by Yvonne Jocks
Audra closed her eyes and did try. But sleep came poorly in even the best of buggies; the livery rental, on a dirt road yet, bounced and jarred her too much. And they hadn't made it a mile from town when their horse whinnied into the dark morning and another horse nickered back from the shadows ahead of them.
Audra opened her eyes, glad for an excuse not to continue trying to sleep.
The rider was bundled against the cold, head down so that his hat brim protected him from the wind. Judging from the horse's size and gait, much less her blaze, the man was riding Jack's Queen.
A rancher's daughter, Audra could see that even if she couldn't yet discern bay from roan.
Jack?
As they drove closer, Audra thought the rider seemed slumped in his saddle. Apparently Thaddeas saw something, too; he pulled up on their horse's reins and called out, “Ho! Ho, there!”
The buggy horse obeyed him. Everyone, it seemed, obeyed Garrison men.
“Hello, there, friend,” he called now. “Is everything well with you?”
The rider—was it Jack?—took a deep breath, like somebody waking up. Then he raised his face toward them, squinting away from the glare of their lights.
It was Jack! In the lamplight, he looked somehow wan, unfocused.
Thaddeas made a disgusted sound under his breath, and Audra winced inwardly on her friend's behalf. How dare her brother make a noise like that about Jack!
“Harwood,” he called, trying again to get Jack's attention, though with less audible patience. “Are you going to make it home on your own?”
That cut through Audra's indignation. Was Jack hurt?
“I made it this far,” drawled Jack in slow response, his Southern accent surprisingly thick. Then, even more slowly, his gaze focused on Audra, as if he'd just recognized her.
She tried to smile hello, friend to friend, but could not quite summon up the cheer. Was he sick? If he were sick somebody should make him soup, insist that he drink water and tea.
“Mr. Harwood,” she greeted, careful not to cal him Jack in front of Thaddeas.
He managed a delighted grin of recognition, but somehow it lacked the caliber of charm she'd grown used to. “Audra Garrison!” he greeted, too loudly. “If it ain't the schoolmarm herself. How are you this fine night. . . mornin' . . . Miss Audra Garrison?”
“Go home, Harwood,” said Thaddeas, and twitched their horse's traces. The buggy lurched into motion again. And Audra realized—so come-lately that she felt foolish—what was wrong with Jack. She'd never seen it up close before, was all . Men simply did not drink in the company of ladies. Her father and brother would general y walk between the girls and any cowboy or miner celebrating payday with too much enthusiasm. On the very rare occasion that Audra and her sisters were out alone, they knew to take shelter at the nearest respectable business until such men had staggered well past.
If Jack weren't on horseback, he'd be staggering. Jack Harwood was inebriated!
“Wait up there,” he called now as the buggy moved out. “Are you leavin'? Today?”
Audra said nothing—and not because of Thad's silent disapproval beside her. She had no idea what to say. This man did not seem like Jack at al . Instinct bade her to pretend he wasn't even there. But...
He would be all right. Wouldn't he?
“Farewell , my darlin' Audra,” called Jack from behind them. In the distance a dog started to bark.
She wanted to pull the carriage blanket up over her head from embarrassment for him— and
herself. “Don't go choppin' up any saloons, darlin'! Folks arrest you for that.”
Thaddeas made a growling noise deep in his chest.
“Please just drive,” she said, sounding meek even to her own ears.
“I am,” Thaddeas assured her evenly—and to her wary relief, Jack neither followed the carriage nor called anything else after them.
Audra hunched miserably under her blankets and waited for Thad to say something. Finally, when she could stand it no longer, she had to ask, “He was drunk, wasn't he?”
Because if he wasn't drunk, then something was terribly wrong with him, and they had to go back and make sure he wasn't hurt.
But Thad said, “Yup.”
“Are you certain he wasn't ill ?”
“Yup.”
He'd been drinking on a Sunday night. That demon liquor could change someone so fine as Jack certainly corroborated the stories she'd heard about its evils, didn't it?
“He seemed so ... pathetic,” she whispered. That, perhaps, was the worst of it. She knew Jack broke rules, but thus far he'd always done so with a flair that she found, well ... dashing. Inebriated, Jack Harwood wasn't dashing at all . She resented the loss of that romantic image.
Thaddeas just said, “Plenty of men do.”
“Then why do they do it?” Was even a warm, easy feeling around one's heart worth that
debasement? Then again, she'd been willing to kiss Jack in the woods because of how warm and easy he made her feel, despite dire consequences should she be caught.
“I guess some folks'll risk a whole lot of tomorrow for a little fun today,” Thad suggested finally, shrugging a shoulder.
If only his words did not apply so aptly to her own recent behavior!
By the time they reached Grapevine and boarded the St. Louis Southwestern, the sun had risen, streaking the cold sky with a fan of pink and yellow and then resolving into a clear, bright blue day.
The ride to Fort Worth was relatively brief. From the beautiful new Santa Fe depot, she and Thaddeas had to walk several blocks, to Main Street, to catch a streetcar.
“I first saw Fort Worth when I was ten years old,” Thad said, guiding her with one hand and carrying their satchel with the other. "With Uncle Matthew, his wife Minna, and Aunt Heddy. Can you guess why?"
Disoriented by the city around them, Audra shook her head. Buildings as tall as three stories loomed on either side of the road. Wires for telegraph, telephone, electricity, and even the trolleys swooped overhead, from pole to pole. Carriages drove so fearfully near the trolleys that, had the streetcars not been slimmer on the bottom than on top, all owing room for buggy wheels, they surely would have collided. Two people even darted in and out of traffic on bicycles. Main Street went on for as far as Audra could see, its buildings seeming to get even taller in the distance despite what she knew of perspective.
“We first came to Fort Worth,” Thad said, “because Pa was leaving for Wyoming. For good.”
The distraction of that, Audra could appreciate. “To start the ranch?”
“To start the ranch,” Thad agreed. A streetcar slowed, its brakes screeching on its rails, as they reached the intersection, and they ran to catch it. Thad helped Audra in first, then hopped on himself as the car jerked into motion. A gentleman stood to make room on the wooden seat for Audra, which she took with thanks. Thad stood protectively beside her.
“It was 1878 . . . March, I think,” Thad said, hanging on through the lurch and sway.
“When he met Mother!” Her parents rarely spoke of how they'd met, courted, and married
somewhere along the route of a cattle drive, so her sisters often wondered about it.
“You would have to ask them,” said Thad, as cryptic as their parents.
A stout matron seated across from her was listening in on Thad's story, but when Audra noticed, she looked pointedly away—as if she could not hear just as well , even so.
“I wanted so badly to go on the drive with him,” Thad continued. "But it was too dangerous. He said he'd send for me the next summer. Since he'd never been gone so long before, Aunt Heddy decided I should see him off.“ He smiled at the memory. ”I think she feared he would be scalped by Indians, like General Custer. It was tremendous, Audra! The cowboys drove the entire herd in from the prairie, across the railroad tracks, and up Rusk Street, right over there—two thousand head!
Not white-faces, either; they were all tall Texas longhorns. I'd never seen so many cattle. They
just kept coming, bellowing like they do, their horns clacking and their hooves churning dust; I could feel the heat off of them. And when they got to the north side of town they went right down over the bluff, swam the Trinity, and bedded on the other side. And there was Pa, bossing the whole outfit like he was born to it."
Audra took Thad's free hand and squeezed it, grateful for the shared memory. She wasn't simply a transplanted northern girl. She had Texas roots—right here.
Loud laughter off the street snatched her thoughts from the heroic image of her father riding into the wild frontier. A trio of men stood, smoking cigars, on the uneven wooden sidewalk outside a place labeled the Cowboy Saloon. The one who'd laughed sounded somehow loud and unsure—
like Jack had this morning. Then he cursed, and his friends laughed again.
“Disgusting,” muttered the woman sitting across from her.
Now that Audra took notice, as the streetcar carried them farther from the depot, the
neighborhood worsened instead of improved. They passed three more saloons and Holland's Free Show Pavilion—a theater, apparently, but hardly a respectable one. Rooming houses boarded the kind of renters who hung their laundry out the windows to dry—even unmentionables! Audra saw more than one pool hall , and a building marked bar. A cowboy lay unconscious on the sidewalk in front of that one. At least, Audra hoped he was unconscious.
She'd seen saloons before, but never so closely grouped. In fact, she counted more dens of sin here, in one block, than there were buildings on Candon's Main Street. “Where are we?”
The lady across from her said, 'This is the Third Ward, dear. You just cover your ears and we'll be through soon."
Thad leaned closer. “That's what Aunt Heddy said when we rode through here. Try not to notice.”
“I don't understand.” The sight of a man in a familiarly cut frock coat, exiting a saloon and wincing from the sunlight, would not let her close her eyes or cover her ears. That is not Jack, she told herself. But he dressed very similarly, down to the brocade vest and watch chain.
He stepped over the unconscious cowboy without even seeming to notice.
“I understand that we're in Fort Worth—and Third Ward. But. . . what is this place?”
“It's called the Acre, Audra,” said Thaddeas, watching her reaction with increasing interest. “Hell's Half-Acre. This is probably where your gambler friend stays when he's in town.”
Chapter Eighteen
Teachers will avoid indecent, immoral, or offensive places of entertainment.
—Rules for Teachers
It wasn't patience that kept Audra silent until she and Thaddeas reached the Delaware Hotel, past the ugly district he'd called “the Acre.” What silenced her was something she'd rarely felt toward her brother—anger.
The gentle elegance of her second-story room, with its walnut furniture and Brussels carpeting, disoriented her after that place. Was this even the same city?
And would Jack really stay there instead of, for example, here? How would Thad know?
While she stood silently, Thad inspected her room, even the window to make sure her view overlooked nothing improper. "Best freshen up before lunch. I'm right next door. If you need anything, knock." He even knocked on the richly papered wall once, lest she might not otherwise grasp the idea. “I've got your key, so I can be here in a blink. Nobody else can get in.”
He'd bent to kiss her cheek before she realized he saw nothing different about her. She'd stewed in silent resentment for over eight blocks, and he had not even noticed!
Only when she asked, “Did you do that on purpose?” did Thaddeas blink in surprise.
“Do what? Can't I kiss my own sister?”
“Did you bring me through that place on purpose?”
He glanced at the door, as if picturing the hallway or the lobby downstairs. “What place?”
Would she have to say it? “The ... Third Ward.”
His gaze sharpened with indignation. “The Acre?”
She nodded, her own anger flickering into uncertainty at his surprise.
“For pity's sake, Audra; why would I do something like that?”
“So that I should think badly about Jack Harwood.”
“He doesn't do a good enough job of that on his own?” And, in fact, Jack had hardly endeared himself to her this morning. So why did she feel so defensive of him?
Thad's speculative expression—his “lawyer look,” the family called it—made her uneasy.
“I disliked that place,” she tried to explain, to shift his focus off of Jack.
"You aren't supposed to like it. Decent folks don't—especially with it sitting smack between the depot and the business district.“ Thad cocked his head. ”In fact, I'd say anyone who did like the goings-on in the Acre must be running lean on decency, himself. Wouldn't you?"
“I wouldn't know,” Audra parried. “What kinds of goings-on are we discussing, exactly?”
Thad's eyes flared in a moment of distress—some things a man just did not discuss with his sisters!
“Goings-on that a lady of your age ought not know about, that's what.”
Jack would have told her, she thought pettily, though that might not recommend him. "Then how could I possibly be familiar with people who do know about them?"
“I hope you aren't!”
“Well, I'm not.” But she could not lie flat-out to her brother, not even when she looked away from his probing gaze. “Except for Mr. Harwood, of course.”
“Oh?” Thad sounded somewhat more dangerous than usual.
“And I don't even know if he's someone who would enjoy a place like that.”
“After this morning? Believe me. He is.”
She had the grace to flush. “I've never seen him that way before.”
“You've never seen him late at night before—” At Thaddeas's abrupt silence, Audra had to face him again, to guess what he was thinking. She wished she hadn't. His bright-eyed horror reflected too much of the disappointment she'd feared for months, though cloaked in uncertainty.
“Have you?” Thad demanded—and his voice cracked.
“Of course I haven't! How could you think—why, even if he weren't...” Weren't what? A gambler?
A scoundrel? That had not stopped her from equal y scandalous daytime meetings. Confused, she went to the window so that she could look at something other than Thad's concern—and so that, perhaps, he would not see her own guilt. “That's a terrible thing to think.”
But was it, if not true, accurate? Her breath misted on the cold glass. Though she'd measured her words, it felt painfully like lying.
“I know,” said Thad, after a long moment.
“I do not meet with men late at night.” Though it had been dark when she'd first kissed Jack, in Aunt Heddy's lamp-lit kitchen....
If only to reassure herself, she repeated, “I don't.”
“I know,” repeated Thaddeas more gently, crossing to her side and putting a hand on her shoulder.
She saw his face reflected in the glass above her own. They wore similar expressions of guarded confusion. “I'm sorry, Audie. That man concerns me, is all. I didn't trust him around you before this morning. And after everything you went through back home, with Connors ...”
Oddly, she had not thought of Peter Connors for weeks.
“It upset me, too,” she confessed. “This morning, I mean. And then that ugly place ...”
Thaddeas squeezed her shoulder. "It's been a long morning, Audra. Rest, and then we'll see what the better half of this city has to offer, agreed?"
She nodded, and when he bent to her she kissed his cheek. She did love him.
But when he locked the door upon leaving—to protect her safety, of course; not to limit her freedom—her eyes widened in a fresh flare of uncharacteristic anger.
As consciousness slowly returned, Jack felt sure of only one thing in the world: waking up was a bad idea. Rank unpleasantness lurked somewhere just beyond the blissfully numbed ed
ges of his mind. Even without naming the memory, he knew to avoid it.
But life didn't work that way. His storekeeper friend looked in on him somewhere around dawn.
“You sick or something?”
Jack said, “I will pay you cash money to leave me alone.”
“I'll take credit,” said the voice. “Ten dollars an hour.”
Even if his eyes were open, Jack would not have blinked at the atrocious sum. Waking up
threatened to hurt badly enough that he'd promise nearly anything to postpone it. “Deal.”
The door shut like a soft dynamite blast. Jack sank gratefully back into the senselessness.
Almost immediately, it seemed, the door reopened. A determined streak of sunlight stabbed through it, across his closed eyes. When Jack rolled away his head tried to fall off.
He. propped it against the crook of his elbow. “I thought,” he muttered through clenched teeth,
“that I ponied-up an X-note to keep you out.”
“You owe me three X-notes so far, but I had to see if we have any more blue yarn for Miz Fuller.”
The room where Jack slept, behind the main storeroom, held overstock. Ferris proceeded to ferret through it with loud rustling and dragging noises— including that inescapable thud of his crutch.
The noise ricocheted through Jack's head, all but drawing blood with every echo. "I'm surprised, Harwood. I thought you could hold your liquor."
Damn consciousness anyway. Now he'd remembered not only that this was Ferris, but that he was Harwood. The unpleasantness—something even worse than the cadence in his head, and the
miserably increasing awareness of the rest of his body—couldn't be far behind. “So did I.”
“What happened?”
When in doubt, smile. Jack did try. Somehow just the stretching of his lips made his stomach swoop unsteadily. “I believe I must've fallen in with bad companions.”
Hamilton snorted. “Likewise, I'm sure.”
Jack didn't have the strength to lift a choice finger in response. After what had to be a thoroughly amusing search on Ham's part, he lame-elephant-stomped from the room again.
Jack dragged his blanket more tightly over him—damn, but it was cold!—and tried to burrow back into the safe nothingness of sleep before he fully remembered.