Crows and Cards (Houghton Mifflin Stereotype Editions)

by Joseph Helgerson

  Ho-John gave three tugs on the wire and called out, "Feel that?"

  "Not a bit," Chilly answered. "Try it harder."

  Ho-John gave three hard yanks.

  "How 'bout that?"

  "A tickle," Chilly said. "Hold on. Let me try it with my boot off."

  Footsteps crossed the floor to a chair. There was a grunt as he pried off a boot, which landed heavy as a cannonball above us, making me flinch. Then came his footsteps again, but this time it was one loud clunk followed by a soft, squishy one, so you knew one of his feet was only stocking covered.

  "Now try 'er," Chilly called out.

  Ho-John did.

  "We're in business," Chilly announced. "Feel it just fine now.

  And that was the telegraph I was going to be operating. It was also what you might call the official start of my career as a gambler, though it wasn't anywhere near as high-flown a starting point as I'd have ordered up on my own. As soon as Ho-John and I wormed out from under the house, Chilly led us to the pantry shelf I'd be working from. Ever the carpenter, Ho-John ran the loose end of the telegraph wire up to my perch by threading it through some holes he drilled in the shelves. He wrapped the end of the wire around a small block of wood and hung that on two nails that he pounded in about level with my shelf. I could fit the block in my hand, slivers and all. If I gave it a tug, Chilly's foot would feel a silent vibration in the floorboard the wire led to.

  They had me crawl onto the shelf for some practice runs. Through the peephole in the wall I could see over the shoulder of whoever sat in the nearest chair. For the time being, that was Goose. In his stockings, Chilly sat across the table from Goose, dealing a hand of poker. When Goose didn't get anything to speak of, I kept the telegraph quiet. If all he got was a queen or higher, I gave it one tug. If he was dealt a pair, I yanked the wire twice. Two pair needed three pulls on the wire. Three of a kind got four tugs. A straight needed five. A flush, six. And so on up the ladder to a royal flush.

  It worked pretty slick, I must say. Chilly knew what Goose had almost as soon as Goose knew himself, which allowed him to call bluffs and lay off betting against strong hands and slip a card into his mitt whenever the time was right. What's more, he didn't need to deal himself seconds nearly so often nor resort to marked decks at all. About the only thing he had to do was cut a hole in the bottom of his boot so that his stockinged foot was always pressed directly on the loose floorboard, feeling for vibrations.

  We were all set up to help rich gents be a bit more charitable and Christian-like with their pocketbooks. Understand now—every once in a while I had me an uneasy twinge or two over what I was about to do and could hear my ma tsking from far away, but such notions are pretty easy lost when an Indian chief with eyes white as snow has told you it isn't time to quit your new trade—not yet, anyway.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THAT VERY NIGHT WE STARTED WORKING the telegraph. Chilly sat straight across from the peephole while Goose filled the chair to his right. To the left of Chilly went some small-time player, such as the one from the Rose Melinda who wandered in with his lucky clam named Sherry-Ann. Chilly didn't need any help from me to clean out someone like that and then offer him one last wager—everything he'd already lost against his good-luck charm. (Stripping some poor soul of his lucky piece put the highest kind of gloss on Chilly's night.) But it was the chair right in front of me that was always left open for the "guest of honor," as Goose called whatever high roller we were fixing to educate. With the lantern next to President Washington's portrait turned up, we were all set to make things better for the orphans of St. Louis.

  On that first night, we trimmed a braggy cotton buyer and shortened up an Army paymaster who lifted out his false teeth and set 'em onto the table beside his money, saying they always guarded his wampum. Crafted together out of silver and ivory, those chompers were a sight to behold, but they didn't bring him any more winning cards than a bent doornail would have, not with the telegraph working against him. Chilly, he just pulled out his pocket watch to check the time, as if this particular hand of five-card was already taking too long. Those teeth and the shell named Sherry-Ann were dropped in the silver box upstairs with all the other good-luck pieces well before the whippoorwill nesting down the creek got started on her good mornings.

  Given excitement such as that, I didn't fuss too long about how Chilly had tried to remove my ear. I was too busy feeling smug about how easy and smooth the telegraph worked. Back home everyone would have taken a dim view of my putting on such airs, but here at the inn such strutting seemed to be expected. Everyone paraded out a smirk soon as they got a chance.

  Night two saw a horse trader who was all talk about the best ways to pawn off whistlers and biters and rackabones. He claimed to have outfitted just that afternoon a boatload of German farmers with the worst herd of crowbait he'd ever seen. He bragged about getting top dollar too. After we did all we could to teach him it was better to give than receive, that horse trader called Chilly a low-down, straw-stuffed cheater.

  The whole table flashed quiet. There wasn't much being said at the two other tables in the parlor either, especially not when Chilly pushed his chair back and stood up.

  "Sounds like you know a book's worth about fleecing folks," Chilly declared loud and clear, "so I guess I ought to be complimented to have the likes of you calling me a cheater. Excepting I ain't. 'Low-down' and 'straw-stuffed' kind of burns my hide, so here's what I'm aiming to do. I'm going to take my coat off. That way you can see I don't have a single card up my sleeves."

  "Not anymore you don't," the horse trader came right back.

  "And I'm planning to let you peek in all my pockets," Chilly said, ignoring the trader's salt with confidence, seeing as how he had me backing him up. "So you can see they're empty. If you want, you can count the deck we're playing with and hold 'em up to the light. Feel free to look under the table if it'll clear your nostrils any. In short, I want you to do whatever you need to. Yes indeedy, I'll strip down to my silk undergarments if it will help convince you that the reason you lost here tonight doesn't have nothing to do with me. The reason you lost is all between you and your Maker."

  Well, Chilly stood there glaring at the horse trader, and the horse trader, who was standing by then too, returned the favor. Or at least I guessed that's what he was doing. From where I was peeking through the wall, I couldn't see nothing but the back of his coat, which had a split down its middle seam. Heavy as he was breathing in and out, that split seemed to be spreading.

  The air in the main parlor didn't have a single wiggle-waggle to it—everything was so still. I know I wasn't breathing. After a bit, the horse trader said real gloaty-like, "When's your coat coming off?"

  "Soon as you promise me one little thing," Chilly replied, cool as a spring day. "And I want you to call it out loud enough for all these gents to hear."

  The horse trader just hunched his shoulders with a grunt.

  "Once you're satisfied this here game is on the up and up," Chilly said, "I want you to tell us where those German farmers are headed with the nags you peddled to 'em. I aim to take the money you've dropped here tonight and send it their way."

  It was the kind of gesture that would have left a Sunday-school teacher glowing with admiration, though the horse trader wouldn't divulge those Germans' whereabouts. He flat out said that Chilly wasn't nothing but a fool and stomped out of Goose Nedeau's inn with a slam of the front door. Everybody in the main parlor gave Chilly a big round of applause for showing such mettle. The clapping got even louder when the horse trader shot a new hole or two in the red-whale sign out front of the inn. Taking himself a bow, Chilly shouted over to the bar, "Professor, a round of your finest for the house. None of that Arkansas bust-head, if you please."

  That pretty much marked the high point of the week, and an awful high point it was, but after that, there was enough sitting around, waiting for the next excitement, to make me wish for a cast-iron bottom. The majority of players who pa
ssed through Goose Nedeau's weren't nothing but smarty-pants clerks and skunky river men who were hardly worth bothering to educate about the benefits of being charitable. And most of the time we didn't. All total, there probably wasn't but one or two poker players out of five when Chilly parked his whiskey glass at his left elbow, which was the signal to work the telegraph. The rest of the time Chilly shifted the whiskey back to his right elbow, meaning I could take a rest. "If we go winning every hand," he explained, "even the fools that come around here are going to get suspicious."

  So mostly I lay cramped on my narrow, wood shelf in the dark, peeking out my little hole and fussing over slivers. It all got fearful wearisome. Waiting and waiting and waiting to tug on my wire didn't show anywhere near the dash I'd been expecting as Chilly's apprentice. Truth be told, it sort of brought to mind sitting in the smokehouse back home.

  Most nights it was all I could do to stay awake, though I knew better than to raise such complaints around Chilly. I liked my ears right where they were.

  The poker playing usually ran down by two or three in the morning. As the last guest either left for home or got carted upstairs to a room, they unlatched the pantry door and let me out. At the same time, they put Ho-John in, for he spent the rest of the night locked up. After I swamped out the parlors, I was free to turn in too.

  Cleaning up used to be Ho-John's lookout, but that had meant somebody had to stay awake to make sure he didn't go running off soon as everyone was sawing wood. They passed the job on to me so's everyone could get some rest. Happy as I was to be rid of my shelf for the night, I didn't put up any squawk over inheriting Ho-John's chores, especially since it only took me maybe a half hour to draw a bucket from the creek out back, splash the water over the floor, and swash it around some. Stacking unbroken glasses on the bar added a few minutes more. What coins I found went in my nest egg, long as it didn't amount to more than a dollar. Over that amount was the inn's property, so belonged to Goose and his silent partner, Chilly.

  Those gamblers may have sloshed their whiskey and dropped their cigar ashes, but they kept powerful good track of their every last penny. The first week I pocketed a grand total of four coppers and an old Spanish bit from beneath the tables. My second and third weeks didn't bring in even half that much, though I had to work just as hard.

  By the time I made it upstairs at night, it didn't matter much that I was sleeping on the floor; I could have winked out atop a thistle patch.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IN THE MORNINGS, EVERYONE BUT THE PROFESSOR slept in, rolling out somewhere around noon. The Professor wasn't much on sleep and got up not long after sunup, letting Ho-John out of the pantry to start his morning chores. When the rest of us woke up later to the smell of something burning in the kitchen, I always sprang downstairs to make sure the place wasn't on fire.

  Once I knew we weren't going up in flames, I fetched water for Chilly's washbowl, then hung on to watch him shave around his goatee and trim his sideburns. The way he spruced up was too grand a show to miss. He went after his teeth with wood picks and gargled up good from a black bottle of forty-rod. And all the while he was cleaving whiskers and plastering down his hair, he had me rubbing soda on any soiled spots his suit had picked up. He never talked much during all this, except maybe to say something like, "You see that pair of queens I dealt out last night?"

  Sometimes he felt a powerful urge to improve his hand after I'd signaled what his opponent was holding. Folding just wasn't his style at all.

  "Why no, sir," I admitted. "I didn't."

  "That's 'cause you weren't supposed to," he said with a grin.

  On occasion I got brave and asked a question. "Was it your pa who taught you 'bout gambling?"

  "Not likely," Chilly answered, on the gruff side. "He run off with some duchess when I was a tyke."

  "Where'd they go?" I asked, stupefied to hear of such goings-on.

  "Now where do you think?" Chilly sniped.

  I was about to guess they'd headed off for a castle, but right about then Chilly nicked himself with his razor. Though it was the only time I ever saw his hand slip that way, it pretty much marred me for life when it came to shaving, and I never did get back to asking about his pa and that duchess.

  Once satisfied with how he presented, Chilly made me stand on a chair to hold his coat open so's he could step into it. If I was going to learn to be a gentleman, he said, the best way was to serve one. There was even some idle talk about getting me outfitted with store-bought clothes.

  "So you'll look more like a squire," Chilly said.

  Nothing much come of it though, or leastways, not any new clothes. He said I could pay for 'em out of my share of the winnings—only trouble was, he kept forgetting to pass on my share. Any time I asked when I might be seeing some of those winnings, he flat out told me not to worry, they was coming soon as I paid him the thirty dollars I still owed for my apprenticeship. "You didn't expect me to forget that, did you?" Chilly asked. I told him that I surely didn't, though I couldn't resist asking—without luck—exactly how much my winnings had amounted to so far. You see, paying back Ma and Pa's seventy dollars had begun to weigh on my mind pretty regular, so I was itching to ship some money home to prove how well I was doing without 'em. Chilly didn't appreciate such an uppity attitude at all and, to remind me of my place, took to calling me Squire Zeb every chance he got. It was Squire Zeb, could you fetch me my coat? Or Squire Zeb, I've a hankering for a cigar. Or Any squire worth his salt would keep these boots of mine better polished.

  Anyways, after I held Chilly's coat open, he had me sprinkle rose water on his shoulders. Closing his eyes, he'd tell me to let a few dabs fly at his face too. Then it was downstairs to tackle whatever Ho-John had scorched for breakfast, though late as it was by then, most folks would have called it lunch.

  Ho-John's keeping all the vittles too close to the fire didn't slow down anybody's appetite. We tucked away seconds, sometimes thirds, complaining about the biscuits and gravy and bacon all the while. Once everyone let out a notch on their belts and eased up shouting for more fried ham and fixings, they leaned back and worked some on my education. Moving out to the parlor, Chilly dealt cards to everyone and we got down to rehearsing ways to help rich gents share their wealth with the less fortunate of this world.

  Since there were sure to be times when we took our gambling elsewhere and couldn't cart the telegraph along, we practiced fake shuffles and false cuts and dealing seconds. Every once in a while Chilly or Goose or the Professor would say something like, "Now here's how Feathers McGraw used to stack decks down on the Red River." And everybody studied real careful how he done it. We'd ask him to do it again, slower, so we could get the hang of it. We all wanted a turn at trying our hand at it too. 'Course, I usually botched her pretty bad, small as my hands were, but every day my fingers limbered up a little more, allowing me hope that I was making progress, particularly when Chilly saw fit to present me with one of his old vests. It was a shiny thing and I wouldn't have taken it off for money, though it hung on me like a blanket and was fraying at the bottom and losing thread along its seams. Three secret pockets had been stitched into it, two in back, one on the side, and they were exactly the right size for holding cards.

  I practiced slipping kings and aces in and out of that vest's pockets everywhere I went, all in the name of helping orphans. Day and night I was at it, clumsy at first but gaining confidence and improving my handiwork till I could switch cards under Goose's nose without his catching on. Given his eyesight, that may not have meant all that much, but it was a start.

  "Zeb," Chilly told me one day, "you got smooth hands and that's a fact. You'll be going places with them."

  Such flattery kept me plugging away harder than ever. 'Course, I was learning from the best. Anytime he wanted, Chilly could deal himself, or anyone else bellied up to the table, as many deuces or treys or jacks as need be. Swapping one whole deck for another didn't even make him break a sweat. His fingers struck like sna
kes. At first I couldn't spot none of it, not unless he wanted me to. Even old Goose, blind as a mole, could fling those cards around easy as pie, though he couldn't always tell which cards he was tossing.

  Most every day they got out a satchel full of playing cards that the Professor kept tucked away behind the bar. There must have been thirty to forty decks in there, each marked up so their backs could be read good as their fronts. It was done by lifting a spot of glaze off here, or putting a dab of ink there, or trimming the edges of some cards so the dealer's fingertips could feel what they were when he flung them. They practiced handling those cards until playing poker began to seem more like reading a book than any game of chance. It was so handy that I couldn't help but ask why they even needed to bother with me running the telegraph.

  "Oh, there's never enough ways to skin a cat," Chilly reckoned.

  "Or get caught skinning one," the Professor added.

  "What's that mean?" I asked.

  "Just that nothing works every time," the Professor said. "There's always someone around who might have already seen what you're doing."

  "Even the telegraph?" I didn't like the sound of this.

  "There's nothing new under the sun, Squire Zeb," Chilly cautioned. "Telegraph's been run before."

  "Didn't Ruby Ed run one on the Still Kicking?" Goose asked, naming a steamboat they liked to gas on about.

  "Among other things," Chilly agreed.

  "But what happens," I broke in, "if someone comes along who's seen a telegraph?"

  "Why"—the Professor acted surprised to hear me ask it—"you get caught."

  "Shoo, fly." Chilly waved the Professor off. "There's no need to go putting fool ideas in the boy's head."

  The way he said it so throaty and low warned the Professor not to say another peep, though he looked sorely tempted. The Professor had been tending bar at the inn long before Chilly had horned in, and the two of them didn't often see eye to eye.