Packing Iron (5 page)

By the end of the week Gabriel, though still sore, had healed enough to help Ingrid and Raven gather vegetables from the patch beside the cabin. When that task was finished and Raven had gone off to hunt quail, he offered to make a few much-needed repairs to the corral fence, barn and cabin.

Ingrid thanked him but said it wasn’t necessary. She had already sold the ranch to Mr Lylo Willis, who ran the
telegraph
office in Santa Rosa, and because of its rundown condition had accepted a lower price than it was worth.

Surprised, Gabriel asked her when she and Raven were moving.

‘End of this month. We’re going to live with my
stepbrother
, Reece, in California. He’s been nagging me to come ever since Sven died. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave here.’ She looked sadly about her. ‘This is all I have left to remember him by … and it’s taken me this long to find the will to pull up stakes and go on without him.’

Wondering why it mattered to him if she or her daughter left or not, Gabriel said: ‘How’s Raven feel about movin’?’

‘She’s undecided …. changes her mind from day to day. She loves the desert and the freedom it gives her, but at the same time she’s excited about going somewhere new and
living in a big fine house with servants—’

‘Your stepbrother’s fared well, then?’

‘Very well. Reece owns the town bank, a general store and from what he says in his letters a lot of land as well.’

‘Then you shouldn’t want for anything.’

‘Absolutely not. He’s made that very clear. Says I won’t have to lift a finger. He’s also made plans for Raven to attend a school for fine young ladies in Sacramento.’

The idea amused Gabriel and he couldn’t help grinning.

‘I know what you’re thinking and I felt the same way. Poor Reece has no idea what a handful she is and, frankly, I haven’t let on. I know that’s dishonest but, well, there’s always the chance that once she gets there and settles in, she’ll change. People do, you know,’ Ingrid added when he frowned. ‘I know in Raven’s case it’s hard to believe—’

‘That’s not what was on my mind, ma’am. I was thinkin’ that if she was my daughter I wouldn’t want her to. I’d want her to stay just like she is. Not often you find a young’un with her kind of savvy an’ grit.’

‘Heavens, now you sound like my husband – that’s exactly what he would have said.’ She paused, troubled by her thoughts. ‘Sven didn’t like my brother much. He only met Reece a few times, but he formed a bad opinion of him. And whenever I tried to defend him, Sven would accuse me of turning a blind eye. We seldom argued about anything, but when it came to Reece we disagreed vehemently. I can remember Sven saying to me once: “For God’s sake, woman, open your eyes and see this man for what he really is – a greedy, ruthless land baron who’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants!” Of course, that was just his opinion, and a very biased opinion at that—’

‘Biased?’

‘Reece didn’t want me to marry Sven. He thought he was a good man, but felt financially I could do better. In fact he 
was angry at me when I ignored his advice and married Sven. Said I’d rue the day.’

‘Did you?’

‘Never. Not once, not even for a second. But somehow Sven found out about what Reece said and never forgave him. Which was sad. Though Reece is only my stepbrother, he’s always done his best to take care of me. I love him very much and because of the rift that sprang up between him and Sven, I was forced to make a choice – my husband or Reece. As a result, we didn’t see each other for several years.’

‘An’ now you’n Raven are gonna go live with him.’

‘Sounds like you think I’m making a mistake.’

‘Wasn’t my intention.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ Ingrid said adamantly. ‘I admit Reece can be pugnacious and difficult to deal with at times, like any businessman … and he does enjoy getting his own way. But he’s not ruthless and he’s not greedy. He’s generous. In fact he’s one of the most generous men I’ve ever known.’

To Gabriel, it sounded like she was trying to convince herself that her stepbrother was a fine man and instinctively he wondered why.

Misunderstanding his silence, she said: ‘My goodness, listen to me carrying on. Forgive me. I usually don’t burden other people with my problems. But I can’t discuss this with Raven. She’s far too young to understand any of it—’

‘It’s no burden, ma’am. Everyone needs to talk to
somebody
.’

‘I’ve noticed you don’t.’

‘Maybe I’ve been alone too long.’

‘Oh, I’m not criticizing. In fact I’m envious. I’d give anything not to be so needy, so dependent upon the love and affection of others—’ She broke off, embarrassed, and then only half-teasingly said: ‘Perhaps I should have you 
teach me how to be a gunfighter … then I could be as
independent
and free as you.’

‘Guns don’t bring independence, ma’am. Or freedom. Truth is they can sometimes keep a fella boxed up.’

‘Then why do you keep using them?’

‘Don’t have much choice.’

‘Because of your reputation?’

His tight-lipped silence answered her question.

‘What if you went somewhere else, some place far away where no one knows you?’

‘An’ do what? Tend bar in a cantina? Sell dresses an’ nails in a general store? Wear a badge for fifty an’ found till some saddle tramp sees a wanted poster an’ puts one in my back? For gunfighters … life ain’t long on options.’

The stress of the past few days showed on his weary, rugged face and her heart went out to him. Moving close, she rested her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his light blue eyes.

‘If by some miracle you could hang up your guns – would you?’

‘I don’t deal in miracles,’ he said. ‘I deal in lead.’

It was not the answer she’d hoped for. She stepped back, upset by his response, and started for the cabin.

He knew he’d hurt her and cursed himself for letting his anger get the better of him. For a moment he considered calling her back and explaining that five years ago Cally had asked him the same thing. Younger then and still filled with hope, he’d answered yes. Encouraged, she had ignored public opinion and a warning from the territorial marshal, and become his woman. And from then on her life had been a living hell.

Not about to put another caring woman through the same anguish, he waited until Ingrid reached the cabin then said quietly: ‘Reckon I’ll be ridin’ on tomorrow.’ 

‘Tomorrow?’ She turned back to him, making no effort to hide her dismay. ‘But, why? What’s your hurry?’

‘No hurry. Figure it’s time.’

‘I wish you’d reconsider, Gabe.’ When he didn’t reply, she added: ‘It would mean a lot to me if you’d stay on until Raven and I leave for California. It’s only another week or so.’

‘Why till then?’

‘Well, for one thing you’d be completely healed. You start riding too soon and you might reopen your wound. And once it starts bleeding again it could get infected—’

‘What’s the other reason?’

She hesitated.

‘If you want me to stay, ma’am, I gotta know why.’

‘It’s Raven. Before you showed up she was giving me fits. She fought me over everything – refused to do anything I asked and threw tantrums whenever I put my foot down. I thought at first it was just her age and rebellious nature. But as time wore on I realized it went much deeper.’

He waited, wondering how that involved him.

She seemed to read his mind. ‘Raven likes you. More importantly, she respects you. You’re a man and right now she needs a man to look up to.’

‘Ma’am—’

‘No, no, please listen. Although Raven’s never come right out and said it, I know she blames me for Sven’s death and ever since that day has seemed intent on making my life miserable. But now, with you around, she’s seems to have gotten over all that and become her old self again.’

He thought a moment before asking: ‘Why you? You didn’t pull the trigger.’

‘In her eyes I might just as well have. She believes if we hadn’t gone to Melvin’s Haberdashery to pick up my
birthday
dress, her father wouldn’t have gotten shot. I’ve tried to talk her out of it, but she won’t listen. She’s convinced 
herself that I’m to blame and that’s all there is to it.’

He slowly digested her words. ‘How ’bout you?’

‘Do I think I’m to blame?’ Ingrid shrugged, dejected. ‘At this stage I don’t know what to think. No, that’s not true. Yes. Occasionally. When I’m feeling really low. Then doubt creeps in and I start wondering. I mean, I surely didn’t need a fancy new dress, not living way out here. Yet I went ahead and helped Sven pick it out of the catalogue … chose the day we rode into town and—’ Her voice trailed off and tears glinted in her cornflower eyes.

Feeling uncomfortable, as he always did when women cried around him, Gabriel wished he was better with words so he could soothe her and make her understand that death didn’t work that way. It didn’t play favorites; once it chose its victim nothing could swerve it from its course.

‘Want me to talk to her?’

‘Thank you, no. She might think I put you up to it and then she’d hate me even more.’

Gabriel shifted uncomfortably.

Seeing how ill at ease he was, Ingrid dried her eyes on her apron, said: ‘I’m sorry I imposed on you like that. It was wrong of me. You’re not responsible for Raven or me—’

‘But I am indebted to you.’

‘Nonsense. We did no more than any other civilized person would do under the circumstances.’

‘I’ll stay,’ he said quietly.

‘No, no, I won’t hear of it—’

‘And I’ll ride with you to Las Cruces – that’s where you’re catchin’ the train to California, right?’

‘Yes, but – well, thank you, but I wouldn’t dream of putting you to that sort of inconvenience.’

‘No inconvenience. I’m goin’ there anyways.’

‘You sure? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?’

‘No. There’s a lady I know at the mission. She means a lot to me and I want her to know I’m still alive.’

Ingrid felt a twinge of jealousy but quickly dismissed it. ‘So, there is a woman in your life?’

Before he could reply, they heard Raven yelling outside.

‘Rider comin’!’

Gabriel and Ingrid exchanged uneasy glances and then hurried out to the corral.

‘Over there,’ Raven pointed to the north. ‘He’s too far off to see who it is, but I reckoned you’d want to know.’

She was speaking to Gabriel. He nodded his thanks then asked her to get his field glasses from his saddle-bags.

‘Most likely he’s heading for Santa Rosa,’ Ingrid said as Raven ran to the barn. ‘Maybe even the border.’

Gabriel didn’t say anything. But his gut instinct said this rider wasn’t a good omen.

Shortly Raven returned, gave him his glasses and pointed out into the desert. ‘See … there … just to the left of that butte.’

Removing the glasses from the old traveling case, he blew on the lenses, wiped them clean with his sleeve cuff and focused them on the approaching rider.

‘It’s a man, all right. On a grullo. Got his hat pulled down low so’s I can’t see his face. But he’s ridin’ like a man who’s got all day to get where he’s goin’.’

‘May I look?’ Ingrid said. ‘Maybe there’s something about him or his horse I’ll recognize.’

He handed her the glasses. She trained them on the rider then shook her head and said he didn’t look familiar.

‘I wonder who he is?’

‘Bounty hunter, most likely.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘A cowboy’s got no need for more’n a Winchester and a pistol. This fella’s packin’ two on the hip, a belly gun an’ a 
Sharps-Borchardt rifle, Model 1878 in his saddle boot.’

‘You can tell all that from here?’

‘Bein’ observant, it’s what keeps a man alive.’

‘Maybe he won’t stop here,’ Raven said hopefully. ‘Maybe he’ll circle ’round us and keep riding?’

‘Anything’s possible.’ Gabriel focused the glasses on the rider again. There was something familiar about the erect, cocky way he sat in the saddle and the matching ivory-grip .44s poking from his black-leather, tied-down holsters that raised a question mark in Gabriel’s memory – and as the man suddenly looked up, showing his face, he realized why:

‘Damn,’ he said softly.

‘You know him?’ Raven said.

‘Latigo Rawlins – yeah, I know him.’

‘Sounds as if you don’t like him much.’

‘He’s a shootist,’ Gabriel said as if that answered her question. ‘A hired gun.’ Catching her ‘like you?’ look, he added: ‘He kills folks for money.’

‘Is he fast?’

‘Still alive, ain’t he?’

‘Faster’n you?’

‘Raven,’ her mother began crossly.

‘I’m just asking, Momma.’

‘Hopefully,’ Gabriel said to Raven, ‘I’ll never find that out.’

‘Do you think he’s coming here after you?’ Ingrid asked. ‘I mean, could Mr Stadtlander have hired him?’

‘Anything’s possible,’ Gabriel repeated. He took another look through the glasses at the rider then walked off.

They watched him enter the barn. When he reappeared a few moments later he’d buckled on his gun-belt and was tying the holster down, gunfighter-style. As he joined them he drew his Peacemaker, spun the cylinder across his
forearm
to make sure the gun was fully loaded, and then slid the 
Colt back into its well-oiled holster.

‘Take Raven inside,’ he told Ingrid. ‘An’ stay there till I tell you to come out.’

Ingrid didn’t move. ‘This gunman, Latigo whatever his name is, he won’t be here for at least another ten or fifteen minutes. That’s more than enough time for you to saddle up and go wait in the hills till he’s gone.’

‘Runnin’ ain’t the answer.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Raven offered. ‘Show you where to hide.’

Gabriel shook his head. ‘I need to get this settled. Now do like I say, ma’am.’

Grudgingly, Ingrid led Raven into the cabin. But by the way she slammed the door he knew she was angry with him.

Gabriel rolled a smoke, flared a match to it and sat on the edge of the water trough. He made sure the sun was behind him, and in the face of the rider, and then watched Latigo Rawlins riding toward him.

He’d first met the little Texan in the Acme Saloon in El Paso, the same saloon in which lawman John Selman would eventually shoot the notorious John Wesley Hardin in the back of the head. That night Gabriel and Latigo had faced each other across a poker table. Neither lost nor won much, and afterward they talked over drinks at the bar. Their meeting didn’t turn into a friendship; but during their conversation they discovered they had several things in common. Both were loners. Both had lost their parents while still in their mid teens. And both had a reputation for settling disputes with their guns.

During the ensuing years they had occasionally run into each other in various towns across the southwest and though they’d never had to confront one another, accounts of their individual exploits forced them to grudgingly respect each other’s speed with a gun.

Many people, especially lawmen, considered them cut from the same cloth and hoped they would kill each other off. Because of Latigo’s immense ego it probably would
have happened too; but before the big showdown could take place Gabriel was branded a horse-thief by Stillman Stadtlander and forced to flee to Mexico.

Now, as Latigo Rawlins drew close enough to recognize Gabriel, the small, handsome, sandy-haired shootist reined in his horse, removed his cigarette and whistled softly. ‘I’ll be damned. Is that really you, Mesquite?’

‘Mesquite Jennings is dead,’ Gabriel said, referring to the name he’d used when he had first become an outlaw. ‘He was shot down by the
Rurales
south of the border.’

Latigo Rawlins chewed on Gabriel’s words a moment, then said: ‘Then who might I be talkin’ to now?’

‘Gabe Moonlight.’

‘Whooeee. That’s mighty fancy.’

‘It’s my natural born name.’

‘True?’

‘True.’

‘Hell, I never knew that.’ Latigo had a boyish voice to go with his boyish grin. ‘All these years, amigo, an’ you never once mentioned it.’

‘Had no call to.’

That seemed to satisfy Latigo. He took a long drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt away. ‘I heard a story once. Don’t recall who told me but they said you took the name Mesquite Jennings from of one of them dime novels. That so?’

‘Yep.’

‘Why’d you kill it off?’

‘It’d worn out its welcome.’

‘Too bad. Me, I always liked the sound of it. Had flair. Like a woman in red satin and black knickers.’ He twisted slowly in the saddle trying to stretch the stiffness from his back. ‘Sure ’preciate it if I could step down and water my horse.’ 

‘Help yourself.’ Gabriel watched as the little gunfighter dismounted. He did it in one slow fluid movement, making sure his hands were always near his guns, and led his horse to the trough.

‘That’s a fine lookin’ grullo,’ Gabriel said as the leggy, mouse-colored dun buried its muzzle in the water.

‘Won it from a fella in a cantina in Alamogordo. Bluffed him into foldin’ with just one deuce showin’.’

‘Still playin’ stud then?’

‘Every chance I get. You?’

‘Not so much.’

‘Bein’ on the run’ll do that to a fella.’ Latigo laughed mirthlessly. Then removing his hat, he slapped the trail dust from it against his leathers, dipped it into the trough and poured water over his head. ‘I was due for a new pony, anyway. My roan was all wore out.’

He drank from his cupped hands, ran his dripping fingers through his curly fair hair and dried them off on his denim shirt. Then sitting beside Gabriel, he took out the makings and rolled himself a smoke.

‘Any time you feel like it,’ he said, scratching a match on his thumbnail, ‘you can tell them two women it’s safe to come out now.’

Gabriel looked at the grullo and noticed the tip of a brass nautical spyglass poking out of the saddle-bags. ‘They’re doin’ fine where they are. ’Sides, you ain’t gonna be here that long.’

Latigo grinned wryly. ‘No. Didn’t think I would be.’ His eyes, yellow as firelight, settled on Gabriel for an instant and in that instant Gabriel felt a cold chill run up his spine. It wasn’t fear, he knew; just an instinct warning him never to draw on this man unless he had an edge.

Rising, Latigo lazily stepped into the saddle and backed the grullo up without his eyes ever leaving Gabriel. ‘Thanks 
for the water,
amigo
.’

Gabriel nodded, ready to slap leather if Latigo even looked like he was going to draw.

But the little shootist made no attempt to go for his gun. Instead, once he was a few yards away he reined up, leaned on his saddle horn and gave Gabriel a cold smile.

‘If you ever get a hankerin’ to put distance ’tween you and here, look me up in California. I’ll be up north in Old Calico. Could be I’ll need someone like you.’

‘To do what?’

‘Watch my back. Man I’m gonna work for says the last two guns he hired were dry-gulched.’

‘I’ll think on it, Lefty.’

Latigo chuckled. ‘Been a spell since anyone called me that. Adios!’ He wheeled the grullo around and dug his spurs in, launching the startled horse into a gallop.

Gabriel breathed easier and signaled to the cabin. The curtains stirred and moments later Ingrid and Raven came out.

‘What did he want?’ Raven asked.

‘Was he after you?’ Ingrid added.

‘Hard to tell,’ Gabriel said. ‘Claimed he’s on his way to work for some fella in Old Calico, but—’

‘Old Calico?’ Ingrid said, surprised.

‘You’ve heard of it?’

‘That’s where my stepbrother lives. It’s a small town in the gold country near Placerville. What a coincidence.’

‘Maybe he’s gonna work for Uncle Reece?’ Raven said.

‘Don’t be silly. What use would he have for a shootist?’ She turned back to Gabriel. ‘How would this Latigo know you’re here? No one else does.’

‘Don’t figure he did. Not at first. But he’s got one of them fancy sea-captain’s spyglasses so he might’ve seen me from way off on that butte an’ decided to get a closer look. 
By now Stadtlander must’ve put a reward out for me, an’ Latigo, he was born with a nose for blood money.’

‘Does that mean he’ll be back?’

‘I doubt it,’ Gabriel said. ‘Latigo plays life like he plays poker – bluffing losers. Now that he’s seen I’m not all shot up like maybe he heard, he’s most likely to use that Sharps of his to gun me down from long range.’

‘Mean he’ll bushwhack you?’ Raven said.

‘Mean he’ll try.’

‘Dear God,’ Ingrid said. ‘This is the nineteenth century. Aren’t we ever going to learn to get along with one another?’