Dance With A Gunfighter (32 page)

She looked back at him. "Big enough for you,
too."

McLowry couldn’t stop himself from kissing a spot of dried
paint on the tip of her nose. "Whatever would the good people of Jackson
City say about such an arrangement?"

"I don’t care."

The way she looked at him made him ache inside with
wanting to do what she suggested. But thoughts intruded of nameless men like
the one in Tombstone who’d challenged him, plus all the other gunfighters who
still sought him out. "I wish it could be," he whispered.

"I love you, Jess. When will you learn to accept
that?"

His throat felt thick with unspoken words. How many hours
had he spent weaving foolish dreams about Gabe and himself? About living on
this ranch? Particularly at night, alone in the barn, he would pretend he was
here building a home for the both of them. He had planned how he would help her
run the ranch, how he would watch it grow big and profitable. In those dreams,
they would live together in the little house. Mornings, he’d wake up to hot
coffee and a big breakfast, then he’d kiss Gabe good-bye as he went off to work
in the barn or the stable, or ride the fences, or tend the cattle. Later in the
day, she would bring him a lunch and sit under a cottonwood, talking with him
as he ate. Each evening, he’d return to a big supper and afterward... afterward
would come the best part, when he and Gabe would sit and talk in the cool of
the evening, and share their thoughts and dreams. Then, when night fell, they’d
go to bed and love each other all night, every night. To have such a home, to
have such love in his life...

Instead of speaking, he took her in his arms and, without
music, they waltzed away the sunset. Jess’s eyes never left her face, etching
it in his memory for the lonely days and nights ahead.

o0o

Gabe and McLowry stood at the train platform in Tucson,
waiting for the train from Denver to arrive. They were there to meet Chad and
take him by buckboard back to the ranch, a half-day’s ride.

The owner of the home where Chad had been staying, Robert
Weylach, turned out to be a gracious and kindly man. He had taken a liking to
the young man, and had personally seen to it that he was delivered safely to
the train station in Denver.

When the train stopped, the porter got off and put down a
block step to help the passengers descend. As travelers deboarded, friends and
relatives met them with great bustle and fanfare. Before long, it seemed
everyone who was supposed to get off had done so. As Gabe and Jess still waited
on the platform, the porter walked up to them.

"Are you here for the boy in the wheelchair?" he
asked.

"He’s my brother," Gabe said.

His long face was sorrowful. "Right. I’ll get him,
and we’ll help him off the train together."

He went into the car. The moment Gabe saw her brother in
his chair was both a joy and so devastating she wasn’t sure she could bear it.
She forced herself to smile.

His eyes were downcast, not looking up to greet her or to
see where he was being taken. His hair was the beautiful jet-black color she
remembered, and much longer than he used to wear it, but nothing else about him
was the same.

His face and neck and hands were frightfully thin and
bony. His shoulders seemed to have shrunken within themselves, and his chest
was all but concave. His legs were covered with a red and black blanket. The
dark brown clothes he wore looked like hand-me-downs from someone six sizes
larger. Somehow she managed to move her legs forward towards him.

McLowry got there first. He grabbed the wheel axle of the
chair, while the porter held the handles. Together, they lifted the chair and
Chad, and eased them through the narrow doorway onto the platform. Still, Chad
didn’t look around, as if he didn’t care where he was, or with whom.

As the porter stepped back, McLowry gave him a generous
tip. He nodded his thanks, and with a touch of his cap to Gabe, said,
"Good luck." Then he was gone.

Gabe stared silently at the stranger before her.

"I’ll go get his bags," McLowry said, and left
the two alone.

She crouched down in front of her brother. His arms were
on the armrest, his hands drooping off the ends, and his head bent forward. He
paid no attention to her. Lightly, she touched his wrist. "Chad," she
whispered. "They told me you were dead. I’m so sorry! I never would have
left you at that place. I just didn’t know!"

He seemed lost in his own world.

"We’re going home now," she said. "I won’t
fool you and say it’s the same. It’s not. It’ll never be the same for us. But
at least we’re together." She kissed his forehead. "I love you so
much, Chad. I love you, big brother."

He paid no attention to her, and that hurt most of all.

When McLowry returned, her hand was clutching Chad’s. Her
brother’s hold was limp, his eyes still directed at the ground. She tried to
smile, but she could see that Jess wasn’t fooled. "I loaded his bags into
the buckboard," he said. "We should get going so we’ll make it back
home by nightfall."

She pushed her brother’s chair. It wasn’t nearly as easy
to do as she’d assumed, with the ruts from rains and big rocks that men and
horses just ignored. More than once, Jess had to help her out.

Getting Chad onto the buckboard was another problem. They
were able to rouse enough of his attention that he helped. Gabe was glad to see
his arms were strong, even though his legs were useless. He was so thin now,
she imagined she could probably carry him herself in an emergency. He sat
between her and Jess, and his wheelchair was tied onto the back with his bags.
Throughout the ride home, Chad never said a word.

They circled past Jackson City--Gabe didn’t want him
confronted with curious people, even though most were friends. He needed time
to settle himself, and his thoughts.

She felt him stiffen as they passed the old flappy-tongued
saguaro. She put her hand on his knee and smiled. He didn’t look at her, but
Jess did. She could see the concern in his eyes, and once again she was glad he
was with her. She didn’t know how she could have handled Chad without him.

Chad bowed his head as they approached the house. He
didn’t look at the new ‘white dove’ as Gabe called it. He didn’t look at the
old barn, or the corral, or the stable areas. Not at their father’s old chuck
wagon or the well or the chicken coop or the vegetable garden. Jess lifted the
wheelchair onto the ground. Chad helped as they lowered him to it, but he made
no indication of knowing where he was or why.

"You’re home, big brother," Gabe said.
"Your room is all set up for you. Do you want to go inside now?"

He didn’t respond. She started to walk around behind him,
to push the chair indoors, when he suddenly jerked it around and wheeled fast
and hard away from the house. Gabe watched horrified, and started after him
when Jess caught her arm. "Give him time," he advised.

Chad continued to the dry arroyo, and stopped. It was a
favorite spot for him when he was a child. To see him there, now, in a wheelchair
was hard.

There were times during winter rains, or in summer when
the monsoons came, that the wash would overflow or flash floods would barrel
through and the whole area would be under water. That was when the desert trees
and shrubs would turn green, and the land would team with frogs and toads and
snakes and all manner of wildlife. Other times, like this one, the white rocks
of the bottomland gleamed dusty and dry in the hot sun.

Gabe loved both sights. It was nature. It was home.

Perhaps Jess was right, and she should leave Chad alone a
while, but she worried about him, and what he was feeling. She knew how
difficult it had been for her to come back here. For him, it must be even
worse.

After a fifteen minutes or so, she walked to his side.
Tears glistened in his eyes, and they nearly broke her heart.

o0o

The next day, word began to spread throughout Jackson City
that Gabe had brought her brother back home again. People came out to the ranch
to visit, bringing cakes and pies, casseroles and stews. Gabe found it all
eerily reminiscent of a get-together after a funeral, but she couldn’t object
to having fine food available in the house for once.

Jess stayed out of the way of the townspeople. He told her
that if he let the people of Jackson City gawk at him as well as at Chad, they
might be in danger of wringing their necks from swiveling them around so much.
Keeping out of the way was, he suggested wryly, a public service.

After a few days, the hubbub died down. Life settled into
a dull roar until two weeks later when McLowry told her he was going to leave
for a few days. He wouldn’t say why, or where he was going, just that he wanted
some time on his own. Gabe hadn’t realized how completely she’d come to depend
on his assistance at the ranch, and how much she expected him to be nearby,
until he wasn’t there.

She knew that one day he would leave the ranch for good,
and had tried to prepare herself for it. She couldn’t imagine him finding this
life very interesting.

Even knowing that, she couldn’t keep him from her
thoughts. Even as she milked the cows, she found she kept one eye on the teats
and the other on the barn door, expecting him to stroll through it any minute.

It surprised her, too, as she rode over the ranch, doing
the chores McLowry usually attended to, how so much of what had been done there
was due to him. He’d put in a big water tank, weeded, straightened the posts
and tightened the fence of the corral, put cactus and wires around the chicken
coop to protect the hens from coyotes, and put fresh hay in the barn. He’d made
plans for adding a windmill and a cistern near the stables. He was everywhere
she looked, in the very air she breathed.

Three days later, when he still hadn’t returned, she was
beginning to worry, having no idea where he’d gone or why or if he would
return. After breakfast she rode into Jackson City to see if anyone there had
seen him. No one had.

While in town, she stopped off to visit with Mrs. Beale
and to talk with her about Chad.

"I remember after the War Between the States,"
Mrs. Beale had said, "a number of our soldiers came home that way. Some of
them stayed lost in their own worlds forever, but in time, many of them grew
stronger and their minds came back to us. Now, you’ve got to remember, they
couldn’t ever return to the way they were before the war. But they spoke, they
loved their families, and they learned to live again."

"So there is hope for him." Gabe said, as she
anxiously glanced at the grandfather clock. She had left Chad alone to come
here, and she was worried about him.

Mrs. Beale poured more tea. "There is always hope,
Gabe. Don’t ever give up on him, and also, give him some time. It’s good you’re
here, now. You need to allow him to be alone without you constantly hovering
over him, watching his every move, his every expression. You’ve got to let him
come around on his own."

Uneasily, Gabe sipped her tea.

When she returned home, she went into the house calling
Chad’s name. There was no answer. She checked his bedroom, and he wasn’t there.

She hurried outside, looking all around. He wasn’t at the
arroyo. She ran into the barn, trying not to panic. Maybe Jess had returned,
and the two were together somewhere. They seemed to like each other--Chad would
follow Jess around, not speaking, while Jess would talk in that slow drawl of
his about all kinds of things and seem to keep Chad interested.

There was no sign that McLowry had returned, and Chad
wasn’t in the barn.

She ran out the barn’s back door and stopped. Tottering on
the very edge of his wheelchair seat, Chad was at the corral, gripping the
topmost rail and reaching inside to pet his old roan, Thunder. She stared at
his lips, unbelieving. He looked like he was talking to the horse. He’d had
Thunder since he was sixteen, and he’d raised him from a colt. Gabe often felt
he loved that horse more than anything else in the world. Now, he’d found him
again.

She tiptoed backwards into the barn where he couldn’t see
her. She watched, her heart in her throat as he pulled himself out of the chair
to reach Thunder’s neck and pat it, his strokes long and slow and loving
against Thunder’s snout and neck. Chad’s face had a look of contentment he
hadn’t worn since he’d come home.

Chapter 25

Two nights later, Gabe awoke to see a dim light outside
her bedroom window. For a moment she thought the barn was on fire.

It wasn’t. Someone was inside the barn with a lantern.

She prayed Jess had returned. Throwing a shawl over her
long nightgown, she grabbed her Winchester just in case it was some prowler,
though she couldn’t imagine one so dull-witted as to light the way as he stole
from her. Not that there was much in the barn worth stealing. Barefoot, she
quietly made her way across the yard.

Peeking inside the barn door, she let loose a sigh of
relief, lowered the gun and walked in.

She must have made some sound because Jess suddenly swung
toward the door, his hand reflexively hovering over his sidearm. He stared at
her as if he couldn’t believe she was there, then his face softened with an
expression she had never seen before.

She ran to him and their lips met.

"Where did you go for so long?" she murmured
between kisses.

He held her close. "No place special."

"I was worried I’d never see you again!"

He drew back from her. "Now, little one," he
drawled mischievously, "surely you don’t think I’d desert you, do you? Not
when there’s that terrific bed waiting for me right there in the corner."
He angled his head toward the hard army cot. "Besides, what would that
pretty cow who shares this side of the barn with me say if I wasn’t here to
lullaby her to sleep each evening? We’re quite the twosome, you know."