Susan was a person to
marry and raise a fine family one day. All the things Gabe would have liked for
herself, truth be told. But McLowry was the man she’d fallen in love with, and
he wasn’t one to settle down. And Tanner was like a spirit drifting over this
territory, touching all aspects of it and turning them evil. She felt she was
chasing the devil himself, and she knew that anyone who wrestles with the devil
gets burned.

Her life was quite different from what she’d expected as
she was growing up. She would never have the comforting settled-down way of
life she’d wanted. But she didn’t want Susan to miss out on them. "To lose
a chance at happiness--that’s too high a price, Susan."

"I don’t understand."

"No, but someday, I think you will." Suddenly,
Gabe felt very old. She remembered being told "someday she’d
understand" by her father, and how much she’d hated that. She had gained a
lot of wisdom these past few months, but the toll had been terrible. "Look
for what’s beautiful around you, Susan, and be thankful for it. It can
disappear so quickly."

Gabe, Susan and the Flint family said their good-byes as
McLowry waiting patiently, then the two of them headed west, toward home.

Chapter 23

The days rolled together as they crossed the desert.
McLowry avoided the few towns and settlements on the way, traveling on the rim
of civilization. He had no desire to become embroiled in any other people’s
lives--no more of the kind of entanglements that seemed to happen to him ever
since he’d met Gabe.

He shot jackrabbits and sage hens for food, and boiled
wild onions, sego lily, and squaw cabbage when they grew tired of jerky and
pan-biscuits. He, who had always followed silent and mysterious trails alone,
who had camped easy with the silence of the night, enjoyed these days with Gabe
as his companion more than he could have ever imagined. And at night, he’d hold
her in his arms, sharing kisses, but nothing more. He was determined to be
honorable if it killed him, and the way he felt some nights, he thought it just
might.

As time passed, McLowry talked more about his years
traveling around Texas, the Indian Territories and finally into the Arizona
Territory. He talked about the quickness of his gun and how, if he stayed too
long in one place, some gunfighter trying to make a name would find him and
challenge that speed. To avoid those confrontations, he had kept traveling.

He asked Gabe, over time, more and more about her father
and her brothers. The pain was like a sword running through her the first time
she tried to talk about them. Eventually, she told him about their deaths, and
how she had been saved only because Chad had shoved her into the root cellar
and slammed the door shut. She told him about the guilt she felt, the guilt she
lived with every day. His interest in her feelings of guilt surprised her. He
thought the feelings were important, and hearing about them seemed to help him
understand her and her desire of revenge. She told him she’d want
vengeance--and justice--whether she felt guilty or not, and he’d nodded, not
exactly agreeing, but not disagreeing either.

As the days went on, she was able to talk with a little
less hurting, and then one night, she even smiled as she told him a story about
her brother, Chad.

"One time," she said, "he was about twelve
and stole a jug of Pa’s rot gut. Pa never let the boys or me touch it, but he
liked a glass or two himself. Anyway, Chad grabbed it and sneaked off. All of a
sudden we heard all this loud yelling coming from way down the road. Me and Pa
and Henry all ran outside to see what it was. You know what we saw?" she
asked.

McLowry shook his head.

"There was Chad, zigzagging from one side of the road
to the other, running and screaming hell-bent for leather that the jumping
chollas were after him." She began to chuckle and McLowry joined her.
"He’d drunk so much of what Pa used to call ‘coffin varnish’ that he
couldn’t even walk straight, and he sure couldn’t run. He must have fallen into
a patch of cholla because he was covered head to toe with cactus needles, but
he swore that not only were they jumping, but that they were chasing him,
too."

She laughed hard then. "I tell you, though, he paid
for it. It took forever to pull those thorns off of him. He didn’t touch
whiskey again after that."

The smile on her lips faded suddenly, but before the
too-present shadows touched her eyes, McLowry grabbed her and kissed her hard.
She stared at him in surprise. "I like to hear you laugh," he
whispered.

"Oh...you!" was all she could force past the
lump in her throat.

One day, when they reached the top of a ridge, they saw
spread before them the valley where Jackson City lay. Gabe dismounted. Her hand
shaded her eyes as she peered at the familiar hills in the hazy distance.
Truly, it was the most beautiful landscape in the world, she thought. Like so
many peaks in the territory, they weren’t ranges, but stood alone, jutting out
of the ground in odd, irregular shapes, yet tall and independent...much like
the people who lived among them.

"There!" When Jess stepped to her side, she
grabbed his arm and pulled him closer, pointing toward the northern horizon.
"In the foothills of that mountain that looks like the back of a hissing
cat is my family’s ranch."

"A cat’s back?"

"Sure, all arched and mad...and the skinny pinnacle
is his tail. Can’t you see it?"

He gazed at her and smiled, feeling her joy, yet filled
with regret that their interlude was ending. "I see it," he said
softly.

"Home..." She sighed, her spirits soaring as she
quietly took in all before her.

He kept his eyes fixed on her.

"Oh, Jess, look at the little hill that’s flat on
top--the one that looks like a stove-pipe hat." He stepped behind her
following her arm as she pointed. "The last year I was in school, the
teacher, Mr. Purvis, took the whole class on a picnic up there to celebrate the
start of summer vacation. Harry Benson decided to try to kiss Molly Pritchard.
She slugged him so hard he rolled halfway down the slope. We fell over
laughing. Mr. Purvis didn’t find it funny and made us leave."

As she chuckled and glanced up at him, he could see how
eager she was to go back to Jackson City, despite all her earlier protests
about doing just that. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Even her hair
had grown, changed, and was no longer the funny mop he’d learned to...care about.
"And what did you do to boys who tried to kiss you?"

"None did. But if they’d have tried, they’d have gone
all
the way down the mountain."

Good
, he thought.

They mounted their horses once more, and this time rode
without stopping until they reached the edge of town. McLowry reined in his
sorrel. "I have to talk to you."

"Now?" How could he want to talk when they were
so near home? She’d thought she’d hate returning, but instead, with each step,
her excitement grew until her need for home was practically a physical ache.
She wanted to see Jackson City, to smell it, to feel the familiar dirt and dust
of the town under her boots once again.

He took a deep breath. "If the town were to see you
with me, they’d think the worst of you."

"It doesn’t matter."

"It does, Gabe. For you and for your future. You go
on ahead. Anybody asks, just say you’ve spent this time in Bisbee, and that you
traveled back here alone. Tomorrow, I’ll ride into town and in a day or two,
I’ll just happen to meet you. How’s that?"

"Crazy, that’s how it is!"

"It’s also necessary. I know these town gossips.
They’ve got nothing better to do than trash girls’ reputations."

"What do I care about my reputation?"

"I was raised in a land and a time when to be a lady
meant everything. You’re a lady, through and through, Gabe. It’s not fancy
clothes that make one, and not her language. It’s her soul. But these people
might not know that. If they decide that a woman traveling around with some
gunfighter scum makes her a lowlife as well, they could make your life a living
hell."

She rubbed her palm on the pommel of her saddle, not
trusting herself to look into his eyes. "I love you, Jess. Does being a
lady mean I have to deny that, too?"

"Yes."

The word sliced through her. "No!"

He winced, every part of him wanting to agree with her and
ride down there in the open. But he knew better. He grabbed her wrist.
"Listen to me real good, Gabe, cause I’m just going to say this
once."

She clamped her jaw shut, her heart pounding.

"That’s your home down there. You don’t know, and I
don’t, how you’re going to feel when you go back, and how people are going to
treat you. You should love it; you should want to make your life there...and I
might not be welcome."

She turned her head, not willing to listen to such madness.

He jerked her arm, making her look at him again. "If
that happens--"

"It won’t!"

"If it happens, just remember that I wasn’t planning
on staying here, anyway."

Her face paled.

"I plan to head up to Santa Fe. I could go now, or I
could go later. In any case, you’re going to have to forget about me, hear?
Just like I’ll forget all about you."

She stared at him, stricken.

He couldn’t leave it at that. "We’ll see how it goes,
all right?"

She nodded, then turned her head away. It hurt too much to
look at him.

Slowly, he eased back in the saddle. The words he had said
to her made him feel like the lowest kind of cad, but someday she might thank
him for them. If it turned out, as he expected, that Jackson was a place where she
belonged and he didn’t, he couldn’t bear to think she might not be able to find
the kind of love she deserved, even if it did mean his Gabe would be with
another man.

He turned his horse and slowly rode away from her, not
letting himself look back, feeling more empty, more lifeless, with every step
the horse took.

o0o

Gabe went a little ways then stopped and turned to look at
McLowry. She watched until he was gone, then nudged her horse forward at a
gallop toward the town, away from the pain of his words. He said he’d follow in
a day or two. That would be when she’d prove to him how wrong he’d been about
her and the people of Jackson City.

She rode straight to Mrs. Beale’s house, the grandest
house not only in Jackson City, but from there to Tucson. Cozette Beale was
married to a circuit judge who spent more time on the circuit than did any
other judge in the Territory. Most folks said he did it to keep away from
Cozette, who liked few things more than to put on airs because she was a
judge’s wife. Despite that, Gabe liked the woman. Mrs. Beale had no children
and had seemed to take a special interest in the motherless Devere
brood--especially in Gabe. She had always given her butter cookies and tea when
Gabe came to town, and told her things about being a "lady" that her
Pa hadn’t had a clue about. Things like holding out her little pinky when she
sipped tea, and not biting hard into a confection with powdered sugar on top or
it’d fly onto her upper lip and make her look like she was frothing. Gabe would
leave these sessions and howl at how funny they were--but she remembered them,
nonetheless.