Crows & Cards (5 page)

When Pearl Gulliver flipped the winning card over, he snorted, angry-like. Chilly had won, doubling our pile.

"Luck visits us all from time to time," Pearl Gulliver spouted.

Chilly returned fire by saying, "Some get visited more than others."

He wasn't done, either, not by a long shot. Lump together everything he'd said about the wonders of being a gambler, and it still wouldn't have impressed me as much as what came next. Soon as Pearl Gulliver slid two new cards out of the box, Chilly shoved all our winnings onto one of the card pictures painted on the oilcloth. Every man round that table went quiet as a deep woods. The only one still moving was Pearl Gulliver, who chuckled softly beneath his beard.

When the next two cards got flipped, I raised my hands above my head and whooped it up with everyone else. Chilly had doubled our money again. We now had upwards of two hundred and eighty dollars looking pretty on our side of the table, and we hadn't been sitting there for more than twenty minutes. It would have taken all six of my years with Great-Uncle Seth to see that much loot. I was beaming like a tree-sized candle, and I ain't talking no sapling either.

And then Chilly did something that had me laughin' for joy, 'cause it appeared he wasn't done working that table yet. Yes sir, when Pearl Gulliver trotted out the next two cards, Chilly toyed with him some by lifting out his gold watch to check the hour, as if it might be time for us to be moving on with our winnings, but then he showed a change of heart and let everything ride on another picture.

A hush fell over the table. Maybe three seconds passed before the dam burst and every player rushed to piggyback on Chilly's run. Holding tight to their rabbits' feet and clamshells and ivory crosses, every man there shoved his money on the same picture as Chilly.

"Out to bust the bank, are you, boys?" Pearl Gulliver's face was pinched up tight as something stitched shut.

"Aiming to see the next cards," Chilly answered, speaking up for the rest of us.

To his credit, Pearl Gulliver flipped the cards over without the slightest tremble.

What happened afterward had best be called an explosion. Everyone rose in the air a foot or so and hats went sailing. There were cries of "Glory be" and "Oh mama" and "We're bucking the tiger, boys. Bucking her good."

Me? The numbers were flying through my head faster than buckshot. We had upward of five hundred and sixty dollars and counting. I would have been a full-grown man before my Great-Uncle Seth forked over that much. It all meant nothing to Chilly though. He sat still at the center of the celebrations, watching Pearl Gulliver's hands for treachery. That's when I knew for sure how Chilly Larpenteur had got his nickname. I'd heard tell of men with ice water in their veins, but that didn't touch how cool Chilly was.

"The game's still on, gents," Pearl Gulliver reminded everyone. There was a terrible fire burning in his eyes that made me look away from him.

The others turned to Chilly, who was just about ready to shove our winnings onto the picture of a new card when a woman's voice filled the room.

"Gentlemen," she called out. "Please, can you spare something for the poor orphans of St. Louis?"

The whole bunch of us turned as one toward the door, where stood a lady pretty enough to strike you blind if you had sight or give you sight if you were blind. She had honey gold hair and a voice that would have given songbirds the miseries, so sweet did she sound. It was the same lady who'd been singing at the piano in the main cabin. You could hear the heart of every man there take an extra pitter-pat.

The only one who had any wits about him was Chilly, who gathered up our earnings, rose from the table, and made a courtly bow to the lady.

"Those orphans are deserving of some supper too," Chilly agreed.

When I watched him dump half our winnings in a little basket the lady was holding, I couldn't have felt any prouder than if I'd done it myself. Every other man had his eye on Chilly too, and what's more, they all followed him over to do the same.

"St. Jerome blesses you," the lady said.

"And you," she said to the next man.

"You won't be forgotten," she promised a third.

And so on down the line, 'cause dang if every man at the table didn't make a sizable contribution to the orphans of St. Louis. Every man but me, that is, 'cause I didn't have a cent in my pocket, and Pearl Gulliver, who stayed right at his table, looking devastated by the shower of gold coins raining into that woman's basket. Every dollar that went to them orphans was a dollar he wouldn't be seeing again.

"You've proved to those orphans that the world cares," she told us, dabbing a tear from her eye. "God bless you, one and all."

With that, she swept back out to the main cabin, moving from table to table to ask for more contributions. It looked as though the example set by Chilly and the other gamblers was reaping rewards out there too. All the ladies and gents was dropping money in the basket left and right.

I felt filled full of sparks to think of the good we'd done. Not too long back I'd been wondering if I'd even make it to St. Louis without drowning, and now here I was, helping poor orphans. Wouldn't my brothers and sisters be all atwitter if they could see me now? Even Ma and Pa might have their doubts about the wisdom of packing me off to Great-Uncle Seth's.

As soon as the doors closed behind her, the spell was broken and everyone spun back to Pearl Gulliver, who was waiting for us with a nasty smile wrinkling his face. His hands were resting on the dealer's box and looking none too innocent.

"You do-gooders ready to play?" he asked.

Hearing that, Chilly charged back to the faro table as if a bugle was blowing. Single-minded as he looked, I don't think he'd have noticed a flaming arrow landing square in his chest. I'm ashamed to admit it, but just then a little wave of doubt washed over me and I grabbed at his coat sleeve. I was thinking maybe it was time to scoop up our earnings and call it a day before some calamity hit us. Even after helping out those orphans, we still stood two hundred and eighty dollars up, or thereabouts, which was miracle enough to last me for a stretch. But Chilly brushed me off easily as a leaf, maybe knowing he had one more lesson to learn me that day.

Lowering himself back down to the table, Chilly gazed hard at the two cards that Pearl Gulliver now slid out of the box. Nodding to himself as if everything was in apple-pie order, he checked his pocket watch as though we were on a schedule and proceeded to wager all our money on the picture of one more card. The entire room fell still as something pinned under one of them Egyptian pyramids. Empires could have come and gone while we sat there. Kings could have grown beards long enough to trip over.

Somebody sneezed, ending the stillness. Every other player whipped out his good-luck charm and rushed to catch onto Chilly's coattails.

It didn't look as though Pearl Gulliver had a friend in the world other than himself, but that turned out to be enough. Flipping over the next two cards without a moment's pause, he knocked the wind right out of us.

Chilly lost.

Everything.

And everyone else went tumbling right down with him.

Pearl Gulliver had broke the entire room in one blow. What with his gloaty, satisfied smirk, the old fraud had to have dealt a crooked hand. While we'd been tending to orphans, he must have been tending to the cards. But losing didn't bother Chilly one bit. He rose up from that faro table without a word of complaint, checked the time as if late for an important appointment, and left without a backwards glance. Such nobility is a rare thing in this world. I may have been only twelve, but I'd seen enough to know that much. Chilly and me had just lost somewhere around two hundred and eighty dollars, but it didn't weigh on him, not a bit. He had faith in his abilities to win it all back soon. You could tell by the lofty way he carried himself out of there.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"L
ET THAT BE A LESSON TO YOU,
" Chilly advised once we were back down on the passenger deck. "Every man's got his weakness and mine's faro."

"Know what you mean," I answered, doing my best to sound worldly. "My little sister Emily is mine. She's all the time getting me into trouble without even trying."

"Do tell," Chilly said, without seeming too interested. Something over my left shoulder had caught his eye. At the same time that he was murmuring that, he was also reaching for a piece of kindling off a nearby wood stack. Without warning, he spun and launched the stick, which tumbled toward me end over end like a tomahawk.

I dropped for the deck, not knowing what to think. The wood whirred by overhead and a split second later splashed into the river, though not before a bird cawed from so close behind me that I covered up to avoid being pecked. When nothing happened, I rolled over, cautious-like, and caught sight of a crow perched on the railing. The bird tilted its head for a better look at us, cawed twice, and lifted away from the boat just as Chilly was grabbing another chunk of kindling. Before Chilly could peg that stick, the crow dipped below the railing and skimmed away. Chilly let drive anyway, muttering daggers all the while. "Pesky bird. I can't tolerate a scavenger."

"Know what you mean," I said, pulling myself up and dusting off. "My brother Harold is all the time—"

But Chilly had already moved on to something else. "'Pears we got some unfinished business waiting on us. Try to keep up, boy." And off he shinned toward the back of the boat.

I jogged alongside him, unable to resist asking one little thing that was nagging at me. "Shouldn't we have quit while ahead?"

"'Course we should have," Chilly grumbled, sidestepping a fella with a wooden leg. "And if I hadn't gotten waylaid by them poor orphans, we might have, but they broke my concentration." He shook his head, disgusted with himself, but then he sort of chuckled at his own shortcomings too, adding, "Leastways we gave old Pearl a run that he won't soon forget. That counts for something. The rest of it's all spilt milk, and you know what they say 'bout that. Second-guessing yourself ain't no way for a gambler to carry on. What you got to be thinking of is your next bet. Like right now."

We'd arrived at a knot of deck hands, slaves who'd been rented out to the
Rose Melinda.
They were throwing dice, rolling them against the crates of chickens, who were cackling dangerously. Reaching into a vest pocket, Chilly fished out the two coppers I'd paid him in addition to the seventy dollars of my ma and pa's. I couldn't hardly wait to see what he had to teach me next.

"Might as well find out what I can do with these," he said.

Those deck hands made plenty of room for us when Chilly stepped up to their game. Oh, a couple of 'em might have stared kind of resentful-like, as if we had something of theirs that they wanted back, but for the most part they just beamed and welcomed us right in. The closest I'd ever been to a slave was the runaway who'd holed up in the barn back home, and all I'd seen of him was the empty tin plate I collected every evening after chores. 'Course, every once in a while I got to go with Pa into Stavely's Landing and I'd seen a few slaves there, though always from across the street, never up close, so I took a special interest in this bunch on the
Rose Melinda.
But except for dressing in hand-me-downs about like my own, they didn't sort out a whole lot different from the crowd around the faro table. Naturally, the color of their skin and shape of their faces was different, but they rubbed their good-luck pieces and loved winning same as everyone upstairs. It was kind of a disappointment 'cause I'd been expecting them to be a whole nother tribe.

A tall, sweaty man blew considerable on the dice and talked to them too, like they were old friends, which was what they turned out to be (for him, not us). It took but one throw of the dice for Chilly's next lesson to be over. There wasn't even time to fuss about quitting while ahead. We'd lost before I could get around to it.

"Looks like we'll be enjoying the scenery from here on out," Chilly remarked, sounding almost relieved, as if he could only rest now that he'd done his duty and lost our last cent. "It'll give me a chance to tell you about the telegraph you'll be running."