Dance on the Wind (74 page)

There in that warm corner of Troost’s livery beside Hysham’s forge, Titus became a part of the process—no more than a tool like the other tools he used—the huge bellows, a bench vise, a half-dozen hammers, a sledge, a shoeing hammer, a horseshoe punch, a handful of tongs, two hand vises, at least seven files and a pair of rasps, a wedge and cold chisel, along with an ax-eye punch. The whole of it could be carried by one pack animal if need be, with weight to spare … yet with such an outfit and an anvil—a blacksmith could forge miracles, if not repair dreams.

The frontier blacksmith was truly an important member of any community. Especially for the frontier rifle makers.

Many times over the years Hysham had given Titus a perfectly round steel rod of a certain size and a long rectangular piece of iron he was to shape, welding it inch by inch around the long rod, withdrawing the rod after each weld to cool it, reheating the iron while he did so, making weld by weld until he had his octagonal rifle barrel shaped around that rod.

A craftsman like Troost even showed Titus how to fashion his own rifling tool completely out of wood, save for the small cutting edge of fire-hardened steel. With this Titus would be given the next task of inserting the tool with its small cutting button, twisting and drawing, twisting and drawing, removing tiny curls of the barrel, making lands and grooves of a particular caliber’s twist as specified by the growing rifle trade in the city.

“You need a hot fire, Titus,” Troost had explained early on. “Don’t know what all you’ve learned so far—so you pay heed what I got to teach you. Man can use seasoned hickory, or even oak bark—but I prefer to use my own charcoal. Made right out there in my own kiln.”

Charcoal meant cutting and splitting wood. Across the years of sweating summer and winter, Titus came to
appreciate a good, sharp, narrow—or felling—ax. With its handle or helve at two feet six inches in length, carved of shell-bark hickory and set into a head weighing no more than four and a half pounds, it was a tool no man on the frontier could do without. Many times had Titus spent a portion of a day selecting a proper piece of seasoned hickory, whittling it into rough shape for an ax handle, then smoothing it with a piece of broken glass, eventually to wedge it into the ax eye so that it would stay despite hard use.

Pity that men did not treat their axes more tenderly, Titus discovered, making sure to warm them on frosty mornings to lessen the danger of breakage to that honed edge. And woe to the boy who allowed his father’s ax to bounce from wood to rocky ground, or the wife who used her husband’s ax to cut the bone from a gammon of bacon.

But without just such flaws in human nature, Hysham Troost preached, “There simply wouldn’t be enough work for a good blacksmith hereabouts.”

Long, long after Titus heard the last ring of the old man’s hammer on anvil fade from the sodden, cold air of the livery, he felt himself nudged, awakened rudely.

“Shit—you damn well don’t look like you’re in no shape to do no work for a man.”

At the strange voice he tried to turn his face, tried easing open his puffy, crusted eyelids. Clearly this wasn’t Troost kneeling nearby. A different voice. A different smell.

“Don’t try to talk right now,” the stranger continued. “I punched your fire up there in that leetle stove ye got yourself thar’. The warm sure does take the bite off this’r night.”

Bass listened as the man shuffled about in the hay nearby like a dog making its bed, then settled back with a grunt and a sigh. The stranger was eating something, his lips smacking as he continued talking.

“Come in hyar lookin’ fer a blacksmith. Ye be the blacksmith? Shit-fire. I be needin’ a blacksmith in the wust way. Traps is what I got need of. Strong-assed traps, mind you. Them criks and rivers in that thar’ kentry take ’em a
toll of meanness on a man’s beaver traps. This’r nigger cain’t be takin’ off fer the far lonesome ’thout a smithy like you fixin’ on ’em.”

This was a … a Negra!

But … the man didn’t talk like no Negra Titus had ever met, sure as hell sounded nothing like the one he had known the best—Hezekiah Christmas. But, Lord and behold! The man had just called himself a nigger.

Painfully he cracked one eye open, his heart thumping with a generous mix of both fear and anticipation. In the dull glow of that squat-bellied toad of an iron stove Titus made out the dim, shadowy figure hunched in the corner of his tiny cell, chewing at what meat remained on a huge bone. Slowly he raked his sore eyes over the man, his nose suddenly pricked with the fragrance of what the man ate.

No, what Titus smelled could not be that bone the stranger tossed aside carelessly before wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. It had to be the clothing he wore.

In shadows that rose and fell down the man’s arms and legs long fringes danced in the muted rose of the fire’s dim light. Strips of dull color laced their patterns down each sleeve, over each shoulder, a round patch emblazoned at the center of the man’s chest, partially covered by a long, unkempt beard he wiped his greasy hands upon, then stroked aside. From somewhere beneath the tangle of his chin whiskers he produced a small clay pipe.

Straining his eyes through the murky, smoky firelight kicked out by that small, cast-iron stove, Bass tried to make out the man’s features. Sure as hell didn’t look like no Negra. Not like no Negra Titus Bass had ever laid eyes on—drunk or sober. No broad nose there … but it was damned hard to tell for sure in this light, what with all that matted beard.

As the stranger loaded the pipe from a pouch at his side, Titus worked to tear his eyes open wider, the better to make out the man’s hoary head—a mass of hair sprouting every which way in wild and greasy sprigs once he yanked off his low-crowned, wide-brimmed beaver-felt hat and carefully laid that wind-battered, rain-soaked old veteran aside. Evidently a prized possession, Bass made note.

Agonizingly Titus rolled onto an elbow about the time he cracked the second eye fully open and rocked himself up.

“Ah—thar’s a leetle life left to ye, is thar now?” The stranger leaned forward, his face coming into the stove’s glow as he stuffed a long piece of straw through the grate on the stove’s door.

Bass nearly gasped, low and rumbling, collapsing from his elbow again. “You … you’re a white man.”

“What?” the man asked, then threw his head back and roared in great peals of laughter, rocking back into the smoky confines of the shadows skulking in that corner of Bass’s little cell. “Me, a white man? Sure as sun, coon—I be a white man in sartin comp’ny, mister. But in t’other comp’ny, like these decent, God-fearin’ folks hereabouts, I s’pose I be took for as Injun as Injuns come.”

“I … thought … no. But you … said you was—”

“Spit out your piece—I said me what?”

“Call’t yourself a Negra.”

The stranger’s brow knitted up a moment, quizzically working that over in his head; then he suddenly rocked forward, roaring in laughter again. “I’ll be go to hell right hyar an’ let the devil hisself chaw on my bones. If’n that don’t take the circle! I call’t myself a
nigger,
mister.”

“That’s what I said—just what you called yourself.”

Leaning forward even more, the man came closer to Titus. Now Bass could see that one big upper tooth protruded outward like a hound’s unruly fang. Likely from force of habit come of many years living with his affliction, the stranger constantly worked his upper lip beneath that shaggy and unkempt mustache, sliding the lip this way, then that, doing his very best to hide that large yellowed fang that poked its way out into broad daylight despite some of the stranger’s best efforts.

Around it the man rasped his explanation. “An’ a feller what calls hisself a
nigger
ain’t in no way calling hisself a Negra. A Negra got him black skin, black as charcoal in that forge o’ your’n. An’ a nigger … well, now.” He scratched at the side of his beard, then pushed some of his long hair back over his shoulder, shrugging as if his tilt
on things made all the world of sense to him. “Niggers come in all colors. No more’n that. Yest a word fellers I know come to use, s’ali.”

Bass licked his dry lips, then croaked, “W-where in God’s earth you come from?”

“God’s earth, eh? That’s purty good, mister. Fer that’s yest whar’ I come from.” He sighed. “Yessir. I yest come hyar from God’s earth. Say, ye look thirsty thar’. Bet ye could do with some water?”

Titus watched him drag the red cedar piggin close and pull the dipper from it.

“Hyar. Drink up,” the man commanded.

He did so, greedily too: savoring the cool, sweet taste and smooth texture of the water sliding like silk across his parched membranes.

“That ought’n limber up that talkin’ hole of yer’n,” the stranger declared. “My Lordee—what ye gone and done to yerself? All cut up the way ye are?”

“A fight over to a tavern last night,” Bass replied, his stomach suddenly feeling very empty with the slosh of water he had just poured into it. Maybe his stomach rolled only from the smell of the stranger’s food—the mere thought of eating made his belly curl up in protest.

“I see’d wust myself, mister. Blackfeet mostly. Though them Rees do a fairsome job on a nigger. When their kind get done workin’ over a man—he ain’t left near as purty as you. An’ it ain’t be all that long ago I see’d fellers wus’n yerself.” He clucked, sucked his lips sideways to hide that snaggletooth, and wagged his head. “Leastwise, as hangdown as ye might feel, looks to be yer movin’ and talkin’.”

“Don’t mean I ain’t half near death,” Titus grumbled with self-pity, his mind of a sudden feverish on something to eat after his fast of nearly twenty-four hours, despite how his stomach might protest. Then he remembered the food Troost said he’d brought in. Rocking unsteadily onto that one elbow, he craned his neck, searching for the plate in the shadows of his smoky quarters.

“Don’t ye take the circle now!” the stranger exclaimed suddenly, as if it had taken more than a moment
for Bass’s words to sink in. “Why, if this coon ain’t got him a sense of humor.”

“You damn well got me wrong—I ain’t much at funnin’,” Titus admitted, growing impatient with his search. Troost had said he’d set that plate nearby, towel and all. “Never have been much at funnin’. Say, you see’d a plate around here? Had it a towel laid over keep the bugs out?”

“Towel, an’ a plate? Like this’un hyar?” the man replied, bald-faced and innocent as could be—producing the large pewter platter, complete with a striped towel covering it all.

“Likely that’s the one.” Bass took it from the man, immediately sensing just how light the whole affair was. Collapsing to his side, he flung off the towel, finding the plate empty. “What … the hell?” he screeched two octaves too high.

“Was them yer victuals?” the stranger asked. “Pardon the bejesus out of me. When I come on in here while’st back, I nudged ye. Spoke at ye too. But nary a move. Figgered ye wasn’t dead, way ye was breathin’—but had to be laid out black as night till the peep o’ day. Feller in that condition surely didn’t want him no victuals, so hungry as I was—I weren’t about to leave ’em go to waste.”

“You ate my god … goddamned supper?” Titus shrieked. The effort hurt, his sudden flare of hot anger shooting through every bruised scrap of tissue in his body as he rocked off his elbow, the plate clattering beside him.

“I’ll go fetch ye some victuals on my own, straightaway,” the stranger declared, starting to rise. “Ain’t used to St. Louie City, but I’ll likely find something in this’r town, even this time of night.”

“What time you figure it to be?” Bass asked weakly, his brain hammering with great slashes of pain once more as he closed his eyes, laid an arm over them as he sought a soft place for the back of his head.

“Hell if I know what time to make it out to be ’cept nighttime, mister.” He pointed off generally toward the rafters overhead. “From looks of the moon out there ’mongst all them clouds when I come in, had to be some past midnight.”

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus growled nearly under
his breath. “You come in hereto rob a sick man of his food this time of night? Cain’t you just leave a sick man to get his sleep?”

“Look who’s gone an’ got hisself techy,” he snarled back. “Mayhaps I best find me ’nother blacksmith do my work for me tomorry an’ ye can yest ferget me rootin’ ye out some victuals
this time of night!”

Titus wasn’t doing a damn bit of good against the steam-piston throbbing that rocked his head. As quietly as he could, he said, “Don’t … please don’t go nowhere. Troost’d have my balls if I run off any business, mister.”

“Troost?”

“My boss,” Titus replied. “Man what owns this place.”

“That mean … yer saying ye ain’t the blacksmith?”

“I am. But I just work here.”

“Ye any good?”

“You damn bet I am,” he growled back, angry at the man. The thought of it: to be awakened by a stranger who had just eaten his food in the middle of the night, then turned around and insulted him too.

“So tell me,” the man said. “Ye gonna be worth a lick to work on my traps tomorry?”

“I doubt it.”

“Then I’ll wait,” the stranger said, smacking his lip around that fang the color of pin acorns. “’Sides. It’ll gimme time to have my spree. Come down hyar to St. Louie to have me my spree. So I got me time till ye heal yerself up.”

Titus grumbled, “That’s mighty kind of you.”

“Ye still hungry? Said ye was hungry. I’ll go fetch ye some victuals.”

“Least you could do so I can consider us even,” Bass replied, wagging his hammering head slightly.

The stranger slowly got to his feet and began pulling on a long blanket coat, well-greased and dirtied, blackened by the smoke of many fires. “Yer sure as sun a techy sort, ain’t ye?”

“Ain’t you touchy if’n some feller come in to eat your food and wake you up from a dead sleep?”

He clucked a tongue against that big front tooth, then
said with a nod, “S’pose yer right, mister. I owe ye for yer hospitality. I does at that.”

Titus rolled his thundering head away, easing it over onto the elbow he crooked beneath his puffy cheek. “Supper would be a damn good start at showing your thanks.”