Crows & Cards (17 page)

Kneeling down on the floor, he pried up the board we'd loosened for stringing the telegraph and set it aside. Then he picked up two other boards, one on either side of the first, and set them aside too. Not a one of them was nailed down at all! With the hole triple wide, he lowered himself through the floor, moving slow and careful-like so as not to rattle his chains. When he ducked out of sight, something told me he was stashing his things right next to that broken hammer and chisel we'd run into down there.

Done with that, he pulled himself back into the pantry, replaced the boards, and crept away without clinking his chains but twice. Both times he stopped dead, his shoulders all hunched, but there wasn't any need for him to fret. Out in the parlor, Chilly and Rebecca were plotting away so thick that they never heard a thing.

There didn't seem much doubt that one of these nights, after he was locked away in the pantry, Ho-John was planning on taking himself another dip in the Mississippi, headed for Illinois. It didn't take me but a blink to decide I wasn't going to tattle on him, not after all I'd finally figured out about the workings of Mr. Chilly Larpenteur. But seeing Ho-John planning his escape so careful-like did slow me down considerable and make me think that maybe I shouldn't go rushing into anything without some planning of my own.

So I lay there in the dark, listening to Chilly and Rebecca carrying on worse than South Sea pirates. They eventually judged they'd just have to coax the chief back that night with his crown. That way they wouldn't have to let Captain Horacio's excursion boat leave without them in the morning. Chilly guessed that maybe if he paid his respects to the chief that evening, while on his way home from helping the poor and needy, it ought to goad him back to the inn.

"He's a proud old peacock," Chilly confided.

"Don't lay it on too thick," Rebecca warned. "You might scare him off."

"Leave it to me." Chilly patted his watch pocket. "I've been baiting hooks for many a year."

Not this year,
I thought to myself.
Not if I got anything to say about it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
STAYED HOLED UP IN THE PANTRY
till the orphanage lady cleared out and Chilly went hunting for me, wanting to make double darn sure I was on hand to work the telegraph. He wasn't going to tolerate any slip-ups on such a night as this. First off he popped into the kitchen, asking Ho-John if he'd seen my worthless hide anywhere abouts.

"Why don' you leave that poor boy alone?" Ho-John wanted to know.

"Don't you start talking like a fool," Chilly warned, "or you might find yourself sold off to some cotton field, hear?"

"I hears ya," Ho-John muttered.

"So let me try again," Chilly said. "Have you see that no-good squire of mine?"

"Last time I seen him," Ho-John answered, "was when I was plucking chickens. He was headed back into the house. That's all I know."

"All right then," Chilly growled.

Next I heard him calling out my name as he clomped upstairs, where I'd been known to sneak a nap, but I still couldn't bail out of the pantry, not with Ho-John chopping taters in the kitchen. If I popped out now, he'd see that I knew all about his getaway plans, which might force him to do something desperate, or at the very least leave him sick with worry that I might go blabbing about what he'd been up to. Kind as he'd been to me, I didn't want to put him through those miseries, so I started considering whether I ought to risk lifting up the pantry's loose floorboards to crawl out that way, slivers and all. Seemed like I should be able to pull the boards into place from below, so no one'd be the wiser. But that'd leave me in the dark, under the inn. What saved me from having to chance that terrible fate? Ho-John clanked into the parlor to call after Chilly. "Will that lady you was whispering with be staying for supper?"

"Never you mind about her," Chilly said from halfway upstairs. "If you know what's good for you, you'll forget she was ever here."

Seeing my chance, I squeezed out of the pantry and rabbited through the back door. Quick as you can dot an
i,
I buried myself in the pack of hounds tied up behind the inn. They may have been rough on raccoons, but they didn't have no issues with friends of Ho-John's and washed me with their tongues to prove it. That was exactly the kind of welcome I was in desperate need of. I stretched out there, soaking up their attentions, trying to conjure up what to do next, and—I'm sorry to say—asking all sorts of why-me questions till Chilly tracked me down.

"Get out from under them dogs," he ordered, yanking me to my feet. "It do beat all the places you find to get to."

Here was my golden opportunity to teach him a lesson for shoving me around, but fast as he was hustling me along by the scruff, I couldn't do nothing but kick air as he herded me back toward the inn, where he could keep an eye on me.

"Squire Zeb," he railed after planting me on a kitchen chair, "tonight you're going to learn a thing or two." When I didn't act grateful enough about that prospect, he added roughly, "If you know what's good for you."

***

Supper was sootier than usual, but Chilly didn't notice, busy as he was bragging about how he was going to do the chief out of his crown. Then, when everyone finally had his fill of scorched chicken and undercooked beans, Chilly announced all casual-like, "I guess maybe I'll go pass on some winnings to the poor and needy."

Hearing such a bold-faced lie riled me up bad, which at least proved that I had some pride left. What I didn't have was a lot of sense, 'cause I up and blurted, "I been meaning to ask if I could get me a refund."

"A refund?" Chilly snorted, not understanding what I was getting at. "On what?"

"My apprenticeship."

"What's this about?" Chilly froze halfway out of his chair.

"Well, sir," I jabbered despite myself, "I've been working it over in my head and it's got me thinking that maybe gambling ain't exactly the life for me. I ain't sure my hands is fast enough."

"Didn't you slip a king in your hand just yesterday afternoon without my seeing?" he came back.

Well, I thought I had but apparently not.

"And the late hours," I mewed. "They seem to be giving me a rash. Under my arm."

I held up my arm, where I had me a handy rash from a spider bite, but Chilly wasn't interested, so I kept on gibbering away, fast as I could muster.

"And my eyesight's going down on me too. Some nights I can hardly tell the difference between a king and a queen. So it's all got me to thinking that you might be better off finding another boy. One who's better suited for your needs."

Chilly sat still as a rattlesnake while listening to all that. One of his hands went to jingling some coins in his pocket, adding to his rattler qualities. When he started in on a smile that even an undertaker wouldn't have called warm, my insides turned all to mush.

"'Course, I wouldn't expect the whole seventy dollars back," I stumbled on. "Not with you having educated me for going on a month now. But if you could see your way clear to giving back sixty-five of it, I'd say we could call 'er square and I'd be on my way. You could even keep my share of our winnings."

Right about then old Goose couldn't hold it in no more and threw back his head to bray like a donkey. It was so unexpected and loud that I jerked backwards in surprise. I didn't tumble off my chair though, not with Chilly's big hand nabbing my upper arm.

"After all I've done for you?" Chilly snarled. "Why, I'm so disappointed, I could cry."

"Oh, please don't cry," Goose begged, once he managed to quit hee-hawing. "I can't stand to see a full-grown gambler cry.

"I say you should indulge yourself," the Professor advised. "I generally feel better for days after I've had me a good weep."

"Say," Goose said, sounding inspired, "ain't we forgetting something here? Ain't this boy sworn into some brotherhood or other? You know the one I mean. That outfit that never lets anybody quit except to go to the cemetery."

The Professor just looked at me kind of pitiful-like for believing such truck, but Chilly and Goose had themselves a good hoot over my predicament. My blood ran icy to hear 'em, 'cause you could tell by their jeers that the Brotherhood wasn't nothing but another lie they'd served up to trick and hogtie me. But what really stung was how well it'd worked.

"You fellas don't fool me," I sputtered, brave as I could muster, which wasn't much puffier than a church mouse. "There ain't no Brotherhood."

"Oh yes there is," Chilly came back. "And you're looking at 'em."

With that, Chilly dragged me over to the pantry, flung me inside, slammed shut the door, and rolled a barrel before it. I dug in my heels some, for all the good it done me.

"What's got into that boy?" Chilly yelled.

"Maybe a conscience," suggested the Professor.

"Where'd he all of a sudden get such a thing as that?" Chilly demanded.

"Some claim we're born with 'em," said the Professor.

"More likely you've been talking to him," Chilly shot back. "You just keep this in mind, Mr. Professor: I'll put the boot to any conscience that sticks its nose in my business, and I'll do it good and proper too."

By then my jaw was too locked up for my teeth to be chattering, and my heart was thumping against my chest like a trapped bumblebee. I punched out in the dark as hard as I could, aiming at Chilly for all the good it did me. My fist smacked a timber and my arm bone rang clear up to my ear. "Pa!" I shouted, maybe blaming him for my fix. That might not have made a whole lot of sense, but it's the way I felt about it. If he'd let me stay to home, none of this mess would have ever happened to me. And besides, didn't blaming him beat blaming me? Better yet, it helped me skip over all those promises I'd been peddling myself about stopping Chilly from treating me worse than mud.

Outside the pantry, the gamblers were commiserating over what an ungrateful little twig I was, and how a good tanning would likely do wonders for my attitude, and how it never rained but it poured. Even the Professor allowed I wasn't to be trusted, though the way he said it, he almost sounded proud of me. None of that mattered though. By then I was so full of wretchedness and general all-around despair that I just crumpled up and fell to the floor and lay there like some June bug caught on its back.

By and by it got quieter out in the kitchen, and after a bit I heard Ho-John creep to the pantry door and whisper, "You all right in there?"

I didn't have the heart to answer, so he gave up and left me alone to wallow. But after a while I felt something hardening inside me that I hadn't known was there. It must have been backbone I was feeling, 'cause pretty soon I was telling myself that I shouldn't take being treated such a way and that I ought to do something about it. That sure enough sounded like some free advice of my pa's, which surprised me, all right, mad as I was with him. But it wasn't long till such thoughts left me feeling a touch braver too. About then I seized up hard, struck by an idea on how to help the chief and myself. The only problem was getting word to him of my plan. In the end, it was hearing Ho-John rummaging around the kitchen that gave me a notion of how to proceed.

I could still hear Chilly going on about all the generous turns he'd done me and how these days everyone spun right around and bit the hand that fed 'em and wasn't it a crying shame how parents didn't bother to teach their offspring any better. Somewhere in there the Professor struck up his violin and Goose retaliated at the piano, which started the dogs off. Chilly announced at the top of his lungs that he was going to tidy up before heading downtown on business. "And that fool boy better be in that pantry when I get back!" Hard as Chilly then stomped upstairs and loud as the Professor and Goose were having at their instruments, I figured it was now or never if I was going to do something. What with all the noise, nobody was going to hear me lifting up Ho-John's floorboards, no matter how trembly and clumsy I was about it.

Dropping beneath the house, I started to lower the floorboards down after me but stopped with only one in place. Fast as I'd be moving when I came back, I didn't guess there'd be much time for hunting up the pantry's loose boards, so I left the hole wide open and struck out for the street, praying that no one would dare pay the pantry a visit, not after the way Chilly had carried on. Luck was with me, and I didn't run into any rampaging mummies or half-buried coffins while crawling out of there.

Once out from under the inn, I headed for the levee and Chief Standing Tenbears, running all the way 'cause I knew that Chilly was somewhere behind me. By the time I made it to the river, Dr. Buffalo Hilly and the chief were done hawking elixir and visions for the day, but I did have a dab more luck and spotted the cross-eyed loafer who'd been so keen on sampling Buffalo Hilly's tonic. He was weaving sideways down the street in between nips on one of the doctor's bottles and told me straight off where the medicine show could be found.

"This time of night?" He hiccupped. "They'll be camped up to Chouteau's Pond. Direct across from the mill."