The Gamble (I) (23 page)

Her tiny apartment seemed stifling. She carried a hard wooden chair onto the landing and sat listening to the music from below, fanning herself with a lace handkerchief. From the opened back door of the Gilded Cage came a lively new song she’d never heard before. The cancan, most likely. Her fingertips kept rhythm against her thigh and she tried to imagine Pearl doing her notorious high kick with the red taffeta ruffles rustling and frothing about her.

A coyote howled in the distance.

Yes, I feel the same,
she thought.
Howlingly lonely.

She thought of Gandy and Willy—it was insanity to become embroiled in the lives of two such unlikely candidates, yet she feared it was too late to extricate them from her affections. She was doomed to heartache on two counts, for Collinson had made it clear Willy was his, and Jube had made it clear Gandy was hers.

She thought of Jube, pretty, pretty Jube, dancing the cancan downstairs right now with Ruby and Pearl. She pictured their legs flashing through the air, and it made her feel weighted and unwieldy. She wondered what it felt
like to kick a man’s hat from his head. She wondered what the cancan looked like and had a sudden idea that left her feeling nervous but determined.

She took her chair back inside, but instead of getting ready for bed, she found one of her voluminous outdated petticoats and laid it on the table. Into it she put the items she needed, then lay down on the bed fully clothed to wait.

It seemed to take forever for the noise below to stop and for the bar to close down. Then again forever before Agatha heard everybody from next door make their way to their rooms and retire for the night. She lay stiff and flat, as if any movement would betray her plans.

She allowed a full hour to pass after all was quiet before she cautiously sat up and slipped from her bed. In total darkness she found the bundle she’d prepared beforehand, plus a single candle in a holder and her sampler from the wall. She moved down the outside stairs barefoot, making no more noise than a shadow.

The dress shop was silent and dark. She felt her way into the workroom, lay her bundle on the table and lit the candle. She lifted it to check the shadowed corners of the room, breathing shallowly.

Don’t be silly, Agatha, it’s only your own conscience you’re scared of.

Turning her attention to the bundle, she felt like a burglar. She folded back the white petticoat to reveal a hammer, nail, brace, and bit. She picked up the brace and bit and Willy’s stool and shuffled to the common wall between the millinery shop and the saloon. From the corner she measured off four paces, picturing the pine boards on the other side of the wall, the places where occasional knots had fallen out. She set the stool down and struggled up onto it. Guiltily, she glanced behind herself—but of course no one was there. Again it was only her conscience that seemed to be watching from the shadows on the far side of the room.

Determinedly, she braced the bit against the wall and slowly, slowly began boring. She stopped often and lifted the candle to check the depth of the hole. At last the far
end of the drill slipped through. She closed her eyes and sagged, resting a palm against the wall. Her heart hammered crazily.

Please, don’t let there be any wood shavings on the saloon floor.

Agatha, you should be ashamed of yourself.

But I only want to watch the girls dance.

It’s still eavesdropping.

It’s a public place. If I were a man I could sit at a table and watch everything I’ll see through this hole and nobody would think a thing of it.

But you’re not a man. You’re a lady, and this is certainly beneath your dignity.

Who will it hurt?

How would you like it if somebody looked the other way through the hole?

Agatha shivered at the thought. Perhaps she wouldn’t use it after all.

The wood shavings all seemed to come her way when she withdrew the drill bit. She pressed her face against the wall and peered into the hole. Solid black. The wainscot felt cool against her hot, flushed cheeks and again she experienced the queer sensation that those upstairs knew what she was doing.

She set the drill down and with three sharp raps drove the nail into the wall. Holding her breath, she paused, looking up at the ceiling, listening for the slightest movement. All remained silent. Releasing her breath, she hung the sampler over the hole and put Willy’s stool where he’d left it. Then she carefully swept up the wood shavings and hid them beneath some fabric scraps in her wastebasket, blew out the candle, and returned to her apartment.

But she could not sleep for the remainder of the night. Clandestine activities at three
A.M.
did not set well with Agatha. Her nerves jittered and she felt as if she had a touch of dyspepsia. She heard a train rumble through town. And near dawn the distant coyotes yapped in chorus. She saw the sky lighten from black to indigo to chambray-blue. She heard the lamp-lighter move down the street, snuffing the lanterns, closing their doors, growing closer and closer,
until he passed beneath her window and then faded off in the opposite direction. She heard the town cowherd gather the local cows from backyard sheds and herd them down the main street toward the prairie to spend the day. The dull clong of the lead cow’s bell became fainter and fainter and fainter... and at last Agatha slept.

She was awakened by her first customer of the morning rattling the shop door downstairs. After that the day was disastrous. She snapped at poor Violet and became impatient with Willy’s questions. A fight broke out in the Gilded Cage in the late forenoon, and when Jack Hogg threw the two hotheads out onto the boardwalk their momentum carried them in the direction of the hat shop and a flying elbow broke one of the small panes of her front window. When Gandy came to apologize and offer to pay for the damages, she treated him abominably and he stomped out angrily with a scowl on his face. The mute man, Marcus Delahunt, brought over a shirt with a simple torn seam, but the bobbin jammed on her sewing machine and the thread formed a bird’s nest of knots on the underside of her stitching. Delahunt watched her slam things around in frustration, touched her calmingly on the shoulders, then sat down himself to find the problem: two coarse blue frayed yarns caught in the bobbin race. He mimed a question: Did she have any oil? She produced a tin can with a long, skinny spout and he squirted oil into twenty places, worked the flywheel back and forth, rose from the stool, and flourished a palm toward the machine as if introducing it to Agatha.

It ran as if new. In no time she had his shirt mended.

She looked up square into Marcus’s face, feeling small for her churlish behavior, not only to him, but to everyone all day long. “Thank you, Marcus.”

He nodded and smiled and mimed something she could not understand.

“I’m sorry. Say it again?”

He glanced around the shop searchingly, spotted the calendar hanging beside the back door, and took her hand, leading her to it. He pointed to her, the oil can, and measured out seven days on the calendar.

“Every week. I should oil it once a week?”

He nodded, smiling, making a smooth-running driver of his elbow, illustrating how the machine would run if she’d follow his advice.

“I will, Marcus.” She squeezed the backs of his hands. “And thank you.”

He reached for his pocket, as if to extract money. She stopped his hands.

“No. It was nothing. Thank you again for fixing the machine.”

He smiled, doffed his hat, and left.

After that Agatha’s temper mellowed, but at suppertime, instead of eating, she napped, overslept, and was late joining the other W.C.T.U. members for their evening circuit.

By the time ten o’clock came she was in a state of intense anxiety.

Her conscience would not relent.

You were surly and short with everyone all day long, and you know why. It’s because of that blame hole you drilled in the wall. If you can’t live with it, patch it up!

But it drew her like an Aladdin’s lamp.

In the dark of night she shuffled through the blackness of her familiar back room, then ran her fingers along the stamped wainscoting. Against her fingertips she felt the beat of the music sending tremors through the wall. The rhythm pulsed up faintly through her shoes. Carefully, she lifted the sampler away. Into her silent, lonely world streamed a tiny pinpoint of light. She leaned close and put her eye to the hole. There were Jubilee, Ruby, and Pearl doing the cancan.

Their magnificent skirts—shining black on the outside, ruffled red on the inside—flashed left and right. Their long legs created shots of black fishnet in triplicate. In ebony ankle-length high-heeled boots they pranced and strutted, wagged their calves and kicked. Their feet shot to the heavens. Their torsos leaned forward, then back, before they circled and shouted and tossed their heads until their red hair feathers trembled.

It was a bawdy dance, but Agatha looked beyond its lustiness to find in their leggy bodies the symmetry, grace, and agility she herself had not possessed since she was nine years old.

The music hushed and Jack Hogg was pressed into work as an announcer, calling out above the noisy crowd. Though Agatha couldn’t make out the words, she watched everything. The girls circulated through the saloon, capturing the hands of six bright-faced, eager men whom they tugged along to the front of the bar. Ruby and Jube arranged the cowpokes in an evenly spaced line and flirtatiously squared the men’s Stetsons on their heads. Jack produced a pair of cymbals and called out a verbal fanfare joined by that from the instruments.

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.

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!”