The Gamble (I) (31 page)

“And entertaining enough that I find myself grateful Alvis Collinson didn’t manage to do you in.”

He studied the coal of his cigar in the dark, then rolled his head toward her. “I remember something about that night. I remember openin’ my eyes and you were kneelin’ beside me, touchin’ my face.” The only movement on the balcony was the rising coil of smoke. Even the coyotes had stilled,
and in the silence her eyes met his and held. “You called me ‘dear.’ “

Her heart tripped in a light, quick cadence. She felt her cheeks grow warm but was unable to turn away from his scrutiny. Did he know what happened inside her each time she looked at him? Did he know what a picture he made—lounging on that railing, his head angled her way, his arm draped lazily over the knee, his bare feet and chest compelling in the starlight, the line of his black trousers accenting his masculine pose? If he knew, he’d probably run as fast as he could, back inside to Jubilee.

“I was very frightened, Scott.”

“It just struck me as curious—you bein’ a temperance worker and me bein’ a saloon owner.”

“Don’t oversimplify. You’re much more than a saloon owner to me, and I believe I’m much more than a temperance worker to you. By some odd twist of fate I think we’ve become friends.”

“I do, too,” he replied quietly. “So how can you go off to the governor’s tea and talk about prohibition?”

She felt as if he’d tossed cold water in her face. She’d known the time would come when they’d have to talk about it further, but she hadn’t been prepared for it tonight.

“Scott, you don’t really think I want to shut down the Gilded Cage, do you? It would mean I’d lose you and Jubilee and Pearl and Ruby and Marcus and... well, all of you. And you’ve
all
become my friends—I thought you understood that. It’s an unfortunate circumstance that if prohibition closes down the others, it’ll close you down, too. Please understand.”

He jumped off the rail and started pacing agitatedly. “I don’t! Dammit! I don’t.” Close to her chair he stopped, gesturing with the cigar. “Why you? I mean, why not let those other women fight for the cause?” He waved an arm at the rest of the world. “At least they have reason—some of ‘em. Their lives have been affected by liquor.”

She wasn’t sure she could make herself tell it; after all, she’d held it inside since she was nine years old. Not even when Annie Macintosh had wailed out her pitiful story had Agatha been able to force herself to follow suit. The hurt
was too immense. She had carried it too long, guarded it too closely to share it easily.

Within her nightgown and wrapper her skin suddenly felt clammy. Her heart thrust so hard within her breast that she heard it in her ears.

“Sit down, Scott. It’s very difficult for me to talk to you when you’re stomping back and forth as if you wish there were still public dunking stools for recalcitrant women.”

He drew up short, glared at her for a moment, then plunked himself down on the top step, presenting his back.

“There are times, Scott Gandy, when you act the age of Willy.” He snorted but said nothing. “May I come over there and sit, or will you bite my head off?”

“Come!” he snapped belligerently.

“Are you sure?”

He glared over his shoulder. “I said come,” he repeated with strained patience. “What else do you want—an engraved invitation like the governor sends?”

She rose from her chair, tightened her belt, and fidgeted with her neckline. He sat hunkered on the step, his pique so evident she was reluctant to approach him. Her bare feet shuffled across the raw boards of the landing and she perched on the top step, as far away from him as she could get. Looking askance, she noted his resistant pose: facing the opposite direction, knees wide, shoulders curled, the cheroot clamped in his teeth.

She drew a shaky breath, then began.

“When I was a child we lived in Colorado. Never in one house for long because my father had gold fever. He’d stake a claim and work it until it proved worthless. Then we’d pull up roots and move to the next town, the next house, the next worthless claim. He was always so sure that he’d strike it rich. When a claim was new, he was happy—and sober. But as it continued showing no color, he’d begin drinking. Lightly at first, then more heavily as his disappointment grew. When he was sober, he wasn’t really a bad man, only filled with self-delusions. But when he was drunk...” She shivered and hugged herself.

Gandy’s shoulders uncurled and he half turned, captivated by her mellifluous voice and her straightforward gaze.
“He was one of four boys whose father had died, leaving them equal shares in a farm in Missouri. My father chose to sell out his shares to his brothers and make his way west instead of spending his entire life being a ‘redneck dirt grubber’—as he put it.” She laughed softly, sadly. “He only gave up one kind of grubbing for another. But he thought it preferable grubbing for gold instead of for rutabagas. That, he said, was woman’s work, and he’d leave it to my mother.

“She was a hard worker, my mother. Wherever we moved she tried to make it a home, and at first the houses weren’t so bad—we still had some of the money from the division of the farm to live on. But when it was gone the houses got older... colder... just as he did. And he got meaner.”

Scott was studying her directly as she absently overlapped the panels of her wrapper upon her knees and smoothed them repeatedly. She lifted her face and stared at the invisible horizon.

“He began taking out his failures on my mother.” She linked her hands and fitted them tightly around her knees. “When I was nine we moved to Sedalia to a pitiful little house with a drafty bedroom upstairs for them, and none for me. I slept in the kitchen on a cot.” A winsome smile tipped up her lips. “At the foot of my bed, Mother had a rocking chair, right in front of a window, with an ivy hanging above it...” Her words trailed off and she turned her head away from him. She touched a wooden bar on the railing, picked at it absently with her fingernail. “I used to love that ivy.”

He sensed there was more she wanted to say about her mother, but at present she kept the focus of her story on her father.

“He came home one night, drank, angry, disappointed. It seemed he’d had the choice between two towns when we’d moved the previous time, and—typical of my father—he’d picked the wrong one. His friend Dennis, who’d staked a claim near Oro City, had struck gold, while my father’s mine proved worthless again.

“He was so drunk that night. Cursing, throwing things. Mother was angry, too, accusing him of drinking up what
little money we had when the house wasn’t fit for mice and bats, and hadn’t even a bedroom for me. She threatened to leave him, as she always did, only this time she headed upstairs to begin packing. I remember lying on my cot, listening to them fighting up there. The thumps on the floor, his cursing. I heard a muffled scream and ran upstairs with the childish wish to protect Mother. I know it was silly of me, but when you’re that age you don’t reason, you only react. They were at the top of the stairs, fighting. I don’t remember much about those exact moments, except that I grabbed my father’s arm, thinking to stop him from striking her, and when he shook me off I went backward down the stairs.”

Gandy’s heart began pounding as if he himself were tumbling down with her.
Oh, God, not that way,
he thought. Not by the hand of her own father. His cheroot suddenly tasted foul and he cast it aside. He wanted to tell her to hush, to halt the memories that must be excruciating for her to dredge up. But she went on in the same calm voice.

“Something...”—she clutched her knees and swallowed—“... something happened to my hip. After that I had a...”

She could bring herself to say everything but the most painful word of all. Staring at her profile, so outwardly composed, Scott felt afresh the self-recrimination of the day he’d pushed her down in the mud. And contempt for the man who’d crippled her. And a choking sense of inadequacy because he could do nothing to reverse it. But he could say the word for her.

“Your limp?” he asked in a quiet, understanding tone.

She nodded, unable to look him in the eye. “My limp.” She gazed off into the distance. “But the irony of it is that I did what I set out to do. I stopped their fighting—forever. She left him after that and we ended up here, where she opened the millinery shop. I never saw him again, but news came back to us when he died. I was in my late teens then. I remember the day Mother told me he was dead—he’d fallen off a mule and rolled down a mountainside. They hadn’t found his body till some weeks later.”

Scott’s mind recaptured flashes of his own youth juxtaposed against hers. Secure, loved, knowing all the time he was both. He’d spent little time considering what it was like to grow up in any other kind of environment, until he moved to Proffitt and came up against Willy. And now Agatha.

“I told my mother I didn’t care at all that he was dead.” Her voice became lighthearted, but she rocked unconsciously, giving away the deeper emotions she concealed. “Not at all.” He saw her struggling with tears for the first time since she had begun to relate her story. “Just like Willy the night his father died. He shouted it to me again and again, and ended up punching the mattress and sobbing in my arms.”

“Oh, Gussie... Gussie... come here.” He slid across the step and took her into his arms, stopping her pitiful rocking. She let herself be taken against him while she began to cry. But her weeping was silent and motionless. She acquiesced to his embrace but took no part in it. Her very stillness tore at his heart like a rusty blade. “Gussie, I’m sorry,” he whispered brokenly.

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I never wanted that.”

He pulled her face into the curve of his neck and felt her tears run down his bare collarbone onto his chest. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yes, you did. That’s why I never told you before. I’ve never told anyone before. Not even the women in the W.C.T.U. But I couldn’t let you go on getting angry at me for what I must do. Please, Scott, don’t be angry with me anymore.”

She was small and narrow-shouldered, and fit perfectly beneath his chin. He stroked her hair, drawing it back from her face. There had been times lately when he’d wondered what it would feel like in his fingers. He scarcely noticed now, in light of his concern for her. “I’m not really angry at you. Maybe I’m angry at myself because half o’ me agrees with you. Every time I took at Willy I know you’re right. And I have t’ force myself t’ forget that there are thousands of other Willys in the world with nobody to help them out of a situation they don’t deserve.”

She closed here eyes and rested against him, absorbing the comfort he offered. His bare skin had grown sleek with her tears. He was hard and warm and smelled of the cheroots he smoked. And when his hand cradled her head and tucked her firmly against him, she went gratefully, her cheek pressed upon his chest with its coarse mat of hair.

He represented security, strength, and protection, and she’d had too little of all three in her life. She slipped her arms around his warm sides, spread her hands upon his naked back, and held fast.

And there in his arms, she began healing.

His fingers moved idly in her hair. His sure, steady heartbeat thrummed against her temple. The night shielded them. She wanted to stay that way forever.

But in time propriety interfered. She became aware that he was bare-chested and she wore only her nightclothes. She backed away to look up at him.

“Then you understand why I must go to Topeka?”

“Yes.”

Meeting his direct gaze after crying in his arms became disconcerting. She groped for her lost sense of humor and told him, “I hate it when we fight.”

She was rewarded with a small, sympathetic grin. “So do I.”

She chuckled self-consciously and swiped her lower eyelids with the backs of her hands. “And I’ve never in my life dribbled all over a man’s chest. I certainly don’t intend to make a habit of it.”

“Was I complainin’?”

“No, but it’s not decent. You in practically nothing, and me in my night things. I’ve left you in a mess.” She caught the edge of one sleeve, stretched it taut, and began drying his chest with it.

He caught her wrist. “Gussie, stop fussin’ and listen.”

His eyes were only dark shadows as she looked up into them. Her pulse suddenly drummed in her throat. She sensed that he’d become as discomposed as she by their brief intimacy, and the realization spurred her sexual awareness of him. He caught both her hands and held them
loosely, dropping his gaze, then lifting it in a prolonged study of her shadowed features.

“Thank you for tellin’ me. It means a lot t’ me t’ know I was the first one you trusted.” Her chin dropped. She’d told him all that without blushing. Now, when there was nothing to be ashamed of, she felt herself get hot all over. He rubbed her knuckles with both thumbs. “And what I said before is true. When I say I’m sorry, I don’t mean I go around feelin’ sorry for you because you limp. You don’t feel sorry for yourself, so others don’t either. That’s one of the things I admire about you. Long ago I stopped thinkin’ of you as anything except Agatha, my spunky neighbor who’s too much of a thorn in my side to be considered a cripple.”

She couldn’t help smiling sheepishly, still looking down at their joined hands.

“I don’t mean to be a thorn in anybody’s side, least of all yours.” She withdrew her hands carefully before asking, “So, what do you intend to do with me?”

He leaned against the far rail and studied her from beneath lowered brows for some time before asking, “What are the chances this law’ll pass?”

She was relieved that once again, though still members of opposing factions, they could discuss the issue without rancor.

“The latest issue of
The Temperance Banner
gives it about a forty percent chance,” she answered honestly. “But that margin is narrowing all the time.” He drew in a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, then sat gazing distractedly at a point somewhere beyond the rooftop of the necessary. “What would you do if it passed?”

“Do?” He rested both elbows on his knees and swung his face toward her. “I’d pack up and leave Kansas. What else
could
I do?”