The Gamble

  Then up strutted Pearl, skirt caught up to her waist, her long legs supple and strong as she twirled like a top along the line of erectly postured men.

  The cymbals crashed. Pearl’s toe shot up in a swinging arc. The first hat tumbled to the floor.

  She whirled, kicked, and another hat flew to the floor.

  Down the line she went until six Stetsons lay strewn at the men’s feet.

  Agatha’s heart pounded. Exhilaration made her double her fist and she punched the air along with the last two incredibly high kicks. Through the wall she heard the rumble of applause, men’s sharp wolf whistles, and the stomping of feet.

  Jubilee and Ruby joined Pearl for a final chorus, including a totally immodest pose in which the three of them spread their legs, flung their skirts up over their derrieres, and peered at the audience from between their knees. A last volley of breathtaking contortions, a final flourish of red ruffles, and the three of them fell to the floor with their legs split and their arms raised.

  Agatha found herself as breathless as the dancers. She watched their bare chests heave beneath their brief silk bodices and saw beads of perspiration trickle down their temples. She felt as if she’d danced right along with them. Her body wilted against the wall. She slid down and slumped onto Willy’s stool.

  It was a wicked dance, suggestive and brazen. But spirited and filled with the zest of life. Agatha closed her eyes and tried to imagine kicking the hat off a man’s head. It suddenly seemed a most desirable talent. Why, if she could do it—just once—she’d feel blessed. She rubbed her left hip and thigh, wondering what it felt like to be beautiful, and whole, and uninhibited... what it felt like to laugh and whoop and raise a ruckus in flashing red-and-black skirts.

  She sighed and opened her eyes to darkness.

  Agatha, you’re getting dotty, watching cancan dancers through a hole in the wall.

  But for a while, watching them, she had become vicariously young and resilient and happy and filled with a joie de vivre. For a while, watching them, she had done what she had never done before. For a while, she, too, had danced.

  CHAPTER

  10

  The summer moved on. Across the prairie the gama and buffalo grass grew tinder-dry. At night, heat lightning flashed, bringing only empty promises. Around the perimeter of Proffitt, the townsmen burned a wide firebreak. The dust created by the incoming cattle infiltrated everything: shelter, clothing, even food. The only damp spot for miles around seemed to be at the base of the windmill in the center of main street, where a pump kept the public watering tank full for thirsty stock. The flies increased; with so much manure everywhere, they thrived. So did a colony of prairie dogs that decided to make their village in the middle of main street. Occasionally, a cow broke its leg stepping into one of their holes and had to be shot on the spot and butchered. If this happened between Tuesday and Thursday, it became cause for celebration: Friday was the regular butchering day at Huffman’s Meat Market, and with temperatures in the high eighties, nobody risked buying meat after Monday.

  A band of Oto Indians came and camped on the south edge of town. To the north the prairie became dotted by the wagons of immigrants waiting to file claims on government land. Every day the land agents rented a steady stream of rigs from the livery stables and rode out to show the unclaimed sections to the eager-eyed immigrants. Drummers came in on the train, selling everything from patent medicine to ladies’ corsets.

  Gandy and Agatha saw less of Willy. He ran barefoot with a gang of boys who hung around the depot selling cookies, hard-boiled eggs, and milk to the passengers while trains stopped for thirty minutes to take on water. Occasionally, he ate with Gandy, but Agatha suspected most of his nourishment came from filched cookies, milk, and hard-boiled eggs. Agatha’s only consolation was that it wasn’t really a badly balanced diet.

  On the Fourth of July the “drys” had one parade. The “wets” had another.

  On one street corner the editor of the Wichita Tribune spoke out in favor of ratification of the prohibition amendment introduced by Senator George F. Hamlin in February of ‘79 and signed by the governor the following March.

  On another corner a liquor advocate bellowed, “The saloon is an indispensable fixture in a frontier town, and liquor itself proves as powerful an aid to communication as printer’s ink!”

  A white-ribboned temperance stalwart cried out, “The chains of intoxication are heavier than those which the sons of Africa have ever worn.”

  From the wet camp came: “Drinking symbolizes equality. In the bar, all men are equal.”

  As July progressed the issue of prohibition became hotter along with the weather. From the pulpit of Christ Presbyterian, Reverend Clarksdale called down blessings upon “all the noble actors upon the human platform of temperance.”

  The town assembly staged a late July debate between the temperance and liquor forces. Distinguished orator and Methodist-Quaker preacher Amanda Way came to town to speak for the drys. Miss Way proved so convincing that before the evening was over, the ladies of the Proffitt chapter of the W.C.T.U. had additional reason to celebrate: George Sowers signed the temperance pledge.

  There was only one way he could possibly keep his promise, and that was to remove himself from temptation: George took to collecting buffalo bones. With seventy-five thousand of the creatures having been slaughtered in the fifteen years since the Civil War, the prairie now seemed like an immense boneyard waiting to be harvested. On the morning following the signing of the pledge, George was seen driving west with a swayback nag hitched to a weatherbeaten wagon. The next day he was seen heading east to sell his chalky pickings to the fertilizer and bone-china producers in Kansas City. Though the bone trade left George a far cry from the gold baron he’d once been, Evelyn seemed satisfied. For a while she mellowed.

  During that summer the ranks of the W.C.T.U. local swelled. They outgrew Agatha’s back room and began having their regular Monday evening meetings in the school-house. Then in early August Annie Macintosh showed up at a meeting with a black eye, a cut lip, and two cracked ribs. She fell into the arms of her “sisters” and sobbed out the truth: her husband, Jase, beat her whenever he hit the bottle.

  That was the end of Evelyn Sowers’s mellow period. That very evening she led the march on the Sugar Loaf Saloon, bearing Annie along, surrounded by a protective wall of frenzied, angry women. She marched up to Jase Macintosh, made a powerful fist, and put every ounce of her two hundred fifteen pounds into a swing that caught Jase on the jaw and flipped him backward off his chair. She stood above him, planted one thick-heeled black shoe in the middle of his chest, and hissed, “That’s for Annie, you rum-soaked ally of Satan! You’re a gangrenous excretion poisoning the life of this community!” She pointed to Annie and bellowed to the customers at large, “See what this has done to a good wife who’s done nothing to deserve it except raise his children, wash his clothes, and clean his house?” She glared down at Jase. “Well, no more. Annie will live with George and me now, and you’ll never lay a hand on her again.” On her way to the bar she planted her full weight on Macintosh’s chest, nearly breaking his ribs. “And as for you”—she confronted Mustard Smith with both fists on her beefy hips—“you swine! You destroyer of the home! You’re the cause of the human wreckage you see before you day in and day out. It’s a wonder you can look at yourself in the mirror every morning!”

  Mustard Smith drew a Colt .45 and pressed the barrel to the end of Evelyn’s nose. “Git out, bitch,” he growled low in his throat.

  Evelyn didn’t bat an eye. She pressed forward until the gun barrel flattened her nose grotesquely. When she spoke no air came through her nostrils.

  “Shoot me, go ahead, you slimy lizard. I ain’t scared of you or any of the other saloon owners in this burg. Shoot me and you’ll see a thousand others like me crawlin’ over you like vermin over a dead skunk.”

  Smith calmly pulled the trigger.

  The chamber was empty.

  Though
Evelyn stood foursquare to the fearsome saloon owner, her union members sent up a gasp.

  “Next one’ll be loaded,” Smith warned.

  “You can kill one W.C.T.U. member, or a dozen of us, but you can’t kill the whole legislature, Smith.” With a satisfied smile, Evelyn turned away, the tip of her nose imprinted with a tiny red doughnutlike circle. “Let’s go, sisters. On to the next dispenser of strychnine!”

  When Agatha returned to her apartment at ten o’clock that night, she was weak from emotion and fright. Evelyn might be fearless in the face of enemies such as Mustard Smith and Jase Macintosh, but Agatha wasn’t.

  As she climbed the backstairs she felt each tense minute of the past three hours in her aching limbs. It required a supreme effort to drag herself up the stairs. There were times when she grew unutterably weary of fighting the temperance battle. Tonight was one of them. She approached her door eagerly and reached out with the key in her hand.

  The door was ajar.

  In the dark her toe struck something that rolled in a circle. She reached down for it. It was her doorknob.

  A brief cry of fright escaped her throat. She pressed a hand to her hammering heart and felt the sickening clench of fear grab her chest. Hesitantly, she reached out and pushed the door wider. It struck something and halted. A man? She didn’t think, only reacted: whacked the door back as hard as she could with the full force of her body! Instead of hurting anybody inside, she missed a step and fell, injuring herself. She lay on the floor with pain shooting up her hip, fear exploding everywhere inside her body. Waiting for somebody to kick her, hack her, kill her.

  Nothing happened.

  From downstairs came the sound of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” From inside her chest came the pop of her own thudding heart. She pushed herself up and made her way to the table, her feet shuffling through objects of soft and hard texture. With trembling hands she struck a match and held it above her head.

  God in heaven, what a mess!

  Everything had been ransacked. Clothing, knickknacks, bedding, papers. Broken glass and upset chairs lay strewn like flotsam behind a tornado.

  The match burned her fingers and she dropped it. With the next one she lit the lantern. But she remained rooted, too stunned to cry, too petrified to move. Within thirty seconds shock overpowered her body. Chattering teeth, jolting limbs, glassy eyes. When she moved, she did so without conscious thought, radiating toward help not because it was the wisest thing to do, but because she’d lost the power to reason another course.

  Dan Loretto was calling out keno numbers at the table nearest the back door as she shuffled in. He glanced up and immediately leaped to his feet.

  “Miss Downing, what’s wrong?”

  “Somebody br... broke into my ap... partment.”

  He put his arm around her shaking shoulders. “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you all right?” It felt as if she’d rattle her bones loose, she shook so hard.

  “I... I... yes... I was out... I... I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Wait here. I’ll get Scotty.”

  Gandy was playing poker near the front, facing the swinging doors. Dan slipped up behind him and whispered in his ear. “Miss Downing is here. Somebody broke into her apartment.”

  Gandy’s cards hit the table before the last word left Dan’s lips. “Deal me out.” His chair screeched back and he rose, ignoring the fact that he left money in the pot on the green baize tabletop. He took one look at Agatha, waiting near the rear hall, and swerved to the bar. Without breaking stride he ordered Jack Hogg, “Bring the shotgun and come with me.” On his way past the piano, he commanded quietly, “Keep playin’, Ivory... you, too, Marc. Keep the girls dancin’.”

  Agatha looked like a ghost, glassy-eyed and pasty.

  “Agatha,” he said, even before he reached her, “are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  With an arm around her shoulders, he swept her along toward the back door, followed by Jack and Dan. “Is somebody up there?”

  “Not any... m... more.” Why wouldn’t her teeth stop chattering?

  “You sure?”

  She nodded, breathless, struggling to keep up with his long-legged strides. “I’m sure. But everything’s t... torn up.”

  He charged out the back door, tugging her along by the hand, agitated at holding back to accommodate her. He’d seen her walk up steps before; there wasn’t that much time to waste.

  “Hang on,” he warned, then unceremoniously plucked her off her feet into his arms. “Boys, go on ahead.” She hung onto Gandy’s neck with both hands, while Dan and Jack took the stairs two at a time. They flattened themselves against the wall on either side of her door. The barrel of the shotgun went through first.

  “We got a loaded gun out here!” shouted Jack. “If you’re in there, you better be spread-eagled on your belly!”

  Riding in Gandy’s arms, Agatha told him, “I’ve been in... side. They’re gone already.”

  “You’ve been inside! All alone?” He mumbled a curse and plunked her none too gently on the top step. “Now sit there and don’t move!”

  Gandy came up short in her doorway. Lord o’ mercy! he thought. Somebody’s really done a job on this place. Dan and Jack had already made their way inside and turned, looking back at him.

  “It’s a real mess.”

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Jack.

  Gandy stepped over a broken teapot, leaned to pick up a music box with the cover twisted and one hinge broken. In the silence it began tinkling out a soft song.

  “What do you suppose they were lookin’ for?” Dan asked, turning toward the bedroom, where a torn pillow had caused feathers to scatter like fresh snow over everything.

  Agatha spoke from the doorway. “My cash from the millinery shop, I imagine.”

  Gandy spun to face her. “I thought I told you to wait out there.”

  She hugged herself and raised her green eyes appealingly. “I’d feel safer in here with you.”

  The music box still tinkled:

  Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,

  Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee...

  She came toward him with her broken gait, staring at the delicate metal box in his long, dark hands. On its cover was painted a white-wigged lady with one wrist draped over the back of a garden bench, her skirts swagging delicately, while willows wept in the background.

  “It was my mother’s,” she told him softly, taking it, listening a moment, then closing the cover. She glanced away. Tears came to her eyes for the first time. She pressed the music box just below her breasts, covered her lips with trembling fingers, and said softly, “Oh, dear.”

  Gandy stepped over the teapot again and took her in his arms with the music box pressed between them. “Easy, Agatha,” he soothed. She seemed unaware of his presence. He righted an overturned chair and forced her to sit, then stood with both hands gripping her shoulders. “Agatha, listen to me.” She raised tear-filled eyes. “Where do you keep your cash box?”

  “Downstairs... in a desk drawer. I just lock it up at night. I don’t bring it up here.”

  “Where’s the key?”

  “With the rest of...” She looked around vacantly, as if expecting them to appear out of thin air. “Oh, dear,” she said again. Her eyes grew wide and frightened as she looked back up at Gandy. “I don’t know... oh, dear... where could they be?”

  “Did you have them tonight?”

  “Yes. I... I remember coming to the top of the steps and reaching toward the door to unlock it, only the knob was lying at my feet.”

  Gandy shot a glance at Dan. “Check the landin’. Jack, you’d better go for the sheriff.” When they were both gone, Gandy returned his attention to Agatha. In the harsh lantern light her face appeared milk-white. She held herself unnaturally stiff. He kneaded both her shoulders, rubbing his thumbs hard along her tense neck. “We’ll find out who did this... don’t you worry.” And a minute later: “You doin?
?? all right?”

  She raised her translucent green eyes and nodded.

  Dan came in with the keys. “I found ‘em. Want me to check downstairs, Scotty?”

  “Do that, would you, Dan?”

  When he was gone, Scotty picked his way about the apartment, stepping over Agatha’s private possessions. He felt a lonely desolation looking at her clothing, her papers, her bedding—all the things that nobody but she should have access to. It made him feel as if he himself were guilty in some small way for laying siege to her private life. He turned and came back to her. “I don’t think they were after money.”

  Startled, she gaped at him. “But what else?”

  “I don’t know. Did you find any note? Any clue at all?”

  “I went only as far as the table.” They both glanced around but spotted nothing except the rubble left by the ransacker.

  “Do you think it could be Collinson?” he asked.

  “Collinson?” The idea terrified her more than the notion that robbery had been the motive.

  Dan clumped up the stairs and burst through the doorway, breathless. “Nothin’ down there. Everything’s locked up tight.” He handed the keys to Agatha, then dropped back a step. “What do you think, Scotty?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But I do know she can’t stay here tonight. We’ll take her next door.”

  Agatha couldn’t believe her ears. “Next door?”

  “You can bunk in with Jube.”

  “With Jube?” But Jube slept with him.

  “It’s not safe in here with that doorknob broken off. And, besides, you’re in no emotional state to be alone.”

  At that moment Sheriff Ben Cowdry stepped to the open door. A singularly dour man who wasted little time on civilities, he surveyed the scene with both hands hooked on his hipbones, eyes narrowed, missing little.

  “Hogg told me what happened here.” He picked his way inside, raising his boot heels high to step over the articles on the floor. His eyes moved carefully from one spot to the next. He glanced at Agatha. “You’re all right, Miss Downing?”