Dance on the Wind (65 page)

As spitting mad as he was at first, it didn’t take long at all before he found himself laughing until he cried, there and then in that shanty leaking with a cold early-spring drizzle, thinking how his New Orleans pay was on its way back down the Ohio and Mississippi right about then, traveling full circle without him.

That very day Titus determined to up and set out downriver himself.

Just shy of the mouth of the Ohio he decided he’d make camp and wait to fetch himself a ride to the far shore of the chocolate-hued Mississippi. After three days of signaling to every passing keelboat and broadhorn and even the ungainly log rafts, a flatboat finally pulled over to tie up at the bank nearby late one afternoon. In return for bringing in a couple of deer for the hungry crew’s supper, Titus was awarded a trip to the west shore of the old muddy river at dawn the next day.

Waving in farewell, he watched that boat’s crew urge their broadhorn into the main channel. On south lay the mouth of the Arkansas and the White and all the rest of those rivers he had floated past when he was younger. Now he stood there on the far side of the Mississippi at twenty, turning expectantly to face the north that spring of 1814. Upriver. New country he had never laid eyes on. Nothing else really concerned him now but moving north. His eager feet set themselves in motion.

St. Louis lay somewhere beyond the horizon. How far, he had no idea. At the time it really had mattered little when he would reach that mythical place. For the time being, he exalted in the journey itself. He was young, feeling the fiery surge of every heartbeat as the wide breadth of his life seemed to stretch out before him. For now, time as measured in days, months, or years was of little concern for him.

He was on his way to see for himself the city that had lured Levi Gamble out of the eastern forests … when one evening Titus heard nearby the lowing of cows, about the time he was ready to roll himself up in his blankets that twilight. How his mind whirled with memories of home and barns, turned earth and the heady aromas of a cabin kitchen. No, sir—those surely weren’t wild critters
he heard. Why, one of them even wore a bell by the gentle clang of it.

Titus had followed the lowing to its source, and near dark he’d found the shed attached to a corral and paddock. Beyond stood a cabin where a telltale thread of smoke rose from the stone chimney. In the lengthening shadows Bass decided he didn’t feel all that much like company. Quite the contrary, the possibility of warmth in that cattle shed beckoned him even stronger. After a solid night’s rest, he figured to be up and on his way early enough, scaring up something for breakfast somewhere down the trail.

Besides, this settler might even have him a chicken or two roosting in that shed. And chickens just might mean eggs. Even pullets, those young chickens less than a year old, would mean eggs for a settler. Titus sorely missed his eggs. In these years since fleeing Rabbit Hash, he hadn’t eaten anywhere near as many as he used to eat back in Boone County. Yes, indeed. It had all sounded like a fine, fine idea to lay out his blankets in that shed for the night, then purloin himself some eggs come dawn and cook them in his cup over a breakfast fire once he had put a few miles between himself and the settler’s place later that morning.

Trouble was, Titus was about to learn that Able Guthrie was an early riser.

Which meant that he awoke not to the gentle cluck of a chicken or two as they went about laying his breakfast. No, Bass awoke instead to someone tapping the bottom of his bare foot, just barely opening his eyes enough to squint up at the muzzle of that big fowler the settler had pointed down at his privates.

“You wanna keep all your parts in working order, I’ll pray you tell me what you’re doing here in my shed.”

While there had been guns pointed at his head and his heart, never had Titus Bass had one aimed at that most tender piece of his anatomy. A downright pleasurable piece it had proved itself to be too.

“Ju-ju-ju—”

“Spit it out, son.”

“J-just sleeping.”

The settler poked the muzzle of that gun firmly against Titus’s crotch. “Where you from?”

“Nowhere … n-now.”

“Don’t fun me!”

“Ain’t gonna try funnin’ you a bit.”

“Best you tell me where you hail from.”

“Owens … Owensboro.”

“On the Ohio?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What you doing here in this country?”

“Set on seeing St. Louie.”

“So you sleep good?” the settler asked him, something easing around his eyes.

“I’m beginning to figure I slept too damned good,” Titus grumbled, looking cross-eyed down at that rifle stuffed into his crotch.

“Don’t pay to be sneaking into a man’s cow shed and sleeping the night away less’n you can get up afore that man stumbles onto you, does it?”

“No, sir,” he replied as polite as he could, watching something slowly crossing the man’s face that convinced Titus he might soon be breathing a bit easier.

“Way I figure it,” the settler said as he leaned back, dragging that big muzzle away from Bass’s most responsive part, pointing at the floor as he continued, “you owe me a little of your time and muscle.”

“T-time … and muscle?”

The farmer quickly gazed around him at the small shed and sighed. “This ain’t gonna do me much longer, son. Already I’ve gone an’ laid the corner posts for a new barn. Staked and stringed everything else. I figure you can help me today afore you push on tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You’re likely to be real tired after I work you hard as I’m gonna today. You’ll wanna sleep another night right there in that hay.”

Bass had to grin with relief. And that had made the settler smile, finally raising his fowler away from its delicate target.

“My name’s Able Guthrie.”

He held his hand up to the man. “Titus Bass.”

“You come down from Owensboro of recent, yes—I remember,” Guthrie replied. “Well, c’mon, young Mr. Titus Bass. The woman’s waiting breakfast for us.”

“B-breakfast?”

“Damn right, er—pardon me,” Guthrie apologized sheepishly. “I don’t but rarely curse. The woman don’t like it—not a hoot—and I promised the Good Lord I wouldn’t do no cursing around my girl.”

Bass threw back the blankets and stood, dusting hay from his clothes. “Girl? Your family?”

“Only the one. Marissa. After her my woman couldn’t have no others. Had hoped for at least one boy to have my name. Carry on the family, like any man would hope for.” He flashed a courageous smile, his eyes crinkling with such brave, good humor in that way Titus would come to appreciate in those months still ahead of them. “But I got me a fine, fine girl. A strong woman she’ll be real soon. Gonna raise her mama and me some handsome grandbabies. You come now and have your breakfast afore we start the day.”

“Don’t believe it,” and he wagged his head. “You’re gonna feed me.”

“Sure as hell am…. Dear Lord, there I go again!” He whispered this last, his eyes flicking at the cabin, where the door opened and a full-framed woman waved him in from the cow shed. “Sure I’m gonna feed you. I can’t expect a man to work his all for me without first putting some fodder down into his belly.”

They had crossed the muddy yard, dodging greasy rain puddles and fresh cow dab close by the paddock to reach the cabin, where they climbed onto the low porch and pushed through the open doorway that faced south like most settlers’ places erected foursquare with the world. It made perfect sense for the main entrance to look out on the southern side, which stayed sunny in the winter, cool in the summer, where the hard-driving rains and sleet and snows that mostly came out of the north and west of those hard months of the year could not beat in upon those taking shelter there.

Guthrie led him into the main room, thick with the heady perfume he had long ago forgotten. Like a warm
flood the seasoned memories washed over him. Titus drank in the aromas of sizzling sausage, fragrant biscuits just scraped free from the Dutch oven, pungent smoked bacon piled high on a big platter at the center of the table where Guthrie went to settle. The seductive allure of boiled coffee made his mouth water almost as much as the sight of that pitcher of creamy milk and an apple-tree knot that served as a bowl for freshly churned butter just waiting to be lathered on those biscuits.

Looking around the room in amazement, Bass took in the hutch table covered with wooden bowls and pewter trenchers and utensils, several three-legged stools and a handful of half-log benches, on the shelves near the fireplace a hominy block, deerskins laid out for rugs across the uneven floor, brass tinder boxes with their dull sheen near the hearth, lug poles for the tea kettles and cast-iron cookware handy by the mantel, pepper grinders squatting on the table before him, a well-used cherry seeder atop a small table stuffed back in the corner, joined there by a coffee mill and a butter paddle, yellowed by use and age, lying among it all.

“This here’s the woman, my missus,” the settler said, steering Titus’s attention away from the table to the woman rising from the fireplace with the bail of her Dutch oven at the end of her arm, still scraping loose the pull-apart biscuits that had baked themselves together in a mounded loaf beneath a golden-brown hue. “Lottie, the young fella’s name is Titus Bass.”

“Ma’am,” Titus replied, glancing once at the woman’s flushed face as she dragged the entire biscuit loaf onto a platter with her wooden spatula. In wet-mouthed wonder he went back to gaping at that table. He hadn’t eaten like this in … in longer than he could remember. A real sit-down family meal, complete with all the fixings he could ever hope to have for breakfast.

“How would you like your eggs?”

He turned dumbly at the new voice, startled to discover the other female at the fireplace had turned to him, a great iron spatula in one hand, a coarse linen towel in the other, hand and towel both wrapped around the handle of a large cast-iron skillet. She squatted beside it so she could
swing the trivet it sat upon over the flames in the fireplace made of stones daubed with a proper plaster of lime and gypsum, the chimney of fine-grained sandstone.

“Eggs?” Titus answered her with his voice rising, stunned by the surprising beauty of the girl, finding her cheeks flushed by the heat at the fire, sensing a thrill at the way her chestnut hair spilled down each side of her neck in curls she kept pushing out of her way … then suddenly he felt guilty as a pig snatcher, remembering last night how he had planned on gathering up a few of those very same eggs for himself, then stealing off into the dawn before anyone in the cabin was the wiser.

“Maybe you don’t like eggs?” she asked him.

Able Guthrie nudged into the discussion, saying, “Mayhaps he don’t, Marissa.”

“Eggs?” Bass repeated, and swallowed hard again, locked into looking at her deep, round eyes. So much like a doe’s. Heavy-lidded, long-lashed, and damned near as big around as that skillet she sat beside. “I I-like eggs a whole lot. Yes, ma’am. I mean miss. Sorry. Yes. Eggs. I’ll take me some.”

“How many?”

“A couple maybe.”

Atop his crude cane chair Guthrie snorted, turning to his daughter and waving a hand in her direction as he said, “Just g’won and fix him a half dozen for starters, daughter. I’m planning on having you women stuff this here young fella so I won’t feel the least bit guilty ’bout working the bedevil out’n him till dinnertime.”

Titus grew wide-eyed, asking, “Dinner too?”

“I figure by midday I’ll work your breakfast off you,” Able explained, planting his elbows on the rough table. “So these two here gonna fill you back up come dinnertime. Then later on—by supper—it’ll be getting dark, so it’s only fair I feed you again at the end of the day. So tell me: that sound like fair pay for using your muscle and ’flowing you a place to sleep out to my cow shed?”

“I’m making syllabub for dessert this evenin’,” the girl at the fireplace said.

He looked from Able Guthrie to the girl. “S-sylla …”

“Syllabub,” Lottie instructed, coming to his shoulder. “It’s a fine and heady drink we make by mixing fresh cream with our own apple cider and whipping it up to a fine froth.”

It made his mouth water just thinking about how sweet it might rest upon his tongue. The girl at the fireplace smiled softly as she turned back to her chore of cracking eggs over the skillet. For the moment he wasn’t sure if it was the flush of the fire’s heat, or the crimson of her own embarrassment that had brought such a lovely blush to Marissa Guthrie’s face.

“Yes, sir,” Titus eventually said, turning on his stool to look at the settler. “That’ll do … I mean them meals—they’ll do just fine for my pay, Mr. Guthrie.”

“Then sit yourself and dig in,” the woman said, moving past the table in a swirl, a tangy cloud of sourdough clinging to her. “I’m Lottie—seeing how Able forgot to introduce us proper. You eat, and make yourself to home, son. We don’t get much folk out here. Not much folk at all.”

“What folks there is seem to be on the hurry north to St. Lou,” Guthrie explained as he speared some fat sausages onto his pewter fork and freed them into his shallow wooden bowl. “While other folks is scampering south—getting as far away from that place as a person can get.”

Lottie Guthrie turned to Titus, asking, “You want to see St. Louis yourself?”

“Yes’m. Figured I would see it for some time now.”

“Don’t be in such a rush, young Mr. Bass,” Able Guthrie warned. “There’s far more to life than the push and shove of folks when they get all crowded together, more to living than the hurly-burly of wine and song and the great trouble all that can bring a man.”

“Able Guthrie! Leave this young’un alone,” Lottie snapped as Marissa came to the table with the skillet still sizzling with more than a dozen eggs popping in hot grease. She settled on a bench opposite Bass.

“Just giving Titus his due, as I would warn and watch over my own son, missus.”

“Just like you keep me from ever knowing anything about St. Lou,” Marissa suddenly spoke up.

“Many are the times I think I done the wrong thing to come across the river to set down new roots here—just after the earth shook more’n two year back,” the settler grumped. “The farther away from that sin hole, the better, you ask me.”