“So, mister—you come see us?”
He looked back at the girl again, mystified by the invitation … although he understood. Many were the folks who lived their lives set apart from others, only to gather at Sunday services, for funerals and weddings and baptisms—along with the annual Longhunter Fair. Theirs was the lone and hardy stock who took great pleasure in the infrequent passerby who carried news of distant people and places.
Titus asked, “That what your mama told you come ask me?”
Openmouthed, she nodded. “Said you got our welcome to come by on your way upriver.”
Glancing over the girl’s shoulder, for the first time he noticed two of the younger children standing in the store’s open doorway, watching the stranger and their sister. “You’re on your way back to home now?”
“Mama said to tell you be ahead on your way and we’d come along shortly.”
“You riding?”
The girl giggled quickly behind her hand, her eyes twinkling as she answered, “Hell no.” Then her faced flushed in embarrassment. “Y-you won’t tell Mama I cursed, w-will you?”
With a smile and a wag of his head, Titus loosened the packmare’s halter, then reached for the rein to the Indian pony. He bent his head down to whisper, “That’s our secret. I swear it.”
“Just that … all we got left us is that one ol’ mule,” and she pointed across the rutted path at the animal. “Does all our plowing, and we bring it to town with us for to carry home all what we take out on barter from Mr. Henline in there.”
His heart felt a tug at that moment, staring at the old mule, the way it hung its head and kept weight off one of its legs. Clearly, the hock was swollen with spavin. Easy enough to see that it wouldn’t be long before the mule came up lame on them. “You sure your mama wants me to stop by?”
“She said so for me to tell you.”
“I can’t be stopping off every place I go by now,” he grumbled, suddenly perturbed at the intrusion on his journey. Bass jabbed his left foot in the stirrup of the worn saddle.
“Mama said to tell you she figured you look like’n you needed a home-cooked meal.” The girl prodded, taking a step forward as Titus rose onto the back of the pony. “Likely you ain’t had none such in quite a time.”
He opened his mouth to snap back at her about no longer needing no home-cooked meals … then decided better. Why, it did sound good. But, just the same, he had some new victuals of his own—so he wasn’t all that bad off. Best to keep pushing on.
“I got me a long, long way to go, girl. You tell your mama—”
“Last place a body gets to talk with civil white folks,” she blurted in.
Impatient to be on his way, Titus was on the verge of tapping heels into the pony’s ribs when he stopped and brooded on that. “No other place on yonder from you? Now, I can’t believe that.”
“There’s the forts upriver,” and she flung an arm in that general direction. “Soldiers, traders. Men come down from upriver. But there ain’t no more plain white working folk after us. Mama thought you’d like to have yourself a hot meal and maybe some man talk with my uncle.”
Slowly he turned to gaze at the doorway once again. A third small face had poked itself around the jamb—watching expectantly.
“All right,” he answered, not all that sure of his resolve, “You go tell your mama I’m most grateful for her kindness … and tell her I’ll feel better riding along home with your bunch. Now, be off with you and have your mama finish up inside so we can get on our way. Gonna be getting dark soon enough as it is.”
Twilight was just beginning to squeeze the last light of the day from the sky when the girl and her oldest brother led the lot of them up a wide path into the yard surrounding four squat buildings and a half-dozen rickety pole lean-tos. After introductions the flush-faced aunt announced that supper was simmering over the fire and ready soon as everyone washed up and sat themselves down.
“Your belly ready for that home-cooked meal I promised you?” the widow asked Titus, her dark-gray eyes finally meeting his again for the first time since they began their walk north from Franklin.
The eyes softened as he gazed back at them … and the voice was nice enough too. “I’m always ready, yes, ma’am.”
Night came down easily, and the breeze had kicked up by the time Bass shoved himself away from the long, crude table and rose from his half-log bench, its legs scraping across the puncheon floor. The woman’s brother-in-law got to his feet along with Titus, turning to retrieve a pipe and tobacco pouch from the stone mantel above the fireplace, which provided the only light for the low-roofed room besides a dozen or more candles and Betty lamps filled with oil he figured could only have been rendered from a bear.
“Let’s us use my tobaccy,” Bass suggested. “Find some way to pay you back for that meal.”
“No paying back necessary,” the widow replied from across the table as she rose, her hands filled with wooden trenchers. “You already done that at Bailey Henline’s shop.”
Plainly needled, the man kept his eyes on Titus as he asked his sister-in-law, “What you go and get yourself in debt with Bailey for now?”
“She don’t owe nobody nothing,” Bass quickly intervened, putting his hand up as the widow was about to protest. “I had me a little something extra after trading with the man. And them young’uns was just having ’em a gander at the hard candy. I paid for ’em to have a sweet treat. Didn’t amount to nothing.”
“An’ you have y’ some of Henline’s tobaccy?”
Bass nodded. “Mine now. I’ll be off to fetch it.”
The two of them settled out front beneath the narrow porch awning on half-log stools, leaning back against the rough-log wall chinked with Missouri clay, and slowly sucked down more than one bowlful apiece that evening. While the settler dragged out as much news as he could about what all was happening downriver in St. Louis and beyond, Titus pried out as much information as he could on what lay upriver.
“Fort Osage be a fella’s next stop,” the man declared. “South bank. But—you cain’t count on soldiers and folks allays being there.”
“They closed the fort down?”
“Not all the time.”
“How far?” Bass inquired.
With a shrug he answered, “Only been up that way once afore. Can’t really say. It’s a piece.”
“How many days you figure?”
“You ain’t got no ragtag along and can keep your horses on the scat—I’d figure a little better’n a week.”
“That long?” And he watched the settler nod, drawing on his pipe, then dropped his eyes to peer into the bowl the way the man did after nearly every puff.
“Fine tobaccy, this,” the man offered after a moment of silence between them.
“You know anything of what’s north of Osage?”
“Next place be Atkinson’s post. If, like you said, you’re hankering to foller the Platte west, I hear that’s where you pick up the river what’ll take you all the way to them far mountains.”
The sound of that distant country made his mouth dry then and there. It seemed like he’d journeyed so damned far already. Fifteen winters it was—as far back as 1810 … as far east as Kentucky in the great bend country of the Ohio River. And lately it seemed everyone he ran into was telling him he’d only begun his journey. From what he’d seen, maybeso those folks were right.
Back east on the Ohio and the great Mississippi, in those forests and along the trails and traces—things weren’t really all that spread out and far apart. Even in traveling the wilderness along the Natchez Trace, a man knew he would come across a stand—a wayside inn—with some frequency. But from what he had seen out here already … not only was a man running out of folks and settlements, it was as if the land itself damn well seemed to be growing all the bigger on him the farther west he set his feet down.