Fair Play Page 8

  He stared at Billy’s skirt, wondering what kind of legs she had under there. Pulling his thoughts back where they belonged, he approached the steps. “You ready?”

  She turned toward him. Eyes widening, she perused him from hat to hoof and then back up again. “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

  Tugging the rim of his hat, he winked. “Wish I could say the same, ma’am.”

  Red rushed into her cheeks.

  Die and be blamed, but he liked to see her blush.

  She hadn’t made any move to come down the steps, so he went on up to help her down.

  Lips parting, she took a step back.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  He glanced at the child. “He all right?”

  “Who?”

  “The baby. Who do you think?”

  “Oh!” There was the blush again. “The baby. Yes. Fine. He’s fine. Drank a whole bottle. Burped loud as any man. I found him a nice white gown. Has pleats all across the front and fits him just right. How are you?”

  He drew his brows together. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she’d sampled some of Kentucky’s sour mash.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “I’m late? I’ve been over there with Derry for a good ten minutes while he about talked the hide off a cow. The minute you stepped out, I came right over.”

  She glanced at Derry, but the boy had drawn in another customer.

  “Yes, well. Let’s go, then.” She took off down the stairs.

  He grabbed her elbow. “Easy, woman. Slow down before you get tangled up in your skirts.”

  Tensing, she allowed him to assist her, then pulled out of his grasp the minute they reached the walkway. What the deuce was the matter with her?

  Churning up more dust than could settle in a day, she scurried toward the exit. He had no trouble keeping up. And though he didn’t know what kind of bee had gotten into her bonnet, he sure as cockleburs wasn’t going to ask.

  CABLE CAR10

  “He thought they only had cable cars in San Francisco, but Chicago had enough grips to supply the whole country, seemed like.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  He’d never ridden in a cable car before. Until arriving at the fair, he’d thought they had those only in San Francisco. But Chicago had enough grips to supply the whole country, seemed like.

  Taking the babe from Billy, he helped her up onto the car, handed her the infant, then climbed in next to her and waited for the ride to start. Each bench was designed to hold four people, but they were split down the middle like pews in a church. Wooden barriers restricted folks from entering the center aisle reserved for the gripman. The uniformed man walked down its length collecting tickets.

  Hunter tucked in his legs, his knees almost as high as his chest, his shoulders and elbows scrunched together. He’d never make it all the way downtown like this.

  He laid his right arm behind Billy, stretched out his legs as best he could, and extended his left elbow beyond the armrest. Much better.

  The car was completely open, with small columns supporting the roof overhead. Bedraggled children, tired mothers, and weary husbands who’d toured the fair filed into the benches behind them. Bending low, Billy whispered to the infant and tickled his chin, her profile and jawline as fine as any fairy-tale princess’s. Everything about her intrigued him. Nothing about her made sense.

  She’d taken to the babe like a bear to a honey tree. Clearly, she’d make a good mother. So why would she have intentionally given up the sacred calling of her sex in exchange for the toil and hardship of a man’s? Had she feared she’d become a spinster and didn’t want to be a burden to her family?

  But that didn’t make a bit of sense. Not with her curves and face and easy laughter. There had to have been plenty of men willing to guard and protect her within the walls of their homes and the strength of their arms.

  A clanging gong and a yell warned passengers to either get on or get off. The babe scrunched up his face at the noise, but Billy tickled him again to keep him from crying.

  Though Hunter braced himself for a jerky start, the ride was surprisingly smooth and quiet—almost as if they were gliding over ice. No screeching wheels since everything was controlled by a cable underneath the tracks. And no coal-burning odor since the powerhouse running the car was kept in some building downtown.

  At the end of Fifty-fifth Street, the gripman slowed the car to make a ninety-degree turn north onto Cottage Grove Avenue. Several men jumped off. Others jumped on. All the while the grip still moved. But Hunter fastened his attention to an expansive pleasure garden now stretching out on his left as if it had been dropped straight down from heaven.

  “That’s Washington Park,” a woman behind them pointed out to her son.

  Hunter wished he could jump off, too. Never had a sight been so welcome. Young boys played a game of baseball not too far from a flock of sheep grazing in an open field. A man in a canoe rowed his best gal down a winding canal. A smattering of couples walked along handsome trails lining the park.

  He took a long breath. He missed home. Missed its wide open spaces. The slower pace. The people. His horse. His guns. He’d never been outside of Texas before now. If he’d had any idea how noisy, filthy, smoky, and crowded it was here, he never would have come.

  But it was his lifetime dream to be, not just a Ranger, or even a captain of the Rangers, but chief of the entire Rangers outfit. And to do that, he needed to broaden his horizons. Meet and work with men in powerful positions. Learn more about the places some of their outlaws were migrating from. The World’s Columbian Exposition offered him a way to do that in six short months.

  Never had time passed so slowly.

  They left the park behind and reentered the city with building after building looking like overgrown store boxes with holes punched in them.

  He looked down at Billy. The subtle motion of the car had put the babe to sleep and she wasn’t too far behind. Her head nodded, then jerked up. Nodded, then jerked up. He wondered how much sleep she’d lost last night because of the child. Tempted as he was to wrap his hand around her shoulder and pull her against him, he resisted. He’d given in to temptation last night and would’ve stolen a kiss if she’d allowed it. But she hadn’t, and it was just as well.

  Starting something with her might make the five months he had left here a lot more pleasant, but the last thing he needed was to become involved with a woman who worked. Which begged the question—what was he doing arranging to have the rest of the day off so he could spend it with her?

  But he already knew. Where he came from, a fellow didn’t leave a woman and child to take a seven-mile trek across a booming city and into the slums unescorted. Adjusting his hat, he started paying closer attention to the streets they crossed.

  “What stop is ours?” he asked, giving Billy a gentle nudge and trying to keep his voice down, though he didn’t know why. If the babe could sleep through all the racket from the city streets, he could sleep through anything.

  “Canal and Polk,” she answered, her voice groggy.

  A few minutes later the car turned onto Twelfth Street and the cosmopolitan face of Chicago turned seedy. One look at the plethora of brothels along with the character of the men on the street and Hunter was glad he’d insisted on accompanying Billy and the babe.

  Finally, they made it to Polk. He signaled the gripman, learning that while the men hopped on and off the car, the gripman brought the car to a complete stop for women, children, and old-timers.

  He helped Billy off the car. “You want me to carry him?”

  “No, we’re fine.”

  “You sure you have the right address?”

  “Halsted and Polk. That’s what the matron at the dormitory told me.”

  Tamping down his concern, he appropriated her doctor’s bag and took her elbow. Best he could tell, they’d left the brothels behind, but the buildings still w
eren’t the fancy kind they’d passed coming up. They were factories, mills, and warehouses, each emitting its own pungent odor.

  The farther they walked, the more the buildings deteriorated until at last they were in a neighborhood the likes of which he’d never seen. And in his line of work, he’d seen plenty. Plenty of hideouts, plenty of hovels.

  But these . . . these were worse than hovels. They were rickety sheds, thrown-together lean-tos, and dirt-encrusted fleapits all snuggled up tighter than books on a shelf with saloons only a spit and a stride apart.

  Leaning down, he removed a gun from his boot and tucked it into the back of his trousers.

  Billy’s eyes widened. “What’s that for?”

  “I just want to put it where I can get to it a little easier.”

  “You mean it’s loaded?”

  “Of course it’s loaded.”

  “And you’ve had it this whole time?”

  He sliced her a glance. “Seeing as you graduated cum laude, I’m figuring that question doesn’t really require an answer.”

  Lifting an eyebrow, she turned her attention to the sidewalk, which with each step, weakened, then split off, then disappeared altogether.

  They came to a stop. They could either turn around or step into the mire that masqueraded as a street.

  Abandoned wagons rested in gutters. Poles from peddlers’ decrepit carts welled up toward the middle of the roadbed. Rotten wooden blocks, which had once served as pavement, lay in patches.

  Billy made a move to advance.

  Hunter held her in check. “There’re probably enough fleas in there to herd like cattle.”

  “I imagine there are.”

  His jaw begin to tick. “You’ll ruin your skirts.”

  “There’s nothing else for it.”

  “We could go back,” he said. “I’ll find a livery. Hire a couple of horses.”

  She studied him, a challenge in her bearing. “You worried about your armadillo boots?”

  “I sure enough am.”

  “You don’t have to come.” She extended a hand for her bag.

  He held it out of reach.

  “Listen, Hunter, you’re the one who invited yourself along. The baby and I will be fine. It can’t be too much farther.”

  She was touched in the head if she thought he’d leave her and the babe at this point. Made him mad she even suggested it.

  A group of laughing children with stringy hair and rags barely covering their rail-thin bodies tore around the corner, dipping under a makeshift clothesline.

  “You’re it!” one of them shouted, then they all scattered, leaving the tagged ragamuffin to stand in a river of slime where she covered her eyes and counted to twenty.

  As she did, her playmates hid in crates, wagons, and garbage boxes. Garbage boxes. A youngster in short pants jumped feetfirst into the refuse. A covey of flies ascended. A huge, black rat scampered out of the offal and onto the edge of a hinged wooden box.

  Hunter palmed his gun and aimed.

  Billy sucked in her breath.

  But the child ignored the rat and it scuttled off.

  Uncocking his weapon, Hunter returned it to his waistband. The horrendous smell and filth should by all rights have caused the boy to cast up his accounts. Yet he didn’t seem bothered in the least. A couple of other youngsters up the street played leapfrog. The smaller of the two splatted his hands right into the quagmire, only to straighten and put those selfsame, mud-caked hands on the back of the boy who’d just jumped over him.

  Billy made a move toward the morass.

  Grabbing her arm, Hunter spun her around. “I’m not leaving the babe in this cesspool.”

  The baby whimpered.

  Billy’s expression hardened. He figured that as a doc she’d seen all kinds of things in her work. Well, so had he. That didn’t mean he had no feelings at all.

  “The women at Hull House,” she said, “have a reputation of being kind, good, and hardworking. All are college educated. I feel sure they’ll see the child is well taken care of.”

  “So he can what? Live in these disgusting conditions? Is that what you want for him?”

  Her face remained stoic. “It’s not a matter of what I want. I didn’t create this situation.”

  “But you’re willing to drop him right in the middle of it.”

  Her eyes flickered. “What would you have me do, Hunter?”

  He lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. Keep him?”

  Her lips parted. “Keep him? You think I can simply keep him? Just like that?”

  “Sure.”

  “And I suppose you think that’s possible because I am, after all, a woman?”

  “Well, yes.” He tried to keep the exasperation from his voice, but didn’t quite manage it.

  “And just how, exactly, would I do that?” She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “I’d have to quit my job in order to take care of him. And if I did that, I’d have no source of income. Then he and I would both end up living in this mess.”

  He shook his head. “Not if you got married.”

  Her eyes widened. “Got married? To whom?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure I could find you somebody.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Well, I don’t want a husband, Hunter. Because husbands don’t much like it when their wives have ambitions and earn wages.”

  “But don’t you see, that’s the whole point.” Grabbing a bandanna from his pocket, he swiped it across the back of his neck. “You wouldn’t have to earn wages. Once you married, your husband could take care of you, and you, in turn, could take care of the baby.” It was the perfect solution. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. He took the first easy breath he’d had since they’d found the little fellow.

  “I see.” She held her back straight as a fence post. “And what about my ambitions?”

  He gave her a stern look. “Now, Billy, what are ambitions when compared to a child’s life?”

  “What, indeed? But, as it happens, I have a better idea. One that won’t affect my marital status or my occupation.”

  He eyed her warily. “And what would that be?”

  “I think you should keep him.”

  He reared back. “Me? I can’t keep him. My assignments take me from the Rio Grande to the Louisiana border to the Gulf of Mexico. I spend half my time chasing gun-toting, fast-shooting men on the run and the other half hauling them in. I can’t be towing a little one along. Out of the question.”

  She shrugged. “So get married.”

  His jaw dropped. “Married? To who?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure I could find somebody for you.”

  His ire began to rise. “Well, aren’t you the one thinking the sun comes up just to hear you crow.”

  Her lips thinned. “Are you coming or not?”

  He stood rigid, facing off with her. By all that’s holy, she had tongue enough for ten rows of teeth. And she was crazier than a Bessie bug if she thought he could keep the child. He didn’t know the first thing about children.

  “You sure you won’t keep him?” he asked, his voice tight.

  She studied him, those pretty brown eyes delving into his. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  After several tense seconds, he blew out a long breath. “Well, I can’t leave him here. Not like this. Not without some breathing space, at least.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Hunter, but I plan to continue on to Hull House and talk to the women there. Maybe they’ll be able to ease our minds some.”

  With a resigned heart, he nodded. “All right, then. Hold the baby tight.” Leaning over, he swooped her up into his arms and slogged his way toward Halsted.

  CHICAGO YOUTH FROM THE WEST SIDE11

  “He gestured toward a young boy smoking across the street. ‘Kids who don’t have anyplace to go loaf around street corners.’ ”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Billy sputtered and fussed and sputtered some more. H
e couldn’t have cared less. After a block and a half, the sidewalk improved enough to set her back on her feet.

  Shaking out her skirts, she mumbled underneath her breath.

  He gave her no never mind, his attention completely on the children. Most all were of foreign descent. Some thigh high to a mule, some with a little fur on their brisket. Some playing catch, some loitering about the saloons. Some sleeping in upstairs windowsills, some running down outside staircases. Their numbers had multiplied and they now paved the streets and alleyways.

  He thought of the farm he’d grown up on. He’d had fifty acres of his own and those of his neighbors as his personal play space. From can-see to can’t-see he’d explored every inch of it. Rather than returning home for the midday meal, he’d snack on the bounty provided by the fruit and pecan trees, the bushes and brambles, the roots and gums. If he’d longed for playmates, he had dogs, cats, birds, horses, and farm animals at his beck and call. He couldn’t imagine being reduced to closed-in streets, a neighborhood divested of any hint of green, and a choice of rats for companions.

  The ground floors of the two-story wooden houses along this stretch were either shops or saloons. Coal stores covered in soot stood next to grocers and butchers. Brightly painted wooden Indians announced an abundance of cigar shops. Red-and-white-striped poles identified the occasional barber. And large glass globes filled with colored water designated the drugstores.

  He wondered how people living in such squalor could afford what the stores offered. Or how the merchants stayed in business.

  A group of older boys spilled out of a saloon, cutting Billy off. Straightening, Hunter stepped between them and her, but the young men never even noticed their blunder and wove across the street on unsteady legs. A handful of youngers scurried out after them.