Chapter 20

In Which I Take a Shot at Being Aunt Kitty’s Teacher

We were back in Chicago by the time Mr. Maroney’s trial hit the newspapers. I took comfort in reading that he would remain behind bars and that Flora and her mother would never get their hands on that money again—nor would they ever be rich enough to buy up all the mules she wanted to torture.

Since our return from Jenkintown, I was working harder than ever to stay on Aunt Kitty’s good side and avoid the orphan house, the workhouse, or any other living arrangement that meant sending me away. I picked up more of the sewing tasks that Aunt Kitty used to handle. And I was mindful to do a good job with the marketing for Mrs. Wigginbottom—and leave time to barter biscuits for more newspapers and fatten up that orange tomcat on the back porch.

Aunt Kitty stayed on me like fleas on a mangy dog, reminding me all the time about improving my mind so I could better myself. “Do you want to put stitches in holey socks your entire life?” she liked to ask.

I started leaving my copy of the Chicago Press & Tribune on the table each day for Aunt Kitty to read, something she was always saying she had no time for. It was my own reminder to her about good habits. She might be drilling me in sums and vocabulary every week, but I made a point to teach her a few things—mostly about the worthiness of reading the daily newspapers and being an Informed Citizen.

Plus a newspaper is just the thing for a snoop like her.

The Chicago Press & Tribune was full of stories about fools printing fake money and thieves stealing it, and burglars helping themselves to everything from jewels to liquor to dead bodies in the cemetery. Mr. Pinkerton’s detective agency was growing more popular, and his operatives were hailed as heroes for fighting the good fight.

Messrs. Pinkerton & Co. deserve great credit… and have won additional laurels by the success which has crowned their efforts. It is dangerous, with such a firm in our midst, to be guilty even of genteel rascality.

I was standing just outside Mr. Zenger’s butcher shop one hot morning, making sure to keep my body in the rectangle of shade his awning was providing, when I overheard some gossip. I knew he was going to drop the price of mutton sooner or later, so I paced here and there as I waited, and I did a bit of eavesdropping.

“I hear that Pinkerton fellow uses voodoo magic to get those criminals to talk,” said one old man, shooting a wad of tobacco juice into the street.

“I hear it’s whiskey,” said another, this one younger and wearing a wilted gardenia in his breast pocket. “He gets them drunk. Then they tell where they’ve hidden all their stolen jewels. That Pinkerton is a tricky one.”

I let out a snorting laugh that even surprised myself. It drew curious looks from the rest of the shoppers. And before I had a moment to gather my wits, I was arguing with the whole lot of them. The old man was spitting and shouting about voodoo trickery, and two women collecting their sausages chimed in with the gardenia man. I was looking to Mr. Zenger for help when suddenly my aunt passed on the sidewalk.

“You come in here and tell ’em, Aunt Kitty,” I hollered over the arguing voices, waving my aunt to step into the shade under the wide green awning. “In all the time you’ve known Mr. Pinkerton, has he ever used voodoo or whiskey to solve a case?”

I was close to snorting with laughter again. Just the thought of such silliness made me grin. But the moment I looked into my aunt’s stony face, any trace of the merriment I was feeling vanished like a flock of sparrows.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nell,” she said, her voice so icy, I could have served it with lemonade. “Now I suggest you finish your chores and get on about your business before you find yourself in trouble.”

And the way she emphasized the world trouble, I could tell I was in plenty.

I raced through the rest of my marketing, rushed into Mrs. Wigginbottom’s kitchen with the groceries, and scurried through the cabbage-scented parlor until I caught up with Aunt Kitty.

“They were telling tales about Mr. Pinkerton at that butcher shop,” I said stiffly, joining her on the staircase to our room. “I couldn’t let them say such things. They called him an abolitionist, too. Said he hides runaway slaves in his own house.”

Aunt Kitty was silent, raising a single eyebrow in my direction as her reply. I watched her slip a licorice candy from her silver tin, then snap it shut again.

“What does the word abolitionist mean to you, Nell?”

“It means somebody who wants to… abolition something.”

I could see that didn’t satisfy her. She sucked on her candy and eyed me for a moment or two as we reached the bustling second-floor landing. The neighbor I called Mr. Hummer from the third floor pushed past, and I recognized the song he was humming as “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” Then I heard a door bang upstairs, indicating that Mr. Slammer was about.

“Or maybe abolish is the word. I hear talk of folks wanting to abolish slavery,” I said hesitantly. And when she nodded, I pressed my case. “How can Mr. Pinkerton be an abolitionist if he’s from Texas? Everybody knows that’s a slave state. Do you think he’s really hiding runaway slaves at his own house?”

Once we reached our room, Aunt Kitty shut the door firmly behind her and leaned against it, giving me a long look. Her cheeks were flushed, and it wasn’t just from the August heat.

“Do you realize the damage you might have done?” she hissed. “Revealing my identity like that? Silly girl! And just as I’d begun to believe you weren’t some foolish child.”

I couldn’t speak. My face burned with embarrassment. What if someone from the butcher shop, someone who overheard my talk, followed me back to Mrs. Wigginbottom’s boardinghouse? Would they know Aunt Kitty was a Pinkerton detective? Would they think that of a woman?

“You are never to discuss Mr. Pinkerton or his business—or my business, for that matter—with anyone, Nell. Do you understand me?”

I nodded and tried to summon my voice. The voodoo, the whiskey, the name-calling, I mumbled. They were having a go at Mr. Pinkerton, I explained meekly, and all I wanted to do was set them right.

“You are correct that an abolitionist wants to bring an end to slavery across the land,” Aunt Kitty said, her words coming out tight and clipped. “And yes, Mr. Pinkerton is an abolitionist. He is a friend to the slaves and offers refuge in his home here as they journey north to Canada, where they can live free.”

Then she paused and finally moved away from the door. Stepping to the fireplace, she began winding the clock on the mantel. “But you are wrong about his country of origin. Mr. Pinkerton hails from Scotland, not the Wild West.”

Scotland or Texas, they both sounded foreign to my ears.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Kitty,” I began. But I didn’t know where else to go with my apology. “I just—”

“That’s enough, the damage is done,” my aunt said, heading for the back room and rummaging around in the big, wooden wardrobe. I saw her fumbling with a pale yellow hatbox, then slipping a silver object into her bag.

“I believe you can make amends,” she said, her skirts swishing as she crossed the room again and reached for the door. “Now grab your sunbonnet, and we’ll go.

“And stop calling me Kitty.”

We were back in the blinding sunshine in moments, and I raced after her until we reached State Street. We climbed aboard the clattering omnibus just as it pulled up, and it carried us all the way to the southern edge of the city, where the prairie grasses grew tall and abundant. The summer heat was drying out the land, and beyond us stretched empty fields turning from green to golden. Since I was finished with my obligations to Mrs. Wigginbottom, I figured Aunt Kitty wanted us to take a leisurely stroll along the lakeshore back to the city.

“Are you and me out for a meander, Aunt Kitty?”

“You and I, Nell,” she corrected, straightening her bonnet as we stepped away from our ride. “Do you never study your grammar lessons? And no, we are not out for a meander, though I do recognize that from last week’s vocabulary drill.”

Once the omnibus was out of sight and we could no longer hear the horse’s hooves, she handed me something heavy and cold. “I have observed the scar on your hand, Nell. It tells me you can shoot. But what I want to know is, Can you shoot well? Well enough to teach me?”

You could bet a stack of rabbit skins I was a decent shot! An empty stomach made a good teacher. And as much as I loved holding a cottontail in my arms and rubbing its soft fur with my cheek, I loved it even more in a stew with a few carrots.

I took hold of my aunt’s silver weapon and turned it around in my hands. I squeezed one eye shut and pointed it off toward a cluster of trees and the lake beyond.

“Just so you understand what you’re dealing with, Aunt,” I began, “a gun like this here revolver made by Mr. Samuel Colt is a killing machine, plain and simple. And as you see from my scar, you can hurt your own self as much as what you’re—”

BANG!

We stared off toward the pale gray rocks in the distance, where a bit of dust kicked up from the bullet.

“—as much as what you’re shooting at. And frankly,” I added, “if you’re not careful, it can knock you flat on your fanny.”

She thanked me for my warning, though her voice lacked conviction. I was pleased, however, that she wanted to know more. Pushing the gun back into my hands, my aunt asked how she was supposed to shoot it.

“You have to show me, Nell.”

“Why do you need to learn to handle a gun, Aunt Kitty? Is your detective work getting more dangerous?”

Silence was her only reply. And that told me enough. She wasn’t investigating the jewelry heists and grave robbing I’d read about in the newspapers. For Aunt Kitty, the stakes were getting higher. And that I’d just compromised her identity this morning at the butcher shop—well, I felt a knot tighten in my stomach.

I shuddered to think of my aunt pulling a gun on a criminal. Would that criminal point one right back at her? I knew guns were for taking lives, but in my mind, that was limited to small critters we needed to eat. What would it be like to squeeze the trigger on a man? Or woman?

Once a bullet was fired, there was no calling it back.

I looked off at the lake, as blue as the late-summer sky, and I let some thoughts wrestle with each other in my mind. On one hand, “Thou shalt not kill” was about as crystal clear a sentence as had ever been written. But on the other, I did not want to attend Aunt Kitty’s funeral.

Finally I determined that I was a crack shot, and she’d be hard pressed to find herself a better teacher than me. So I vowed to show her everything I knew.

I raised the gun and again pointed it toward the lake. My arms were warm from the sun, but my fingers remained cool and nimble. I aimed for a broken branch that was dangling from a tree about fifty paces away. Again, the BANG! that emitted from the revolver made Aunt Kitty jump. She grabbed at the straw bonnet on her head, leaping back as the branch exploded in the air and rained down on the ground below it.

“You can take six shots before having to reload,” I explained, trying again to place the smoking gun in her hands. But she pushed it back to me and waved her long, gloved fingers toward the trees.

“But what do I do to make it shoot, Nell? How do I use it?”

I took aim at another tree and slowly walked her through the steps.

“You get your prey in sight,” I whispered, her breathing fast behind me, “pull back the hammer”—her breath caught—“then gently squeeze the trigger.”

BANG!

This time she was ready for the shot but not the quarry. We both gazed up at the tree where I’d fired and stood there in wide-eyed wonder as a squirrel fell right out, deader than a slab of bacon.

“Thank you, Nell,” Aunt Kitty said cheerfully, finally taking the warm revolver from my hand. “This demonstration has proven quite useful. We even have something to bring back to Mrs. Wigginbottom’s kitchen.”