So Wild a Dream
Page 33
Sam—Two Hawks, Grumble reminded himself—got out the three cards and threw them clumsily. The throw was so clumsy, in fact, Grumble wondered if Jameson might catch on, but he didn’t dare look at the man’s face. He frowned at Sam—you don’t need any extra effort to look clumsy with cards.
“A dollar says I can pick out the little boy.” Grumble counted four two-bit pieces onto the table.
“Well …,” said Sam. The look of greed on his face was really quite delicious. “All right.” He got out the fat purse and matched the four with his own.
Grumble picked out the little boy and gave Two Hawks a tight, superior smile.
Sam was flustered. So flustered, in fact, that when he picked up the first two cards he dropped them, leaving the little boy on the table.
While Sam was bent to the floor picking up the cards, Grumble reached out quickly and bent the corner of the little boy. Then he gave Jameson a slow wink.
Sam came up sputtering.
“Twenty dollars says I can do it again.”
Now Sam was really flustered, and about to snarl in anger. He poured an excess of gold coins into his palm and slammed twenty dollars onto the table.
He threw the cards.
Grumble calmly picked out the little boy again, and more calmly pocketed all the coins on the table.
“God damn it,” Sam burst out. “God damn it.”
He picked up the three cards and hurled them onto the floor. Then he started to stomp them.
Grumble put a gentle restraining hand on his forearm. “You’ve had terrible luck, nothing more than that. It comes with the territory.” Then he gave Jameson a conspiratorial nudge. “Why don’t you change your luck by changing players? Throw for my friend Jameson here.”
“I’m gonna throw these cards overboard.”
“Just one more time. Be a sport.”
Sam bent down to pick up the cards. This was the crucial moment in manipulation of the mark, but also manipulation of the cards. Sam had to slip those three cards away and substitute another three, with the old lady corner-turned instead of the little boy.
He did it very, very well, and while pretending to mull things over.
Sam stood up and staggered one step back into the chair. He glared at them. “All right,” he said. “One throw. But I ain’t gonna play for chicken feed.” He opened his purse and spread the entire contents on the table. It was impressive, nearly the entire two hundred he’d earned from Ashley-Henry. “I’m gonna throw for all I got against all you got, both of you.”
Grumble hesitated judiciously, then put the contents of his own purse next to Sam’s. It was between forty dollars and fifty dollars.
Jameson was quick to do the same. About seventy dollars or eighty dollars, Grumble noted.
Sam threw the cards, if possible, more clumsily than before.
Grumble nodded to Jameson with a half smile, smilingly inviting him to pick the winning card.
Jameson turned over the marked card. When the old lady appeared, his face shot into wonderful mottles of purple, orange, and red.
Sam seized all the coins, slurped them into his purse, and chortled loudly. Then he jumped up, cackled louder still, and held up his purse high. It was a full, resounding cackle, backwoods triumph riding high. “I knowed I could do it,” he called. “Yes, sir.” These words came out like slush. “I knowed, I knowed I could do it.” And he staggered off toward the deck.
“That poor fool may not even get off this boat with his money,” said Grumble to Jameson.
“Our money,” said Jameson.
“Yes.” He made a wry face. “I really couldn’t afford that. I’m afraid my foolishness …”
He puckered up as though tears were imminent.
Jameson stood up. “Perhaps we’d each prefer other company for a while,” he said in a disgusted tone, and headed outside in the direction opposite to Sam’s.
The tears usually did the trick.
Grumble finished his whiskey, which was good.
Sam got off the boat at the next stop with all the money. Grumble traveled on one stop farther. The next day he took the first steamboat back upstream. Sam got back on.
But they couldn’t divide the spoils yet.
Grumble was already buying drinks for another pigeon.
Sam was glad he’d remembered the horse manure on his boots.
Back in St. Louis, when they divided their loot equally, Sam remarked happily that he’d made nearly as much money in two days as many working men earned in a year. “Way more than I need to go in style to Pittsburgh.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Sam wondered, all the way to Pittsburgh, what his feelings would be when he saw the city where he fled from the constables, then the few buildings of Morgantown. The faces of Katherine Turley (now Katherine Morgan), his mother, and his brother sailed like high, vague clouds through his mind. He talked about them with Coy quite a lot on the steamboat, but he didn’t have any words to say to any of them, not yet.
All he felt when he walked down the short gangplank onto the Pittsburgh waterfront with Coy on a leash was wariness of the constables.
They don’t keep arrest warrants two years, do they? said an inner voice. The old anger still smoldered, he noticed.
No, lad, said Grumble’s rumble, but they remember bad boys who slug policemen.
Maybe this time Coy will fight the battle for me, he teased himself. Coy was always calm, but very protective of Sam.
They hurried through the streets until he was on the road up the Allegheny and could breathe deep again. A walk of twenty miles didn’t seem like much, not anymore.
The road didn’t become a two-wheel track where it used to. It had been improved considerably. And it wasn’t the rainy season. So he wasn’t completely surprised when a wagon came along and none other than Arthur Turley offered him a ride to Morgantown.
Turley acted like he’d never been so glad to see anyone as he was thrilled to see Sam on this fine autumn noon. He did throw a nervous glance or two in Coy’s direction, sitting in the wagon bed behind them. “Will you stop to share a bite with us?” Another nervous look at Coy.
“No, I’m eager to see Ma.” That seemed neutral enough.
The smith nodded sagely, pulled at his beard, and allowed as how that made sense. Ellie would be very glad to see her youngest, that was sure.
Then he turned loquacious. Did Sam know about his nieces and nephews? Why, in the time Sam had been gone Gwen had borne a boy, Betsy another boy, and Katherine a girl. Turley delivered the third bit of news off-handedly, as of no particular consequence.
Sam had a bad moment. Carefully, he asked the ages of all three. Katherine’s girl, Hilda, was just eight months old. So she wasn’t Sam’s. Relief fluttered his insides like wind-stirred blades of grass.
“Yes, just eight months,” Turley repeated idly, still acting self-consciously like this information didn’t matter. Sam wondered what tales had been told about him and Katherine after he left. He hoped they’d stung Owen sharply, very sharply.
They came on a place the road had been corduroyed, and Turley turned to a subject that made him more comfortable. “These improvements sure is good. We move goods to town most always by wagon now.” Sam remembered Turley had always been awkward and fearful around boats.
They talked idly, and not entirely honestly, as though they’d been friends, which they weren’t. Sam had always been leery of Turley’s temper. Now he made a point of calling him by his first name, Arthur. Sam was through mistering people in this world. Turley pretended not to notice.
For the next two hours Sam heard more news of the people he’d grown up knowing than he’d ever heard as a youth. Some of them he got a big kick out of hearing about. Most of them, well, he was surprised at how little he felt, one way or another.
To tell the truth, and he had no intention of telling it to Turley, he was absorbed in his surprise at how angry he was, after so long, about Owen’s lies to the authorities.
No, I need to go straight into the lion’s den.
The old house looked better and worse at the same time. Owen had built onto the store in front. In fact, the old parlor and front bedroom were now absorbed into the store and filled with display counters. The store was also spiffed up, doors and windows newly whitewashed, puncheon floors laid, and a handsome wooden sign out front.
MORGAN STORE
A room had been added at the back, a hasty-looking construction job with a low shed roof. Sam was willing to bet that was his mother’s bedroom now.
Then he saw Katherine.
She was picking tomatoes in the garden, holding her small harvest in her pouched apron. A child wearing only a shirt crawled beside her. Hilda, Turley had said.
He walked to them. “Hello, Katherine, hello, Hilda.”
Katherine started. Hilda sat and whimpered.
This time you didn’t hear me come up, thought Sam. He leaned on his father’s rifle, held Coy tight on the leash, and looked at the two of them. He was satisfied to see that Hilda was a dead ringer for her mother, with no sign of Owen in her face.
Katherine’s face turned sour. “Oh. You’ll be wanting to see your mother,” she said with a show of indifference. She’s in her room.” She looked askance at Coy, then turned her back and bent over the tomatoes.
After a moment she realized Sam was still standing there.
Now she pointed with her free hand. “It’s the new room, there.” She pointed to the low place with the shed roof, as he’d known she would. “She has her own entrance on this side.”
Dismissed. He nodded, gave himself a hint of a smile, and moved off.
A rap on the door brought nothing. Another rap and a querulous voice. “Who’s there?”
“Sam.”
He heard a thump and the door flew open.
Ellie Morgan flew into her son’s arms.
They talked in her sitting room, as she called that section of her one-room quarters. Her area was roomy sideways, if cramped for head room, a sort of self-sufficient place where you put a mother-in-law you want to see little of.
Ellie sat on the one sofa and Sam on the floor at her feet, where he was comfortable. Coy curled up next to him, at home.
Ellie Morgan looked old for her sixty years, he thought, and hard used. Today she didn’t look far off, though—she was right there with him. It was a good feeling. “You’ve growed so tall, and so strong,” she said.
She wanted to hear every story of every adventure. Though the telling had gotten old for him, he reheated the tales nicely for his mother. Felt good to tell her. He kept the brag out, and skipped over many dangers, or touched on them only lightly. His walk of ten weeks he didn’t mention at all. He did tell her he’d made a good deal of money, and left her the impression he got it all from hunting beaver.
She o-o-ohed and a-ahed in all the right places, and some others. After maybe an hour’s recitation she kissed him for maybe the twentieth time and told him what a hero he was. It felt good.
They hadn’t spoken a word about Owen, or Katherine or his sisters, or the nephews and nieces.
“Sam, I …”
“Yes, Ma?”
“I did want to ask you one thing.”
He nodded, smiled at her, waited.
She drew a deep breath and came out with it. “Well, you know, when you kids were growing up, we never did live near enough a church ever to go. I mean to a proper service, which I wished and wished we could, but we just never did, and …” She gave Coy a very odd look, like he represented all the wildness she meant to stave off, and couldn’t. “I done my best for you, I did, and what I want to know is, Did you ever go to church? You know, to pay your respects.”
Now Sam drew a deep breath. The desire to lie was big in his heart. “No, I didn’t, Ma.”
She looked so downcast, he wished he had lied. “Well, would you? Would you promise me that one thing? Go to church at least once?”
“There’s a Baptist church in St. Louis.” He knew she’d be horrified at the idea of the Catholic church. “A Reverend Welch preaches there. I’ll go.”
Relief washed her face clean, and almost young.
His heart opened to her. Feelings danced, but he couldn’t help her. He wanted to embrace her, swing her, and then carry her away forever. Before he could think, he stammered out, “Ma, you want to go to Pittsburgh with me? We could rent a little house.” His mind immediately frothed up a bunch of lies—I could work the river, we’d see each other every couple of months—but he couldn’t bring himself to say them.
Ellie’s face grew tender. “That would never be a life for you.” She patted his cheek. “Never.”
He breathed again.
Thump. Then steps. Coming down the hall and this way. The door burst open, and Owen filled it.
“The prodigal son returns,” he said with a twisty smile.
Coy growled.
“Damn, what’s that?”
Coy growled loudly and barked. Sam restrained him with the leash.
“What are you doing here?”
Sam smiled at his brother’s blunt words. Good, I don’t have any lies for you either.
“Settling up.”
“With Ma? All right. You and I don’t have anything to say to each other.”
Thoughts touching on “frigging” and “your wife” scampered out of the darkness of his mind toward consciousness. He had no intention of saying that, ever. From the hints in the air, he didn’t need to.
“It’s you I need to settle up with,” Sam said. Owen’s stance got belligerent. “You told the constables some lies when I left. Said I stole this rifle, which Dad willed to me. Said I stole twenty dollars and a boat.”
Sam handed his mother Coy’s leash and reached into his hunting pouch. Coy burst into a short fit of barking, but Ellie held him fearfully tight.
“I never stole a thing, and I ought to collect twenty for your lies, and the trouble they caused.”
Owen sneered.
“Now, I considered the boat small compensation for my share of Morgan’s store and mill, plus the house and acreage. Looks worth a pretty penny to me. But here’s the dollars I sold the boat for anyway.”
He looked Owen up and down, considering whether he wanted to swing for the balls or the chin.
Owen stepped close enough to take the coins, saying with a sneer, “Satisfied now?”
“Almost,” said Sam, pulling the coins back.
He hit Owen with a humdinger of a punch, a real lollapalooza, the best punch he’d thrown in all his life. Belligerent or not, Owen wasn’t expecting it. Sam’s fist caught him square on the chin. Owen flew backwards, hit the sofa next to his mother, toppled over the back of it, and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
“Now we’re even,” said Sam, to deaf ears.
Ellie gave a little cry and peered over the sofa at her eldest. She handed Sam the leash, ran around, and put her hand on his chest. After a moment she looked up at Sam and laughed a little. “I won’t say he didn’t have it coming.” She chuckled.
“Guess I better go,” Sam said, “before Katherine makes a ruckus, or Owen tries to tell the sheriff I killed him.” He counted coins into one hand, took the leash, and gave his mother the coins. “This is fifty dollars. I don’t want you to be completely dependent on Owen.” After hesitating, she put it in a dress pocket.
“I’ll stop and say hello to Betsy and Gwen on the way back to Pittsburgh. You ever need to get word to me,” he said, “send it care of Governor William Clark in St. Louis. Sooner or later I’ll get it.”
She came to him and wrapped her arms around him tight.
“It’s in you to wander,” she said. She took a couple of deep breaths, then looked up into his eyes. “I probably won’t get to see you again.”
He looked back into hers. “I kn
ow.”
“Stay to supper?”
“Owen won’t be out that long.”
“Where will you go?”
He fingered his gage d’amour. It meant Meadowlark’s affection, and a lot more. “The Rocky Mountains. I’m a mountain man.”
“Your father,” said Ellie Morgan, “would have been so proud of you.”
In the road Sam turned and looked back at the family place. “So long, Dad,” he said. He held up the rifle Lew Morgan had given him. “Thanks. This was my start.”
He looked at the brass plate on the butt, where Celt had been scorched. He turned the stock over and looked at the side that was plain wood. “I’m going to put my sign on this,” he told his father. “A buffalo, engraved right here.” He rubbed the wood with his leash hand, then held up the rifle higher, as a salute.
Then he clucked at Coy, and they were off.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Rendezvous series
Chapter One
SAM PICTURED HIMSELF as a hollow bone, stripped of the marrow that made him alive.
A hollow man notices little. He barely registered his fellow passengers, the captain, and crew. He barely knew the name of the steamboat, or the ports they stopped in, Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville…
He did feel the force of the current, the urge of the river, westward, westward, down the Ohio River. As much as he could experience any emotion, he was glad.
At night he dreamt of emptiness. He slept outside on the bow of the steamer, wrapped in the moon’s misty light and curled up with his pet coyote. Sometimes he dreamt that he was a feather, drifting on the wind alone. He had heard Crow men, his friends, make a piping music with the hollow bone from the wing of an eagle. But Sam’s flight made no music. The air passed through him, sterile, and no song filled his emptiness.
For the past two years he had wandered as a beaver hunter through the Rocky Mountains and the huge plains that stretched from them to the Missouri River. Two weeks ago he had started home, drawn by a force he could not name. After traveling a thousand miles he found a world and a family he no longer knew. He felled his older brother with a fist. He said a hurried goodbye to his mother and his sisters, a last goodbye. In effect, he had tipped his life upside down and poured out his past, his family, his home.