Crows & Cards

by Joseph Helgerson

That was the princess. Chilly hung up, maybe expecting to hear her beg for another chance, but that's not what he got. What he saw next reddened his face brighter than a blacksmithy's forge could have managed. When the chief lifted his hands, the princess gave his cards a flip, revealing four aces.

  And a joker.

  The joker was a wild card, so it counted as an ace too, making five aces.

  I'm not entirely sure a royal flush would have whipped such a crowd of aces. Maybe the only hand strong enough to do that would have six aces in it, and even Chilly Larpenteur hadn't figured out a way to slip that many into a game of five-card.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A BAG OF MARBLES WOULD HAVE BEEN more talkative than the men around that table. Goose kept pawing at his bloodshot eyes as if he couldn't trust what he was seeing, and the Professor wore a skinny, sideways smirk that said he was enjoying himself for the first time in weeks. As for Chilly, he appeared to have just discovered the sky was falling. He couldn't get a word out.

  What we'd seen didn't make sense, not unless the chief had somehow or other cheated. Or had even more powers than he'd told me about. Or ... well, that pretty much covered it, but at the moment I was feeling too giddy to care which way he'd done it. So long as Chilly got his just deserts, I was well satisfied. If the chief had the power to turn deuces into aces, so be it. And if he was cheating, then let a lightning bolt blast me to ash for trying to help him, 'cause, well, I'd cast my lot and was sticking to it, even as Chilly's watch ticked away like a second heart above my own.

  The chief's hands groped across the table toward his sacred bundle. Once his fingers found it, he picked the bundle up careful as a sleeping baby and set it down next to the crown. Wrapping up his prizes took the chief a bit, and all the while he was fumbling with them, Chilly's cheeks were glowing like a chimney fire, his knuckles pressing down so hard on the table that they looked about to burst.

  But not till the chief started to stand as if to leave did Chilly find something to say. "Where in tarnation do you think you're headed?"

  He sounded off his feed but still a force to be reckoned with.

  "Home," the princess told him.

  "Not yet, you're not," Chilly declared. "Goose, Professor, help the chief back down."

  Goose and the Professor stepped forward, more than a little sheepish about having to bully a blind old Indian and a young girl, but the princess and her father eased down all on their own, looking proud but mighty outnumbered. I covered Chilly's watch with one hand and the chief's pouch with the other, trying to keep both quiet.

  Then Chilly stroked his goatee some and sized up the chief for a longish spell, during which the chief held himself straight and speechless. Everyone else in those parts might as well have been cut from wax—me included. After a while, Chilly leaned back to chuckle.

  "Wasn't that slick?" Chilly asked the room. "I ain't for sure positive how he pulled it off, and I ain't going to hold my breath waiting for him to spill it. I'll just say he has my admiration. But admirations only stretch so far." Slapping a hand on the table, he leaned forward and demanded another hand of cards. "For the crown. You can keep that old bundle of yours."

  After relaying all that to the chief, who answered softly, the princess said for him, "What do you have to bet?"

  That strung Chilly up good, for a gambler couldn't very well force someone to gamble for nothing. He wouldn't have been any better than a highwayman if that was his game, and there wasn't any way Chilly would suffer being lumped together with riffraff so low as that. To hold his head up, he'd have to put something on the table that matched the chief's crown for price. Chilly knew it, and the chief knew it, and so did every hanger-on in that room.

  "Why, I've got a whole passel of valuables," Chilly bragged, steamed that anyone would dare think otherwise. "Ought to be something I can find to suit your fancy."

  That's when Chilly started rooting through his pockets for something besides his watch. First off he plunked down a solid silver snuffbox, but the chief wasn't having none of that. The princess said he didn't trust anything with square corners. Chilly thumped the side of his head as if he couldn't have heard right, but then, without comment, he lifted the diamond pin off his shirt front and tossed it on the table. When the chief rubbed the diamond between his thumb and finger, it spurted out of its setting like a slippery melon seed, skittering across the table. The chief said—through the princess, of course—that he had plenty of seeds and didn't need any more.

  Chilly dipped deeper into his pockets and came up with a gold cigar clipper and a pair of gold dice, but everyone could see that Chilly's pile of loot didn't come close to matching up with the chief's crown. And now that the chief had his sacred bundle back, he wasn't proving so easy to boss.

  "What else then?" the princess asked.

  Chilly stomped off to our room and come back with a silk sack of gold and paper money that had been hid I don't know where.

  "Count it," the princess said for her father.

  So Chilly laid it out in rows and stacks, coming up with nearly a thousand dollars. He may have never learned to read or write, but when it came to tallying money, he rattled off numbers as if he'd been born and raised in a bank. I couldn't even begin to speculate on what amount of those stacks was my share of our winnings, not that I felt particularly proud about it.

  "Nothing more?" the princess asked.

  "Well, I don't know what else there might be," Chilly said, so put out that one of his cheeks took to quivering on him.

  When the chief heard that news from the princess, he laughed from the belly, which started him coughing. After his throat finally settled down, he spoke to the princess, who said, "Put up this inn, with everything else, and he'll think about one more hand."

  Goose Nedeau sagged backwards a step at that reckoning, but nobody paid his stumble much mind. They were too busy watching Chilly, who sat there flaring his nostrils and trying to pace himself so's he wouldn't explode. (Now's probably as good a time as any to mention how I feel about explosions—deathly skittish.) After a bit, Chilly couldn't take it no more and told 'em, "I don't own but half of this place."

  That widened the eyes round that table plenty. Except for Goose and the Professor, there wasn't a gent present what knew that Chilly had any say in the inn. You could see they didn't take kindly to the notion either, not considering all the money they dropped into Chilly's lap so regular. As that news sunk in, several of the gamblers began warming up to the chief and princess, who were conferring.

  "Which half's yours?" the princess asked at last.

  "The good half," Chilly declared.

  That set off more jabbering, until the princess hushed everyone by announcing, "If the good half includes the hounds out back, my father says yes."

  "Done," Chilly growled, not caring one whit about Goose's objections that the dogs were his.

  Throwing himself back from the table, Chilly charged upstairs to collect a curled-up sheet of yellowed paper and the silver box where he stowed other gamblers' good-luck pieces. Tucking the box into the crook of his arm, he tossed the paper, which must have been the deed to the inn, atop everything else already before the chief as if daring him to ask for more.

  Me, I lay there wishing I could close my eyes, 'cause I surely couldn't stand to face whatever might be coming down the pike next.

  "That's the whole shebang," Chilly announced. "My half of this inn and everything else I own in this world. Win the next hand and it's all yours."

  "What about that?" The princess nodded toward the silver box Chilly still held.

  "You wouldn't take away a man's good luck, would you?"

  "That wouldn't bother me," the princess answered. "But let me ask you this: will you let us leave when this hand is over?"

  "On my word as a gentleman."

  I had to muffle a cough when I heard that promise.

  "Then keep your good luck," the princess said after talking to her father.

  Holding up
his box, Chilly raised its lid and poured everything inside it onto his side of the table. Thirty to forty lucky charms came tumbling out, everything from the clamshell named Sherry-Ann to those false ivory teeth, with three or four rabbits' feet in the mix, along with a walrus tusk and chinese coins, rear molars, jug corks, pictures of sweethearts, and, well, I don't think I can go on naming 'em all without losing my mind. Chilly stood behind that mound, brimming with confidence, beaming with vigor, 'cause he'd found a way to replace his gold watch.

  And all that while the chief's pouch lay still as a forgotten promise in my vest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AND THEN CHILLY STARTED FEELING HIS OATS. He wanted a new deck of cards to change his luck, and once he got the new deck, he had to get acquainted with it. That took several minutes, but the better he got to know those cards, the more swaggery he swelled. Finally, when he had everything in that deck stacked the way he wanted it, he said real theatrical-like, "Long as we don't hear any more crows, I'm set." Speaking up loud enough for even a bird perched on the roof to hear, he added, "Any more crows come calling, I ain't resting till I've loaded every last one of them with enough lead to sink the Rose Melinda."

  That pinched me pretty hard, 'cause something was stirring in the chief's pouch, making me think I was due for another caw, but the princess saved me from having to try by saying, "It's too late at night for them to be out."

  "Glad to hear it," Chilly said. "That just leaves me with one request, Chief. It's a small one, and I hope you'll honor it."

  The princess told her father, who nodded for Chilly to spit it out.

  "This time around," Chilly began, "I want you to hold your cards like an honest-to-goodness poker player. No more of this leaving 'em lay. Seeing someone play that way gives me the willies."

  The crowd wasn't all with Chilly on this one, not after learning about who owned the inn, though plenty felt the same as Chilly and wanted the chief to act proper. Others sided with the chief, claiming he ought to be allowed to play his hand any way he saw fit. Arguing broke out here and there, but the chief squashed all that by having his daughter say, "He can see his cards through his fingertips."

  "Don't matter," Chilly maintained. "Holding 'em in your hand is what's proper."

  One way or another he planned to get me a look at what the chief got dealt. Judging by how the chief kept shaking his head stubborn-like, I got the idea he was holding out, trying to protect me, but it never came to blows. The pouch in my vest pocket came to life before that could happen. At first the crow in that pouch spoke out in a voice that a raindrop could have drowned out, but don't go thinking it was satisfied to stay quiet. No, it had inherited the same kind of tongue as Buffalo Hilly and never took a rest but instead croaked louder and louder. Whatever it was blimblamming on about didn't do me any good 'cause dang if it wasn't stuck on speaking Indian. I tried to muffle it with my hands, and when that didn't work, I lifted it up to my mouth for a good shhh. Didn't matter. It kept right on twaddling away, marking me for a dead man soon as someone on the other side of the wall heard it.

  "Not now," I hushed.

  Loud as it was getting, I was going to be discovered any instant. Rolling over for a peek out the hole, I fully expected to find an eye peering back at me. No such thing though. Nobody out in the parlor had budged, not an inch, 'cause the princess was leaning over her father's ear, pretending to whisper to him behind a cupped hand. But really the only voice talking belonged to the crow in the pouch just a couple of feet behind them. The chief listened long and hard, even talked back twice, but the pouch kept on insisting till finally the chief threw up his hands as if fit to be tied and passed on some news to the princess, who said, "He'll hold his cards up on two conditions."

  It appeared the pouch had convinced him.

  "Just name 'em," Chilly said, all sunny.

  "We pick the deck," the princess answered, "and no shuffling."

  Right away Chilly knew he was up against the chief's visions again, so it wouldn't be any use trying to talk him out of it, not if he still wanted a chance to win that crown. Besides, now that he'd settled down a bit, he must have realized that it didn't matter what cards he dealt himself. They weren't the ones he planned on finishing with.

  "Professor," Chilly barked, "bring back that satchel."

  So all over again the chief latched on to whatever deck was on top and slid it across the table toward Chilly.

  "Gentlemen," Chilly called out, "one more hand. All my worldly possessions against the chief's crown."

  "Tsa kic ti."The chief nodded in agreement.

  The princess didn't have to bother passing on what her father had said. Everyone got the gist of it. The chief was ready to play cards.

  This time when Chilly dealt, the cards snapped out of his hand and skidded across the table as if landing on ice. I watched with hawk eyes and have to say it surely looked like he was playing square. It was the top card that went flying every time, not the second from the top, or the bottom, or anywhere in between.

  That didn't mean much though. No matter how many good-luck pieces he'd stockpiled, Chilly's old reliable had always been hold-outs. That was the way he tried to steal the first hand, and it appeared to be his choice for the second too. And all he was waiting on, before pulling out those extra cards, was news from me concerning what the chief held in his hand.

  Good as his word, the chief picked up his cards and fanned them out so the princess could see 'em. That also made it time for me to start operating the telegraph. Just thinking about it made me gulp so loud, I'm surprised there wasn't a whole new go-around about the rats in Goose's walls. But everyone stayed focused on Chilly and the chief, hoping to catch one or the other of them cheating.

  What happened next isn't anything I care to try explaining twice; once is strain enough. One by one the cards marched into the chief's hands, and I nearly dropped the leather pouch and thumped my head on the upper shelf watching them arrive. Four aces in a row showed up, followed by—you guessed it—the wild old joker, same as before. It was a feat that had to rank up there with walking on water and spinning straw into gold. Rubbing my eyes didn't change nothing either. What's more, when the princess told the chief what he'd been dealt, he nodded once as if that's what he'd expected to hear.

  But just as puzzling was Chilly's reaction to those cards. He took a long, shameless squint at their backs, scowling all the while as if peering into a fogbank 'cause apparently he couldn't read their markings. Finally, he up and said, "I hope you got something pretty, Chief. This time you're really going to need it."

  The chief answered through the princess, "Pretty as my mother's smile."

  "You wouldn't have another crown to wager on that, would you?"

  That got quite a rise out of the crowd, who figured Chilly was joking, but I wasn't so sure. His voice had a terrible, ragged edge to it, and the way his eyes kept skipping up toward my peephole told me he was waiting to hear from his telegraph operator. Well, he'd be waiting a blue moon before I sent him any news about all the aces congregating in the chief's hand.

  "Only if you've got another inn," the princess answered, which drew an even bigger snort from the crowd.

  As for what Chilly was holding, that was between him and the devil, 'cause this time around he pressed his cards so tight against his chest that no one else could see them. All I knew for positive was that my pantry shelf was getting smaller and more cramped by the second. There didn't hardly seem to be enough air to breathe either. I had me such a sinking, achy feeling about what Chilly might have slipped himself that I squashed the chief's pouch up against my ear again, but wouldn't you know, now I couldn't hear a single word of Indian coming out of it. About the only thing I could hear was the ticking of Chilly's watch.

  The princess's comeback set Chilly to arranging and rearranging his cards like some old auntie with a bouquet of flowers that won't behave. He cast my peephole a steely glance over the top of his hand before announcing, "Chief, I've be
en studying these cards so long, my toes have all gone to sleep on me." And he stomped twice on the floor, as if trying to wake up his foot, though I'm the one he was really talking to.

  "Careful," the princess warned. "You'll upset the rats again."

  Everyone had a good chuckle over that till Chilly trumped her one higher by saying, "I always figured I'd wear me a crown someday."

  That got an even bigger rise out of the crowd, but when all the guffawing died away, the princess shot right back, "Too bad it won't be today."

  Her answer stirred the crowd up so much that Chilly had to signal for quiet. The hand he held up was the same one that had been busy as a bee adding hold-outs to the cards in his other paw and ditching the cards he didn't want somewhere under the table—all of it done right under every nose in that room without raising an eyebrow. The man was a marvel.

  "Talk's cheap," Chilly said. "Let's see them cards."

  A hush fell over the entire world, or at least the part of it that I could hear. It reminded me of how everlastingly quiet my brothers and sisters had gone when Pa had walked me down to the steamboat that had carried me away from home. Everything was leading up to something that couldn't be reversed.

  "You first," the Princess said.

  "How about we spread 'em out at the same time?" Chilly answered.

  The chief agreed to that.

  "One," Chilly counted.

  "Due tsa," the chief counted.

  "Two."

  "Dopa."

  "Three."

  "Dami."

  They laid 'em out.

  When they were done, there wasn't a pair of eyes that wasn't bugging, except for the chief's, which were white and blind as ever.

  Chilly had packed his hand with four aces and a joker, same as the chief. Lumping their cards together made for eight aces and two jokers ... in one deck.

  I guess Chilly wanted everyone to know that he could best the chief at his own game. What he hadn't figured on was the chief playing the same game all over again.