Crows & Cards (23 page)

The princess's comeback set Chilly to arranging and rearranging his cards like some old auntie with a bouquet of flowers that won't behave. He cast my peephole a steely glance over the top of his hand before announcing, "Chief, I've been studying these cards so long, my toes have all gone to sleep on me." And he stomped twice on the floor, as if trying to wake up his foot, though I'm the one he was really talking to.

"Careful," the princess warned. "You'll upset the rats again."

Everyone had a good chuckle over that till Chilly trumped her one higher by saying, "I always figured I'd wear me a crown someday."

That got an even bigger rise out of the crowd, but when all the guffawing died away, the princess shot right back, "Too bad it won't be today."

Her answer stirred the crowd up so much that Chilly had to signal for quiet. The hand he held up was the same one that had been busy as a bee adding hold-outs to the cards in his other paw and ditching the cards he didn't want somewhere under the table—all of it done right under every nose in that room without raising an eyebrow. The man was a marvel.

"Talk's cheap," Chilly said. "Let's see them cards."

A hush fell over the entire world, or at least the part of it that I could hear. It reminded me of how everlastingly quiet my brothers and sisters had gone when Pa had walked me down to the steamboat that had carried me away from home. Everything was leading up to something that couldn't be reversed.

"You first," the Princess said.

"How about we spread 'em out at the same time?" Chilly answered.

The chief agreed to that.

"One," Chilly counted.

"
Due tsa,
" the chief counted.

"Two."

"
Dopa.
"

"Three."

"
Dami.
"

They laid 'em out.

When they were done, there wasn't a pair of eyes that wasn't bugging, except for the chief's, which were white and blind as ever.

Chilly had packed his hand with four aces and a joker, same as the chief. Lumping their cards together made for eight aces and two jokers ... in one deck.

I guess Chilly wanted everyone to know that he could best the chief at his own game. What he hadn't figured on was the chief playing the same game all over again.

When Chilly saw the chief lay out four aces and a joker too, he looked gut shot. His face went all white and billowy as a sail, and he stared straight ahead at my little peephole. I hope I never live to see eyes burning toward me like that again. Fiery comets couldn't sear you no hotter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I
TURNED ALL EGGSHELL
—a single tap could have cracked me into a thousand pieces. Tight as I was gripping the chief's pouch, I must have been hoping for advice but none got delivered, leastways not in English. Think that didn't make me want to cry? No time though.

Chilly had shoved back from the table, sending his chair tumbling as he straightened up and grabbed at his vest. His eyes were dancing wild, and he could only have been reaching for one thing: his pocket pistol. A second later he was pointing a barrel big as a cannon at President Washington's portrait and me behind it.

I rolled off my shelf without a worry about knocking any crocks loose. Inside the chief's pouch, it felt as if a pair of wings was beating, trying to get out. When I dropped through the hole in the floor, I banged my hip a good one but bit back any whimpers, 'cause Chilly was bellowing, "I been double-crossed!" He sounded as though run through by a Pawnee war lance.

There followed a bunch of other shouts, most of which came all at once and went along the lines of this:

"Look out!"

"Crazy fool!"

"
Ha ka ta!
"

"I'm done!"

Judging from the thumps and crashes I heard, gents and Indians must have been diving for cover everywhere.

All that went mum when Chilly fired his pistol, giving my ears the rings worse than a bell tower. Crockery exploded above me. Pickle juice rained down. I fell all the way to the ground and took off crawling.

Fast as my arms and legs were moving, you might have mistook me for a centipede, if there'd been enough light to see by. Bumping into Ho-John's cache of runaway supplies, I raised my head too high and cracked against a timber. The conk laid me flat for a second or two, though not for long, not with Chilly roaring behind me, "He's gone!"

The hole in the pantry floor wasn't a secret any longer, which I felt mighty bad about, considering the fix it would leave Ho-John in. But Chilly's shout sent me rolling again, for fear he'd reloaded. When I reached the edge of the house, I scrambled out and tore off into the darkness. Once I hit the road, I headed for the levee and the nearest steamer. If only someone would get me out of St. Louis, I'd do anything they wanted of me—wash dishes, scrub spittoons, even haul wood. I wasn't going to worry about slivers or deep water or nothing. I'd be brave if I had to.

As I went pounding down that dirt road, Stavely's Landing and home popped into my head as if cast there by a magician. A whiff of Ma's cooking rolled right up my nose without the slightest hitch. This was to the good, 'cause it was fast becoming clear that planning ahead wasn't one of my strong suits. What had I been thinking of doing after helping out the chief? Well, I hadn't considered it one iota. Too wrapped up in everything else, I guess. Lucky for me that running home didn't take any foresight at all. Where else would someone stand up for me, whether I was right or wrong, and get around to boxing my ears only later, after all the company had left? Home was the place where I had a cabin full of brothers and sisters all looking up to me for no better reason than that I'd been there the longest. It was also where I had a ma and pa who'd mostly done their best by me without any pay and not too much thanks either. That's why every puny muscle I owned was pulling me there.

But home was a long ways off. A hundred and sixty-some miles off, and every one of those miles was dark and full of woods and poisonous snakes and mangy dogs and half-starved panthers and ornery homesteaders and whooshing thunderstorms and lonesome wood ticks and ... The list wound around me tighter and tighter, faster and faster, till I could barely suck down a breath. One hundred and sixty-some miles looked to be the distance to the ends of the world.

And not far behind me, Chilly was screaming and cursing and breaking things like a man who was three-quarters volcano and one-quarter jaws of hell. I'd barely got a stone's throw from the inn before I heard its front door slam open. Checking over my shoulder, I saw Chilly come busting outside, with the Professor right on his coattails.

Well, if I was ever going to make it home, I had to do something and do 'er pretty quick, so I dove into a patch of woods along the creek. When I struck an old oak about four steps in, I gave up running and started climbing. Hiding in its limbs seemed safer than sounding like some bear thrashing through the brush. Needing both hands for pulling myself up, I stuffed the chief's pouch in a vest pocket and shimmied upward till the air went so thin, I couldn't hardly breathe. At first I didn't dast check how high I might have gone, but finally I chanced a peek and found I was barely off the ground. Four or five feet at the most.

So upward I struggled again, going mostly by touch and smell, 'cause my eyes were nailed shut tight as coffins. The next time I looked, I found myself about as high as Ma and Pa's cabin roof. There I stayed, figuring if it wasn't high enough, they could have me, 'cause one foot higher would have done me in, fast as my heart was whim-whamming away. And the sound of Chilly's watch in my ears? Loud as a blacksmith clanging on a horseshoe. I'd barely got a good hug on the tree's back side before Chilly and the Professor come charging along. I swear they didn't look any bigger than sugar ants way down below me as they peered every which way in the dark.

"I ain't got the foggiest how that old Injun did it," Chilly was roaring, "but when I get my hands on that boy I'll find out quick enough."

"You sure Zeb was in on it?" the Professor asked, clearly not so quick to judge.

"Why do you think he took off running?"

"Maybe 'cause you was shooting at him. 'Sides, the boy couldn't have had anything to do with all them aces. How you going to explain them?"

"I can't," Chilly growled. "And that's my point exactly. There's a whole lot more going on here than I can figure, like how come a deck from that satchel wasn't marked ten ways from Sunday. Answer me that."

"You'll have to ask Goose," the Professor came back. "He's the last one I seen tinkering with them cards."

"That old fool! And why didn't that worthless boy warn me a lick?"

"Maybe the wire broke."

"Don't give me none of that. Just fetch them hounds. When I get my hands on that boy, I lay I'll get to the bottom of all this."

If my blood hadn't already been standing still, hearing that would surely have brought it to a halt. They were going to have me treed in no time. Sitting where I was, I'd already done half the job for 'em. And every tick of Chilly's watch seemed to be calling out,
Here I am!

"You want Ho-John too?" the Professor asked.

"Can you name me anyone else can handle those mutts?" Chilly spat out. "'Course I want him, and I want him tonight. Not sometime next week. Just send 'em out here, then go help Goose hold on to that Injun."

Once the Professor was gone, Chilly kicked dirt and thrashed about and called out my name some, sounding as if he had the sweetest, most special treat for me in all creation. Pretty soon the hounds started baying, and Ho-John in his chains was herding them down the road. All of a sudden my blood started moving again.

"We're after that boy," Chilly shouted above the dogs.

'Need something to sniff up," Ho-John said. "Well, go get it," Chilly yelled. "Do I have to do all the clang-blamed thinking around here?"

Off Ho-John shuffled, leaving Chilly behind to lay out everything that had ever gone wrong his whole life long. It was quite a list and mighty impressive, ranging from his pa running off with that duchess to his ma being strict as a judge about his upbringing. Chilly was cussing out the crow that'd been plaguing him and wondering how it'd made his precious watch disappear when Ho-John came hurrying back with my blanket in one hand and a lantern in the other. I cracked open my eyes enough to see that the lantern threw shadows everywhere, especially across Chilly's face, which looked long and mean as an ax head. The dogs buried their snouts in my blanket and got the idea right away. Drat my luck but they had to be the most intelligent pack of hounds I'd ever run across. First thing they did was make a beeline for the oak tree I was clinging to the back side of.

There they were, howling and bouncing higher and higher off the oak's trunk. And there I was, clenching my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut as if that would somehow hide me better. But what saved me in the end was Ho-John.

"Ain't nothing up that tree," he called out. "They just remembering some old coon they had up there last week."

If Chilly had been paying attention to anything but the chief's crown, he'd have known that Ho-John was laying out a bold-faced lie. Nobody had had those dogs out in the woods since the telegraph had been up and running. No, what Ho-John was doing was saving my skin, even after I'd sunk his escape plans, and I daren't even sing out a peep of thanks.