Crows & Cards (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
FOUND MY WAY BY ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS
and following the accordion music. Dr. Buffalo Hilly had set up camp between a couple of low-hanging trees, on the edge of a half-moon-shaped pond that in the gathering darkness looked too wide for swimming and just right for drowning.

As I squirmed in closer, I seen that the doctor was serenading his camel, which stood there chewing thoughtfully on a shrub and gazing off into the night. Since Buffalo Hilly appeared to be on speaking terms with Chilly, I didn't barge right in and ask where I might find the chief. Instead, I crept around the edges of the campfire till stumbling across a deer-hide tepee on the far side of the medicine wagon. It was smallish, not much taller than a man, and hung on three or four poles that crisscrossed up top. A kitcheny kind of perfume curled out its smoke hole. There was some singing too—low and solid and hard-driving—an Indian song, all right, and hearing it give me a chill, creeping around under a dark cloudy sky as I was.

When the song pulled up lame for a bit, I cleared my throat real polite-like, not sure how you were supposed to come calling at a tepee. After the third time I ahemmed, the princess lifted her voice to say, "My father wonders if that is the west wind talking to him."

"'Fraid not." I apologized in a hurry-up whisper 'cause I was expecting Chilly to show any second. "It's only me, Zebulon Crabtree, come to warn you off something."

The princess's head popped out the door flap right quick after that. One look at me and back inside she went. There followed a flurry of Indian words, and then out she came again.

"Did the Birdman send you this time?"

"Not that I know of." I winced, hoping she wouldn't send me packing, but then she surprised me.

"Doesn't matter," she said, holding the tent flap open. "My father's been expecting you."

I had a rough breath or two soon as I heard that, but I moved ahead anyway, ducking through the door flap and past the princess in a flash, not wanting anyone else to see me. Inside, a leathery, smoky smell covered me like a nice, homey blanket. Lit up by a fire, the tepee was surprisingly bright. A pot was simmering away over the coals. Grass had been piled up around the bottom of the walls so there weren't any distracting drafts. Logs had been laid around the fire to hold in sparks.

Old Chief Standing Tenbears was sitting with a buffalo robe slung over his shoulders and a long pipe stuck to his lips. The pipe couldn't have been doing him much good, for every once in a while he had to leave off sucking on it so that he could have himself a low, racky cough. In the glow of the fire, he didn't look too much older than stone. He'd taken off his war bonnet, which must have been a heavy load to cart around, and replaced it with a top hat that had two black feathers sticking out its back. His eyes were white and ghostly as ever.

"What's this big warning?" The princess sounded snippy, like she didn't believe I had any such thing.

"Only that Chilly Larpenteur's been cheating you."

There. It was out. I sure wish I could report that saying it aloud lifted a weight off my chest and shoulders and every other part of me too, but it wasn't anywhere close to so. Soon as I quit worrying about the chief I started feeling powerfully low and itchy about Chilly. He wasn't anything but a scoundrel and a blackleg who'd locked me in a pantry and scuffed me up regular, but then again, hadn't he been willing to take me under his wing and say a kind word when I'd needed it most?

To top it off, I didn't exactly get the idea that Chilly's cheating habits were a whirlwind of news to the chief.

No, when the princess told the chief what I'd said, he threw back his head and laughed real bold, plenty long and hard too, which started him to coughing. I got me a pretty good look at his tongue and the few yellowed teeth that floated around it. After settling down, he speechified a long spell to the princess, who summed up what she heard this way: "He knew that."

"Did he need all them words to tell you?" I crabbed, still fretting about Chilly.

"He asked if you brought something for the cooking pot."

"Was I supposed to?"

"Only if you'd been raised right. And he wanted to know if you'd written your ma yet."

"I'm working on it," I grumbled, not taking kindly to being reminded.

"Don't forget to ask about the picture of the horse with two humps."

"I thought I told you—"

"It's in her book," the princess insisted. "The one with all the words in it."

"Her dictionary?" I said, dumbstruck.

Without having a vision, how could the chief have known Ma had one of those left over from her teaching days? Chilly couldn't have told him 'cause I never brought that book up around the inn, not even during the night when I sometimes whimpered in my sleep. How did I know that? Simple. I'd never in my life dreamed about that dictionary, thank goodness. The thought of copying out the definitions to all them words never failed to give me the fantods.

"The only horse pictured in Ma's dictionary is a unicorn, and it's got a horn, not humps."

"The horse like Buffalo Hilly's," the princess told me. "Buffalo Hilly won't sell his, so my father wants a picture instead."

"Are you talking about that camel?" I asked, sitting up straighter with a jerk.

"Some call it that, yes."

Soon as I heard her answer, something big crashed inside my head. Ma's dictionary did have a picture of a camel in it. I could see it plain as day and could even remember getting hand cramps writing out its definition. His knowing about that picture sealed it for me. Far as I was concerned, the chief really did have powers enough to confound a minister. Ma's dictionary sat closed on a shelf a hundred and sixty-some miles upriver. But even if that book had been sitting in the tepee with us, would his seeing inside it have been any less a miracle? He was blind as some anchor but could see far as the ends of Missouri, if not beyond.

And if that was the case, then I was honor bound to believe that he'd seen my ma and pa wringing their hands and wanting a letter so they could know how I was doing. I nearly shouted
Hallelujah!
Right there I understood that I'd been holding back on something that scared me worse than slivers, deep water, heights, fires—the whole kit and caboodle. The way my folks had bundled me off to St. Louis had pretty near convinced me that they didn't care one whit what happened to me. Hadn't I pleaded with 'em to keep me? Hadn't I reasoned? Begged? Sassed? Stormed? But far as I knew, they hadn't listened to a smidgen of it. So what was I supposed to think?

'Course, in the back of my heart I'd always sort of secretly hoped that I was wrong about their not caring, but now I had certifiable
proof
that I was wrong. And when it comes to questions big as how your folks feel about you, proof is the difference between lightning bugs and lightning. There wasn't time to celebrate though 'cause right about then someone called to the chief from outside the tepee. Even though it was a voice I'd been expecting all along, hearing it still gave me January shivers. Chilly Larpenteur had arrived and was sounding mighty full of himself.

"You to home, Chief?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I
MUST HAVE LOOKED DESPERATE
as a trapped possum, 'cause the princess had to jerk on my arm to get my attention. Pointing out a pile of buffalo robes, she gave me a shove. I scrambled around the chief and burrowed into those robes without any thoughts of tomorrow.

"Who's asking?" the princess said, buying me some time.

"Why, your old friend Chilly Larpenteur. I was just heading home and thought to stop off and offer my condolences."

"We didn't know we needed any of those," the princess answered, opening the door flap.

Then came the jingle of coins in Chilly's pockets, followed by the rustling of his feet. Pretending to be brave, I straightened a finger to push up on the robe covering my head. I couldn't see much of anything though, only the chief's back and, on the far wall, the shadow of Chilly's top hat.

"After you lost all them gold eagles?" Chilly gushed, smooth and friendly as ever. "I believe that a kind word is the least I can offer."

"We've been thinking you did us a favor," the princess countered. "Now we don't have to carry that heavy sack around."

"Well, I'm glad to lend a hand with such a problem whenever I can," Chilly answered, serious as a sermon. "But I've still got my regrets about it."

The princess translated, the chief answered, and the princess reported back to Chilly, "My father says you don't sound like a man with regrets."

"Oh, I've got 'em," Chilly lamented, sincere as a weasel. "I've suffered many a sleepless night worrying that someone's lost money they couldn't afford to. That's why I stopped by. To let you know that if you've a mind to try your luck again, I'm game. And if you're strapped for funds, well, don't let that hold you back. Rest assured that I'll consider taking something of value in trade."

The princess and chief went back and forth after that little hint till the princess informed Chilly, "My father says he'll keep all this in mind."

"I figured he would," Chilly said. "But I best warn you, I'm only going to be in town for tonight. I'm afeard that tomorrow I'm being called away on business..."

Monkey business,
thinks I to myself.

"...and who knows when I'll be back."

That pretty much wrapped up Chilly's visit. He said his goodbyes and vowed he wouldn't let anybody touch the chief's sacred medicine bundle, which up to then no one had mentioned a word about. He did feel obliged to point out, though, that he was traveling light on this trip so wouldn't be able to take the bundle along nor protect it while he was gone. But he promised that he'd hide it somewhere perfectly safe, if there was such a place in this world. (The way the orphanage lady had warned him not to lay it on too thick must have slipped his mind.) He also couldn't resist reminding them one last time that he was more than willing to take something in trade for the bundle, particularly if it was something gold and shiny. And then he left, though I'm pretty sure I heard him clicking open his pocket watch before ducking out the flap. Me, I hung tight under the robes till the princess said Chilly was good and gone.

"Are you ready to hear exactly how he's been cheating you?" I asked, popping up.

They were and so I told 'em, holding up every so often to allow the princess to pass along all I was saying. I filled 'em in on the telegraph and the peephole in the wall and how I had my shelf in the pantry all fixed up like home. I might have talked up my shelf too much, but only to impress the princess, which didn't go down well at all. She was glaring so fierce that I could feel my edges starting to smoke. When I wrapped everything up, the princess told the chief the last of it, and there was a long pause before the chief answered back.

"My father wants to know why you're telling us all these things."

"'Cause I'm hoping to mend my ways," I reported. "And maybe teach Chilly a lesson."

"What kind of lesson?"

That's when I filled 'em in on how Chilly was hoping to cheat 'em out of the crown that the king of Prussia or wherever had given the chief. And I explained how my cheating days were behind me too. Aside from the low and dusty way it left me feeling, there didn't seem to be any future in it, not if a person hoped to live with himself and tuck into a decent night's sleep now and then. I told them that if they'd give me a chance, I just might be able to help 'em get the better of Chilly—all fair and square—and get back that sacred medicine bundle they were missing. As plans went, it wasn't any slouch, and I spelled out every little detail of it too.

"When you look over your cards," I explained, talking fast 'cause I still had to beat Chilly back to the inn, "I'm supposed to signal what you've got by tugging on the telegraph wire. One tug means you ain't got nothing but a high card, queen or up. Two tugs, you got a pair, and so on. And if you got nothing, why, then I don't tug at all, which is exactly what I aim to do—no matter what you're dealt."