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Jericho lived simply, despite some prosperity from his ironmonger trade. Because he was a Christian his house had more furnishings than a Muslim abode: Muhammadans rely on cushions that can be moved so the women can be sequestered when a male guest arrives.
The habit of the Bedouin tent has never been left behind. We Christians, in contrast, are accustomed to having our heads closer to the warm ceiling than the cooler floor, and so sit high and formal, in stationary clutter. Jericho had a table, chairs, and armoires instead of Islamic cushions and chests. The carpentry was plain, however, with a Puritan simplicity. The plank floors were bare of carpets, and any decoration on the plaster walls was limited to the odd crucifix or pic-ture of a saint: clean as a convent, and just as disconcerting. Miriam, the sister, kept it spotless. Food was plentiful, but basic: bread, olives, wine, and what greens the woman could buy each day in the market stalls. Occasionally she’d bring meat for her muscled, hungry brother, but it was relatively rare and expensive. Winter was coming, but there was no provision for heat except that given off by the charcoal of the cooking hearth and the forge below. There was no glass in the screened windows, so the coldest were blocked up by bags of sawdust t h e
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for the season, adding to the autumn gloom. The basin water was cold, winds penetrating, candles and oil precious, and we slept and rose at farmer hours. For a Parisian layabout like me, Palestine was a shock.
It was the forging of my new rifle that first bonded us. Jericho was steady, skilled, quiet, diligent (all things I should emulate, I suppose) and had earned the town’s respect. You could see it in the eyes of the men who came into the sooty courtyard to buy iron implements: Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. I thought I might have to tutor him in the design of a good gun, but he was ahead of me. “You mean like the German jaegar, the hunting rifle?” he said when I described the piece I’d lost. “I’ve worked on some. Show me on the sand how long you want the piece to be.”
I sketched out a forty-two-inch barrel.
“Won’t that be clumsy?”
“The length gives it accuracy and killing power. Just forty-five caliber is enough; the rifle velocity makes up for bullets smaller than a musket’s. I can carry more ammunition for a given weight of shot and powder. Soft iron, deep grooving, a drop to the stock to bring the sights up to my eye for aiming but keep my brow out of the pan flash.
The best I’ve seen can drive a tack three times out of five at fifty yards.
It takes a full minute to load and ram, but the first shot will actually hit something.”
“Smoothbores are the rule here. Quick to load and you can shoot with anything—pebbles, if need be. For this gun, we’ll need precise bullets.”
“Precision means accuracy.”
“In a close fight, sometimes speed wins.” He had the prejudice of the sailors he had served with, who fought in sharp brawls when boarding.
“And the right shot can keep them from getting close at all. To my mind, trying to fight with an ordinary musket is like going to a brothel blindfolded—you might get the result you want, but you can miss by a mile, too.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” Damned if I could get him to joke.
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He looked at the pattern in the sand. “Four hundred hours of work.
For which you’ll pay me out of this treasure of yours?”
“Double. I’m going to be searching hard while you craft the rifle.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Easy to promise money you don’t have.
You’ll help, and not just with this but other projects. It will be a new experience for you, doing real work. On slow days you can hunt for buried treasure or learn enough gossip to satisfy Sidney Smith. You can bill
“Then bellow that fire.” And when I leaped to obey, and shoveled charcoal, and shifted enough metal to make my shoulders ache, he grudgingly nodded. “Miriam thinks you’re a good man.” And with her endorsement, I knew I had some trust.
Jericho first fetched a round metal rod, or mandrel, slightly smaller than the intended bore of my future rifle. He heated a bar of carbon-ized Damascus steel, called a skelp, the same length as my gun barrel.
This he would wrap around the mandrel. I held the rod and handed tools while he placed these on a groove in a barrel anvil and began to beat to fuse the barrel’s cylinder. He’d do an inch at a time, removing the rod while the metals were still slightly pliable, then plunging the result into sizzling water. Then it was reheat, wrap another inch of the steel, hammer, and reweld: inch by inch. It was tedious, painstaking work, but curiously enthralling too. This lengthening tube would become my new companion. The duty kept me warm, and hard physical work was its own satisfaction. I ate simply, slept well, and even came to feel comfortable in the pious simplicity of my lodging. My muscles, already toughened by Egypt, became harder still.
I tried to draw him out. “You’re not married, Jericho?”
“Have you seen a wife?”
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