"Sure enough," I said.
"That he's proud of?"
"Busts his buttons," I answered, which started everyone to buzzing so loud that Buffalo Hilly had to whistle for quiet, which gave me a chance to ask the chief, "Should I give up on this new trade I picked?"
"Not yet," the princess answered after conferring with her father.
Such an answer as that landed me on an awful muddy bank. I'd been hoping for a yes or no. Those were answers with some teeth. But not yet? What use was that? There wasn't time to ask for more details either, not the way Buffalo Hilly was turning me around by the shoulders and pushing me out of the way to make room for paying customers, who were shoving closer now that the chief had gone on about Pa and Ma.
But how was I supposed to know when yet would arrive? Could be tomorrow, could be forty years up ahead. I had a bothersome hunch this was turning into one of those questions that I was supposed to answer for myself. I hated those worse than slivers, deep water, heights, and blazing campfires all combined.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BY THE TIME I WRIGGLED FREE of the crowd, they were peppering Chief Standing Tenbears with mysteries enough to knot up a dozen sphinxes, and all the while I was slinking off, Dr. Buffalo Hilly was promising people there wasn't any need to push or shove. The chief had vision enough to go around. After what I'd heard, I didn't doubt it either, which made me wish he'd at least gotten around to sharing his thoughts on cheating a cheater.
But I didn't have time to dilly-dally, not with Chilly waiting on me, and pointed my nose toward Goose Nedeau's place, except that it didn't seem a day for going anywhere in a straight line. I hadn't trotted but two or three blocks before spying someone else I had run across before. It come close to striking me dumb to think that I knew anyone in a place so overgrown as St. Louis, but right across the street—lovely and fresh as ever—stood the lady from the Rose Melinda, the one who'd collected money for orphans. I mightn't have noticed her, busy as I was dodging wagons and mules and jug-bitten loafers, but she was singing the same song as before, "The Last Rose of Summer." She still sounded every bit the nightingale too. I wasn't the only one who had pulled up helpless at the sound of her voice, though I was the only one near run over by a wagonload of bricks. Dusting myself off, I headed across the street as if lassoed. Soon as she was done warbling, I asked how the orphans were doing without even introducing myself.
"Ever so well," she said, smiling down on me warmer than spring sunshine.
Being looked at so gracious and kind wiped away all my worries in a flash. And to think that I wouldn't have been beamed down on at all if I hadn't hooked up with Chilly. It put a whole new shine on gambling and cheating the cheaters, just the way Chilly said it ought to. Didn't I feel small and wormy for daring to question all the good that Chilly and the Brotherhood were doing for those less fortunate than themselves? Why, quitting my new trade just yet was out of the question. To make amends for even thinking such a thing, I up and asked, "Are you still collecting for 'em, ma'am?"
"Alas, I am," she sighed. "Poor things are in greater need than ever. This cold, cruel world knows no bounds."
I didn't need any more convincing than that. Now that I'd been forced to fend for myself, I was more than primed to help those orphans any way I could. Digging into my pocket, I come up with the nickel left over from buying telegraph wire. When I held it out for her to take, she didn't reach for it a bit. Not that lady. She was too genteel and refined to do such a thing as that. No, she turned to the side and lifted the top of the basket she was carrying. Inside sat a china bowl with several coins already in it.
"St. Jerome blesses you," she said as I dropped the coin into the bowl.
I stood there speechless, gazing up into her eyes like some kind of thick-skulled ape. She must have been used to spreading stupefaction wherever she went, 'cause she took my admiration serious as could be. Bending over, she planted a little peck on my cheek to prove it. I felt like never, ever dabbing water on that cheek again but making a kind of shrine out of it. Those poor orphans couldn't hardly have been better cared for if the clouds had parted and two hands the size of Goliath's, or bigger, reached down from the heavens to tuck 'em in every night. A toasty feeling warmed me up just thinking of it.
"Your ma and pa must be awfully proud of you," she said before leaving.
I'd have given anything to believe those words as I watched that orphanage lady chat up gents all the way to the end of the block. I was just about to drift after her, to bask in her glow a little longer, when something latched onto the top of my ear. Looking up, I found Chilly glaring down.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MY PA HAD NEVER GRABBED HOLD OF ME thisaway, and when I tried squirming free, Chilly only twisted my ear all the harder. I flopped around like a snagged fish till he pinched the meaty part of my shoulder, locking me up on the spot. He knew right where to squeeze to stop my thrashing.
"Didn't I send you after wire a good two hours back?" he asked, and none too friendly about it either.
"Could have been longer," I fessed up, standing on tiptoe to ease the ripping on my ear.
Such honesty seemed to throw him off track, though not for long.
"So what have you been doing all that while?" he thundered. Spittle flew off his lips, which were raging sort of purplish.
"I seen a medicine show," I squeaked.
"And?" He was pretty near lifting me off the ground.
"I watched it. Never seen one before."
Chilly let up on my ear, though he wasn't done with my shoulder yet. Leaning over, he got close enough for counting eyelashes and growled, "So why were you talking to Rebecca?"
"Wh-who?"
"Don't go playing deaf and dumb with me. Won't wash."
"But I don't know any Rebeccas," I babbled. "Not 'less you count my sister way back home, though she usually goes by Becky, 'lessing it's Sunday and the—"
"I'm talking 'bout the lady you was only just hobnobbing with," he said. "And don't go pretending you weren't."
"You m-mean the orphanage lady?" I sputtered. "I was just asking her how them orphans was doing."
He pulled back from me, eyes jigging, and gave me a rough warning. "You wet-nosed pup. If you know what's good for you, steer clear of her. And never you mind why." He went for my ear again, yanking it extra hard. "Just come on along now 'fore I blow a boiler."
And he led me to the nearest coach he could find, chucking me inside like a head of cabbage and following behind himself, after a quick check of the sky. Shook up as I was, I didn't know what to think.
***
The reception I got back at the inn was almost as rainy, though Goose didn't start out by grabbing any ears. He went for a more schoolteachery approach.
"Now listen here, Zeb—your monkeyshine's come close to costing us a night's use of the telegraph."
"And he was talking to Rebecca," Chilly fumed.
Goose ditched the schoolteacher then and there. Whirling on me, he blasted, "You what?"
"I just asked her about them orphans."
"Never you mind 'bout them orphans," Chilly barked.
"'Less you care to join 'em," Goose added, raising his hand as if to slap me. "Anybody see you?"
"Only Chilly." I was doing my level best not to quake or teeth chatter or sniffle. At least my answer got Goose to drop his hand, but what I'd said wound Chilly up even tighter.
"Hogwash," Chilly said. "He was talking to her right on Market Street. The whole town seen 'em."
Chilly set to pacing. Muttering too. He appeared to be pulling a storm cloud right behind him and every once in a while he let a question rip, sharp as a crack of thunder. Mostly he asked what did I think I was doing? And didn't I have any sense? And how could he trust me after such business? He didn't slow down any for my answers either, which was good, since mostly all I had to say was a bunch of mumbled yeses and noes and I-don't-knows.
Then he hit a stretch of pacing where he didn't ask nothing, which
was worse than all the questions. Even the Professor didn't speak up on my behalf, as he sometimes did, but kept his head down, straightening up things behind the bar. I winced every time Chilly changed directions and went all crumbly when he spun on me to ask, "So that's what took you so long? Talking to Rebecca?"
"No sir," I volunteered. "Finding the wire ate up some time, and then I seen that medicine show and took a look."
"Buffalo Hilly, I suppose."
"The very," I admitted. "And Chief Standing Tenbears. He knew so much about me, it was scarier than I don't know what."
Upon hearing that, Chilly threw back his head and horse-laughed, which made me cringe and wonder what I'd done now, but after Chilly had himself a good, long laugh, he cooled off a bit, seeming more like the man I'd been eager to sign on with, which was a welcome relief.
"Goose," he said, flashing all friendly again, "I'd say we owe this boy an apology."
"We do?" Goose sounded as surprised about it as me.
"Yes sir, we do. We keep forgetting he's green to all these matters and that we're supposed to be smartening him up as we go along." Talking to me, he added, "Now looky here, Zeb—St. Louis ain't so big a town as it likes to think, and if people see Miss Rebecca mingling with a gambler's apprentice, why, all that fine work she does for them orphans will go up in smoke. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"No sir."
"Good." Chilly sized me up carefully. "Now I want you to be honest with me, Zeb, 'cause that's the way it is in the Brotherhood. Do you think you can manage that?"
"I do."
"Was there anything else that happened on your errand?"
I started to say there wasn't, which was an outright lie, 'course, so I pulled back on my reins, hung my head, and come out with it. "I seen a crow."
"Where?" In a flash, Chilly had ahold of my ear again.
"On the chief's shoulder," I squawked.
"Tell more," Chilly ordered, giving my ear just an outstanding twist.
So quick as I could I filled them in on how the crow had landed on the chief's shoulder and all. Any second I expected to lose an ear, but the more I laid out, the looser Chilly's grip went, till at the end he let go of me entirely and exchanged the queerest kind of twinkle with Goose, as if the two of them couldn't have wished for anything better than having a crow visit the chief. Why that struck their fancy so, I couldn't say, and I wasn't about to go upsetting the apple cart by asking. But they surely were pleased, which was something I stored away for future pondering. Then Chilly noticed me watching him kind of strange and said, "There anything else you're holding back?"
'Course there was, and I didn't reckon Chilly was going to take to it kindly. Hadn't I given the orphanage lady a nickel? I didn't guess that it mattered if I'd seen him give her over two hundred dollars back on the Rose Melinda. Something warned me that he might not feel so generous about my being free and easy with our money. The thought of setting him off again egged me toward fibbing, which naturally I knew better than doing. What kept me from taking that plunge was hearing my ma's voice pop up in my head and warn me off it by saying Zeb in that all-knowing way she had that made me want to wilt, so I changed course and trotted out the truth, confessing, "There was one other thing. I gave the change from your dime to that Miss Rebecca. For the orphans."
Chilly pulled back and gave me a double-hard look.
"Don't that beat all?" he pronounced at last.
"He's a country unto himself, all right," agreed Goose.
"Do you think we can ever learn him anything?"
"It seems doubtful," Goose answered.
"You're a regular saint," Chilly said to me. "Now here's what I want you to do next.... "
He never did say a mean-spirited or stingy thing about my giving that nickel to the orphans, which goes to show you the high standards he had. Just thinking about such nobility nearly lifted me right up out of my boots and floated me away, though not so far away that I lost track of how close I was to Chilly. After all this, I made sure to keep an extra foot or two between us, in case he went for my ear again.
What he had in mind for me to do next was help Ho-John put the telegraph wire under the inn. 'Course, I couldn't tell him I was afraid to go rooting around beneath the house, not when everything was so light and airy and back to friendly between us. All I could do was hope there wouldn't be any slivers involved in stringing that wire.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GOOSE NEDEAU'S INN WAS STACKED UP on wood stumps on account of a nearby creek that was prone to flooding. The crawlspace under the house measured maybe a foot and a half tall and wasn't no trouble at all for me to handle on my stomach. Squeezing Ho-John under there was another matter. He had to go on his back, which he claimed left him feeling trapped, but the fit was too tight for him to flip over later on, so he didn't have much choice.
Dark as it was down there, I couldn't see what might have holed up beneath the inn over the years. Mummies and headless riders, I shouldn't have been surprised. Rough old cobs who wouldn't care a bit about picking up any slivers. And camping below that house must have been just the ticket for any varmint needing a roof over its head. The way the hounds tied up out back set to baying sometimes, you just knew something had to have scampered under there—escaped monkeys or roving night vipers or who knew what all. Ho-John wouldn't let me light the candle either. It was the only one we were getting for the job, and he didn't want it burned up before we got the real work done. (At least I didn't have to worry about singeing myself till later.)
So we shimmied along, heading for a dim square of light toward the middle of the house, where Ho-John had cut a board out of the pantry floor. The rattle of the chains holding his feet together gave everything fair warning that we was coming through. 'Course, we slid under the house from the rear side 'cause Chilly didn't want anybody seeing us and wondering where we were going with a candle, hammer, and nails. Might raise suspicions, which was the last thing a gambler wanted.
Ever so often I felt a shiver working up my spine and would say, "You hear something?"
And Ho-John would mostly answer, "Not yet."
That didn't settle me down any, since it left me thinking he was expecting to hear something anytime now. It also fizzed me up some because it was the exact same answer that Chief Standing Tenbears had given me. I was fussing over how strange it was to get the same answer twice in one day, when Ho-John tried to calm me down by pointing out that I was probably hearing Goose shuffling around the kitchen above us, hunting for eats.
"You believe in ghosts and witches and suchlike?" I asked.
"'Course I do."
Which didn't comfort me much, particularly when my hands kept running into stray bits of this and that, which didn't seem to have any business being under the inn. My fingers tugged a ribbon out of the dirt. Attached to that ribbon was a baby's Sunday bonnet. Then my belly met up with a marble, a good-sized one too, and somehow or other, a broken-handled hammer and chisel had found their way under there. When I asked Ho-John how he could explain such trappings, he said he didn't have no trouble explaining them at all.
"Some children probably lost 'em over the years," he said.
"But what would they be doing with a hammer and chisel?"
"Oh, that probably belonged to their pa. This here house wasn't always a gamblers' den, you know. Once upon a time there was families lived here."
"What happened to 'em?"
"Probably something terrible and wicked," Ho-John answered, real casual-like. "So maybe we best leave their things alone."
I was agreeable with that.
"Do people really think of this place as a gamblers' den?"
"Mostly. And if you're bound and determined to become some kind of gambler yourself," Ho-John added, "just don't go thinking you're something important. That's all I'm asking."
I didn't know how to handle such a request as that, so I didn't say much of anything to it. It was the kind of undermining talk that nags at a person though. A
fter a bit, I said kind of sassy-like, "So what exactly is it would make a person important?"
"That's a question every man's got to answer for himself," Ho-John said, ignoring my tone, "but owning my own tools would do 'er for me."
There wasn't much I could say to that, coming as it did from a slave, who had never owned anything his whole life and didn't have no hopes of ever owning anything either, not unless he ran away again. 'Course, I knew what Chilly would say. He'd say that sharing with the poor and needy was what made him feel important, and that was an answer I sure couldn't fault.
We snaked along under there for most of forever, till we reached the square of light and Ho-John took hold of the wire he'd dropped through the hole in the pantry floor. After that, we got down to work, pulling the wire toward the main parlor. Whenever we reached a wood beam, I handed Ho-John a tenpenny nail and he pounded it in halfway, then rapped the nail sideways, bending it over till it made an eyelet. Through the eyelet, we threaded the telegraph wire. For a few feet, the hole in the pantry floor gave us light enough to work by, but before long Ho-John had to light up the candle so we could see to do the job. He said he wasn't big on trying to cheat folks, but if it had to be done, then he wanted his part in it done proper. Hearing that reminded me of how my own pa had always wanted things done right too, though I was too busy keeping my distance from Ho-John's candle to remark on it.
We lined the wire up for nine or ten feet, all in a straight line. Up above, Chilly thumped his heel on a floorboard they'd loosened in the main parlor. Ho-John knotted the wire's end to an eyelet he'd made in that loose board and shouted out for Chilly to put his foot down on it.
"It's there," Chilly said.
Ho-John gave three tugs on the wire and called out, "Feel that?"
"Not a bit," Chilly answered. "Try it harder."
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