The Gamble (I) (12 page)

Outside, the ladies took up a chorus of “Cold Water Is
King,” singing at the top of their lungs, only to inspire Gandy to send Marcus Delahunt onto the boardwalk to play his banjo and muddle their song. When Mooney Straub, Wilton Spivey, and Joe Jessup approached, the music grew louder from both factions.

Drusilla Wilson herself approached the trio, shouting to be heard above the din.

“Friends, before you set foot inside to support this ally of Satan, consider how you might better work toward your final salvation. Beyond these doors is the twisting road to ruin, while on this paper is the...”

Their laughter covered the remainder of her plea.

“Lady, you gotta have a wheel loose if ya think I’m signin’ that thing. Ain’t ya heard? There’s dancin’ women here!”

“And that pitcher o’ the naked lady,” added Mooney.

“And we aim to name ‘er!”

Guffawing, they jostled three abreast through the open door. The place began to fill fast. Things were much the same with Drusilla’s next three attempts to waylay Gandy’s customers. They laughed in her face and hurried inside, already reaching for their coins.

Then came a ne’er-do-well named Alvis Collinson who’d lost his wife to pneumonia two years earlier. A surly man with a nose like a mushroom, Collinson was known around town for his hair-trigger temper. He worked at the stockyards when he worked. When he didn’t, he spent most of his time drinking, gambling, and starting fights. Countless knuckles had rearranged his face. The left eyelid drooped. The nose bulged hideously. The cheeks, with their broken capillaries, had the appearance of a red cauliflower. His filthy clothing appeared oily from body excretions. When he passed Agatha the air turned sour in his wake.

Evelyn Sowers surprised everyone by stepping forward and accosting him.

“Mr. Collinson, where is your son?”

Collinson stopped. His head jutted and his fists clenched.

“What business is it o’ yours, Evelyn Sowers?”

“Have you left him home alone while you sit here night after night pickling your innards?”

“What the hell ya doin’ here anyway, all you old biddies?” Alvis cast a hateful glare across the entire group.

“Trying to save your soul, Alvis Collinson, and give your son back his father.”

He swung back to Evelyn. “Leave my boy outta this!”

Evelyn stepped directly in front of him. “Who’s taken care of him since your wife died, Alvis? Has he had his supper? Who’ll tuck him into bed tonight? A five-year-old boy—”

“Get outta my way, hag!” He gave her a push that sent her stumbling backward. Her head struck a post and several ladies gasped. Their song faded into silence. But Evelyn bounced off and grabbed Collinson’s arm.

“That boy needs a father, Alvis Collinson. Ask the Lord where he’ll get one!” she shouted.

He shook her off. “Haul your bustles back to your kitchens if ya know what’s good for ya!” he roared, stamping inside.

By now Marcus Delahunt’s fingers had stopped moving on the banjo strings. In the sudden silence Agatha’s heart hammered with fear. She glanced inside to find a frowning Gandy observing the altercation. With a jerk of his head he motioned Delahunt inside, calling, “Close the doors.”

The musician went in, leaving the doors flapping.

“Ladies, let us sing,” Drusilla interjected. “A new song.”

While they sang “Lips That Touch Whiskey Shall Never Touch Mine,” the saloon filled to capacity and not a man had signed a pledge. As the last verse began outside, a roar went up inside. Over the tops of the swinging doors Agatha saw Elias Potts being clapped on the shoulder and congratulated for winning the picture-naming contest. The portly druggist was hoisted to a tabletop and seated in a spindle-backed chair. Then they lifted their drinks in a toast to the nude, shouting, “To Dierdre and her garden of delights!”

Overhead, the new trapdoor opened and the red-shrouded cage began descending on a thick red satin rope. The men roared, and clapped, and whistled. The background music of the banjo and piano was scarcely audible above the uproar. Potts, scarlet to the fringe of his near-bald head, grinned
and dried the corners of his mouth as the cage hovered before him.

The piano player struck one fortissimo chord.

A long leg jutted out from between the folds of red.

The banjo and piano hit and sustained another chord.

The high-heeled white boot rotated on a shapely ankle.

A glissando rolled.

The leg shot out and the toe of the boot braced on Elias Potts’s left knee.

The music stilled.

“Gentlemen, I give you the jewel of the prairie,
Miss Jubilee Bright!”

The music swelled and the red drapes swooshed to the ceiling! The men went crazy. There stood Jubilee, dazzling in unrelieved white.

The words about whiskey faded from Agatha’s lips as she stared. Jubilee leaned from the cage in a dress slit from hem to hip, its strapless bodice covered in glittering white sequins. In her incredible white hair bobbed an even whiter curved feather whose tips, too, flashed with sequins. She braced her toe on Potts’s knee and leaned forward to stroke his jaw with a fluffy white boa. Her voice was sultry, the words slow and ripe with innuendo.

“It’s not because I wouldn’t...”

Never had Agatha seen a more beautiful leg than the one braced on Potts’s knee, never a more enviable face than the one leaning close to his. She could not tear her eyes away.

“And it’s not because I shouldn’t...”

Jubilee sidled in a full circle around Potts’s chair, letting her shoulder blades graze him.

“Lord knows it’s not because I couldn’t...”

She flipped the boa around Potts’s neck and sat on his lap with the heel of one white boot crossing her opposite
knee. She slid the boa back and forth in time to the music.

“It’s simply because I’m the laziest girl in town.”

The men whooped and hollered while Potts grew ripe as an August watermelon. Ivory Culhane raised his voice. “Gentlemen, the gems of the prairie, Miss Pearl DeVine and Miss Ruby Waters!”

From above, two vampish bodies slithered down the red satin rope. It twined around and between their legs—black fishnet stockings, high-heeled black boots—and along their skimpy costumes—black satin and sequins and scarcely enough material to make a corset. Hand below hand, Pearl and Ruby came down the rope while whistles and wolf calls drowned out their song. The nearest hands plucked them from the roof of the cage and deposited them on the edge of the green-topped table where they sat, leaning back against Potts’s legs, peering up at him provocatively. Behind him, Jubilee cradled the back of his head against her bosom and tickled his nose with the boa.

“It’s not because we wouldn’t.

It’s not because we shouldn’t.

Lord knows it’s not because we couldn’t.

It’s simply because we’re the laziest girls in town.”

Watching, listening, Agatha was both repelled and mesmerized. So much skin! But so healthy and beautiful.

“We’ll accomplish no more here tonight,” Drusilla Wilson announced, bringing Agatha to her senses. “We’ll move on to the next saloon.”

Resisting the urge to look back over her shoulder, Agatha followed the others. At the Branding Iron Saloon they marched directly inside and signed up their first reformer, Jed Hull, who became frightened by the newspaper drawing of the Blackwell Island Asylum for Inebriates that Drusilla Wilson passed around.

Angus Reed, the Scot who owned the Branding Iron, couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Hull being shepherded
out the door. He leaped over the bar and shouted, “Where the hell you going, Hull? Haven’t you got enough guts to stand up to a bunch of female do-gooders who belong at home breeding babies?” But he was too late. With a violent curse he swatted the bar with a wet towel.

Inspired by their first success, the reformers marched on to the Cattlemen’s Crossing, where the price of drinks had been cut to twenty cents and had lured several hard-core imbibers away from the show being staged down at the Gilded Cage. The owner, an irascible former cowpuncher who went by the name of Dingo, suffered inflammatory rheumatism from drinking too much gyp water in his trail days. Though his stiff joints kept him from leaping over the bar as Reed had, they lent him a perpetual orneriness. He hobbled from behind his kegs and kicked Bessie Hottle smack in her bustle. “Git your ass outta my saloon and don’t come back!”

Red to the ears, Bessie led the quick retreat.

Next they invaded the Alamo, where Jennie Yoast and Addle Anderson encountered their husbands and more wrath from the owner, a half-breed Mexican named Jesus Garcia who cursed a string of Spanish epithets when he saw two of his best customers shamed in public and chased home by their wives.

The next three saloon owners were too amused to object when the band of women descended upon them, singing “Lips That Touch Whiskey.” Slim Tucker laughed his guts out. Jim Starr offered each of the ladies a drink on the house. And Jeff Diddier swigged down a double shot of bourbon, backhanded his mouth dry, and joined in singing the last chorus of their song.

At The Sugar Loaf Saloon, the owner, Mustard Smith, pulled a shotgun from behind the bar and gave them thirty seconds to clear out. It was rumored that Smith wore his full black beard to cover a scar that ran from ear to ear. The ladies didn’t stop to inquire if it were true. Everyone knew he’d ridden with B. B. Harlin’s gang, and three of them had been hanged from a railroad trestle. When Mustard ordered, “Clear out,” they cleared.

At the Hoof and Horn they had little luck. The place
was empty, having lost its few customers to the lively show across the street. The ladies said a simple prayer for the salvation of Heustis Dyar’s soul, then left peaceably. Behind them, Dyar stood with hands akimbo, eyes burning, chewing his cigar stub as if it were a piece of raw meat.

At Ernst Bostmeier’s Saloon they signed up their second reformer of the night, one of the customers who frequented Ernst’s place because he served a free pickled egg with each glass of beer. As the ladies walked out the door with their saved soul in tow, the grumpy old German proprietor threw a pickled egg that missed Josephine Gill’s shoulder by a mere inch. “Dere’s more vere dat come from!” he bellowed in his thick German accent, shaking his fist. “Ent I only miss ven I vant to!”

The remainder of the saloon visits proved uneventful. In each, the owners, bartenders, and clientele were merely amused by what they considered a pack of distempered old maids and errant housewives with not enough dirty socks to keep them at their scrub boards.

It was well after eleven o’clock when Agatha climbed the stairs to her apartment. Downstairs the laughter and music still poured into the night. On the landing it was dark. Before she could unlock her door her fingertips brushed a paper hanging on it.

Her heart lurched and she spun about, backing up against the door.

Nobody was there.

Chills crept up the backs of her arms. She held her breath, listening. The only sound came from the continuing revelry in the Gilded Cage.

Quickly, she jerked the note free. A tack dropped to the landing floor and rolled away. She spared not even a moment to pick it up, but hurriedly unlocked the door and slipped inside.

Somehow she knew even before the lamp was lit what she’d find.

STAY OUT OF THE SALOONS IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU!

It was printed in capital letters on a clean sheet of white paper. She hurried back to the door and locked it, tested the knob, then leaned against it with a sigh of relief. She scanned the narrow apartment—the bed and chifforobe were the only two places large enough to conceal a man. She stood stock-still, listening for breathing, rustling—any sound at all. The faraway chords from the piano and banjo covered any faint sounds the room might have held. She struggled to her knees, peered beneath the bed from across the room.

Black shadows.

Don’t be silly, Gussie, your door was locked.

Nevertheless, her heart pounded. She inched closer until the lamplight revealed nothing but dust balls hiding under the bed. On her feet once more, she tiptoed to the chifforobe, paused with her fingers on the handle. Abruptly, she flung its doors wide, then wilted with relief.

Only clothing.

Who were you expecting, silly goose?

She pulled down her window shades, both front and back, but the creepy feeling persisted while she undressed and retired.

It could have been any of them. Angus Reed, who’d jumped over the bar and shouted angrily when they took away one of his customers. That rheumatic old cowboy, Dingo—people said his rheumatism made him ornery as a rabid skunk when it acted up. And how about Garcia? He was visibly upset to have two of his regulars carted home by their wives. Bostmeier, the German? Somehow she doubted it; in the dark she smiled at the memory of that pickled egg flying through the air. If Bostmeier wanted to threaten anyone, he’d do it in person. But what about Mustard Smith? Agatha shivered and pulled the covers tightly beneath her chin. She saw again the drooping batwing moustache, the full beard, the hooded eyes, and the crooked mouth.
The shotgun.
If it were true, if Smith
had
ridden with B. B. Harlin’s gang, if they
had
all been hanged, if he
was
the only one to have lived through it, what kind of malevolence might lurk in such a man?

She considered all the others—Dyar, Tucker, Starr,
Diddier, and the rest. She didn’t think any of them had taken the W.C.T.U. seriously.

So what about Gandy?
Lying on her back, she crossed her arms tightly over her breasts.

Gandy?

Yes, Gandy.

Gandy, with his dimples and his “Evenin’, ladies”?

Exactly.

But Gandy has no reason.

He owns a saloon.

The busiest one in town.

For the moment.

He’s too cocksure to resort to threats.