Free No Less Than the Journey by E.V. Thompson

wanting to introduce you and me ever sincewe boarded the boat. She’s really taken with you.’
    ‘Lola is a nice person,’ Anabelita commented. ‘All she ever needed from life was to be given a break. She has it now and I believe she’ll make the most of it … but to get back to your question, yes, my pa was a gambler all his life. He knew every gambling trick in the book – and a few more he had thought up for himself. Yet, in the main, he was honest. He taught me that it isn’t necessary to cheat. By studying the way a man plays his cards for a couple of hands it is possible to learn enough about him to beat him nine hands out of ten. Those odds were good enough for him and they are good enough for me too.’
    ‘You still haven’t told me why you’re gambling on a riverboat instead of teaching school in California,’ Wes pointed out.
    There was a long pause before Anabelita said, ‘When I was sixteen my ma died and it hit pa hard. It took him a couple of years to recover, by which time we had lost just about everything, so he began travelling – and took me with him. When we found a respectable town I would join in a card game or two, but we would never stay long. Folk don’t take to gamblers especially successful ones. Besides, most money was to be made in and around mining towns, where it was “easy come, easy go”. Unfortunately, saloons in mining towns aren’t the sort of places frequented by “nice” young women, especially women who like nothing better than to sit down at a table with a pack of cards, taking money from men like the Senator’s son you took care of for me tonight. The result was that pa eventually took me off to stay with one of his sisters who ran a respectable boarding-house in St Louis, but I didn’t stay there for long.’
    When Anabelita fell silent, Wes prompted, ‘Where’s your pa now?’
    ‘He’s gone to join my mother.’
    From something in her voice, Wes felt he was about to hear something she was not in the habit of talking about very often. He was right.
    ‘Pa died a while ago, shot after an argument in a gambling saloon in a small town in Texas. He didn’t carry a gun.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Wes said sympathetically. ‘That must have hit you very hard.’
    ‘It did, but it was only the beginning of my troubles …’
    Pausing to down a deep swig of her drink, Anabelita continued, ‘My aunt was a pillar of her local church who had never approved of the fact that my mother was a Mexican Catholic. When she found me playing cards for money with some of her boarders she made the men involved move out of the house and find somewhere else to board. By then the money my pa had been giving her for my board and keep had run out, so she told me to leave too. I think that was the happiest day of her life.’
    Wes detected the bitterness in her voice and was almost afraid to put his next question to her because he was not sure he wanted to hear her answer. Nevertheless, he asked, ‘What did you do then?’
    ‘One of the men who stayed at my aunt’s house whenever he was in St Louis was a Mississippi river pilot. He was one of those I would play cards with. He told me about the gambling saloons on boats like this one and said the riverboat companies were always looking for young women to act as croupiers. I approached the steamboat company, told them what he had said and who he was, and they took me on for a trial onboard the Missouri Belle . I’ve been here ever since.’
    ‘Well, you’re obviously a great success,’ Wes said. ‘That can be seen by the number of men who prefer playing at your table to any of the others … but where do you go from here,Anabelita? How do you see your future?’
    ‘None of us can predict the future, Wes,’ Anabelita replied. ‘Right now I am working at something I know and enjoy … at least, I do for most of the time. I also have free board and lodging, earn commission on the money I take at the tables and am able to save more