The Sporting House Killing G. Powell (best free novels .TXT) 📖

made trading in cotton and cattle, but investment also poured into the woolen mill, the two electric street car lines, the bottling businesses, and the gas and electric companies. Bankers and homebuilders prospered with them. Clients needed lawyers to help them secure that prosperity. This city on the frontier between industrial audacity and wild west grit had its own brand of pluck, and it was time for Harley to be a part of it.

He couldn’t just wait for it to happen. The good times wouldn’t last forever. The year 1893 had been a bad one most other places. The collapse of the wheat market had devastated the heartland of America. A credit crisis and high unemployment ravaged the entire country, and labor unrest plagued the industrial cities back east. Ordinary people had lost their homes to foreclosure. Stock prices had plummeted. Three railroads had failed, and hundreds of banks closed. Maybe hard times elsewhere were what brought desperate women to the Reservation.

After four years of riding shotgun for Papa in court, it was Harley’s time to take the reins.

He turned onto Sterling DeGroote’s street in Provident Heights, a new suburb on the northwest edge of town. Mr. DeGroote had moved to Waco from New York following his friend Samuel Colcord, a New York developer whose ambition was to turn this suburb into an aristocratic neighborhood. Already it was really something. The homes were like smaller versions of the mansions built by captains of industry and commerce back east.

Sterling DeGroote appeared to have bold ambition too. Harley tried not to crane his neck like a rube as the DeGrootes greeted him in the foyer. He’d never visited a house with its own indoor ten-pin bowling alley, though he’d read about places like the Breakers and George Vanderbilt’s new home in North Carolina. He wasn’t so sure Mark Twain was right that the extravagance of the captains of industry was just gilding over the hardship of the ordinary people who made them rich.

They settled into velvet-upholstered chairs in the parlor.

“So, Peter, do you live in the dormitory?” Harley asked.

“No, sir. I still live here—until I graduate,” he said, with a smile toward his father. “It’s a long way from school, but the Hobson rail line really helps. And sometimes when I’m late, Father lets me use the buggy. It’s fast.”

Peter DeGroote was a handsome young man, probably about twenty or twenty-one, with a fresh, dimpled face and a winning smile. He was smartly dressed in a serge coat and white duck trousers.

“Your father said there’s something you know about Cicero Sweet we need to hear about,” Harley said.

Peter sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Yes, sir. I know him.”

“How?”

“I’m a senior. Baylor has a literary society, and last semester I debated against him. He’s a freshman.”

“When was this exactly?”

“Probably late November.”

“What happened?”

Peter leaned forward, uncrossing his legs. “It was actually after the debate. I beat him—at least according to the judges—and a young lady-friend of mine who’d come to watch brought a picnic lunch to share afterward. We went across Fifth Street to Waco Creek and spread a blanket on the bank under a cottonwood.”

Someone else to track down. Harley recorded the story in his copybook as fast as he could. “Who was she?”

“Chloe Malone. Anyway, we were just down there enjoying the day, and Cicero came up from campus. He had a Lone Star and was drinking it in big gulps. I couldn’t believe he had beer on campus. I warned him he’d best hide it before somebody saw him, but he just ignored me. I think he was upset about losing. I got the feeling that he thought he was a better talker than he really was, maybe because of his name. He started mouthing to me and bothering Chloe, and I asked him to leave us alone, but he didn’t. He sat down, uninvited.”

Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Chloe didn’t like it, and I asked him to leave again. He finished his beer, threw the bottle in the creek, then pulled another one out of his coat. So I got up and just stood over him and told him to leave.”

“How’d he react to that?”

“He stood up, too, and got up in my face and cussed at me.” He held up his hand to demonstrate how close it was. “He had a foul mouth, and I could tell it upset Chloe. I told her we’d better leave, but then Cicero pushed me down. Well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon we were swinging at each other. He knocked me into the creek, and then he bothered Chloe while I was getting out.”

Just like he suspected—Cicero was no saint. “What did he do?”

“He tried to take her hand.”

“What happened then?”

“I jumped on him and we rolled around, scuffling. Chloe tried to stop us, and finally Cicero must’ve just gotten tired of it. He said he’d had enough of unsociable people, and he just walked off.”

Peter glanced at his father.

Papa needed to hear this. “Were you hurt?”

“No, sir, not really. Just a little sore.”

“Did you report him?”

“No, sir. I figured he’d just get over it, and so I just let it be.”

“Have you had any trouble with him since?”

“I haven’t run into him much.”

Mr. DeGroote had been sitting back and listening up to that point. “I advised him to avoid the boy. He appeared to be a troublemaker to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Harley nodded. Perfectly consistent with his conduct in the whorehouse. “Peter, have you heard anything else of him? Any other trouble he’s been in?”

“Just that he can’t handle his beer and gets into fights.”

Worse and worse. “Who told you that?”

“I’m not sure. Just some of my friends.” He glanced at his father again.

“Have you ever heard anything about him going to the Reservation?”

“No, sir.”

Harley stopped writing to refill his pen with ink. A full report to Papa would bring him around. “Does Chloe live in the women’s dormitory?”

“No, sir. She doesn’t actually go to