The Gamble (I) (7 page)

Addie Anderson rubbed Florence’s shoulder and offered, quietly, “It’s all right, Florence. We all understand. You did what you thought best when you were bringing him up.” She faced Miss Wilson as she went on forthrightly. “My husband, Floyd, he used to be sober as a judge, except for maybe when somebody got married or on the Fourth of July. But he got sickly a couple years back and had to take on somebody to look after the shop while he was down. Jenks, his name was, fine-lookin’ young man from St. Louis, with letters to recommend him. But they was all phony. Jenks got his fingers in the books and rigged ‘em so’s he could swindle us without Floyd ever knowin’ what he was up to. By the time Floyd discovered it, it was too late. Jenks was gone, and so was the nice nest egg we’d saved up. That’s when Floyd started takin’ to drink. I try to tell him, ‘Floyd,’ I says, ‘what good does it do to spend what little money we got gettin’ drunk every night?’ But he don’t listen to nothin’ I say. We lost the store and Floyd went to clerk for Halorhan, but it’s a big come-down to him, clerkin’, after he was his own boss all those years. The money Halorhan pays him goes nearly all for whiskey, and we’re behind six months on our account at the store. Halorhan’s been good, but lately he’s been warnin’ Floyd, if he don’t pay some on what we been chargin’, he’s gonna have to let him go. Then...” Suddenly Addie broke into tears. “Ohh...” she wailed.

It made Florence Loretto’s plight seem less drastic, and she, in turn, comforted Addie.

After that the women opened up, one by one. Their plights were all similar, though some stories were more pitiful than others. Agatha waited for Annie Macintosh to admit where she got the bruise on her cheek. But Annie, like Agatha, remained silent.

When a lull fell, Drusilla Wilson took the meeting in hand once again. “Sisters, you have our love and support. But to be effective, we must organize. And organization
means becoming a recognized local of the national Women’s Christian Temperance Union. To do so you must elect officers. I’ll work together with them to draft a constitution. Once that is accomplished, committees will be formed to draw up temperance pledges.” She displayed several varieties, all of which could be pinned on a reformed man’s sleeve. “One of your first goals will be to get as many pledge signatures as possible, and also to solicit new members for your local.”

Within a quarter hour, Agatha found herself—over her own protests—voted the first president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Proffitt, Kansas. Florence Loretto became vice-president, over her own protests. Annie Macintosh surprised everyone by speaking for the first time that evening, volunteering to be secretary. Agatha nominated Violet for treasurer, observing that it would be easy for the two of them to work together, since they saw each other every day anyway. Violet also objected, to no avail.

Dues were set at twenty-five cents—the price of one shot of whiskey—per week. A pledge committee of four was formed for the purpose of hand-lettering pledges until some could be professionally printed. A committee of three was delegated to query Joseph Zeller, editor of the
Proffitt Gazette,
on the cost of printing pamphlets and advertisements and pledges. A rally was scheduled for the following night for the purpose of soliciting signatures on temperance pledges, starting in the closest saloon.

The meeting closed with Miss Wilson teaching the ladies their first temperance song:

Cold water is king

Cold water is lord

And a thousand bright faces

Now smile at his board.

They sang it several times, in rousing harmony, until their voices drowned out the sound of “Camptown Races” coming from the other side of the wall.

As the meeting closed, everyone agreed it had been an exhilarating evening. As Drusilla Wilson left, she
assured Agatha that help and directives would come from the national organization as well as through
The Temperance Banner.
And Miss Wilson herself would remain in town until the organizational wrinkles had been ironed out.

Agatha closed the door behind the last woman, leaned back against it, and sighed. What had she gotten into? More than she’d bargained for, most certainly. Not only organizer, but president. Why ever had she agreed to hold the meeting here in the first place?

With another sigh she pushed away from the door and turned out the lanterns. In the darkness she left the workroom by the back door. The rear of the building gave on to a path leading to a storage shed and the smaller building she genteelly referred to as “the necessary.” After visiting it, she made her way upstairs, head down, as usual, watching her feet. She was two steps from the top when a voice brought her head snapping up.

“So how did the meetin’ go?”

She couldn’t see him, only the glow of his cigar in the dark on his half of the landing.

“What are you doing here?”

“Inquirin’ about the meetin’, Miz Downin’. No need t’ jump so.”

“I did not jump!” But she had. How awkward to think he’d been sitting up here watching her walk out to “the necessary” and back, equally awkward to realize he’d observed her struggling up the stairs in her shuffling, one-two fashion.

“Pretty good turnout y’ had there.”

“Thirty-four. Thirty-six, counting Miss Wilson and myself.”

“Ahh, commendable.”

“And I’ve been elected president.” It was the first time she’d taken any joy in the fact.

“President. Well, well...”

Her pupils had dilated enough to see that he was sitting on a chair tipped back against the wall with his boots crossed on the railing. The acrid scent of his cigar smoke reached her as the tip glowed orange once more.

“We had such a rousing meeting that none of us even minded the sound of Mr. Culhane’s piano coming through the wall. As a matter of fact, we sang so loud, we drowned it out.”

“Sounds inspirin’.”

She could hear the grin in his voice.

“I dare say it was.”

“And what did y’ all sing?”

“You’ll know, soon enough. We’ll come in and do it for your patrons. How would that be?”

He laughed, the cigar still clamped in his teeth.

“T’ tell the truth, we won’t be needin’ you. Jubilee and the girls’ll be here any day, and we’ll have all the singin’ we’ll need.”

“Ohhh, yes. Jubilee and the girls—from the billboard? My, they sound wonderful,” she intoned sarcastically.

“They are. You’ll have t’ come over and take in a show.”

His cigar smoke irritated her. She coughed and struggled up the last two steps.

“How can you smoke those disgusting things?”

“Habit I learned on the riverboats. Kept my hands filled when I wasn’t playin’ cards.”

“So you
were
thrown off the riverboats!”

He laughed and his chair clunked down on all fours. “The ladies o’ your club been speculatin’ ‘bout me, have they?” He rose and his boot heels resounded with calculated laziness across the narrow landing until he stood before her at the top of the stairs.

“Hardly. We have bigger fish to fry.”

“Supposin’ I was, though. Supposin’ I was a big, bad gambler who knew every trick in the book. Man like that’d know how t’ handle a few old squawkin’ hens who set out t’ shut down his saloon, don’t ya think?”

Fear quickened her blood. He stood ominously close, backing her up to the stairs. She had a dizzying sense of déjà vu, certain that in an instant she’d go tumbling down as she had long ago. Her muscles tensed as she anticipated the sharp blows, the scraped skin, the sickening disorientation of somersaulting from tread to tread. With one trembling hand she grasped the railing, knowing it would do little
good should he decide to give her a shove. His eyes became red sparks as he drew on the cigar once more. The smell grew sickening, and her palms began to sweat.

“Please,” she choked in a whisper, “don’t.”

Immediately, he stepped back and took the cigar from his mouth. “Now wait a minute, Miz Downin’, you do me an injustice if you think I was entertainin’ thoughts of pushin’ you down those stairs. Why, I...”

“You pushed me down once before.”

“In the mud? I told you,
that
was an accident!”

“So would this be, I’m sure. Anybody who’s seen me climb stairs knows I’m not too steady on them. But if you think threats will stop me, you’re dead wrong, Mr. Gandy. They only serve to refresh my zeal. Now, if you will kindly let me pass, sir, I’ll say good-night.”

She sensed his reluctance to let her go thinking ill of him. Yet his belligerence radiated palpably. They stood nose to chest for ten crackling seconds. Then he stepped back. The sound of her solid step followed by the dragging one alternated across the landing. All the way to her door she kept expecting to be lifted by the scruff of her neck and thrown bodily down the stairs. When it didn’t happen she was surprised. She reached her door, slithered inside, closed and locked it. The shakes started immediately. She pressed her palms and forehead against the cool wood, wondering what she’d gotten into by allowing herself to be buffaloed into the presidency of an organization setting out to close down not only Scott Gandy, but ten others like him.

Jubilee and her Gems arrived the following morning on the eleven-oh-five train. Three women with their looks couldn’t step off a coach without causing a stir.

The one known as Pearl appeared to have been named for her skin. It was as pale and luminous as a perfect ocean pearl. Against it, her brown eyes appeared to take up a good quarter of her face. They were darkened with kohl, adding to their size. Her lips were tinted scarlet and flashed like a wine spill on white linen. But her delicate features were shown off to best advantage by the stand-up collar of her fuchsia traveling costume, which bared a goodly amount
of her throat and fit like a banana skin. Her hair was the glossy brown of caramelized sugar, piled into a nosegay of curls high on her head, pitching her shepherdess hat provocatively forward.

“Hiya, fellas!” she called from the train steps, and old Wilton Spivey set sparks off the trackside ballast churning to reach her first. He dropped the tongue of the baggage dray and leaped over two tracks, beat out Joe Jessup, who’d started from the opposite direction, and reached the foot of the train steps, panting. Wilton was toothless as a frog and balder than a brass doorknob, but Pearl didn’t care. She smiled down, cocked one wrist, and extended a hand.

“Just what I was needin’. A big handsome man with lots of muscles. My name’s Pearl. What’s yours?”

“Wiwton Thpivey, at your thervith, ma’am.” Wilt didn’t talk so good with those bare gums, but his eyes sparkled with lecherous delight.

“Well, Wiwton, come on, honey. Don’t be shy.”

Wilton lifted her down, revealing Ruby, behind her.

Ruby was a shapely young Negress with skin the color of creamed coffee. Her hair was straighter than any black woman’s hair Wilton Spivey had ever seen. It swept back from her left ear, straight up from her right, sleek as fast water on a black rock, ending in a curl like an inverted ocean breaker looping the edge of her high canary-yellow hat. She had magnificent upsweeping eyebrows, heavy-lidded black eyes, and lips as puffy as a pair of bee stings, painted a violent magenta. She rested eight knuckles on her cocked hips, gave a little jiggle that shimmied her tight yellow dress, and announced in a deep, rich contralto, “And I’m Ruby.”

Joe Jessup gulped and uttered, “Holy smokes, if you ain’t!”

When Ruby laughed it sounded like thunder building on a mountainside—deep, chesty, voluptuous.

“What I s’posed t’ call you, honey?”

“J... Joe J... Jessup.”

“Well, J... Joe J... Jessup.” Ruby sidled down one step, leaned over till her breasts hovered only inches before his face. With one unearthly long nail she left a pale white
line all the way from Joe’s ear to the center of his chin. “How ‘bout I call you J.J.?”

“F... fine. R... ride to wherever you’re goin’, Miss Ruby?”

“’Predate it, J.J. That’d be the Gilded Cage Saloon. Y’all know where that is?”

“Sure do. Right th... this way.”

By this time there were four others in queue, waiting their turns at the foot of the train steps.

Above them, like an angel straight from the pearly gates, appeared Miss Jubilee Bright—as promised, the brightest gem of the prairie. If the others seemed suited to their names, Miss Jubilee seemed born to hers. She was—incredibly—white all over! Her hair was white, not the blue-white of Violet Parsons’s, but the blinding white of spun glass. It frothed high upon her head like a tempting ten-egg meringue. She was dressed, too, in unadulterated white, from the tip of her tall velvet hat with its trimming of egret feathers to the toes of her ankle-high kid boots. Her dress, like that of Pearl’s and Ruby’s, sported no bustle out back, but clung to her generous curves from shoulder to knee before flaring into walking pleats. It sported a diamond-shaped neckline revealing a tempting glimpse of cleavage, with a fake black mole placed low enough to draw any man’s eyes in its direction. Another mole dotted the left cheek of a face lovely enough to need no beauty marks. The startling almond eyes, the pouting lips, the pretty little nose could hold their own in any company. It truly was an angel’s face.

She raised both arms and called, “Just call me Jube, boys!” And she leaned out with her arms still extended, allowing two cavaliers to grasp them and lower her to the ground. When she got there she left her arms around their shoulders, rubbing their muscles approvingly.

“My, my, I do love my men strong... and polite,” she purred in a naturally kittenish voice. “I can tell we’re goin’ to get along ju-u-ust fine.” Simultaneously, she gave them each a clap. “So, who’m I hangin’ on to here?”

“Mort Pokenny,” answered the man on her left.

“Virgil Murray,” answered the man on her right.

“Well, Mort, Virgil, I want you to meet our friend, Marcus Delahunt. Marcus plays the banjo for us. Meanest picker this side of N’awleans.”

The last man off the train carried a banjo case and wore a straw panama with a wide black band. His boyish face wore a happy smile revealing one crooked tooth, which only added to his appeal. His blue eyes were set wide in a fair face framed by collie-blond hair. Not a particularly manly face, with its pink complexion and sparse blond whiskers, but one forgot that when viewing his open expression of apparent pleasure with the world. Standing with one long-fingered hand on the rail, the other gripping the banjo case, he smiled and nodded silently.