He knew that he was living a duplicitous life, making a pretense of being a temperance man during the week, then spending his weekends in Eagle Ford wagering on cards. But what other choice did he have? When he was playing cards, he didn’t think about how far he was from home, or how tired he often felt, or how the cough he’d picked up during two hard winters in Philadelphia was still plaguing him. The gambling made him happy and wasn’t hurting anyone as far as he could see, and as long as Dr. Seegar didn’t get wind of it, what was the harm? So his weekly pay from the dental office went into the games, and the money he won gambling paid his living expenses. And on the few weekends when he lost more than he made, he just wrote out a voucher with a promise to pay up before the next weekend was over—and most of the time he did.
The only trouble with his gambling excursions was that sometimes the games ran long and he got back to Dallas later than he should have, and his late arrival on Sunday nights meant a short sleep after which he’d have to brace himself with so much black coffee that his hands were shaking while he held the dental drill the next day. He generally dreaded those Monday mornings, so it was a nice distraction to see little Lenora Seegar sitting in the office the first day of the first week in March after a particularly tiring weekend in Eagle Ford. The games hadn’t gone well, on account of some sports who passed themselves off as cowboys and ended up being sharps instead, and he’d come away in rather compromised circumstances. But it would all work out soon enough, once he had a chance to make some more wagers and earn back what they’d taken from him.
“Why, Lenora! How nice to see you here,” he said, though instead of answering with her usual smile, Lenora hung her head and gazed down at the wood plank floor. “Have you come to help your father?” he said, wondering what could be troubling her.
“She has,” Dr. Seegar said, and John Henry looked up to see the older man watching him, hands behind his back in a military stance. Like his father, John Henry thought uncomfortably, when he was about to give a lecture. And like his father, Dr. Seegar had a cold look in his eyes.
“Tell him why you’re here today, Lenora,” he said.
“No,” she answered, her voice small as a child’s. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what?” John Henry asked. “What’s all this about?”
“Tell him, Lenora. Tell him about our visitors this morning.”
And when she raised her face, her little mouth trembling, John Henry had a sudden sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What visitors?” he asked quickly, and Lenora started to cry.
“Friends of yours,” she said in a voice so soft that he could hardly be sure he was hearing her correctly. “Two men from Fort Worth. They were . . .”
Her voice trailed away, but John Henry didn’t have to hear anymore.
“Gamblers,” Dr. Seegar said in disgust. “Two vulgar men who claim to be friends of yours. Desperate characters, if ever I saw any, smelling of liquor and using profane language.”
“They’re no friends of mine!”
“Indeed. Then can you explain how they came to be holders of two notes from you promising payment of a poker debt from the profits of this dental practice?”
John Henry went suddenly weak at the knees, and when he didn’t answer immediately, Dr. Seegar’s voice rose in anger.
“How dare you, Dr. Holliday! I have worked for ten long years to build this business, and I have never once sullied the name of the firm with any kind of debt! And now this! Bad enough that you should obligate our business for anything without first consulting me, but to bring on a debt like this—gambling!” He spat the word out as if it were a profanity. But when he heard Lenora’s little gasp and fresh run of tears, his voice softened. “And worse than all of this, you have brought the filth right into my home. My own daughter was the one to answer the door and have to suffer the language and the abuse of those two men.”
“Lenora,” John Henry said weakly, looking down at her. “I am so sorry, Lenora . . .”
“It’s too late for apologies, Dr. Holliday. The damage has already been done. She’ll never forget this, I’m afraid, though perhaps it’s better if she doesn’t forget it. She has gentle emotions and can be easily swayed in matters of the heart. I’m sure you’ve noticed that she’s been taken with you ever since you arrived in Dallas.”
John Henry couldn’t help shooting a glance at Lenora, but she kept her eyes lowered. All he could see was the crimson blush spreading across her cheeks.
“Hopefully now she will choose more carefully where she puts her affections,” Dr. Seegar went on. “Look at him, Lenora. See how gambling can ruin a man.”
“I am not ruined,” John Henry protested. “I’ll pay back the debt.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to do that, Dr. Holliday, being out of a job.”
And for the first time, he realized what Dr. Seegar planned to do.
“You’re—firin’ me?”
“I have no choice. You’ve brought disgrace on this firm. If I had it in my power, you’d never practice in this city again, but that is entirely your own affair now. Get your things and go. Our partnership is dissolved, Dr. Holliday.”
“But what will I do?” he asked, stunned and bewildered.
“Go back to Georgia. Tell your uncle that he made a poor choice in recommending you. The last thing Dallas needs is another damned gambler.”
It was the only time John Henry had ever heard Dr. Seegar swear, and it hit him harder than all the profanity those Fort Worth sharps had flung around. And worse than that was the look on Lenora Seegar’s sweet face, heartbroken and disillusioned all at once and older by far than her thirteen years.
“What are you waiting for, Dr. Holliday?” Seegar said sternly, stepping in front of his daughter so that John Henry couldn’t see her cry. “Leave now. We don’t want you here anymore.”
Texas was supposed to have been his new beginning, not his downfall. When he’d stepped off the sailing ship at Galveston Island, he’d thought himself on the way to a life of ease and comfort on his Uncle Jonathan McKey’s big cotton plantation on the Brazos. Now he was worse off than he’d been when he first arrived, with no money and no job and even bleaker prospects than before. But there was one benefit to being fired by Dr. Seegar: he didn’t have to hide his gambling anymore. As long as the Dallas police didn’t catch him at it, he could play cards anytime he wanted and not have to worry what anyone thought.
Mattie would have been so very disappointed in him, had she known about his unfortunate situation, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about it. His being fired wasn’t really his own fault, anyhow. If those Fort Worth sharps had just waited the week they’d promised before coming to collect, he’d have had their money for them and everyone would have been satisfied. It was their greed that had driven them to seek out Dr. Seegar and ask for an early reckoning, and he placed the blame for his troubles squarely on them where it belonged.
The real worry was how to start up a new dental practice in the midst of the country’s worst depression, for though the North Texas Fair had been intended to celebrate a new era of prosperity, it turned out to be the last hurrah before a nationwide economic panic. The railroad boom that had started after the War had finally slowed, with nearly every railroad in the country cutting back or closing down, and when the big New York investment house of Jay Cooke and Company collapsed a string of banking failures followed, bringing the worst depression the country had ever seen. Five-thousand businesses closed that year and whole towns seemed to just dry up and blow away altogether.
John Henry had no money for the expenses of opening a business and all the Dallas County Bank would offer in the way of a loan was a good deal for an empty office on the second floor of their own bank building. So he set out his kit of dental school tools, hooked a portable headrest to a slat-backed arm chair, and spent his gambling winnings ordering a foot-pedal driven Morrison Dental Engine drill. But after a whole long day of sitting in the dental
office waiting for patients to arrive, he’d have only a dollar or two to show for his efforts, and that wouldn’t even buy him a seat at a Frogtown poker game.
The owner of the Elm Street liquor store where he bought his whiskey had a suggestion for him, when he mentioned that work was slow and not showing signs of improving anytime soon.
“There’s always work if a man’s willing to go looking for it,” Thomas Miers said as he refilled John Henry’s silver flask. Though the whiskey was more expensive than his meager purse could allow, the liquor helped to soften his worries and calm the cough that was still troubling him. Dallas was a dusty town when it wasn’t muddy from rain.
“I can’t exactly go lookin’ for toothaches,” John Henry replied. “And toothaches don’t generally make much money, anyhow. It’s crowns and such that bring in the profit. But seems like nobody’s got any money for fancy dental work, these days.”
“I’m not talking about dentistry,” Miers said, leaning across the counter like a friendly bartender. “I’m talking about butchering, which is near the same thing according to some folks. The slaughterhouse up in Denison is hiring, paying good money and not much experience needed. The manager is one of my customers, if you’d like me to put in a good word for you.”
“I am not a butcher!” John Henry said, affronted. “I am a professional man, trained in Philadelphia!”
“Not much use in having a profession no one’s paying for,” Miers said with a shrug. “Or time to change careers, maybe. That’s what I did, leaving my calling behind to be a liquor dealer. I set out to be a preacher, but alcohol pays better than God does in times like these. What a man begrudges the collection plate, he’s more than happy to pay for a bottle of whiskey.”
“So why is Denison in such need of butchers when everyone else is layin’ off?” John Henry asked, though he still wasn’t inclined toward slaughterhouse work.
“It’s the Refrigerated Car Company that’s behind it, the way of the future, that’s what. You see all these cattle herds coming through town? Ever wonder where they’re going?”
“To market, I reckon,” John Henry replied, “by way of the railroad.”
“That’s right. But it’s a pricey enterprise paying the cowboys for the drive and the railroad for the rest of the trip. So the Refrigerated Car Company came up with a plan: slaughter the cattle before they’re transported and pack the meat on ice to ship east. Built special cars even to keep the ice cool. More expensive than your usual cattle cars, but they can pack a hell of a lot more beef than if the beeves were still on the hoof, and without any dying along the way. First refrigerated cars went out last year and more planned for this year. Which is why they’re hiring men for the slaughterhouse. Like I said, sometimes you got to change professions if you want to make a living.”
John Henry shrugged. “I reckon as long as I can pay to keep this flask filled, I’m not interested in a change of careers.” He was sure he’d never lower himself to butchering cattle for a living, no matter how empty his flask ran.
There were other ways to make money in a cowtown, like joining a Keno tournament, a game so embarrassingly easy to play that it could hardly be called gambling, except that wagering was the whole reason for it. The house kept an empty water barrel filled with numbered billiard balls, and the gamblers wagered on which balls would be pulled at random from the barrel. There wasn’t any strategy to it at all, no calculating the odds or remembering the cards like there was in Faro or poker. A gambler just had to pick a lucky four to ten numbers each round to win whatever was in the pot, and the only thing that increased his chances of winning was betting on more numbers.
John Henry couldn’t afford to place more than a few wagers, but he also couldn’t afford not to make a bet. Silly as the game seemed, there was a big pot to be won—enough to pay the rent to his landlady and the Dallas County Bank both. He was a month behind at the boarding house and about to go into arrears to the bank, as well, which would mean losing his home and his dental office all at once, and he didn’t relish the idea of being on the streets. All he needed was a little luck to turn things around.
But luck was avoiding him that night as it had been ever since he’d arrived in Texas. He had only just placed his opening bet, taking a numbered card to represent his wager, when a voice rang out from the doorway of the saloon.
“Hands up! This saloon is now closed, and all of y’all are under arrest!”
Of course, the police would arrive just as the bets went down, giving the Dallas police department a quick profit for their night’s work. But it was one lawman against a whole saloon full of sporting men, and his order was answered by a round of laughter until the officer fired off his pistol, flaming out the gaslight hanging from the board ceiling.
“I said hands up, and put ‘em high! Y’all know the law: No gaming in a liquor saloon. Save your excuses for the Judge.”
The gamblers grumbled as they made their way to the swinging doors of the saloon, but they were orderly enough. Most of them had been arrested for gaming before and knew the ropes: sign in at the County Courthouse, spend a night or two in jail until the bond hearing came up, then pay off the sheriff and go free to gamble again. The trial would come later with another fine to pay, but the courts were so overloaded with the nightly collection of charges that the date could be two months away or more—and that was plenty of time to raise the money for a fine or skip town and turn into a fugitive from the law. Most of the gamblers just paid the fine and stayed around.
But John Henry wasn’t as nonchalant about being hustled off to jail like a common criminal. If the arrest had been for something serious, like the shooting of that boy on the Withlacoochee River, he could have reasoned it away as God’s just punishment. But spending a night in jail for something as inconsequential as Keno was an insult to his pride. And when his night in jail turned into ten while he waited for the bond hearing to come up, he swore he’d never set foot in a Keno saloon again.
The Dallas City Jail was a bad place to spend all that time, cooped up as he was in a tiny iron-barred cell with two other prisoners. The whole jail building was less than twenty-feet square with four cells and a jailer’s office. There wasn’t even a washroom inside, so the prisoners had to be escorted under armed guard to the outhouse to relieve themselves, as if they would try to escape with their pants down around their legs. The only escape John Henry managed was to sleep away the days, curled up on a hard cot and dreaming that he was anywhere but where he was. But the sleep felt good and helped to ease the discomfort of suddenly going without his daily dose of whiskey. Though the jailer provided three meager meals a day, he didn’t oblige his guests with alcohol, which was a real shame. Being drunk would have made being in jail a little more tolerable.
Then, after the humiliation of being locked up in jail, came the added indignity of the bond hearing at the red brick County Courthouse when his name was called out by the bailiff for all of Dallas to hear:
“Case Number Two-two-three-six, The State of Texas versus Dr. Holliday.”
The whole state of Texas coming after him for a foolish little Keno game! And though he was prepared to plead guilty and have it all over with, he was having a hard time feeling like he’d done anything wrong. Where he came from gambling wasn’t a crime, just a gentleman’s sport. If Dallas had hopes of becoming a real city, it was going to have to lose its backwards views on gaming.
But the judge of the Criminal District Court of Dallas City saw things differently, and he evidently hoped to make an example of the young doctor who had strayed from the straight and narrow.
“A doctor, eh?” the judge said, peering down from the bench like a preacher staring down from a pulpit. “You don’t look like much of a medical man to me.”
John Henry shifted uncomfortably in his rumpled suit and stained white shirt. He knew he didn’t look as professional as he should, but how could he? There’d been no bathtub in the jailhouse, just a bowl of water and a razor offered to h
im that morning for a hasty shave. Although his mustache was neat and his face was smooth of the blonde beard that had been growing there for a week, he was still unbathed and wearing the same suit of clothes he’d slept in since his arrest.
“Well?” the judge questioned again. “Are you or are you not a medical man?”
“No Sir,” he replied carefully, “I am a dentist, a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.”
The judge raised silver brows. “Ah, then you are an educated man. I assume you understand what law is.”
“Law, Sir?”
“Law, Doctor. The rules that govern our society and keep us from tearing each other apart like jungle creatures.”
“Yessir, I believe I know what Law is.”
“And do you know what the law of Dallas is in regards to gaming, Dr. Holliday?”
He took a breath and let it out slowly before answering, feeling like a rabbit headed into a trap. “Gaming in a liquor saloon is against the law, Sir.”
“Very good, Dr. Holliday. Then can you tell me why an educated professional man like yourself, a man who should be one of the pillars of our new society, a man who ought to be an example to all young men, should be found breaking the law by gaming in a saloon?”
And all at once, he saw the trap for what it was. This was only a bond hearing, not a trial. There was no jury to decide his guilt or innocence, only the judge who held his freedom in hand. The wrong answer, and he could be denied bail and sent back to jail until his trial did come up— whenever that would be.
“No Sir, Your Honor, I can’t think of any reason why an educated man should be found gaming in a liquor saloon.”
Dance with the Devil Page 5