All Standing by Kathryn Miles

Author:Kathryn Miles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

FERGUS FALLS, MINNESOTA

MAY 1885

Jim O’Brien was playing a shell game—that much seemed clear. Nicholas had seen the evening tills, had stayed up late into the night counting the money. The bar was always crowded, and at the end of each night profits were high. Jim didn’t let him touch the bar’s ledger, but Nicholas was responsible for filling its safe with cash every night. Where it went after that was a mystery. The man from Pabst had taken to dropping by the saloon every week looking for his payment. Whenever Nicholas opened the safe, he found it empty. In exchange for his weak apology, he was given yet another bill and the promise that the collector would be back. There were other invoices as well—from breweries and distilleries, from the ice man and the glass factory. They all said the same thing: if Jim O’Brien didn’t settle up fast, they wouldn’t be doing business together for much longer.

It wouldn’t be much of a pub if they couldn’t sell drinks, and that was beginning to seem like a distinct possibility. Not only were the brewers threatening to stop supplying the saloon, but the temperance movement was gaining in strength across the United States. Just a few years earlier, Kansas had succeeded in outlawing alcohol throughout the state. The movement was also growing in Minnesota, and officials were cracking down on saloon owners. Jim O’Brien was feeling the pressure from them as well.

Jim never bothered with formalities, and he rarely had the patience or money for legalities like taxes and licenses. That had come to a head recently when inspectors discovered that the saloon had been selling alcohol without a license. During Jim’s trial, Nicholas sat in the back of the courtroom, flummoxed by reports of unpaid taxes and abandoned debts in Michigan. He didn’t dare talk to Jim about it, though. His brother-in-law had always been bellicose, and the stress of whatever funny business was going on had brought out a new rage in him that frankly made Nicholas nervous. At a recent meeting of the fire brigade, another firefighter had questioned Jim’s character. He responded by punching the man hard in the face. The police officer on duty seemed downright pleased about arresting Jim for assault.

After that, Jim became more scarce than ever, all but living in Chicago. Despite Harriet’s growing distress, he was as vague as ever about what he did there. On those rare occasions when he returned to the Grand Hotel, it was with a stack of whiskey bonds that he cached in the safe before so much as removing his hat or saying hello. Whiskey bonds were as good as gold when it came to loan collateral, and the ones in Jim’s safe would have been more than enough to pay the saloon’s creditors. But Jim never seemed to give the creditors a second thought. Instead he went to the race track or on another of his mysterious jaunts to Chicago, leaving Harriet, Nicholas, and Cecilia to pick up the pieces.

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