Free Crows & Cards by Joseph Helgerson Page A

do that?" I stalled in the doorway.
    "They've been known to, on occasion, and I won't tolerate 'em around. Hear? No scavengers. The Brotherhood won't allow it. Either you pull your own weight or you're out. That's the rule."
    Prickly as he sounded about it, I promised that I'd heard him just fine, though I was wishing hard that I hadn't. On top of everything else, now I had to worry about being followed by crows, who didn't fool around when it came to having beaks and claws.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    I SLUNK DOWN TO F IRST S TREET to hunt up a general store that carried wire, but what should have been high adventure ended up with considerable droops. For one thing, I couldn't let loose of the way that Chilly's explanation had made Ho-John wag his head no till he looked weary as Moses telling everyone one more time where he'd found those commandments. On top of that, I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for crows? And before long it occurred to me that I might even bump into my Great-Uncle Seth, though neither of us had the foggiest what the other looked like. Still and all, I steered clear of anyone with the slightest hint of a tanner about him, say a buckskin vest or coonskin cap or moccasins 'stead of boots.
    The first store I stepped into wanted a nickel for twenty foot of wire. The second store asked for a dime. Same for the third, so I headed back to number one. The starchy clerk behind the high counter there might have bumped up to a dime too, if he'd known how much Chilly'd given me, but at least I knew better than to go flashing money around before it was time to pay. Back home I would have heard plenty about shelling out such a sum for wire, and I headed toward Goose Nedeau's in spirits low as a swamp full of sorrowing frogs. But pretty soon I heard something that nailed my boots square to the road.
    "Ladies and gentlemen," a voice palavered, squawky as a jay, "friends and neighbors, countrymen and visiting nobility, cardsharps and low-down polecats, I'm here to tell you how to save you and your loved ones, if you tolerate any, from pains too demoralizing to mention. There's vapors and symptoms loose on the land. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's clear sailing just 'cause you and yours breezed through this past winter with nothing but the sniffles. You're not in the sunshine yet. There's ill winds blowing from far gone away. Mountain fever, rheumatic pains, the poxes—they're all but small potatoes if lined up with the troubles headed our way."
    Yes sir, it was Dr. Buffalo Hilly, all right, breathing hope and fear into a crowd of gawkers and especially into me. Why, I'd never before got around to considering half the hazards he was hanging out to dry. All of a sudden slivers and pecking hens paled. Buffalo Hilly's admonitions pushed 'em right out of my head.
    Still in his calvary suit, he'd climbed up top his wagon and was giving his accordion a solid pump every now and then to liven up his spiel. About the only one unimpressed by what he was spewing was the camel hitched up front. Everyone else was looking at one another out of the corners of their eyes, wondering if anyone had heard of some new calamity brewing nearby. I know I was. Here and there wise heads were nodding yes, that they'd been expecting just such troubles any day now, which left me feeling in powerfully good company. And all the while everyone was creeping forward so they wouldn't miss a lick of what Buffalo Hilly had to say. Naturally, I was inching ahead right along with 'em, keeping an eye out for the Indian chief and princess as I went.
    "I've found the one treatment that casts out everything from consumption to tapeworms, female distresses to catarrh," Dr. Buffalo Hilly proclaimed. "It's a brain tonic of the first degree! Disordered stomachs, beware! We're talking herbs of joy! You can call me a yarb and root doctor if you've a mind to. All I can say is that this elixir works wonders and I'm the living proof."
    To get his point across, he