Had he always looked like me? Or had something changed?

There was something to these cards all right, and it spooked me good. I peered close at that card. It was like the Fish Boy was looking straight at me. I thought I saw the card smile.

The old lady coughed. I snapped right out of my daydreaming.

“Like I said,” croaked the old lady, “capital deck of cards you got there.”

Enough of that. I wrapped the cards back up in their cloth and put them in the coffin box and hid them in the knapsack.

I promised myself one day I would come back and help her out if I could, same as she helped me. I promised myself that, even if I was a scoundrel and worldly and all that, the least I could do was help this old lady out. I swore it, right then and there.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“If you’re searching for somebody, you’ll head to the Skinny Yellow Dog, you will,” she said. “Tavern down about that way. If a fella’s anywhere, he’ll be there.”

“Thank you again, ma’am,” I said.

“It’s no trouble in the world,” she said. “Not like any trouble I already seen. I been lost before and nobody helped me. I been all alone and stayed that way.”

I gripped my daddy’s knapsack close to me and turned to go.

“Sonny?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“If I were you, I’d be mighty careful about who I let see those cards of yours,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll guard them with my life.”

“Hope it won’t come to that,” said the old lady.

For a second I thought she was kidding, but the lady didn’t smile any. That didn’t make me much feel good, if you want me to be honest about it.

7

I WALKED DOWN THE DIRTY dusty streets. Men hung on street corners smoking and scowling, and women stood around in groups, laughing meanly.

“You know where the Skinny Yellow Dog is?” I asked an old man with buckteeth.

He just sneezed on me.

I tried a young lady, maybe twenty-two, tall and pretty with a long flowy dress.

“Skinny Yellow Dog?” I said.

“Three blocks thataway,” she said, gesturing with a white-gloved hand, “and take a left.”

“Much obliged,” I said, and gave her a bow.

“What a little gentleman you are!” She giggled at me, which made me feel ridiculous. “What are you looking for a place like that for?”

“I’m trying to find the two low-down varmints who kidnapped my daddy.”

“Gracious lord alive!” she said. “You’re a cute one, you are. And your daddy got kidnapped? My, my.” She leaned in close to me. “Revenge is a tricky business. Perhaps I could interest you in one of these?”

She opened her petticoat to reveal a whole arsenal of knives sewn into the lining. The pretty woman slipped one out, a nasty little thing.

“You can really stick somebody good with this one. But you gotta be quick. Once in the belly”—she poked me a little, not too hard, but enough to give me shivers—“then once slow across the throat.” She drew a cold line soft across my Adam’s apple. “Could be yours, just cost you a bit of silver is all.”