The Gamble (I) (3 page)

Drusilla’s nose was so close, Abigail pressed against the back of her chair. “Why, I... I...”

“On Sunday I intend to ask your minister for a few moments in the pulpit. Believe me, that’s all it’ll take, and you’ll have a regular army at your command!”

Agatha wasn’t sure she wanted an army, but Drusilla rushed on. “You’ll not only have the backing of the national Women’s Christian Temperance Union, but of Governor St. John himself.”

Though Agatha was aware that John P. St. John had been elected on a strong prohibition platform two years ago, beyond that she knew nothing whatever of politics, and little more of organization on such a scale.

“Please, I...” She released a fluttery breath and inched herself up to her feet. Turning away, she clasped her hands tightly. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about organizing such a group.”

“I’ll help. The national organization will help.
The Temperance Banner
will help.” Wilson named the statewide newspaper inaugurated two years before to support temperance activities and prohibition legislation. “And I know what I’m talking about when I say the women of this town will help. I’ve traveled well over three thousand miles. I’ve crossed and recrossed this state and have even been to Washington. I’ve attended hundreds of public meetings in schoolhouses and churches all across Kansas. In every one I’ve seen a rousing group of supporters formed almost immediately for The Cause.”

“Legislation?” The word scared the wits out of Agatha. “I’m ignorant of politics, Miss Wilson, nor do I wish to be involved in them. Running my business is quite enough for me to handle. I will, however, be happy to introduce you to the women from Christ Presbyterian if you wish to invite them to an organizational meeting.”

“Very well. That’s a start. And could we hold it here?”

“Here?” Agatha’s eyes widened. “In my shop?”

“Yes.” There was nothing timid about Drusilla Wilson.

“But I haven’t enough chairs and...”

“We’ll stand, as we often must at the doors of barrooms, for hours at a time.”

It was easy to see how Wilson had managed to organize an entire network of W.C.T.U. locals. Her eyes pinned Agatha as successfully as a lepidopterist’s pin holds a butterfly. Though Agatha was unsure of many things, she was certain of one. She wanted to get even with that man for what he’d done to her this morning. And she wanted to be rid of the noise and revelry reverberating through the wall. She wanted her business to thrive again. If she didn’t take this first step, who would?

“My door will be open.”

“Good.” Drusilla clasped Agatha’s hands and gave them one firm pump. “Good. That’s all it will take, I’m confident. Once the women gather and see that they’re not alone in
their fight against alcohol, they’ll surprise you with their staunchness and support.” She stepped back and drew on her gloves. “Well.” She picked up her valise. “I must find the hotel, then take a walk through town and pinpoint the objects of our crusade, all eleven of them. Then I must visit your minister, Reverend—?”

“Clarksdale,” Agatha supplied. “Samuel Clarksdale. You’ll find him in the small frame house just north of the church. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, Agatha. Until Sunday, then.”

With a whisk and a flourish, she was gone.

Agatha stood rooted. It felt as though an August tornado had just blown through. But when she looked around, things remained magically unchanged. The piano tinkled on the other side of the wall. Outside a dog barked in the street. A horse and rider passed beyond the lace curtains. Agatha pressed a hand to her heart, released a deep breath, and dropped to her chair. A member, yes. But an organizer, no. She hadn’t the time nor the vitality to be the head of the town’s temperance organization. While she was still pondering the issue, Violet Parsons arrived for work.

“Agatha, I heard!
Tt-tt!”
Violet was a titterer. It was the only thing about her that Agatha disliked. A woman with hair as white as snow and a mouth with more wrinkles than a Spanish fan should have outgrown tittering long ago. But Violet tittered constantly, like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Tt-tt-tt.
I heard you came face to face with our proprietor right on the saloon steps. How ever did you get up the nerve to try to stop him?”

“What would you have done, Violet? Perry White and Clydell Hottle were already hurrying down the street, hoping for a better look at that heathen painting.”

Violet placed four fingertips over her lips. “Is it really a painting of a...
tt-tt-tt
...”—the titter changed to a whisper—”... naked lady?”

“Lady? Why, Violet, if she’s naked, how can she be a lady?”

Violet’s eyes brightened mischievously. “Then she really is...”—again, the whisper—”... naked?”

“As a jaybird. Which is precisely why I interfered.”

“And Mr. Gandy...
tt-tt-tt...
Did he really set you in the mud?” Violet couldn’t help it; her eyes—the exact shade of Agatha’s dress—sparkled as they always did when Gandy’s name came up. Violet had never been married, but she’d never stopped wishing. From the first time she’d seen Gandy sauntering down the street with a flirtatious grin on his face, she’d started acting like an idiot. She still did, every time she caught a glimpse of him. The fact never failed to sour Agatha.

“News travels fast.”

Violet blushed. “I stopped down at Halorhan’s for a new thimble. I lost mine yesterday, you know.”

Already the incident on the street was being discussed at Halorhan’s Mercantile? How disquieting. Agatha produced the thimble and clapped it down on a glass countertop. “I found it. Underneath the leghorn straw you were working on. And what else did you learn at Halorhan’s?”

“That Drusilla Wilson is in town and spent close to an hour in this very shop! Are you going to?”

“Am I going to what?” Agatha grew vexed at Violet’s assumption that she knew everything being discussed at Halorhan’s on any given morning. Violet thrived on gossip.

“Hold a temperance meeting here?”

Agatha’s torso snapped erect. “Heavens! The woman walked out of here less than fifteen minutes ago, and already you heard that at Halorhan’s?”

“Well, are you?”

“No, not exactly.”

“But that’s what they’re saying.”

“I agreed to let Miss Wilson hold one here, that’s all.”

Violet looked petrified. Her blue eyes grew round as two balls. “Gracious, that’s enough.”

Agatha moved to her desk and sat down, discomfited. “He won’t do anything.”

“But he’s our new landlord. What if he evicts us?”

Agatha’s chin rose defiantly. “He wouldn’t dare.”

But the thought had already occurred to LeMaster Scott Gandy.

He stood at the bar with one boot on the brass rail, listening to the men make ribald comments about the painting. Business was brisk already, considering the hour. Word traveled fast in a town this size. The place was crowded with curious males who’d come to get a look at the nude. When Jubilee and the girls arrived, business would thrive even more.

Unless that persimmon-mouthed milliner continued harassing him. Gandy frowned. That woman could develop into one bodacious, infernal nuisance if she put her mind to it. It took only one like her to rile up a whole townful of females and start them nagging at their husbands about the hours they spent at the saloon. If she was upset about the painting, she’d be incensed about the girls.

Gandy tipped the brim of his Stetson low over his eyes and rested both elbows on the bar behind him. He stared thoughtfully across the quiet street at Heustis Dyar’s place, wondering when the first beefs would come. That’s when the fun would really start. When those rowdy, thirsty cow-punchers hit town, that little do-gooder next door would more than likely pack up and light out for other parts and his worries would be over.

He smiled to himself, extracted a cheroot from the pocket of his vest, and struck a match on his boot heel. But before he applied it, the object of his thoughts—Goody Two-Shoes herself—materialized from next door and moved past the saloon. For no more than five seconds her head and feet were clearly visible above and below the swinging doors. But that’s all it took for Gandy to realize she wasn’t walking normally. The match burned his fingers. He cursed and dropped it, then hurried toward the swinging doors, standing in the shadows to one side. He watched her make her way along the boardwalk. He listened to the shuffling sound made by her shoes. He began to grow warm around the collar. Five doors down, she descended a set of steps, gripping the rail tightly. But instead of using the stepping-stones to cross the street as all the ladies did, she lifted her skirts and trudged laboriously through the mud to the other side.

“Dan?” Gandy called.

“Something wrong?” Loretto didn’t look up. He fanned the deck of cards into a peacock’s tail, then snapped it together. It was too early in the day for gamblers, but Gandy had taught him to keep his fingers nimble at all times.

“Come here.”

Loretto squared the deck and rose from the chair with the same unjointed motion he so admired in the boss.

He came up behind Gandy at the swinging doors. “Yes, boss?”

“That woman.” Agatha Downing had reached the far side of the street and was struggling up the steps to the boardwalk, clutching an armful of clothing that looked suspiciously much like the gray dress she’d been wearing earlier. Gandy scowled at her clean skirts—blue now. They churned unnaturally with each step. “Is she limping?”

“Yessir, she sure is.”

“Good God! Did I do that t’ her?” Gandy looked horrified.

“Not hardly. She’s limped ever since I knew her.”

Gandy’s head snapped around. “Ever since you knew her?” This was getting worse.

“Yup. She’s got a gimp leg.”

Gandy felt himself blush for the first time in years.

“A gimp leg?”

“That’s right.”

“And I set her in the mud.” He watched Agatha disappear with her dirty clothing into the Finn’s laundry down the block. He felt like a heel.

“You didn’t exactly set her in the mud, Scotty. She fell.”

“She fell
after
I set her in the mud!”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“Well, why didn’t somebody say somethin’? How in tarnation was I supposed t’ know?”

“Just figured you did. You been doin’ business next door to her for a month now. You collected rent from her. She walks down to Paulie’s twice a day so regular you could set your clock by her. Breakfast and supper. Never fails.”

But Gandy had never looked twice at the woman. She was the kind who blended into the weatherbeaten boardwalk. A dull, gray moth upon a dull, gray rock. When
he’d gone next door to introduce himself as the new owner of the building, she’d been sitting at her rolltop desk and hadn’t risen from her chair. Instead of bringing the rent over herself, she’d sent it with a timid, twittering old woman who looked as if she’d just swallowed a frog. The few times he’d eaten at Paulie’s he didn’t recall seeing her there.

Sweet Jesus! What would the women of Proffitt say? If it was true that there was an “organizer” in town, he’d have them all on his head. And they’d have plenty to say in that nuisance of a rag they printed. He could see the headline now: S
ALOON
O
WNER
T
OPPLES
C
RIPPLED
T
EMPERANCE
W
ORKER IN THE
M
UD.

At five-thirty that afternoon Scott Gandy left the rear of the saloon and walked up the same steps to the same landing Agatha had ascended earlier. He glanced at the two long windows, one on either side of her door, but as usual they were shrouded by thick lace. He tossed his cheroot over the railing and entered his own door. The saloon and its overhead apartments occupied three-fourths of the building, the millinery shop and corresponding apartment, one-fourth. Upstairs, his portion was bisected by a hall with the door at its west end and a window at its east. To the left were four rooms of equal size. To the right were Gandy’s living quarters and his private office. He entered the office, a small, spare room with wainscoted walls, a single west window, and only the necessary furnishings: a desk, two chairs, coat-tree, safe, and a small cast-iron stove.

It was a cold room, the window curtainless, the wall above the waist-high wainscot painted a drab sage-green, the oak floor raw, bare. He moved to the safe, knelt, and spun the dial, locked away a packet of bills, then, with a sigh, stood and rubbed the back of his neck. Lord, it was quiet. Getting close to suppertime. Ivory had deserted the piano downstairs and Jack had gone to eat. Gandy glanced out the window, hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and absently drummed a rhythm on the silk. The view outside offered little to buoy him. Unpainted frame buildings, muddy streets, and prairie. Nothing but prairie. No spreading water oak trees festooned with Spanish moss,
no scent of magnolia drifting in on the spring breeze, no mockingbirds. He missed the mockingbirds.

This time of day at Waverley, the family used to gather on the wide back veranda and sip glasses of minted iced tea, and Delia would toss cracked corn to the mockingbirds, trying to entice them to eat from her hand. He could see her yet, squatting in a billow of hooped skirts, cupping the corn in her palm. Golden head with ringlets down to her shoulders. Skin as white as milk. Fiddle-waisted. And her eyes, as dark and arresting as the notches on a dogwood petal, forever alluring.

“Why don’t you feed the peacocks?” his father would call to her.

But Delia would kneel patiently, cupped hand extended. “Because the peacocks are too audacious. And besides”—Delia would rest her chin on one shoulder and look back at her husband—“no fun tryin’ to get a tame bird to eat from your hand, is there, Scotty?” she would say teasingly.

And his mother would glance his way and smile at the look she saw on her son’s face. But he never cared who knew it. He was as smitten with Delia as he’d been the first time he’d kissed her when they were fourteen years old.

Then Leatrice would waddle to the door—good old Leatrice, with her skin as dark as sorghum syrup and breasts the size of watermelons. He wondered where she was now. “Suppuh, suh,” she’d announce. “Pipin’.”