Crows and Cards (Houghton Mifflin Stereotype Editions)

by Joseph Helgerson

  Up to then I'd had no idea that gambling took so much hard work, but I began to see that doing it proper took years and years of practice. Understanding why some gamblers leaned so hard on a lucky piece? That wasn't any strain at all. I told Chilly and Goose so too, maybe secretly hoping they might change their ways and settle for whatever they could win fair and square, which would help me out of the fix I was in over cheating. I pointed out that if we applied half so much sweat and toil to anything else, we could probably invent some way or other to fly.

  "Son," Chilly told me, "playing cards beats flying any day of the week. Ain't nowhere else that you can get such satisfaction from helping your fellow man."

  I do believe he meant every word of it too. He was rock solid on what he did for a living. You could tell by the way his voice got so swelled up and important sounding whenever he talked of it. Just hearing him carry on that way brought me scurrying back to the fold, filling my head with such thoughts as Everything'll be fine ... Just got to give it some time, which soothed me, though sometimes I had to repeat it to myself often as a clock ticks.

  So we honed our card skills till late afternoon, me whipping cards in and out of my vest, everybody else brushing up on what suited them. Eventually we retired to gather strength for the night's work.

  Around six or so, it was time for some more of Ho-John's crunchery. Come seven or eight in the evening, when most folks were snuffing out candles and fluffing their straw ticks for a good night's shuteye, Chilly would drift out of the inn for a promenade around town to take care of the charitable work the Brotherhood required of him. He dropped off packages of food and clothes for orphans and poor old widows and the like. The reason he waited till dusk? So he could do these deeds without anybody knowing who he was.

  "We in the Brotherhood don't want no one feeling beholding to us," Chilly explained.

  When he told me that, didn't I feel small for ever doubting him? If all the good we were doing required a little cheating, well, maybe that was the way of the world, says I to myself.

  Depending on how much rich-man's money Chilly had to parcel out, some nights his do-gooding walk took longer than others, but eventually, say around ten or eleven, he drifted back to the inn, where he acted as though he hadn't seen Goose or the Professor for days and didn't live right upstairs and wasn't sure if he had any time to sit in on a hand of five-card. Though it always turned out that Goose could talk him into staying.

  There weren't any promenades around town for me though. Right after supper, before any gamblers showed up, I was latched into the pantry, with a molasses barrel rolled in front of the door in case any of the inn's guests got to wandering. I had to crawl in so early to keep everybody from knowing my whereabouts. And there I stayed the whole night long, learning my trade and peeing as quiet as I could into a chamber pot if the need arose. Some nights it got so dag-blasted cramped and shrinking tight in there that I must have died a hundred times. I figured they'd find me in the morning, blue and ripe as country cheese. Thank goodness Ho-John sometimes slipped up to the pantry door and whispered a word or two.

  "You in there?" he'd always start out.

  It struck me as a strange question, considering there was but one door and he was stationed outside it. But glad as I was for some company, I never asked where he thought I might have gotten to. I'd just slip off my shelf and whisper that I was still there.

  "Good," Ho-John would huff, sounding relieved, as if something might have happened to me that was too terrible to ponder. Then he'd sigh and say something like, "What would your ma and pa think 'bout you wearing that kind of vest you do?"

  "Wouldn't matter to them," I'd answer, all stiff upper lip.

  "Don't think that I'm believing such an answer as that. They the ones that raised ya, ain't they?"

  Having said his piece, he'd shuffle and clink and mutter all the way back to the stove as if put out with me, though later on he always cracked the pantry door to slip me a drumstick or biscuit that wasn't burned too bad. I appreciated his concern but could have done without the ma-and-pa questions, which always left me feeling kind of low and moldy, even if my folks were the ones who'd shipped me to St. Louis.

  That takes care of my first month or so on the job. It wasn't till my second month that I run into some real, honest-to-goodness troubles.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WE WERE GETTING INTO THE MIDDLE OF MAY by then and the days had a low fire under 'em. Goose kept the windows of the inn propped open most always; I kept my vest unbuttoned.

  By then I could pretty much tell ahead of time which guests I'd be running the telegraph on. Lying there in the dark, trying to hold my breath as I pressed an eye to the peephole, I began to feel more than a little sorry about it. We might be helping these fellows to learn about sharing, but they were mighty poor students. The way a few came back night after night for another lesson—that was heartbreaking.

  Then Chief Standing Tenbears dropped by to try his luck.

  The first I knew of the chief's arrival was a commotion that broke out in the front parlor, which was mostly used for drinking and eating the inn's burnt fare. There was some rough shouting, followed by a gunshot, which put a lid on all the hullabaloo.

  "Let him through," I heard Goose yell into the silence. "The chief saved my hide once, over San Carlos way."

  The next thing I knew, Chief Standing Tenbears came trailing the princess into the main parlor, head held high. He was wearing his buckskins and war bonnet, with his right hand resting on the princess's shoulder.

  "Chilly Larpenteur," the princess announced, "my father wants to win his medicine bundle back. He thinks you've had it long enough now."

  There wasn't any back-down to that girl, and you couldn't help but admire her for it.

  "He does?" Chilly acted powerfully surprised and lamb-like all at once, which was one of his talents.

  As the princess led her father forward, Chilly sprang to their side, chock-full of warm smiles and Sunday greetings while guiding them to the chair dead in front of me. There hadn't been anyone sitting there for a half hour or so, ever since Chilly and me had wrung the last dollar out of a traveling portrait painter from Louisville.

  Something told me I wasn't headed for one of my proudest moments. All the other poker games folded quick, with the players bunching around Chilly's table as he fanned the cards, rippled them back together, and slapped them on the table so the chief could cut 'em. For gathering attention, there ain't nothing beats an Indian chief and princess dressed for show. It was lucky for telegraph operations that the gawkers couldn't squeeze between me and the chief, whose chair was tight against the wall. Chilly had seen to that.

  "Did the Chief have one of his famous dreams?" Chilly asked solicitously.

  When the princess translated that question, the chief pulled out a fur-lined pouch and dumped a good thirty to forty gold eagles on the table. The princess stacked the coins in four piles, each worth a hundred dollars. Trying to figure how many visions the chief had needed to earn all that knocked my cipherer clean out of kilter.

  "I wish my dreams were so profitable," Chilly chuckled, which earned a general round of agreement from the crowd.

  The chief spoke up before Chilly could start dealing.

  "My father asks," the princess relayed, "if that boy helper of yours is still around."

  Well, I nearly fell off my shelf when she up and said that.

  "Oh, I expect he's hereabouts somewhere or other," Chilly answered, vague as could be. "Want me to scrounge him up?"

  "My father just asks you to give him a message from his mother."

  Hearing that poked me like a stick in the eye. From out of nowhere, a stick-bur rasped in my throat, 'cause I figured that by now they'd have forgot all about me back home.

  "I'll see that it gets to him," Chilly said.

  "Tell that boy," the princess went on, "that his mother asks him to write home. She's worrying about what's become of him."

  I had to bite a
knuckle to hold a whimper back. Maybe Pa and Ma were having second thoughts about packing me off the way they had.

  "Any particular reason she's needing to hear from the young scamp?" Chilly asked.

  "She didn't say."

  "Well, I'll be sure to let him know," Chilly promised. "You ready to win that medicine bundle back now?"

  But the princess had one last request to make for the chief. "My father wants to sniff the cards."

  "Why, I wish he would!" Chilly cried out with a laugh. "There ain't nothing in this world smells better."

  The chief didn't agree though, not for the first deck of cards, anyway, nor for the two decks that the Professor brought over next. Not until he whiffed the fourth deck did he agree to let the game begin, if Chilly would hunt up the medicine bundle he hoped to win back.

  "Not so fast," Chilly cautioned. "If I'm remembering right, the last time we sat down together, I had to put up a thousand dollars against that most valuable possession of yours. When you manage to run your grubstake up to a thousand, then I'll haul out that bundle. Not before."

  The chief grunted an answer when the princess told him what Chilly had said. "My father doesn't think it should take long to win that much. The spirits are with him."

  "Maybe not all of them," Chilly warned, with a big wink for everyone else in the room.

  Then the cards started flying, with the chief scooping his up for the princess to see and Chilly, after sneaking a quick look at his watch so's he could remember the exact minute the game started, going for his. Once the chief fanned the cards open in his hand, I got my look and gritting my teeth, sent the news flying over the telegraph. "Sapua sapua," the princess would sing out, reading the cards for her father.

  I could see that meant the chief had a pair of sevens.

  Or she would say, "A te dami."

  That meant the chief held three kings. By the time the princess was done filling the chief in on what cards he held, Chilly already knew, so the coins rolled pretty steady to his side of the table. Chilly did manage to work in a feel-good hand now and then, letting the Chief win back a gold eagle or two, but in general the gold flowed only one way.

  Every hand that Chilly won made me feel smaller and smaller, especially after the chief had gone to the trouble of bringing me a message from home. Fast as I was shrinking, I could almost have gone swimming in a teacup if I'd known how to swim. The chief took it all right in stride though, and when his last gold coin went missing on him, he rose and announced through the princess, "Maybe you can keep my father's medicine bundle for a while longer."

  "Guess the spirits got their days mixed up," Chilly commiserated, genuine as some teary-eyed old humbug.

  "Keep it in a dry place," the princess warned him.

  "Won't a drop of water touch it," Chilly vowed. "And if he wants to take another crack at winning it back, why, tell him I'm always open for business, 'specially if he's got something valuable to put up against it."

  "I will tell him," the princess promised, and without another word, she led her father out of the main parlor. When Chilly bought a drink of prime stuff for everyone, a huzzah went up. None of it put me in any mood for celebrating though. We were only kidding ourselves if we thought we'd taught Chief Standing Tenbears anything about sharing. Near as I could tell, the chief already knew a sight more about it than we could ever hope to pass along.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE NEXT DAY I MOPED AROUND worse than mumps on your birthday. I kept my hands stuffed in my vest's pockets and my head down. Not only was I tortured 'bout cheating the Chief, but getting up steam enough to write home was a good ten miles beyond me, and every inch of it upriver. Not till midafternoon did I finally find the gumption to at least try to get my hands on some paper and quill.

  The first fellow I ran into was Goose, who was serving himself breakfast from behind the bar. When I asked if he had any writing supplies, he scratched behind his ear so long that I started thinking fleas. Finally he come out with what was on his mind, saying, "You're not considering that old redskin's nonsense, are you? Writing letters home and all? That won't lead you nowhere but into a nest of trouble."

  "Really?"

  "Boy, how do you think I ever made it out West, became a famous Injun fighter, and took possession of so fine a gaming parlor as this? It didn't happen 'cause I was all the time dashing off letters back to Nantucket, I can promise you that. Not at all. If I'd been doing that, there'd have been letters come flying the other way too, wouldn't there? Letters from my pa second-guessing everything I'd ever done and ordering me home to captain one of his leaky old ships to some watery corner of the world, some place where the ocean's deeper than the sky and the wind howls your name till you jump overboard just to find some peace. Mark my words: letters from home won't lead to nothing but an early grave. I've burned every one that ever came my way."

  'Course, by then I'd been around the inn long enough to pass over most of Goose's blowings, especially when it came to Nantucket or Indian fighting, but maybe I'd been a little hasty. The way he talked about his pa didn't sound like no flimflam, which left me wondering if the two of us didn't have more in common than I cared to admit. Hadn't my pa shipped me off on a leaky old ship too? But as Goose had pointed out, there was a whole side of this letter-writing business that I hadn't considered—namely, letters from home. That possibility gave my heart an unexpected ache. What if Ma and Pa had reconsidered and wanted me back? That's why the

  instant Goose slumped back on his chair, I shoved off to keep on searching for writing supplies.

  ***

  The weeping of the Professor's violin pulled me upstairs. Knocking on his door and getting no answer, I invited myself in and right away knew I was trespassing on a man of learning. A little desk in a corner had four leather-bound books lined up on it, gold lettered and thick as some lawyer's. And hanging on a wall was a heart-shaped silver locket that made you think of fancy, rhyming poetry just looking at it. Everything else was laid out neat as a general store that ain't yet open for business.

  The Professor himself, he was playing his violin out on the balcony, with Venus and Aphrodite fluffed up contentedly at his feet. Soon as he saw me, he lowered his bow and waved for me to join him. I made it as far as the window leading to the balcony before my toes knotted up on me. Heights, you know.

  "I was wondering," I said through the window, "if you had any writing supplies I might borrow?"

  "Zeb," the Professor answered, resting his violin on his lap, "I had to quit writing down my thoughts years ago. It got so's I was spending so much time doing it that I never got anything else done. Did the chief put a bee in your bonnet?"

  "'Fraid so," I confessed. "Do you think he really could see my ma?"

  "Goes without saying," the Professor answered, rocking back on his chair. "He seen mine once, you know. When the chief and Buffalo Hilly first landed in town, he had that daughter of his pass on that my ma was sending me her heart. I laughed that off and told him that so far as I knew, she still needed it. But then two or three weeks later I got news from my sister that Ma had passed on, and then came a package holding her favorite keepsake, which she'd always wanted me to have. It's that heart-shaped locket hanging on the wall behind you. I keep it there to remind me of what's good in this world."

  Right then he played a snatch of the sweetest, saddest song imaginable. Stopping, he brushed back a wisp of hair and gave me a kindly look.

  "I don't care if you don't believe anything else I ever tell you," the Professor went on, earnest as could be. "Just so you trust me when I say that the chief had known I'd be getting that heart. So if someone asks if I think the chief really can see things, I always tell 'em that his eyesight's way better than yours or mine. The question is, Zeb, are you ready for what he's seen? That's the thing. If you are, then I'd say check with Ho-John about writing materials. He's the one keeps track of such odds and ends around here."

  ***

  Not sure what I was ready for,
I traipsed out back of the inn, where Ho-John was plucking some fresh-wrung chickens while conversing with the hounds. Considering what the Professor had just shared, I'd gone and lost the urge for a letter from home. Who knew what I might hear? I may have been gone only a little more than a month, but wasn't that long enough for something terrible to have happened? Rolling up a log for a chair, I sat me down to give a hand with a pullet.

  "You're looking considerable stretched out," Ho-John observed.

  I thought about telling him my woes, but they seemed too big and never ending to even get started on, so I settled for saying, "Oh, I been all over this place trying to find me some writing paper and quill and things."

  "Ain't likely to find none of that in these parts," he declared, without giving it any thought at all.

  "Why's that?" I asked, surprised at how quick he answered.

  "'Cause there ain't nobody can write 'round here."

  That news struck me midpluck, befuddling me worse than two black cats walking side by side. My ma had taught me the three R's, and though I knew there were plenty who never got such an advantage, I surely never figured Chilly nor Goose nor the Professor—especially him—to be among them, not the way they dressed and carried on so high toned.

  "You got to get over thinking of these gamblers as gentlemen," Ho-John advised. "They may dress like 'em, and lounge around like 'em, and now and then even try to use a knife and fork like 'em, but that's all for show. If you ever stacked 'em up next to a real gentleman, you'd see they weren't nothing but bad-made chalk copies."

  "But what about the Professor?" I asked, kind of desperate-like, I suppose. "You ain't meaning to tell me that he can't write."

  "Makes an X for his name, same as the rest. Maybe a little fancier is all."

  "But he's got those thick books in his room."

  "Could be, but owning a book and reading a book is two different things."