Crows & Cards (20 page)

C
HILLY HEADED STRAIGHT OUT TO THE PARLOR,
where he told the Professor, who was fresh back from his errands, to set him up a drink, a good stiff one. "And now." He chased that one with another. "To keep the first one company." But the third drink that the Professor served up? Chilly didn't touch it at all. He just stood there gazing down into it as if peering into the eye of some creature from the depths of the ocean.

My breathing kept speeding up on me till I pried the chief's pouch out of my hand, which was cramping bad, and set it on the shelf. When I scrunched against the peephole just right, I could see enough of Chilly to know that the drinks hadn't improved his mood any. I even saw him aim a boot at one of the Professor's chickens when it strayed too close. For a second or two, the Professor acted like he was going to stand up for his hens, but one look at Chilly must have warned him off it.

So there Chilly stood, brooding so deep over the chief's crown that he still hadn't noticed that his pocket watch was gone.

That was the way things hung together for a while, long enough for two or three fellas already at the poker tables to fold their hands and say they were cleaned out. Two or three others drifted along to take their places. There didn't ever seem to be any shortage of men willing to fill an empty chair at one of the tables.

Then, without warning, Chilly up and laughed, booming out, "I was betting you'd join us tonight."

With a start, I saw the princess lead her father into the parlor. The chief held up in the door for a long, roving, general all-purpose sniff of the room. He'd changed back into his war bonnet and had tucked his clay pipe under his red belt. One of his hands rested on the princess's shoulder, while the other held a beaver pelt tight against his chest. Whatever was wrapped up in that shiny brown fur was about the size of a man's head and poked everyone in the curiosity real good. Tight as the chief was squeezing his bundle, you could see he didn't have any plans of dropping it. After giving every corner of the parlor a good, solid sniff, the chief talked to his daughter.

"My father wants to play one hand of five-card," the princess announced. "For his medicine bundle."

"Then he's come to the right place," Chilly promised.

He led the chief and princess over to his special table. Acting as if waiting on royalty, he pulled out a chair for the chief in order to plop him down square in front of me. He surely didn't want any mistakes made with the seating, and just this once, we were in complete agreement. What was coming next I wanted to be done with in the worse possible way.

Chilly wasn't done fussing either but made sure the lantern in that corner of the parlor was burning bright—so the princess could see the chief's cards, he said. Seeing his hand brush so close to my peephole nearly put me on the run, but I held on. From there, he crossed over to his chair and lowered himself down without once looking away from the chief's bundle.

By then the two other games had broken up and the players stampeded over to catch the show. The Professor even came out from behind the bar, followed by Venus and Aphrodite. In nothing flat everyone was crowded around Chilly's table, all winking and elbowing one another, probably figuring the chief didn't stand no more chance than a grasshopper in a snowstorm. Not with Chilly Larpenteur. What they couldn't figure out, and what they all had a hankering to find out, was what was inside the pelt that the chief had set on the table. On that point, I guessed I was one step ahead of things, but that didn't make me want to see it any less.

"I told you I'd take something in trade," Chilly said, nodding at the beaver fur, "but if you're after your medicine bundle, I best warn you I ain't taking no trinkets."

"
Du ska,
" the princess told the chief.

She must have said it was time to open the bundle, 'cause the chief laid his wrinkled old hands on it. His fingers were knobby and bent, and it took him upward of a year and a day to unwrap the thing. Nobody blinked the whole time. When he got the job done, a puff no stronger than a baby's breath could have knocked over every man and chicken in the place.

Lying atop the glossy fur pelt was a solid gold crown. Looking at it pretty near started angels to singing in my head—that's what a something it was. It had spikes like a castle's turrets, and right smack dab in the middle of the tallest spike was a red stone the size of a sparrow egg. I figured that for a ruby. The way it gleamed in the lantern light didn't hardly seem possible. There weren't any diamonds or emeralds stuck in the crown, but there didn't hardly need to be, not the way that ruby set off all the gold around it. The whole thing blazed away bright as a Christmas tree lit by a hundred or more candles. You could tell right off it had been custom-made to sit on some grand nabob's head.

The chief pushed it to the center of the table. For a blind man, he had a pretty good idea of what people wanted to see. I know my eye was pressed up tight against the peephole.

Chilly sat there gaping, looking dumb as a salamander about fire. You kind of got the idea that he was picturing himself wearing that crown and having people all the time bowing and scraping before him. I'd never seen a grown man look so dreamy. With all my heart I wanted to be long gone before he came back to earth. There wasn't any telling what he might do if he didn't get his hands on that crown.

"That real?" Goose Nedeau asked, breaking the spell.

"If it ain't," Chilly blustered, rushing to the crown's defense, "I don't know what is. Chief, I'd say you got yourself a hand of cards."

Chilly tore himself away long enough to dash upstairs to collect the chief's sacred medicine bundle. Soon as he took off, I found my right hand grabbing the pouch holding that crow's leg. Somehow it made me a smooch more confident to feel it in my palm, though when I held it up to my ear, it was quiet as midnight. Maybe it was still taking in the crown too.

The old deerskin bundle that Chilly brought down was the one I'd spied stashed atop the wardrobe many a time but had never been brave enough to peek inside. Naturally, it couldn't hardly compete with a beaver pelt for pretty, and though the two bundles were about the same size, whatever was inside the deerskin was twice as lumpy, with bulges all over the place.

The princess accepted it from Chilly as if handling something alive and passed it on to her father, who ran his fingers over the bundle as if knowing its every bump by heart. He talked to it some too, and, using both hands, lifted it up, sniffing deep as my ma did when burying her nose in my hair after bath night. It didn't look as though he'd ever get his fill of the smells inside that hide, and all the while he sniffed, his shoulders went up and up, got straighter and straighter, till he sat there tall as the young man he'd once been. I guess it's safe to say that as far as the chief was concerned, that sacred bundle was worth a whole wagonload of gold crowns from Europe. Seeing him shed years like that—it gave me the grit to go on.

When his nose finally had its fill, the chief set the bundle down gentle and spoke to the princess, sounding satisfied but impatient all in one breath.

"My father asks," the princess relayed, "what's taking so long."

"Professor," Chilly called out, his eyes still on the crown, "bring us a fresh deck."

The Professor brought over an unopened box and set it before Chilly, who cracked the seal and pounced on them cards, shuffling and twirling them for all he was worth. He couldn't help showing off his skills, even if he was dealing to a blind man. Watching him carry on so shameless brought to mind how little I'd seen when I'd first met up with him.

The chief, he sat there patient as moss. I didn't have any way of knowing for sure, but I liked to think there was a faint little something of a smile tickling his lips as he thought of me curled up behind him. He wasn't the only one trapped in amber either. Every gambler gathered round that table seemed struck dumb by the sight of the crown, especially Chilly, who seemed to drink deepest of the sight before us. Maybe that's why he got his fill first. Rousing himself, he looked around and didn't take kindly to having all those grubby eyes gawking at
his
crown. He broke the trance by wisecracking, "Boys, I learned everything I know from my ma."

"She must have been quite a lady," remarked Goose, who was so desperate to get a view of what had made everyone quiet that he'd fumbled out his specs.

"Oh, she was," Chilly said, making the cards fairly hum. "The only reason she married my pa was 'cause he had enough sense to let her do all the voting."

The banter earned a mean laugh or two, though not from me. I had a chore to do. Quiet as stardust and with my heart whirring as if it had wings, I tucked the pouch in a vest pocket below the one holding Chilly's watch and slid off my shelf to the floor. Running my fingers across the floorboards, I lifted out the ones that Ho-John had loosened up and leaned 'em against the wall. I wasn't real fond of opening up a hole in the floor again, 'cause there wasn't any telling what might slither up through it, but I didn't see any way around it either. When the time came for skedaddling, I didn't want to be fumbling with boards. I'd have lifted 'em out earlier except that till now I couldn't be sure that Chilly might not decide to pay me another visit to rattle me by the neck some more. But once the chief had pulled in, I knew Chilly wouldn't risk coming anywhere near me, not even if he discovered his pocket watch was missing. That's how I had told the chief to play her too. Let Chilly shuffle those cards to his heart's content, I'd said. It'd give me a chance to set things up on my side of the wall.

With the boards removed, I climbed back onto my shelf as careful and quick as could be. Only trouble was, I put more muscle into the
quick
than the
careful
and brushed against some crockery. One that was full of pickles crashed to the floor.

The voices out in the parlor hung up as if expecting a large timber to fall atop them. Chilly covered up by declaring, "Goose, you've got the clumsiest rats I've ever heard."

Tense as everyone was wound, that little joke set them to slapping their knees and roaring with laughter, which gave me a chance to settle onto my shelf, this time paying more attention to the careful than the quick.

The way Chilly went right on talking could have charmed swifts out of the clouds, so it wasn't long before the crowd forgot they'd heard anything smash at all. Back at the peephole, I could see that Chilly had the cards marching around fancier than a Fourth of July parade. All the while he shuffled, he talked, and all the while he talked, his eyes stayed glued to the chief's crown.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A
FTER
C
HILLY HAD HEATED THE CARDS UP
to his liking, he slapped the deck on the table to be cut, but the chief shook him off with a wag of his head. The way he stuck up for himself cheered me no end, though my smile went flat fast as the princess spoke out, saying, "My father doesn't want new cards."

My head snapped back and my tongue went all thick, 'cause this didn't fit any plan I'd laid out. Go for a new deck, I'd advised. Less likely to be marked, I'd said, though around Chilly there weren't no guarantees about such things. But the chief didn't play it that way at all, which blew to smithereens any chance I had of helping him. An old deck threw all the advantage to Chilly, 'cause he wouldn't even need me to work the telegraph but could read the back of the marked cards himself. The chief's request paralyzed everyone else in the place too, with nary an eye stuck anywhere but on Chilly.

"Why's that?" Chilly's smile had frosted up on him. "Don't he trust me?"

Or me?
echoed inside my head.

Chilly's question was full of gunpowder, but the princess answered real level, "Of course he doesn't trust you, but this has nothing to do with that. My father had a vision that said the cards shouldn't be new. They feel too stiff."

Grabbing up the new deck, Chilly flung it over his shoulder hard enough to break glass. Next he leaned forward to take a good squint into the chief's eyes. It appeared to be hard work, staring down a blind man, though Chilly kept at it till satisfied that he'd done it up good and proper. Sitting back down, he turned huffy.