Twice he’d almost lost her.
Bass dropped the hammer on the anvil again and stepped to the fire hopper, stirring the glowing coals with the tongs, digging out the hottest of the short strips of repair metal he was fabricating. He plopped it down on the anvil and took up the hole punch in his left hand, the hammer in his right.
The first time, he had believed she was taken from him by Josiah Paddock, that winter after he and Josiah returned from lifting the scalp From an old white-headed friend. Finding the pair of them together beneath the robes, Waits as naked as she got when she lay with him, Titus tore off to the west, plunging into the dead of winter and danger, spitting in the eye of death as he undertook a mission so risky that only it could come close to easing the pain of losing her to his best friend. Losing them both at once was almost more than a mortal could bear. …
With the punch crafted from a solid spike of oil-tempered iron positioned a few inches from the end of the strip of band iron, Titus slammed the hammer down on top of it, jarring both of his forearms. If nothing else, he had mused nearly every day of this hot summer, his hands and arms, shoulders and back, were all the stronger for this smithy’s toil.
Years later the Blackfoot had ripped her from him and the Crow. Warriors already grown sickly with the smallpox that ate up their flesh as it sucked away their life with an unquenchable fever. That deadly illness had consumed her brother, but Titus dared his damnedest to keep her alive. The scars it left on her face could never diminish the beauty she remained on the inside, although it took long seasons for her spirit to heal after that lonely walk she had taken with the ghosts along the edge of the sky.
It took more than two dozen strikes with that hammer against the flared top of the punch before he finally pierced a half-inch hole through the strap iron. He laid the punch aside and picked up the tongs, returning the strap to the fire for reheating before pulling another strap of iron from the glowing coals. With a series of holes punched in these short strips of iron, most every repair could be made to a cracked yoke, tree, or running gear, even hold together a wagon box itself. He could bind up what was broken with iron strap and coarse bolts, work everything down tight with the muscles in his back so the emigrant could move on to Fort Hall beside the Snake River. Follow the twists of the Snake all the way to the Columbia … and the sojourners found themselves in Oregon country.
With a repair to this or an exchange for that, Titus Bass would get those farmers a little farther on their epic journey. Fix up a busted axle, trade for a proper-sized wheel. Maybe even refit a tire to the wood shrinking in this high, desert climate … if the farmer relented and gave Titus enough time to do a proper repair during a brief layover at Fort Bridger, heart of the Rocky Mountains.
The sweat beaded down the bridge of his nose, hung there pendant for only an instant, then landed on the glowing iron with a faint hiss.
Twice before he thought he’d lost her. Old as he was now, Titus didn’t figure he could live through losing her again.
“Titus Bass?”
He quickly turned at the unexpected sound of a woman’s voice. She stood framed in a splash of bright sunshine, her fingers knitted together before her. A poke bonnet shaded her sunburned, weathered face as she peered at him standing in the shade of that brushy arbor, where he was plunging a new iron tire into a narrow trough of water with a resounding sizzle.
“That’s me,” he replied after a cursory glance—these settlement women all ended up looking pretty much the same—then turned back to his hoop of iron. With his empty left hand he scooped up a dribble of water and smeared it down his face grimy with cinders and smoke, streaked with rivulets of sweat. “You’re from the train camped over west what come in yestiddy?”
“Yes. Just before noon yesterday.”
“The store’s off that way,” and he pointed.
“I was just there,” she confessed. “That’s where I happed to overhear your name.”
Squint-eyed, he turned his head to peer at her again. “Oh?”
“Major Bridger was speaking of you to some of our leaders,” she explained, inching a step closer, but stopped again, her hands still clenched in front of her apron. “One of the men, he’s needing some blacksmithing work done. That’s when I heard your name.”
“You said that awready, ma’am.” Sensing some impatience with the woman, he dragged the heavy iron tire he had fitted for a front wheel out of the trough and carried it to the outside wall of the Bridger cabin, where he hung it from a wooden peg.
Quietly she explained, “I suppose there are far fewer chances of bumping into a Titus Bass out here in the Rocky Mountains than there are chances finding a Titus Bass along the Mississippi, or running onto him back in St. Louis.”
He slowly turned toward her and snatched up that small scrap of burlap. He wiped it down his sweaty neck and across his bare chest, smearing more of the blackened cinders across his reddened skin. “St. Louie?”
“Where you and I first met,” she said after another step that brought her right to the edge of the shade.
“W-where was that?”
“Emily Truesdale’s sporting house.”
A memory long submerged beneath the layers of seasons, miles, and a thousand other faces. But not near forgotten.
His heart misstepped as he searched for words his dry tongue could speak. “Did you … work for the woman?”
“Of a time, I did.” She stepped beneath the awning, her hands kneading one another now, anxiously. “If you’re the Titus Bass I later saw at Amos Tharp’s livery back in the late winter of thirty-four, then I am … your daughter, Amanda.”
Instantly he felt a twinge of shame—for his sweated body, smeared with dust and blacksmith grime, stinking no less than a horse would at the end of a long day’s ride. “You’re Amanda?” He quickly turned for the wall of the cabin, where his cotton shirt hung on a wooden peg. As he got it over his head and began to smooth it over his sticky frame, Titus asked, “Marissa’s daughter?”
“Your daughter,” she said, finally moving toward him without stopping. As he flung open his arms she pushed back her bonnet, letting it fall to hang suspended from her neck with her long, ash-hued curls. “Father—”
Scratch folded her into his arms, unable to utter a sound, feeling his legs going as weak as they had when she had declared her existence to him back in Tharp’s St. Louis barn. Every bit as quickly he brought her away from him to gaze down into her face. No longer did she possess the pudgy, childlike face of her mother the way she had when she confronted him so many winters ago.
“H-how long’s that make it?”
Shaking her head slightly, she made a tally. “More than thirteen years, Father.”
“F-Father,” he repeated. “Sounds so … starchy an’ high-backed to me.” He rubbed the top of her shoulders. “How ’bout you callin’ me Pa.”
She grinned, and it lit her whole face. “Pa. Yes, yes, I can call you that, Pa.” Then the light in her face was gone, replaced with one of concern as she stared at him intently. “Your eye. What’s become of it?”