Man in Black

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1Graveyard Gulch, Arizona

June 2001

Melissa fidgeted. How could she not when she was so thoroughly uncomfortable? The pale, parched ground burned through her thin-soled sandals. Grains of sand gritted between her toes. The intense June sun beat down on her uncovered head while the dry, hot wind scorched her skin. Even through her sunglasses, the glare hurt her eyes. Her nose twitched at the acrid sting of stable dust.

With each passing moment, she grew more frustrated with Jo’s schemes. Jo meant well, bless her heart. She’d been trying so hard to distract Melissa from her grief, but it was simply getting to be too much.

In the two weeks since Melissa arrived in Arizona, Jo had added daily to a list of things they must see and places they must go. Melissa would have preferred more quiet time together. Given the opportunity, perhaps she could have found nerve to bare her soul, revealing the guilty secret that haunted her. Once shared, maybe it wouldn’t weigh so heavily on her mind.

Take today. Had Jo not insisted, they could be in Jo’s cool apartment in Linda Vista now instead of here in Graveyard Gulch, a partly restored frontier mining camp. Surely they could experience the Old West on television instead of in person. No show performed by amateur volunteers could equal her favorite novels and old movies, anyway.

Moreover, how could she enjoy light entertainment when guilt and grief clouded every moment? She couldn’t escape reality. Daddy was dead and she was to blame.

Melissa’s painful thoughts held her enthralled until she saw the actors begin to take their places. What a garish bunch! The score of men wore a wild array of brocade vests, frock coats, buckskin, beads, fringe, turquoise, conchos, and cavalry blues representing every conceivable outfit of the Old West.

A half-seen motion drew her gaze into the shadow of the barn’s overhanging roof. One man stood there, dressed in unrelieved black. Tall and lean, his severe, dark attire provided a stark relief to the peacock profusion of the others.

Suddenly the whole yard erupted in a noisy and disjointed melee. Gunfire and wild shouts echoed. Then someone yelled in Spanish. “¡Cuidado, es el policio!”

At the sound, Melissa cringed, instinctively seeking shelter. For an instant, she was somewhere else, awash in fear and pain. She blinked and shook her head in an effort to dismiss the troubling vision. When she finally snapped back to the present, the shrill squeals of horses almost drowned the other strident sounds.

A fistfight broke out. Frock coats and buckskin tangled and twined.

Still unaccountably anxious, Melissa made no attempt to follow the action. Instead, her gaze was riveted on the man in black.

He stepped out into the harsh sunlight, the shiny, bronze badge on his vest making one solitary spot of brightness. Walking with a soft-footed grace, he drew his single revolver in one fluid motion. Pausing, he scanned the group with efficient speed, as if sizing up the situation.

“All right, boys. This has gone far enough.”

While his gaze again swept the yard, he slid the weapon back into his holster. Still, he kept his hand near it. Though low pitched, his voice carried clearly, even above the cacophony.

For an instant, Melissa’s heart leaped into her throat. What could one man do against a whole unruly mob shooting and brawling? One man and one gun? Wouldn’t they all turn on him? She shivered as she started to drift back to the shadowy, awful other place.

“Drop your weapons. Now!” The sound of his deep, calm voice drew her back and slammed shut some mental door. Abruptly, she felt as if everything would be all right. She chided herself for being caught up in the fantasy, accepting it as reality for even a second. Of course, they didn’t turn on him. It was only a show, for Pete’s sake!

With sheepish or sullen expressions, the other men stopped. They lowered their weapons, stilled flying fists, and shifted to face him. Moments after his order, they began to drop their gun belts and lay down their rifles.

It’s all play-acting; just make-believe, but something about this one man gave credibility to the whole performance. She found it easy to accept that he, with just the force of his personality, could subdue a brawling bunch of miners, gamblers and cowboys. In contrast to his air of assurance and authority, the others seemed little more than marionettes, woodenly pantomiming their parts.

Only the man in black seemed real. He moved among the rest, lining some up, dismissing others, collecting dropped gun belts and stacking rifles beside the barn. As he approached one man who wore the elaborate charro outfit of a traditional Mexican rancher, he stooped to pick up a pistol. The charro seized the moment. Snatching a wicked-looking knife from his boot, he lunged.

Melissa joined the crowd in a collective gasp. The blade glinted in the sun, transcribing a bright arc toward the black-covered back. At the last possible moment, the man in black twisted deftly aside. He whirled to flip the shorter but heavier man, sending him sprawling. Jolted from the charro’s grasp, the knife flew across the corral.

Melissa gasped again. Shock held her immobile as the blade flashed through the air, settling into the dust not two feet from her toes. Catching her trembling lip in her teeth, she dared a downward glance. It had to be only a prop, but still, she shivered.

The charro rolled into a deep puddle made by water dripping from the horse trough and came up spitting mud. The man in black ignored him, crossed the dusty yard in a loose-limbed amble, and knelt to retrieve the knife. As he rose slowly to his feet, he looked straight at Melissa.

She found herself entrapped by the strangest and fiercest eyes she’d ever seen. They were a pale silvery-gray, hard and pure as the desert sun’s light. Time stopped as she burned and froze. Her head spun and her knees threatened to buckle, but she could not look away nor escape the impaling intensity of those incredible eyes.

She saw the rest of his face in a blur—sun darkened skin drawn taut over angular bones, nose a strong wedge dividing its planes, lips narrow and finely drawn, and a maze of squint lines feathering away from the outer corners of those compelling eyes. A slightly drooping ash-brown moustache bracketed his mouth.

Finally, he touched the brim of his black hat, gave a slight nod, and turned away. Melissa let her breath out in a rush. It couldn’t have been more than seconds, but she felt as if half a day had elapsed. For an instant, a dream-like image danced in the back of her mind, this time more pleasant than fearful, only to fade away before she could grasp it.

The last part of the little drama unfolded at a distance, almost beyond Melissa’s perception. All she could see was the one man’s face. Though weathered, lived-in and too hard to be considered handsome, she had never seen a face with so much strength of character. His eyes utterly arrested her. Icy in color, they nonetheless burned, branding their way across her body and into her mind. Her skin prickled as if seared by their touch. She suddenly understood how cold could burn.

Only when Jo tugged impatiently at Melissa’s arm did she realize the show had ended. Jo pointed out a husky man with a pleasant, youthful face. He wore shirt and trousers of pale gray with a lilac-embroidered vest and a pair of matched ivory-handled revolvers in shiny holsters.

“Come on, Lis. I want to go talk to him.”

Melissa followed, still bemused. After she noted the man in black had disappeared, she gave herself a mental shake and tried to tune in on Jo’s conversation with the gray-clad actor. That was a mistake. She wanted to cringe at some of her friend’s inane questions, but the make-believe gunfighter didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he apologized because he had to leave. Before leaving, however, he invited them to the potluck supper at the group’s clubhouse that evening.

“Guests are always welcome. We’re a friendly bunch, and if you ladies are local, you might even want to join our group. We’ve got some military members who’ll be leaving before long.”

Jo quickly agreed, not giving Melissa a moment to argue or demur. Then they left the stable. Her face alight with excitement, Jo danced around Melissa in a giddy circle as they started away.

“Oh, Lis, you’ve brought me luck! I’ve been trying to get a chance to talk to that guy since the first time I came up last winter. He works at Fort Cochise too, and I think he’s gorgeous! This is so fantastic! Did you see anyone that appealed to you?”

Melissa shook her head, neither willing nor able to admit her fascination with the man in black. Somehow, the type of light-hearted crush in which Jo was indulging seemed totally inappropriate for her own situation, especially when she remembered the hypnotic power of the man’s pale eyes.

She couldn’t refrain from a shudder. He’d seemed not an actor, but more like a real sheriff controlling an unruly mob. Such power and command couldn’t be faked. Yet, for all his apparent menace, she felt no fear.

Although she could not say why, she believed he would never intentionally hurt her. In that moment, as they gazed at each other, she’d almost expected him to reach out and draw her into the protective circle of his arms. Good grief, what is coming over me?

Melissa drifted through the rest of the afternoon in a daze. Unable to pull her thoughts from the man in black and the scorching intensity of his gaze, she listened with only half an ear to Jo’s happy chatter about the day’s events.

The sun had dropped to rest on the jagged edge of the mountains to the west when Melissa and Jo finally turned down Last Chance Street toward the Gulch Gang’s clubhouse. From a block away, they could hear rollicking music and laughter. The delicious aromas of spicy Mexican dishes tantalized them.

A sudden reluctance seized Melissa, slowed her steps. Would the man in black be there? Would he recognize her? In that long look, he seemed to read her entire life history, all her shame, pain, and failures. Did she really want to see him again? Perhaps from a safe distance. But not face to face.

Naturally oblivious to Melissa’s distress, Jo hurried along. Melissa envied Jo’s simple eagerness to become better acquainted, perhaps form a new friendship. Her own tangled emotions were much too complex for such a straightforward response.

Jo’s new hero spotted them as soon as they entered the clubhouse. He hurried over to greet them, looking much more commonplace now, dressed in faded denim. Though his expression reflected honest pleasure upon seeing them, he seemed so—well, so ordinary—nothing at all like the man in black.

Melissa glanced around the room. A mixture of relief and regret filled her when she did not see him. Of course, he’d probably changed clothes also. Maybe now he would seem ordinary too.

Jo’s new friend, Charles Brock, insisted they call him Charlie. He led them around the main room, introducing them to other members of the group. They ended up at the buffet table where he made sure they each got a plate full of food and then found seats for them at one of the long trestle tables filling one wing of the L-shaped room.

The friendliness and warmth of the whole group took Melissa by surprise. She listened in amazement to their easy banter, recognized it as teasing meant in fun rather than the brittle repartee of her acquaintances in Philadelphia, each trying to cut down another.

She knew she had led a very sheltered and restricted life. As the motherless only child of a man whose existence centered on adding to his already generous fortune, she’d been under constant control. The sternly omniscient gaze of her paternal grandmother added even more suppression. The ways of ordinary people proved a constant source of wonder. Could she ever hope to be one of them, to fit in and belong? If only…on her own at last, no immediate goal seemed more important.