Lawless (35 page)

“Do you know any?”

“No, but—”

“And your neighbors who are so fond of you—are they going to rush to help? Of course not.”

“But you saw the people in the streets, Gideon. They’ve gone crazy! You won’t get ten blocks.”

Quietly: “I will if I take my gun.”

Suddenly he responded to an impulse, squeezed her arm and kissed her sooty, sweaty cheek—right there in front of the servant. He murmured, “Don’t worry about me.”

She closed her eyes and pressed her face against his mouth. “How can I help it?”

How natural and comfortable it felt, being so close to her. But he was aware of the man watching, and drew away. A wry and weary smile hid his apprehension as he said, “I really have no choice about going. You were married to Louis long enough to know the Kents have a passion for lost causes.”

Then he went out into a night grown brighter than day.

W
ITH THE LEMAT
in his belt, Gideon started up State Street in the landau. The grooms had changed horses, substituting a gray and a graceless but sturdy dapple for the spent bays.

The carriage clattered past Courtleigh’s. The place was shuttered and curtained like a fortress. Every window was draped. Only slits of light showed at the edges. A man crouching on the roof with a spyglass kept watch on the fire for his master.

Gideon hawed to the team, driving them on. A few moments after he passed the mansion he was overcome by the shock of all that had happened on Taylor Street, particularly the thought that he’d put a bullet into Courtleigh’s assistant general manager.

The shock deepened as he recalled Florian trying to crawl out of the barn. The man couldn’t have gotten far on his own. What had happened to him as the fire engulfed the neighborhood? The same thing that happened to Ericsson?

Gideon’s arms shook uncontrollably. His head swam. He pressed the sole of his boot against the brake for fear he’d careen the speeding carriage into a fence or gatepost. Then his mind took cognizance of what he had been seeing for several blocks—masses of people running south.

The flight reminded him of what he had to do. He’d worry about the possibility that he’d caused Florian’s death if and when Courtleigh raised the issue. It might never happen. Meantime, reaching the north side looked increasingly difficult if not absolutely impossible. Time and again he was forced to slow the landau to avoid the people swarming in the street.

As a boy in Virginia, Gideon had often heard his preacher father refer to Hell. He’d never quite believed in its existence, and his imagination contained only a vague picture of what Hell might be like if somehow it did turn out to be real. Now, just after one o’clock on the morning of Monday, October 9, Gideon beheld the best approximation of Hell he ever wanted to see.

The skyline of the South Side was alight with windblown banners of fire. Clearly the holocaust had leaped the river in more than one place. One immense arm of the fire was burning a few blocks west—the area of his hotel. Where he’d left the gifts for Margaret and the children, he thought with dismay. Further north, he could make out another big section afire, and in the center, the courthouse. That meant the business district was threatened.

The wind still blew fiercely from the southwest. The heat on his left side was scorching. The unbelievably bright sky was full of blazing wood, glowing ash, cinders, occasional clouds of oily black smoke, and great masses of windblown sparks. Gideon had never seen an effect as strange and lovely as that produced by the sparks. It was as if he were caught in a snowstorm in which every flake was lighted from within.

Julia’s instructions called for him to get to the north side via a pedestrian and vehicle tunnel running under the river at LaSalle Street. By the time he’d reached State and Van Buren, he was positive the courthouse was burning. He couldn’t travel up LaSalle, then. Doing so would take him directly into the worst of the fire.

Van Buren was packed with people, but perhaps he could turn right—east—in a block or two. He remembered his first stroll around the city. He’d seen a swing-bridge over the river at Michigan Avenue. He could go north and use that.

Everywhere the flurry of sparks was touching off new fires. He passed a two-story building with a copper roof, cornice and large windows on the first floor. Suddenly fire eating through the back of the building blew the windows outward with cannonlike force. Men and women around the landau screamed. A rain of glass fell on Gideon, gashing his neck. One fragment narrowly missed his good eye as he fought to keep the team from bolting.

People packed the street, pushing barrows, dragging trunks and mattresses, lugging bundles of personal belongings. Several tried to seize the bits or headstalls of his horses. Others attempted to put their belongings aboard. Finally he had to draw the LeMat to keep them back. He drove with the reins wrapped around his right hand and the revolver in his left.

He made slower and slower progress. Hundreds, perhaps thousands were fleeing south along lower State Street. Although rapidly becoming a prime business thoroughfare, State still had a large number of small frame residences. A man wearing five hats stacked one atop another came running out the front door of one such house. He had a small girl in his arms. He spied the landau, fought his way to it and ran alongside.

“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars to hire this rig.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t do it,” Gideon called back.

“Two hundred. Five!”

“No. I need it to fetch a doctor for an injured boy.”

Crestfallen, the man limped away. Two of his hats fell off and were snatched up by people behind him.

Gideon maneuvered the landau around the corner to Jackson, heading east. He hoped Michigan would be less congested. He passed several saloons whose patrons were inexplicably celebrating—singing and capering in the street. At one such place, a frantic owner was trying to load his barreled liquor onto a dray. While Gideon drove by, one of the barrels slipped and rolled down the boards laid from the wagon bed to the street. The barrel split open. Whiskey gushed. Floating sparks ignited it. A river of alcohol flowed in the gutter, burning with an eerie blue flame. Revelers at first tried to dance in the stuff. When it set their trousers on fire, they yelped and reeled away.

Behind him, green flames shot from several of the copper cornices he’d seen earlier. The night was turning into a mind-numbing chaos of color and sound. He realized that ever since he’d left Julia’s, he’d been listening to a sonorous tolling’ without quite being aware of it. Now he heard it distinctly. The courthouse bell. Still ringing even though the building was burning down.

He heard boat bells and horns, too: faint clangs and squeaks above the hubbub of the surging crowds. Probably the horns and bells belonged to vessels trying to negotiate the Chicago River to its mouth, and safety.

As he turned the team into Michigan and saw the dark lake rippling with red highlights not far to his right, the earth shook and the sky reverberated with thunderous noise. People shrieked and began to rum like animated dolls—without purpose, without direction. Somewhere dynamite was being set off. In the hope of creating firebreaks, Gideon supposed.

And above all the cacophony—bells, horns, detonations, screaming—the fire itself made a noise like a continuous gush of air from a great bellows. All across the downtown, that damnable wind was fanning the flames and creating storms of fire that literally roared.

“Damn!” Gideon said in a despairing voice when some smoke cleared and he surveyed Michigan Avenue for several blocks ahead. It was jammed with people and small mountains of personal items and household goods. Obviously a great number of residents from further west had fled with their possessions toward the lake.

Well, he was cursed if he’d turn back just because the street was impassable. He yanked the reins and sent the landau swaying off the wood paving blocks to the weedy strip of open space between the avenue and the shore of the lake.

The landau bumped and lurched north across the uneven ground. There were piles of household things out here as well, and people camping on them. Gideon maneuvered around one such squatter as a man howled from the street, “It’s the judgment of the Almighty! He has seen this city sink in corruption worse than Sodom’s. That’s why we’re all going to die!
The Lord has cursed Chicago!”

People flung rocks and dirt at the hysterical doom-cryer, probably because they feared he was right. Gideon could almost believe he was.

Three poorly dressed men came slipping up from behind, moving in an oblique line toward the landau’s left rear wheel. Gideon’s blind spot. He wasn’t aware of them until heavy boots thumped on the floorboards and the carriage swayed.

Instinctively, he twisted around to the right so he could have a wider field of vision with his good eye. But one of the men had jumped aboard just behind his left shoulder. The man had a short length of pipe in his hand. Before Gideon saw him, he brought the pipe down on top of Gideon’s head.

At the impact, Gideon dropped the revolver. The horses lunged. “Get hold of ’em, Barney!” a man yelled. The one who’d struck Gideon leaped down and dashed in front of the team. He brought the horses to a halt.

Dazed, Gideon was trying to stand. His head rang. Bile rose in his throat. Someone shoved him toward the right side of the seat. A voice growled, “Every liveryman in town’s bein’ offered five, ten times the normal fare for short hauls.” Another shove. “So a couple of us enterprisin’ lads”—Gideon tried to punch at the source of the voice but his head was whirling and he missed—“we’re enterin’ the livery business. Thanks kindly for helpin’ us get started.”

The unseen man grabbed Gideon’s shoulder, tearing his shirt as he booted him off the seat. Swearing, Gideon dropped into the weeds. He hit hard. A rock raked his cheek. He heard the three men laughing and congratulating themselves as they took possession of the landau.

Then, just before Gideon blanked out, one of the men bellowed, “Buggy for hire! Take your personal goods to safety.
Buggy for hire!”

Gideon’s face twisted with rage as he tried to push himself up. The roaring fire and the man’s shout blended together. The ground flew up at him and engulfed him in darkness from which all the firelight swiftly faded.

No one bothered him where he lay amid some weeds whose dry stalks rattled in the hot wind. In about twenty minutes he came around. As soon as he regained his feet, he began to think about what he should do next.

On Michigan Avenue, those attempting to escape and those arriving from further west combined to create congestion of unbelievable magnitude. Northward, in the direction of the bridge, he saw nothing but a red-lit ocean of humanity. To try to go all the way to the town limits on foot would take the rest of the night. He’d return to Julia’s, saddle one of the bays and try a second time.

Provided the whole city hadn’t been razed. Grim-faced, he began to trot south through the scraggly growth along the lake shore.

He ached from head to foot. But he quickened his pace, throwing his head back and gulping the scorching air. He was enraged and humiliated by the loss of the landau. Disgusted that people would take advantage of misery and try to exploit those in peril. He always hoped for the best from his fellow countrymen, and the hope was often realized. Sometimes, though, he was grievously disappointed. Tonight was one such time.

He pumped his arms to help himself run faster. When his chest started to hurt from the exertion, his lungs constricted by the searing air, he didn’t slacken his speed. All he could think of was reaching Twentieth, saddling a mount and starting north again.

He staggered into Julia’s kitchen by the rear door and collapsed on a stool, his chest heaving. Servants rushed to gather around him. Questions dinned in his ears. Finally he understood one and gasped a reply.

“No, I—don’t think the fire will—come this way—not unless—the wind changes.” Blearily, he swung his head. “Someone throw a saddle on another horse. Three hooligans knocked me out and stole the landau.”

“Oh, Gideon!”

He heard the voice from his blind spot, swung his head slightly to the left. Bundled in the emerald bedroom robe, Julia stood in the doorway. Her blue eyes seemed full of some emotion he was too tired to recognize. He had the odd impression that she would have rushed to him except for the presence of the servants.

“I lost the landau. I’ll have to take one of the horses and try to bring the doctor back on—”

He stopped. She was shaking her head. Annoyed, he exclaimed, “Fire or not, I’m going to get him here!”

“It isn’t necessary, Gideon.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “About fifteen minutes after you left, Ericsson’s boy died.”

Afterward, he was never proud of what he did then. His mind filled with a shattering rage in which he seemed to see images of Daphnis Miller and Torvald and Ericsson—and Courtleigh’s thugs—all blurred together. He swore, jumped up from the stool and lurched against the table next to it. He overturned the table.

A stack of Spode broke to bits. The servants exchanged alarmed looks. He stormed to the back door and leaned his head against his forearm. “I shouldn’t have moved him. I should have gone for a doctor right from Ericsson’s!”

Out of his sense of failure, there came a searing new sense of resolve. He would settle with the man who’d caused all this grief. He would settle with Mr. Thomas Courtleigh, who had dispatched hired men to the west side, stayed safe at home himself, and thereby proved the old, sad truths one more time: it was the Daphnis Millers of the world who always suffered, because they had none of the protection afforded by money or position or power. And Margaret wanted him to stop speaking out on behalf of the Daphnis Millers? He beat his fist against the frame of the door.

“Impossible!”

When he blurted the word that made no sense to those who heard it, not one of them scorned his odd behavior. The events of the night had left them almost as shaken and drained as he was.