Yet redemption arrived after sundown when the flies ceased droning and the mosquitoes no longer raised angry welts on what bare skin one had provided for their feast that afternoon. Cool breezes stirred the weeping willows and rustled the leaves of the red elm. The heavy air hung rich with the fragrance of sumac and trumpet-flower vines climbing the dogwood and pecan trees. Fires twinkled through that encampment like a sugar-coated crusting of flickering diamonds against the indigo seep of night.
It was as if Titus could breathe again. After the heat of that long afternoon. After the drama of the rifle match.
With Amy’s supper in his belly they had set off hand in hand in no certain direction once the youngest of the Whistler brood had been put in their blankets, seeking a stroll through camp beneath a half-moon this last night before the revelers would pack up come morning and drift off in all directions for home, to talk across another full year of the Longhunters Fair just past and gossip on what next summer would bring.
As long as this year was in passing, he doubted 1811 would ever arrive.
Days like this one went far to prove how reluctant summer was to lose its grip on the land. Yet day eventually gave way to night—balanced in the sort of evening that could stir a young man’s juices, cause him to think on little else but getting his girl off to himself—to touch all those forbidden places on her young body once more. As exciting and compelling as was his desire for Amy at this moment … his dread that he had already put her with child cooled his fevered ardor.
Once during their walk she had pulled him into the shadows of the overhanging umbrella of long weeping-willow branches and there put her mouth on his, stoking his fire with the sudden, fierce intensity of a blacksmith’s bellows. Amy took his hand and raised it to her breast, squeezing his fingers around and over that soft flesh covered by a thin layer of her summer dress. In that brief and stolen moment she groaned at the back of her throat, exciting him while aroused herself at the same time.
Her lips were moist, wet enough so that her mouth slid across his. It seemed she became hungrier as he grew breathless. Rolling her hips upward, Amy pressed herself into him, more insistent still as she sensed his flesh harden and grow. He had to have her.
Titus whispered, “Got to find us a place … some place—”
But as his mouth left hers, fear drenched him with cold once more.
A child. Marriage. Settling on the land. Rooted to one spot the way his father, and grandpap before him, had sunk their lives into a particular piece of ground. Great-grandpap before them had been a different tale: come here in the beginning when it was a new land, fresh and un-walked, when adventure waited among the wild critters and the Injuns too. Perhaps great-grandpap hadn’t realized what he was doing when he’d brought his family here to raise up a cabin and a passel of young’uns too.
Such was a legacy Titus feared he could not live up to.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered at his ear, her breath hot and moist. “Find us a place. Yes, yes! I promised you—touch me all over again like you done at the swimming hole.”
“You … you’re,” and he wanted desperately to find a way to say it. “Gimme a chance to figure it all out.”
Amy stiffened, drawing herself back to arm’s length. “Figure out what?”
“This being a father.”
“Already you learned that it don’t take nothing much to be a father,” she said, stepping back against him, her head below his chin. “I liked how quick you learned.”
“Scares me.”
“The babe scares you?” she asked, taking up his hand again, this time placing it against the flat of her belly. “This little child what brings us together as husband and wife?”
Extracting his hand from hers, Titus turned slightly, staring out at the flickering fires that pricked the meadow like dancing fireflies, campsites extending from tree line to tree line to tree line. In a gust of laughter carried to them on the breeze, he thought he recognized a voice drifting over from a nearby camp.
Turning to Amy, he said, “Ain’t the child what scares me. What I’m afeared of is living the life my pap cut out for hisself.”
“Don’t you want the same things he has, Titus? A home and family, making a living for us outta the ground?”
He looked away from her face, not able to gaze into those frightened eyes. “I think you always knowed the answer to your own question, Amy. Down inside, you knowed the answer all along.”
“There’s still time to decide, Titus,” she replied, pressing herself back against him. “Time for you to finish your schooling. Then you can figure out what we’re gonna do about a family and where we can put down roots.”
Gripping her shoulders, he stared intently into those doe eyes. “Sounds like you don’t have no idea what I’m trying to tell you. This ain’t about deciding where to put down roots, Amy. This got all to do with not putting down any roots at all.”
She lunged for his arm as he turned away. “Where you going?”
“C’mon,” he replied, taking one of her hands in his. “You come with me.”
As they stabbed their way through the spindly branches of weeping willow, Titus was sure, all the more determined, especially when he heard another burst of laughter. It was his voice.
Drawn to the tall, freedom-loving hunter every bit as much as he was drawn to the soft flesh of Amy Whistler. The sound of his laughter and the merry talk drew Titus on, tugging on her hand to keep up.
“Yo, ho!” Levi Gamble called out, turning as he spotted them come into the light. “Look here who approaches camp!”
He watched Gamble stand from the stump where he and three others were calling out their bets in playing quadrille, a most popular game played between four persons with the forty cards left in a deck after the tens, nines, and eights had been discarded. At that moment, backlit in firelight, the woodsman seemed even taller than he had that afternoon.
Titus shuffled nervously, explained his interruption. “We was out taking ourselves a walk and I heard your voice.”
“C’mon. C’mon—you’re among friends here, Titus Bass. Sit yourselves and join us.” He turned to the others at the fire as he swept up the greasy cards into his hands. “Titus is the lad nearly whupped me in the shooting match today. A likely hunter he’ll make one day soon.”
“Titus an’ me getting married,” Amy blurted to those gathered in that ring of firelight. “Settlin’ in to start our family.”
Each of them stared at the young couple for a heavy moment. And as quickly as the young woman had shattered the mood, Levi Gamble jumped in to work his magic.
“Then congratulations are in order!” he cheered. “You there—pass over that jug of cherry flip and we’ll send her round the circle for this young couple.”
They did, and Titus took him a taste of the sweet brandy after he and Amy settled atop a large tree trunk rolled close to the fire. At times his father cooked up some corn mash or made a strong potato beer, but nothing that had the sweet decadence of that brandy. He took a second taste upon his tongue as the first warmed his belly and handed it past Amy to Levi.
“The young lady here gave her husband-to-be a kiss when we all thought Titus was the winner of the shooting match,” Levi explained to the circle of those at the fire. Then he brought his hand to his chest expressively to continue, “But she never give me a kiss when we discovered I beat the lad by a hair.”
“Maybe next year, young Titus Bass,” a moon-faced man across the flames called out. “Levi Gamble here tells us he won’t be here to steal first prize from you.”
“Why not next year?” Titus asked.
Gamble’s eyes took on a glaze weighed both in time and distance. “I’ll be far, far from the Ohio country come this time next year.” Of a sudden he turned on Amy. “So—sweet lady. What say you to giving Levi Gamble a winner’s kiss?”
Her eyes dropped. “I cannot.”
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“I’m spoke for, and it
would not be the thing to do when a girl’s spoke for.”
“Titus?” Gamble asked, raising his head to look at the youth. “What say you about my kiss? Will you let your sweet Amy put a kiss here, on the cheek of the winner who whupped you in our gallant match this day?”
“Sure,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation.
“Now, sweet Amy—come give me my prize.” Gamble turned his face to the side and leaned toward her. “I’m ready when you are.”
The girl glanced once at Titus, then turned to Levi and leaned his way with her lips puckered. Just as she drew close, Gamble suddenly turned and planted his mouth on hers with a resounding smack. Amy leaped back so far she collided with Titus, and they both spilled over the tree trunk.
Gamble rose to his feet and held out his hands to them. “I’ve never done that before, Amy. Honest. To kiss a beautiful young woman and knock her off her feet that way—and you was even sitting down when I did it!”
The group at the fire roared anew with laughter as Titus and Amy settled once more. Gamble bowed to them.
“If I have caused you trouble in any way with my silly prank, I beg your forgiveness. It’s only my happiness to be off to the western waters, with money in my purse enough to see me on my way.”
“You said you’d be far away from here come this time next year,” Titus replied, seizing hold of Gamble’s wrist with worry. Now he was confused—wanting to know more about this Boone County neighbor. “You’re not staying on here?”
“No, I move on tomorrow.”
“You leave family behind?”
One of the men at the fire explained, “Levi’s from Pennsylvania.”
“P-pennsylvania?” Titus asked. “What brings you here to our country?”
“Just the road, Titus,” Gamble explained. “Going west to see the far mountains and the rivers so mighty they say a man can’t dare cross ’em come spring when the snow on those high places is melting.”
“W-where is it you come from?”
“I hail from western Pennsylvania. Family from a little town called Emsworth on the Ohio, just downriver from Pittsburgh. I was following the river west when I happed onto a shopkeeper in Cincinnati what knew of this fair taking place across the Ohio. Every fair I know of has a shooting match—a likely place for me to win some money to fatten my traveling purse.”
“Money to go west,” Titus repeated, his eyes going to stare at the fire as Amy took his hand in the two of hers.
“If I make good time, I should be well downriver come the first hard snow, and by then I can find me somewhere to winter up and wait out the spring if’n I have to. Work as I need to. Always work and wages along the river, I say. And if’n I ain’t there afore spring, then I can go on down to the Mississippi, north from there.”
“Where?” Titus asked. “Where is it you’re bound for?”
“St. Louie.”
A large man leaned forward, his elbows on knees as he asked, “What do you know of this St. Louie?”
“I’ve heard it’s a lively place ever since Tom Jefferson’s expedition come back from the western ocean with word of beaver and other fine furs to be got from those western lands.”
“What of the Injuns?” a woman asked, speaking for the first time as she came into the firelight, wiping her hands on a long apron.
“Yes,” a man replied. “There must be Injuns there the likes have never see’d a white man.”
“And perhaps they’re better for that,” Gamble said, “what with the way the English stirred up these Injuns agin us during the war for our freedom, as I hear it.”
“They did, that’s for sure!” one of the men roared.
“But those Injuns out there,” Levi continued, “I hear they come walk the streets of St. Louie—looking to talk with the redheaded chief who went west to find them.”
“Who’s that redheaded chief?” Titus asked.
“William Clark,” Gamble replied. “Aye, they come to St. Louie dressed in all their feathers and shells, paint and hides. From what we heard last winter back to Pittsburgh, the Injuns up the Missouri River been quite peaceable ’bout traders coming among ’em.”
“That what you’re fixing to do out west, Levi?” Titus inquired. “Go into the trade with them Injuns?”
He wagged his head. “No. I’m fixing to join up with a man called Manuel Lisa. He’s been working the Injun trade on the upriver for three years now.”
“Sound of his name,” a man commented, “he must be one of them Frenchies.”
“Spanish, he told me,” Levi answered.
In a flush of astonishment Titus asked, “You … you met him?”
Gamble nodded. “He come through Pittsburgh late winter. Town was all abuzz with it. He’d been up to Vincennes looking to supply a whole new kind of outfit. Couldn’t get what he needed up there, so he had to keep on east. Come to Pittsburgh, and that’s how I happed onto talking with him.”
The moon-faced man asked, “You said a whole new kind of outfit. What’s new about it?”
“That’s what got my attention, it did,” Levi answered. “Manuel Lisa was the first to go farther upriver than any of them Frenchies out of St. Louis, but ever before he’d allays just traded the Injuns for the furs. Took ’em blankets and powder and coffee and bells, that such.”
“What’s he figure to do now that’s so different?” the big farmer asked.
“Lisa told me that last year he was the first to take some white men upriver—not to trade with the Injuns—but to trap for themselves and sell their beaver back to him.”
“Injuns take to that sort of thing?” one of them asked. “Taking the fur out of their country like that?”
“Yeah,” agreed another of the farmers. “That Spaniard better be careful, or he’ll find his hair gone.”
“Yup—we ought’n just leave that country for the Injuns. We got plenty enough this side of the river for ourselves. Let ’em have whatever’s left over yonder.”
Gamble said, “I aim to find out just how much country is left over yonder.”
Titus watched the tall man’s eyes, his entire countenance—a bit relieved to consider that Levi Gamble just might have the same fear of taking root in one place that Titus Bass himself suffered. Ever since their afternoon match he had hoped Gamble was a Boone County man, someone Titus could look up from time to time, someone he could confide in and take solace with, kindred spirits they.
But now he had learned Levi wasn’t from Kentucky at all. And worse yet, the hunter was merely passing through, taking first place in Titus’s shooting match only to pay his way west, there to push on for a far country filled with beaver and Injuns and all the adventure a man could want for himself.
“And now,” Gamble continued, patting the skin pouch that hung at his belt with a dull clatter of coin, “I am flush enough to pay for food, lodging, and what fare my journey might need of me.”
“I still say it should have been Titus’s money,” Amy grumbled.
Gamble grinned. “Second place to Levi Gamble is nothing he can be ashamed of.”
“It’s a lot of money he should have won,” Amy added. “It would’ve give us a good start on our life raising young’uns and settling down.”
Gamble studied Titus a moment before he said, “Aye, I will admit that was a goodly sum of money I won me for first prize. But money is not the object. Leastways not for me. Look here,” and he tore the pouch from his belt, yanking at the drawstring to open it up. From the pouch he poured a few coins into his palm with a clink.
“You can go far with that, Levi Gamble,” the moonfaced man commented.
Ignoring the farmer, Gamble leaned closer to Amy and Titus. “Look there. It’s hard. It’s solid.” He bit on one of the coins. “Meaning it’s only a thing. Nothing magic about it. Don’t make this money I won more than it is, young people. You’ll be doing yourselves a great shame if you ever make money more than it really is.”
The big farmer asked, “What is it, then, i
f not a wondrous thing to have?”
“Ah, money can be a wondrous thing only when it lets you reach for what you want most. Money ain’t nothing in and of itself, you see. Only importance comes from how it keeps you going after your dream.”
“So money’s important, after all,” Titus concluded with a nod of his head.
“No,” Levi said quickly. “The only thing important is your dream.”
“So what’s yours, Levi Gamble?” asked one of those at the fire.
He looked up at the canopy of stars. “Those faraway rivers where the beaver pelts are so big they say a man can sleep under one of a winter’s night.”
“A blanket beaver?”
Gamble nodded to the farmer. “Aye. To lay eyes for myself on that land Manuel Lisa spoke of in the quiet tones a man uses when he’s speaking of something religious.”
“This Lisa claim he found him God out there?” snorted one of the older men at the fire, who spoke up for the first time.
With a grin Levi replied, “Perhaps he has, the way he talked. The way he told me come west to St. Louie and he’d put me to work that next season when his boats pushed upriver.”
Titus leaned forward anxiously. “You’ll go?”
“Aye—I will at that.”
“What’s those places you’re going?” Titus asked dreamily.
Gamble turned sideways on his stump to look at the youth. “Magic names, young Mr. Bass. Rivers called the Yallerstone. Another one Lisa built a post on called the Bighorn. Said there’s wild sheep out there in the hills, and the males get horns so long, they wrap right back around on themselves in a curl.”
“Pure poppycock!” someone spouted, and others guffawed.
Levi held up a hand. “Lisa and them as was with him swore by it when I told ’em I doubted all they told me, the size of animals and such. Claim everything’s much, much bigger out there in that big, big country.”
“Like what?” Titus asked.
“Take any critter. The deer, sure. But they got one Lisa called a elk. Big as a milk cow, with a rack o’ horns on his head would cover a dining table at a country inn.”
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