Crows & Cards (15 page)

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

T
HE 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."

"That's a fat wad to swallow," I mumbled.

"First time down, maybe so," Ho-John agreed. "But you ain't the only one to choke on it. The thing you got to understand 'bout these gamblers is that they're all show. Why, they don't gamble to win money. If they did, don't you think they'd keep more of it? Sure enough they would. But whatever they win, they plows right back into the next game that comes along. No, they gamble so's they can rub elbows with gentlemen and feel like gentlemen and maybe have a few bumpkins like me or you mistake 'em for gentlemen, 'cause that's what they want to be. Worse than horses want to run, that's what they're wanting, but they ain't never going to make it, not even if they had a good-luck piece dug up at the end of a rainbow."

"Chilly don't believe in good luck," I came back.

"Now who told you such nonsense as that?" Ho-John clucked his tongue. "Why, he's so superstitious that he won't even admit he's superstitious. He's afraid it'll bring him bad luck."

"Then how come I ain't ever seen him pulling out rabbits' feet or saints cards or drilled coins or..." I started losing my way by then 'cause of the way Ho-John was shaking his head at me, pitiful-like.

"Why do you think he's all the time checking that gold watch of his?" Ho-John asked. "It ain't 'cause he's worrying about the time, I can tell you that much. It's 'cause he won that watch off some gent who carried a cane and claimed to be a duke. Why, I heard Chilly tell Goose that watch has protected him from shed snakeskins and evil eyes and stepping in front of a parson on a Saturday night. And I seen him almost plug Goose for even daring to touch it. He don't go nowhere without it, not even to bed, I'll bet. You check under his pillow sometime. No—you ask me, Mr. Chilly Larpenteur's got more superstition bottled up in his little pinky than the rest of us uncork in a year or more, and the only reason he pretends different is 'cause that's what he thinks a gentleman would do."