something else, seeking something better to do one rainy afternoon when his labors with ink and quill at the dock were cut short as the skies opened up. By late afternoon, soaked and chilled to the marrow, Bass despaired of finding proper work for someone with such an adventuresome spirit as he. But then his keen nose caught wind of that particular scent of fiery charcoal and ironwork slaked in oil carried on the sodden air. He followed his nose, turning when necessary, until he found the livery hulking at the end of Second Street. One of the great doors was flung open, the man within standing over his hissing fire, shirtless and sweating on such a cold spring day—heaving up and down on a great bellows that shot tremendous blasts of air into that glowing bed of coals. His long graying hair he had tied back with a leather whang, worn in a queue popular at the time.
Standing there at the open doorway, drinking it all in—Bass knew why his nose had led him there. Why he was meant to work in this place.
He promised himself that he would never again despair of finding proper work for a man to do. Let others tally their counts or even carry cargo from one place to the next. But this—yes, this was proper work for a man. Fire and iron. Water and muscle. With them and his own unbounded will—Titus knew he could make anything.
There hung from nails driven into every post, and hammered along most every board that served as the livery’s wall, great hanks of thick leather. Some of it crafted into bridles, bits, harnesses of all description. And laying atop most of those nails were thin black strips of iron banding. Stacked back beyond the bellows and the fire lay wide sheets of iron in all shapes and thicknesses.
He breathed deep again, taking in the fiery fragrance of this place. It so reminded him of that short time with Able Guthrie. How the settler had taught him the use of hammer and anvil and fire, to bring a piece of metal to a red heat before repairing a plowshare or making new bands to secure around a maul they had just carved out of a huge chunk of hickory.
“Something I can help you with?”
His eyes came back to the big, lantern-jawed blacksmith. “You’re busy. I come back later.”
“I’m always busy,” the older man replied sternly, but without a hint of rancor. Then he sighed. “More work than I can do sometimes. What is it you need done?” He eyed the youngster up, then down again. “If it’s that rifle of yours, that will take some time. That’s close work. Not like this. And my eyes ain’t all they used to—”
“My rifle? No, sir. I don’t need no work done on it. Don’t need nothing worked on.”
The thick, heavy brows knitted. Titus watched some of the great diamonds of sweat run together in the deep crevices of that brow and become drops that tumbled into the man’s eyes. They must have stung, for he blinked and yanked a great red bandanna from his waistband, swiping it down the whole of his face.
Turning away, he said, “Then I’ve got work to do, young’un.”
With his back to Titus, his great right arm swinging up, then down with that sixteen-pound hammer clanging upon the anvil, Bass watched the man’s shoulders and arms ripple as he smashed a glowing semicircle of iron band between the immutable force of that hammer and anvil. Sparks sprayed in great gusts like June fireflies with each hammer strike. Muscle swelled and bulged with every arc of the arm, sinew strained and rocked with each blow to the unmoving anvil.
Bass swallowed, forcing himself to ask. Daring to speak. To wrench the words free—words that he knew he had to say, or he would forever be sorry they went unspoken.
“You’re awful busy—”
“I just said that,” he snapped without anger, not taking his eyes off his work. “Now, if you don’t need nothing, I’d be pleased if you were on your way. Go find another place to get warm.”
“I come ’cause you … you ’pear to need me.”
The hammer came down, this time with a dull clink, then lay still on the horseshoe he was forming for that animal tied to the nearby stall. Turning only his head, the blacksmith peered at the youngster again for a long moment. And finally turned his whole body.
“I hear you right?” he asked. “I need
“Yes, sir. You’re busier’n … busier’n any man deserves to be. So I figure you need my help.”
The man snorted, but he didn’t come right out and laugh. Not just yet. Instead, he turned back around, gripped the tongs, and stuffed the horseshoe back among the glowing cinders. Still pumping the great bellows with his left arm, the blacksmith turned back to speak.
“You ever do any of this?”
“Some. A little.”
“Shoe a horse?”
“No, sir.”
“Lots of horseshoeing in St. Lou, mind you.”
“You can teach me.”
“Maybe. If you can learn.”
“I can learn. I can learn anything.”
“Where you from?”
“Kentucky, sir.”
“Good country, that,” he said with careful appraisal of the young man once again, then regarded the muddy clay floor beneath his own boots. “Yessirree. I remember that as real good country.” When he looked up at Bass again, the man resumed pumping the bellows. “Why you come here from such good country?”
“To see this country.”
“Maybe even what’s out there?” he asked, his head bobbing off in the general direction of the west.
“Likely, sir. But when I say I’ll work for you, that means I’ll work. I give my word—”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one, last birthday.”
“And you can learn what I teach you?”
“That’s how I learn’t most ever’thing I know.”
The older man chuckled. “If you’re lucky, young’un. That’s how we all learn, if we’re lucky. Well, now. Come over here and let’s see you make a shoe for this here ornery horse.”
“M-make a shoe?”
“You said you can learn, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did—”
“Put your stuff there by the door and get over here. If you can’t learn what I teach you right now, your truck will be right there by the door, so you can pick it up when I throw you out my place. But, on the other hand, if you can do like you say—learn what I can teach you—then you’ll have you a job, and a place to stay, right here. So that truck and rifle of your’n can stay under this roof. Here, pull on this bellows like you was wanting to squeeze the bejesus out of it.”
Bass took over the bellows handle. That first pull surprised him. It was harder than he had imagined it would be. He locked a second hand around the handle.
“No, mister.” The blacksmith swung an open hand at the second wrist Titus put to work at the bellows, knocking it off the handle. “You get to use just one.”
“Don’t know if I’m strong ’nough—”
“Then you get your ass right on outta here and don’t come back asking for nary work you can’t do.”
He gritted and strained, rocking the shoulder up and down, refusing to give in. He felt the pull all the way into his belly muscles. Felt the fortitude not to give in all the way to his toes.
“That’s it, son! You might just have some hair in you after all,” the man said. “Now, why you think I want you to do that with just one of them skinny arms of your’n?”
“D-dunno,” he rasped with effort, fighting on against the bellows.
“’Cause with the other’n you’re gonna pick up those tongs and take that fired piece of horseshoe outta the coals and plop it down on the anvil.”
He did as he was told, releasing the bellows when finally told to, and picked up the heavy hammer. Step by step, strike by strike, he hammered that glowing red arc of iron around the snout of the anvil, shaping, pounding, sweating even after he shucked out of his heavy, wet wool coat that steamed and stank hanging there on a nail near the fire. He didn’t know who smelled worse—the older man whose great chest beaded and ran with perspiration, or him working off what little bit of tallow he had on his scrawny bones.
“There, now, you begun to get the shape,” the blacksmith explained. “But the fine work’s yet to come. Bring
