Crows & Cards by Joseph Helgerson

mumbled yeses and noes and I-don't-knows.
    Then he hit a stretch of pacing where he didn't ask nothing, which was worse than all the questions. Even the Professor didn't speak up on my behalf, as he sometimes did, but kept his head down, straightening up things behind the bar. I winced every time Chilly changed directions and went all crumbly when he spun on me to ask, "So that's what took you so long? Talking to Rebecca?"
    "No sir," I volunteered. "Finding the wire ate up some time, and then I seen that medicine show and took a look."
    "Buffalo Hilly, I suppose."
    "The very," I admitted. "And Chief Standing Tenbears. He knew so much about me, it was scarier than I don't know what."
    Upon hearing that, Chilly threw back his head and horse-laughed, which made me cringe and wonder what I'd done now, but after Chilly had himself a good, long laugh, he cooled off a bit, seeming more like the man I'd been eager to sign on with, which was a welcome relief.
    "Goose," he said, flashing all friendly again, "I'd say we owe this boy an apology."
    "We do?" Goose sounded as surprised about it as me.
    "Yes sir, we do. We keep forgetting he's green to all these matters and that we're supposed to be smartening him up as we go along." Talking to me, he added, "Now looky here, Zeb—St. Louis ain't so big a town as it likes to think, and if people see Miss Rebecca mingling with a gambler's apprentice, why, all that fine work she does for them orphans will go up in smoke. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
    "No sir."
    "Good." Chilly sized me up carefully. "Now I want you to be honest with me, Zeb, 'cause that's the way it is in the Brotherhood. Do you think you can manage that?"
    "I do."
    "Was there anything else that happened on your errand?"
    I started to say there wasn't, which was an outright lie, 'course, so I pulled back on my reins, hung my head, and come out with it. "I seen a crow."
    "Where?" In a flash, Chilly had ahold of my ear again.
    "On the chief's shoulder," I squawked.
    "Tell more," Chilly ordered, giving my ear just an outstanding twist.
    So quick as I could I filled them in on how the crow had landed on the chief's shoulder and all. Any second I expected to lose an ear, but the more I laid out, the looser Chilly's grip went, till at the end he let go of me entirely and exchanged the queerest kind of twinkle with Goose, as if the two of them couldn't have wished for anything better than having a crow visit the chief. Why that struck their fancy so, I couldn't say, and I wasn't about to go upsetting the apple cart by asking. But they surely were pleased, which was something I stored away for future pondering. Then Chilly noticed me watching him kind of strange and said, "There anything else you're holding back?"
    'Course there was, and I didn't reckon Chilly was going to take to it kindly. Hadn't I given the orphanage lady a nickel? I didn't guess that it mattered if I'd seen him give her over two hundred dollars back on the Rose Melinda. Something warned me that he might not feel so generous about my being free and easy with our money. The thought of setting him off again egged me toward fibbing, which naturally I knew better than doing. What kept me from taking that plunge was hearing my ma's voice pop up in my head and warn me off it by saying Zeb in that all-knowing way she had that made me want to wilt, so I changed course and trotted out the truth, confessing, "There was one other thing. I gave the change from your dime to that Miss Rebecca. For the orphans."
    Chilly pulled back and gave me a double-hard look.
    "Don't that beat all?" he pronounced at last.
    "He's a country unto himself, all right," agreed Goose.
    "Do you think we can ever learn him anything?"
    "It seems doubtful," Goose answered.
    "You're a regular saint," Chilly said to me. "Now here's what I want you to do next.... "
    He never did say a mean-spirited or stingy thing about my giving that nickel to the orphans, which goes to show you the high standards he