Walking on Air (2 page)

A few steps took Gabe to the bat-wing doors of the saloon. He pushed them open, scanned the few men sitting at tables wreathed in smoke, and then walked over to stand at the bar. Behind him, the room fell silent. Well, he was used to that. His formidable reputation with a gun made him fearsome to a lot of folks. “A bottle of your best whiskey and one glass,” he told the barkeep.

Bald pate gleaming in the lamplight, the plump older man slung a white towel over his shoulder, pulled the cork on a bottle, and then set it and a glass in front of Gabe. “Merry Christmas.”

Gabe nodded as he poured a two-finger measure of amber liquid into the tumbler. After one gulp followed by a whistle through his teeth, Gabe barely suppressed a shiver. Even so, he sloshed another measure of alcohol into the glass, downing it quickly so he’d get the burn over with fast. Though he didn’t often overindulge, he knew that drinking rotgut liquor most of the time because nothing better was available meant he’d probably die with yellow skin from liver disease, just like his father. At the thought, Gabe poured another jigger. Why not? It wasn’t as if he had one damned thing to live for.

The barkeep moved to the far end of the counter to serve another man, a seedy-looking fellow in a rumpled gray suit. The doctor, maybe? In the month that Gabe had been in Random, he’d kept pretty much to himself and still couldn’t recognize all of the town’s residents on sight. He studied the man in the mirror that lined the opposite wall, which, by power of reflection, made the establishment’s liquor stock look a lot more ample than it was. The fellow had a thin, haggard countenance, a large nose to support his wire-framed spectacles, and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed with nervousness above his dingy white shirt collar, which sported a limp, off-kilter red necktie, the loops escaping from a tarnished stickpin. His blue gaze locked with Gabe’s in the mirror. Recalling his manners, of which he had few, Gabe looked away and found himself staring at his own reflection.

Christ on crutches. He looked like the very devil, his attire all black from his Stetson on down. His jet hair needed a trim, the shaggy ends shining in the light where they curled over his collar. His eyes, the color of thrice-boiled coffee, glittered like polished stones in his sun-darkened, sharply chiseled face. No wonder ladies veered off the boardwalk to avoid encounters with him, and people fell silent when he entered a building. He had the look of a coldhearted killer.

Well, that was fitting. He was a killer, though he’d never set out to be—or had a choice. Some people believed they were in control of their lives, but Gabe had learned the hard way, and at a young age, that fate was as fickle and inconstant with her favors as a dance-hall girl.

Remembering his breakfast date with the ragged, hungry boy, Gabe corked his bottle, asked the barkeep to put his name on it, tossed a coin on the bar, and left the saloon. As he pushed through the doors onto the boardwalk, he saw signs that people were awakening to celebrate Christmas. Scattered ribbons of chimney smoke canted upward into the gunmetal gray sky. He fleetingly imagined the interiors of the homes from which the smoke came. Sleepy children staggering downstairs to stare in wonder at the gifts left for them under the Christmas tree. Cheerful fires crackling on brick hearths. Gaily decorated stockings stuffed with sweets. Women stoking their stoves to roast stuffed turkeys. Was that really what Christmas was like?

In comparison to the cozy pictures in his mind, Main Street looked funereal, the windows of the shops dark and bleak, snow drifting listlessly through the gloom. Only one spot of brightness shimmered in the dreariness, the windows of the milliner’s shop a half block away. Candles flickered on the interior sills, warm beacons to a lonely man. Gabe bypassed the stairwell where the boy waited, thinking he’d come right back, and strode slowly toward the light, yearning to catch just one brief glimpse of Christmas before it turned daylight and he’d be caught staring through windows.

Several yards before he reached his destination, Gabe heard a man call his name. The hairs on his nape prickled. He had lived through this same scene too many times not to know how it always unfolded. Hand hovering over his six-shooter, he whirled to face the danger. He glimpsed movement in the shadows of a building. Then he heard a shot ring out and knew that whoever was lurking in the folds of darkness meant to kill him in an unfair exchange of lead.

For an instant, Gabe welcomed the thought and didn’t go for his weapon. But then his instinct to survive took over. He slapped leather and fired at the black blur of a man . . . and felt a slug of lead plow into his chest with such stunning force that he was knocked backward and off his feet before he heard the second report of his opponent’s gun.

Lying motionless on the frozen ground and staring stupidly at the still-dark sky, he felt no pain, just an odd heaviness and an awful coldness.

“I got him!” a man shouted. “I shot Gabriel Valance! Me! Pete Raintree!”

Gabe managed to turn his head slightly and saw a thin young man staggering toward him, crimson already staining the front of his jacket. The youth’s legs gave out just before he reached Gabe. He fell to his knees with a bewildered expression in his eyes and then touched the blood on his jacket as if he couldn’t quite believe it was there.

“Dammit, you went and kilt me, mister.”

The younger man no sooner uttered the words than he pitched face-first into the frozen mud, dead before he ever hit the ground. Gabe tried to sit up, but his limbs wouldn’t work and there was no air.

This is it
,
Gabe thought, and returned his gaze to the sky. The air around him smelled faintly of gun smoke, whiskey, and the metallic sweetness of blood. A fitting end. The chill of Gabe’s gun butt lay against his palm, his fingers limp around it. He regretted that he’d ever pulled the damn thing from its holster. The dead youth beside him was barely old enough to be dry behind the ears, yet Gabe had snuffed out his life. And all for what? So he could lie in the street and die with snow pelting him in the face?

It hit Gabe then that no one would mourn his passing, not even the boy for whom he’d promised to buy breakfast. As the fog of death closed in around him, as the effort to breathe became exhausting, he felt a clawing regret. He wished that just one person would cry for him, that just one person might miss him. Just one. But in all his miserable life, not once since his mother had died, had he known or earned that kind of sentiment. He’d caused plenty of tears, he guessed, but none of them had been shed for him.

His world was growing colder and darker. Why couldn’t things have been different? Why, despite all his efforts and good intentions, had he been unable to change?
It’s Christmas, dammit. People shouldn’t die on Christmas.
His unsteady gaze searched for the brightly illuminated windows of the hatmaker’s shop. In the moment of brilliant clarity that comes right before death, he managed to focus. Candlelight beamed in the window, casting a cheerful amber glow over the artfully draped fir boughs that framed the glass. The greenery outlined the face of a woman, her solemn gaze fixed on Gabe, her blond hair shimmering like a halo. She was so beautiful Gabe wondered if he wasn’t already dead and seeing an angel.

Dark spots dotted his vision. Her sweet countenance began to swim in and out, clear one moment, gone the next. With every ounce of his remaining strength, Gabe tried to keep his eyes open, but the blackness grew thicker until it settled over him like a blanket, wiping out everything, even awareness.

G
abe jerked back to fuzzy consciousness, then blinked, startled half out of his wits to find himself standing outside a wooden shack with a closed rickety door hanging slightly awry from rusty hinges. He clamped a hand over his chest, expecting to find blood, but felt only the front of his shirt and firm, unwounded flesh under the cloth.
I’m dead
,
he thought.
Only this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Where the hell are the pearly gates?
Maybe better people got pearls and streets paved in gold, while others, like him, were sent to the back entrance. Just deserts. After the life he’d lived, he couldn’t expect a grand reception. Not that he’d ever believed in, or even heard much about, the pearly gates. His lack of faith undoubtedly accounted for the fact that the door was closed, barring his entrance.

So now what? Where was he supposed to go? He turned, glanced down, and felt his heart skip a beat when he saw that his boots rested on what looked like a wispy cloud. He stepped sideways, but there wasn’t any earth. Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat. What was holding him up? He felt his chest again, to reassure himself that he still had a body.

Suddenly two men appeared outside the shack. They wore long, flowing white robes and had rope sandals on their feet. One blond, the other brunette, they each sported long hair falling to just below the shoulder. Gabe assumed they were some sort of entrance attendants—only, the entrance to where? Given that he’d killed a young man only moments before dying himself, he didn’t care to explore the possibilities. He wasn’t all that sure heaven even existed, but he knew from personal experience that hell certainly did, even though the hell he’d lived in since early childhood had been on earth.

Without a word, the two men—were they angels who’d forgotten their wings?—entered the structure and gestured for Gabe to follow them. Gabe wasn’t real sure he wanted to. What was in there, a yawning hole that led to an eternity of fire and brimstone? But he couldn’t spend eternity standing outside a stupid shack that looked like a good sneeze would blow it over. Feeling shaky, which was unusual for him, he stepped inside but left the door hanging open behind him, just in case he needed to make a quick escape. His boots made no sound on the floor, and Gabe, bewildered by the lack of noise, looked down to discover that he still stood on clouds, not wooden planks, as he’d expected.

The men had taken seats behind a paper-strewn table that looked highly unorganized, and then they proceeded to quarrel heatedly over Gabe’s identity, one of them convinced Gabe was someone named Abe Van Horn, the other insisting he was Pete Raintree, the boy Gabe had just shot. Trying to look as if he didn’t resent being talked about as if he weren’t there, Gabe averted his gaze and found himself staring stupidly at the men’s bare knees and lower legs, revealed beneath the table. Apparently they’d hitched up their robes to get more comfortable.

Holding up a hand, Gabe forced himself to look them in the eye and said, “Hold it! My name’s Gabriel Valance. I’m guessing you two are angels. Right? But where the hell are your wings? Do you dress different to greet newcomers or something? And am I at the wrong entrance or is this the back way into hell?”

Gabe had never pictured male angels with bony knees and hairy legs. Now that he thought about it, he’d always had a vague idea that angels were female. And he wasn’t any too sure he wanted into heaven if it meant he’d have to wear one of those girlish-looking robes. Not that he was likely to get an engraved invitation, anyway.

The two men began shuffling a little frantically through their papers. Their eyes widened as they scanned Gabe’s life history. With an appalled expression on his face, the blond angel glanced up and asked how a man with a respectable name like Gabriel could have led such a deplorable life. Gabe suspected he was face-to-face with the archangel Gabriel—a biblical figure almost everyone had heard of, even if they didn’t go to church. Apparently the angel was none too pleased that one of his namesakes had been such a miserable sinner.

Still, delivered by an angel or not, such a sweeping condemnation seemed uncalled-for. Gabe felt a little indignant. “Come on,” he said. “I haven’t lived
that
bad a life. Aside from killing a few people, of course. But that was in self-defense, and I never really had a choice. It was shoot back or die myself. You going to hold that against me?”

The two men assumed stern expressions, making Gabe feel like a boy about to be dressed down by the schoolmaster, not that he’d ever been fortunate enough to experience that dubious pleasure. Even so, he wasn’t far off the mark. From out of the clouds surrounding the shack, Gabe suddenly heard voices. After listening a moment, he realized they belonged to people from his past, a recounting of conversations they’d once had about him. In nearly every exchange, he was either cursed or greatly feared by the speakers. Only a couple of old ladies who knew him as a boy had anything good to say, and that was more pitying than anything else.
Poor little Gabriel Valance. That boy doesn’t stand a chance.

Gabe figured that just about covered his life story, and since he was clearly dead, his chance to make amends was gone. Never a man to put off the inevitable, he asked, “Where is hell? Sounds to me like I may as well make tracks in that direction. As you two have pointed out, I’ve killed fourteen men, counting the one this morning. Why bother reading the rest of my history? I don’t want to wear a damned robe, anyway.”

The two men regarded Gabe with saddened expressions, and in a flash, the clouds around Gabe’s ankles turned to flame.

“Ow! Holy hell, that’s hot!” He lifted his feet, trying in vain to escape the heat. “This isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to go through this until I actually get there!”

Before Gabe felt any real sting, the angels waved away the flames. “Do you still have an aversion to wearing a robe?” the blond asked.

“Rather than roast like a bird on a spit, I’d wear just about anything, petticoats included,” snapped Gabe, belatedly tacking on a respectful, “sir.” Relieved that the flames were gone, however temporarily, Gabe added, more to himself than to the angels, “I can’t believe hellfire actually exists. How can God call Himself merciful and yet sentence sinners to burn for eternity? I’ve got a hell of a lot of faults, but I wouldn’t be that cruel to a dog.”

The dark-haired man studied Gabe with solemn brown eyes. “It is indeed a very harsh punishment, but it isn’t of God’s making. The flames are Satan’s creation, which is why Gabriel and I—Michael is my name, by the way—are assigned to heaven’s gates. It’s our job to save everyone we can, even men like you.”

Gabe gave a bitter laugh and gestured at the shack. “Gates? What gates?”

Michael shrugged. “It’s also our job to make every new arrival feel comfortable, and because you don’t truly believe in the existence of ornate gates to heaven, we felt a shack might be less intimidating.”

Gabe didn’t like the fact that these two fellows seemed to know what he believed in and what he didn’t, but he was relieved to hear that they were there to save him. Hey, if anyone needed saving, it was definitely him. He wasn’t about to say so, though, and he sure as shootin’ wasn’t going to act cowed. “So, if your job is to save everyone you can, what do you have in mind for me?”

The two angels resumed their perusal of Gabe’s life history, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues. The angel Gabriel glanced up. “Do you realize you have intimately consorted with one hundred and fifty-six women, all without benefit of matrimony or any feelings of genuine affection?”

That couldn’t be right. Now they were insulting his manhood. Gabe grabbed the paper from the angel’s hand and scanned it. “This isn’t correct,” he said indignantly. “You left off a bunch of names. And for your information, I was damn good at it.” He ran his gaze down the list, then slapped the record with the backs of his fingers. “There, you see! You forgot to list the gal I made love to last night, proof that you might have left out others.”

Michael’s dark brows snapped together. “We haven’t had time to add the name of the woman last night.” His expression grew accusing. “So we’ll make it a hundred and fifty-seven, and ask you again what you have to say for yourself. This isn’t something you should be bragging about, Mr. Valance. Your flagrant disregard of nearly all of the Ten Commandments is shocking.”

Gabe couldn’t understand what they were so het up about. “I wasn’t bragging. I was being accurate. And I never touched a married woman in my whole life. No adultery. You can’t pin that one on me.”

The angels sadly shook their heads. The golden-haired Gabriel took over the exchange. “Did no one ever explain to you that the seventh commandment encompasses far more than just adultery? Sexual intercourse with prostitutes falls under that rule, not to mention countless other things.”

“Holy hell,” Gabe replied. “Next thing I know, you’ll be outlawing booze. Just because a man has the good sense never to get married, that doesn’t mean he wants to live his entire adult life without getting a little now and again.”

The angel Gabriel sighed. “You are a challenging case indeed.” He turned another page of Gabe’s life history and once again did a head waggle. “Have you done nothing with your life to commend yourself?” he asked. “Did you perform no acts of kindness?”

“Oh, hey, I’m good on that one,” Gabe said. He felt on firmer ground now. “Take the whores, now. I always paid double their rates, even if the service was bad. You two probably don’t have any experience with working girls, but that was definitely unusual, you know? A lot of men fasten their flies, bolt out the door, and don’t even pay the tab.” On a roll, Gabe stabbed a finger in their direction. “And let me tell you, that isn’t all they do! Most whores get knocked around more times than not, and even then the bastards who’re fond of beating on women don’t pay for the privilege. I not only paid that last gal’s fee, but I gave her twenty-three bucks extra. That’s a lot of money!”

Michael’s brown eyes bugged slightly. A hooded expression slipped over Gabriel’s blue-eyed countenance. Gabe could tell this wasn’t going well. Shifting his feet quickly, he said, “And don’t be forgetting the ten dollars I tossed to that kid in the street right before I got shot. Hell, I was going to take him out for breakfast and stay over a day to see if the local preacher could get some family in town to take him in.”

Michael lifted his hands. “For a man of your immense wealth, the paltry sum of ten dollars hardly offsets all the bad things you have done. Nor does the fact that you planned to give any family who would take the boy a generous monthly stipend.”

Gabe felt sweat tricking from his armpits and down his ribs. If he was truly dead, how could he possibly be perspiring? Again, he shifted his feet uncomfortably. These guys wanted to help him out; he could sense that. But so far, things weren’t looking good for him. He desperately tried to recall some good things he had done. “I like dogs. Does that count?”

The angel Gabriel nodded. “It certainly does. Did you ever rescue one from cruel treatment?”

Gabe had done enough gambling to know when he’d just been dealt a winning card. “You betcha. I even got into one hell of a fight with a man once for beating his dog.” He quickly recounted the tale to the angels. “That’s kind, ain’t it?” Damn, he was so nervous that he was slipping back into using poor English. Old Mrs. Harper, an ex-schoolmarm who’d taken him in once and tried to smarten him up, the one and only person in his life aside from his mother who’d ever done him a truly good turn, was probably rolling over in her grave. “I stepped in, regardless of the risk to myself, and saved that poor dog from one hell of a working over.”

Michael waved a hand, and the clouds that drifted in a heavy layer over the shack floor opened to reveal that particular scene from Gabe’s past. Gabe was fascinated. It was like attending a play, only he was one of the actors. He watched himself beat the stuffing out of the dog’s owner, then shove the man’s head in a horse trough. The angels sighed when they saw Gabe hold the fellow’s face underwater until he stopped kicking.

“The bastard isn’t dead,” Gabe pointed out quickly. “See? He’s moving now that his head is out.”

“But you nearly drowned the poor sot,” the angel Gabriel sternly pointed out.

Gabe lifted his hands, palms up. “So I let my temper get the better of me for a few seconds. That doesn’t mean the miserable shit didn’t have it coming. He was gonna kick that dog to death. You saw him.” Gabe raked a hand through his hair and then settled the Stetson back on his head. He briefly considered removing the hat out of respect, but they were being so nasty, he resisted the urge. “I have a pretty bad temper when I get riled, but surely that’s forgivable under those circumstances.”

“Your heart may have been in the right place,” Michael conceded, “but your failure to control your temper negates that particular good deed. Have you anything else to say for yourself?”

Think, Valance
, he told himself.
You’re in serious trouble here, man
. “Uh, well . . . I was always real kind to my horse. After hitting town off the trail, I always took care of him first. He got washed and rubbed down before I even thought about a bath for myself. He got water and food long before I did.” He frowned, realizing that he was getting a ripsnorting headache. How was that possible if he was dead? “I have to admit that Brownie never got sex during our layovers, but he was a gelding, so that kind of fun wasn’t an option for him. Otherwise I would’ve found him a mare to visit with on occasion.”

Judging by the stares and glares that greeted this remark, he could tell he was delivering the wrong address to the jury. What did these angels want from him?

“To men of your time,” the angel Gabriel said, “being good to your horse is considered a necessary kindness. Where would a man be without his horse?”

“On foot,” Gabe replied. “Do I get any points for being honest?” No reply from his judges. “Okay, I’ll take that as a no.” Gabe could almost feel the heat of hellfire inching up around his ankles again.