Free Jubilee Trail by Gwen Bristow Page B

yourself,” the other repeated. “That’s too bad, now we’ll take care of that.”
    “I’m not alone!” she cried, trying to jerk herself away. “I’m waiting for my husband!”
    They appeared not to hear her. By this time the second man had caught her other hand. They both flopped into chairs, talking together.
    Garnet looked around wildly for Oliver. But he was gone, and the door to the lobby was closed. She tried to pull her hands free, but they were holding her, and talking with all their might.
    “Now now, you don’t want to run off, do you? Pretty girl, stay with us, buy you a drink—”
    Then, suddenly, Garnet saw the fair-haired actress in the showy plaid dress. She appeared behind the two men, and slipped her arms around their shoulders. Leaning down between them, she began to whisper in a voice of friendly warning.
    “I wouldn’t, boys, honestly I wouldn’t.”
    They turned in astonishment. “And who do you think—” one of them began indignantly. But as he saw the tempting vision before him his hand loosened on Garnet’s wrist. The actress slipped past him, placing herself against the table so that she stood in front of Garnet.
    “I hate to tell you, boys,” she advised them, “but you’re playing with fire.” She bent her head close to theirs and went on, her voice still a chummy half-whisper. “Her husband’s a steamboat pilot with a gun on each hip. He’s here with her, just stepped out and due back any minute, and only this afternoon he busted a fellow’s jaw for getting too close to her. I saw him do it, right in front of this very hotel.”
    The two men were regarding her with interest. They had both let go of Garnet. “Say, I’ve seen you somewhere,” one of them was saying.
    With a swish of skirts the actress lifted herself to sit on the table, pushing the book away to give her room. She was not looking at Garnet. Her attention was all on the two foggy-eyed men.
    “Of course you’ve seen me,” she answered teasingly. “Can’t you think where it was?” She leaned sideways, supporting herself with one hand, and crossed her knees at the edge of the table with a movement that uncovered several inches of black silk stockings with white clocks.
    “What you doing all by yourself?” the other man asked. It seemed to be the only greeting his fuddled head could think of.
    “Well, I was looking for somebody to keep me company. Only I don’t know why I should want to pay attention to a couple of gents who never have noticed me enough to remember me, after all the time I’ve been around.”
    “Say, I know!” He slapped her knee, laughing as though the recollection were a great achievement. “Down at the Flower Garden—” He began to sing, decidedly off key, several bars of her song about “The time I’ve wasted saying no.”
    “Now then, that’s better.” She smiled upon him in congratulation, and the other fellow, not wanting to be outdone, began to whistle in some slight relation to the same tune. The actress laughed intimately. “Well, it sure is nice to run into a couple of my friends, unexpected like this. And just when I was feeling kind of lonesome, too. Maybe we could all have a drink together, what do you say?”
    They said that was fine. They said it in a great many bumbling words. Garnet huddled back in her chair, keeping very quiet. She was not frightened any longer. She almost forgot she had ever been frightened. She looked and listened, while the men chattered and the actress went on with her inviting lines and gestures, and all Garnet’s thoughts concentrated into one big awesome phrase: “So that’s how they do it!”
    She was so fascinated that she was almost sorry when she heard the actress say,
    “They lock up the bar in this married women’s hotel at ten o’clock, but there’s a nice place down the street where we can get anything we want. You know, Tony’s.”
    They wanted to go to Tony’s, they must go to Tony’s right away, and they