The Cassidy Posse Read Free Page B

hope to improve your position in life. You can tell he’s thinking about a promotion.”
    “Well, Bockleman has more call tuh worry about such things,” said Mike. “He’s a married man with a kid tuh support.”
    “Well, don’t you want those things someday?”
    “Jayzus!” cried Mike rolling over and grabbing Nell playfully by the waist. “Yuh dun’t look like me mother, how come yuh sound like her?”
    “Somebody’s got to help you, for God’s sakes,” she said, struggling to free herself. “You dumb Irish lunk.”
    Mike pulled her on his lap and placed his head on her breasts.
    “This dumb Irish lunk was just wonderin’ how grateful you were tuh have that nasty Dutchman shagged off yer porch?”
    So that was what was on his mind
, she thought. He was a man. What else. But she had other things to do. She had planned a nice dinner at the Palmer House with Edith. Then, with the right mood, maybe she could talk her partner into buying out her share of the business. The new status she anticipated would not allow her to be part owner in a whorehouse. Not even a very high class and profitable one.
    “Mike,” she whined, wiggling free from his grasp. She pushed him back on the bed and began straightening her fancy dress. “You think I got all dressed up to wrestle around with you?”
    He was lying on the bed looking like a dejected puppy. Mike McGhan was no lady’s man by any stretch. Nell doubted if he had any idea of the hold he had on her. Mike had helped her get off a check forging rap a couple years ago. He had assumed her gratitude was extended from that. He would have never remembered years before when a skinny thirteen-year-old girl squeezed through the crowd to see him fight three grown men who had insulted his sister. The first was a big, loud mouth named Hanrahan. He was half a head taller than Mike but slow and drunk. He swung mightily but Mike stepped under the punch and hit him in the ribs with a left. The moment he lowered his guard to grab his injured side, Mike threw a bone-jarring overhand right to his jaw that dropped him to the ground like a bag of her mother’s laundry. Hanrahan’s two tagalongs were momentarily stunned to see their large, obnoxious friend lying limp on the ground. The short, redheaded one recovered quickly and threw a punch that grazed Mike’s chin. Mike caught the smaller man by the ear and whipped him around in a circle until he tripped over the body of his fallen comrade.
    Mike’s undersized friend Kevin O’Day had diverted the skinny snaggle-toothed one from the fight. Knowing he was no match for a grown man, Kevin had borrowed a cane from an old man that was watching. When he came face-to-face with the punk, he froze. The hoodlum grabbed the cane and twisted it out of his grip. Armed with this weapon, he launched his skinny body at Mike with new confidence. He swung the cane with two hands at Mike’s head like it was a baseball bat. Mike ducked and the drunken man’s forward momentum caused him to sprawl in ungainly fashion on top of Mike’s crouched body. Mike lifted him up and threw him over his back into a wagon wheel. The short redhead had regained his feet and was standing with his fist clenched, thinking of having another go at Mike. Then, as if he had just remembered something he had to do, he turned and disappeared into the crowd. Mike stood there like a young gladiator. Nell remembered her pulse racing as people closed around him to shake his hand. There was a look of pride and vindication on the face of Mike’s sister that for some reason made Nell jealous. These same oafs had insulted her on the street before. She should have felt vindicated too. Instead she felt envious of the girl standing on the wood plank sidewalk above the boisterous crowd.
    “What are yuh thinkin’ about?” asked Mike as he scrunched up one of her down pillows.
    “Oh, just another time and place,” she said wistfully. “I think I’m getting soft-hearted with age.