Free The Gamble (I) by Lavyrle Spencer Page A

caught the noon sun and sent it shimmering. Suspended from its onion-shaped roof was a golden swing, and upon it perched a fancy lady dressed in pure white. Another, wearing heliotrope pink, saton the tail of the wagon between Wilton Spivey and Virgil Murray, the three of them swinging their legs and swaying to the music. The third woman, looking like a bumblebee in her black skin and yellow clothes, sat on Joe Jessup’s lap as he drove the wagon. The banjo player stood just behind them, nodding from side to side in rhythm with the song. The wagon was packed with people crowded around the birdcage, and, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the wagon had attracted a trail of children and bright-eyed young fellows who’d left their desks and clerking stations to be part of the music and to ogle the women in the startling costumes. As they came down the street, the entire troupe was singing lustily.
    Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight,
    Come out tonight, come out tonight,
    Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight
    And dance by the light of the moon.
    Agatha tried very hard to be critical. But she couldn’t. She was gripped instead by envy. Oh, to be young and attractive and unfettered by self-consciousness. To be able to ride down the street on a wagon at high noon, singing one’s heart out to the sky and laughing. Shouldn’t there be, in everyone’s life, at least one such reckless memory? But there was none in Agatha’s.
    This was as close as she’d ever come: tapping her hand against her thigh in rhythm with the music. When she realized what she was doing, she stopped.
    As the wagon drew abreast of her store, she got a closer look at the woman in white. She was the prettiest thing Agatha had ever seen. Delicate face with slanting eyes and cupid’s own smile. And she knew how to choose a good hat. She wore one of fashion’s current entries in the war between the high- and flat-crowned hats, the kind called “three stories and a basement.” It was exquisite: towering, but well balanced, and trimmed with expensive egret feathers. Even when the woman swang on her perch, the hat sat securely.
    “Look at that white hat,” she whispered.
    “Look at all of them,” replied Violet.
    “Good hats.”
    “The best.”
    “Their dresses, too.”
    “But look—no bustles, Agatha.”
    “No.” Agatha envied them for not having to hang fifteen pounds of metal on their rumps every morning.
    “But so much chest. Tt-tt.”
    “They’re fancy ladies, I’m sure.” The thought saddened Agatha. All that bright promise would grow to nothing. All their young beauty would grow faded before its time.
    The wagon came to a stop before the saloon. Mort Pokenny opened the cage door and the woman in white stepped out. She stood with hands akimbo and shouted at the swinging doors. “Hey, Gandy, didn’t you send for three dancing girls from Natchez?”
    Gandy himself materialized, surrounded by his employees, all calling out greetings, reaching for the ladies, shaking hands over the side of the wagon with the banjo player. But Agatha watched only the woman in white, high on the wagon, and the man in black, below her. He hooked one boot on a wheel spoke and tilted his hat to the back of his head. In the middle of the melee they had eyes only for each other.
    “’Bout time you were gettin’ here, Jube.”
    “Got here as fast as I could. Took ‘em a month to build the damned cage, though.”
    “That all it’s been?” His dimples formed as he grinned.
    “You wouldn’t’ve missed old Jube, now, would y’?”
    Gandy threw back his head and laughed.
    “Never. Been too busy gettin’ the place set up.”
    Jubilee scanned the boardwalk. “Where’s that town full o’ cowboys you promised I could pick from?”
    “They’re comin’, Jube, they’re comin’.”
    Her gaze returned to Gandy and her eyes glittered with teasing and impatience. “You gonna stand there flappin’ all day, or help a lady dismount?” Without