Dance With A Gunfighter by JoMarie Lodge Read Free Book Online

fact.
    Her eyes settled on McLowry’s back as his sorrel walked
along the trail up ahead. Once upon a time, in the fairy tale life that had
been hers before Tanner’s gang ripped it apart, her wildest hope, her fondest
dream, was that someday she would meet him again. She had lost her heart to him
that night at the dance. Through the years of helping her father and brothers
run the ranch, do the cooking, and take care of household chores, she hadn’t
forgotten him. No one else had ever caused her head to spin, her skin to
tingle, or her heart to melt the way he had. How ironic that he had scarcely
recalled meeting her, while she would have remembered him to her dying day.
    Over the past year or two, a few young men had come to her
house with hopes of courting her, but they had seemed like brown wrens pecking
at grub after she had soared with an eagle. Nothing they did could compete with
her memory of the handsome stranger.
    She wasn’t bothered by not having a fellow, though,
because her pa and brothers had needed her help with the running of the ranch.
Situated in the foothills, an arroyo cut through it. Dry most of the year, at
times it overflowed from rains or flash floods. The water nurtured the oaks and
pinyon and juniper to shade and cool the earth, and the scrub and grasses so
vital to raising cattle in the territory. While some people, especially those
from the north, complained that this land was far too hot and dry and spindly,
to Gabe it possessed a rare and vital beauty in the sculpture of its red and
granite rocks, in the brightness of its sky, and in its very stillness on a
summer’s day.
    She had been raised with the idea that one day she would
grow up and marry and leave the ranch. Instead of filling her with joy, she had
always been saddened by it. Now, she didn’t know what the future held, if
anything. Nor did she care.
    Her throat tightened and she focussed her thoughts away
from her family and back to the gunfighter.
    He had changed. Where his clothes had once been sleek and
polished, they were now scruffy. Where his demeanor had once been one of
smooth, polished deadliness, it was now as hard and blunt as rough-hewn stone.
His face was thinner and more angular and weathered chestnut brown by the
desert sun. But his firm mouth was the same, as was his straight nose, and his
eyes were still so blue they must have made heaven jealous.
    The differences, though, dug deep. The cockiness and ready
smile were gone, and his eyes held a distance she hadn’t seen before. Of
course, when she had first met him she was but a child, and had seen him with a
child’s joyful, innocent eyes. Now, her eyes were old.
    Gabe and McLowry hitched the horses to the tie rail in
front of the Bisbee Hotel, her gray, Maggie, beside the sorrel he called Blaze
for the white spot on its brow. Gabe eyed the expensive-looking hotel and
mentally tallied her money. She didn’t know how long it would take to find
Tanner and the others, and she had to be prudent.
    "You go ahead, McLowry." She patted Maggie’s
neck. "I’ll meet you inside later."
    McLowry had reached for the ties on the saddlebags. His
hand stilled. "How’s your money? Do you have enough for this place?"
    "Of course I’ve got money. But I don’t intend to
waste it on frivolities. I like sleeping outdoors."
    "Right," he muttered, tugging at the ties to
unfasten them. "Get your things and come on. I can’t keep an eye on you if
I’m in there and you’re out here." He lifted the bags from the saddle and
tossed them over one shoulder.
    "Nobody’s asked you to keep an eye on me," she
reminded him.
    "Nobody’s asked me to do a lot of things I’ve done.
But it’s never stopped me before." He started walking toward the hotel.
    God, but she was tempted. After hearing about Colton’s
arrest in Bisbee, she had made camp in the desert for each of the five nights
since leaving Jackson City. Night sounds and night animals were a lot more
frightening when one was alone