“It ain’t wuth very much,” the old man told him.
“What you give me for it?”
The riflesmith eyed the weapon again. “Seen a lot of use.”
“It was in the mountains.”
The old man eyed him appraisingly now. “What you want to trade it fer?”
“To get me that’un.” Titus pointed to the one hung on the big pegsnear the top of the wall.
“That’s a big caliber,” the riflesmith clucked.
“What’s the bore?”
“Fifty-four.”
Titus said, “I figure that’s what it takes to bring down a buffler, don’t you?”
With a grin the old man slipped the spectacles off his nose. “I wouldn’t know, son. Never see’d a buffler for myself.”
“I aim to,” Titus promised. “And I aim to have me a gun what’ll bring one down too. I’ll trade you that there rifle—and bring you my pay each week till we’re square.”
“Had lots of fellers want that rifle—”
“But I’m the one gonna take it to the mountains,” Bass said evenly, his eyes steady on the old man. “Now, you tell me what you need in the way of cash money, and we got us a deal.”
For long moments the old man did not say a thing; then he eventually straightened and hobbled around the counter, over to that wall where the rifles hung on their pegs. “This’un?”
“Yes—that’s the one I want.”
Titus watched the man take it down off the pegs, running his old hands over the wood, the wrinkles on every finger etched with cherry-red or maple stains, browning for each weapon’s iron furniture.
When he had the long flintlock down, the riflesmith asked, “You’re the smithy been making them lock springs an’ such Hysham Troost’s sold me over the years, ain’t you?”
“I am.”
Step by step the old man hobbled up to Titus, handed the rifle over. “S’pose you ought’n feel how she lays agin your shoulder, son.”
Once the rifle lay in his hands, went to his shoulder, rested against his cheek—their bargain was struck: Washburn’s rifle, the next two weeks’ pay, and a goodly order of lock parts, ramrod thimbles, front blades, and rear buckhorn sights. Enough work to keep him busy long into the night for weeks yet to come.
At long last came that Saturday afternoon he carried in the final payment in cash money and a small linen sack of polished lock springs. To the wall behind his workbench the old riflesmith turned. Reaching up, he took down a sign that hung on string from the flintlock’s graceful frizzen, his own crude lettering stating:
“I allays liked this gun,” the man said when he passed it over the counter to Bass. “But I knowed there’d be a man come in one day that’d give me more’n just money for it. I knowed for certain there’d come a fella who’d gimme a real good reason to sell it to him. You done that, son.”
How Titus caressed that .54-caliber flintlock now. Not the prettiest Pennsylvanian he had wrapped his hands around at those Longhunters Fairs in his youth back to Boone County, Kentucky, but by damned it would do for a workingman’s rifle. Being a heavy Derringer, Bass knew it would shoot as true as any engraved, wire-inlaid Kentucky squirrel gun. And unlike those eastern rifles, this one would pack enough wallop to bring down the beasts where he was fixing to go.
Just as lovingly as he had touched all his women before, Titus now ran his hands over the slightly Romannosed stock, the big goosenecked hammer and cast-brass patchbox, its top finial filed in the shape of an eagle’s head.
“What reason did I give you?” Titus asked of a sudden, remembering the certainty of the old man’s declaration.
“You told me you was the one gonna take that there rifle to the mountains,” the shopkeeper replied. “From what I come to know of folks in my many years—I’ll wager hard money you are the man to carry this here big rifle out to that far yonder. I can see it … right there in your eyes.”
Through the following five weeks he labored long hours to pay off Troost what he owed him in barter for what Titus had used in crafting springs and lock plates, thimbles and other furniture for the riflesmith. And without fail every one of those spring nights Bass threw the pouch over his shoulder and the saddle on that Indian pony—riding down to the grove, where he blazed a new mark on the tree where Washburn had him shoot of a bygone time. The sting of sulfur in that black homemade powder like a rich perfume in his nostrils.
So it was that the pony came to know the man’s particular smell, the way he touched the animal, the way that rider felt upon its back, over the weeks, and months, and all those seasons as he brushed and curried the animal, fed it Troost’s best cut grass, riding that rawboned pony every evening as he set off to practice with that big-bored full-stocked flintlock. Slowly coming to know the man all the more because Titus rode him from sunrise to sundown each Sunday—his one day off each week—not returning until the sun had milked itself from the sky, when from the pony’s back he would pull the old saddle he had patched and repaired for Washburn, finally to curl up within his new wool blankets and dream on those far and Shining Mountains.
“You and me’r even,” Hysham gruffly declared early of a morning as Titus strolled in from the outhouse, ready to stoke the fires in the forge for another day.
Bass stopped dead in his tracks, not sure he could believe what he had heard. “E-even?”
“Means you don’t owe me ’nother day’s wages, Titus,” Troost explained with more than an edge of sadness, “less’n mayhaps you want to stay on and work for me ’nother eight or nine more years.”
He stared, unbelieving, into the older man’s glistening eyes, asking, “We … we’re even you say?”
“Said it already,” the burly blacksmith replied a little angrily, blinking at the smart of the tears. “You’re free to go. And when you do, damn well be sure to take that good-for-nothing jug-head of a Injun cayuse with you. I don’t want ’er around here, raising ruckus with my good studs when she comes into season again.”
His heart pounding, Titus took a step closer to the blacksmith. “This … this means … I can go?”
“Gonna miss you,” Troost said, volving his head slightly so Bass would not see him stab a big finger at his offending eyes. “Goddamned dust you stirred up shuffling in just now got me—”
Titus caught him in a fierce embrace before the blacksmith realized it. “You’re a good man, Hysham Troost. A damned good,
“G-g’won now, Titus Bass,” he growled, trying to wiggle himself loose from the younger man’s arms. “Get what all you got to take with you packed on that ol’ dun mare back there.”
“The … the mare?”
He gazed at the younger man through the haze filming his eyes. “She’s as sure a packhorse as there ever was, or Hysham Troost don’t know stink from horseflesh. Good of hoof, and nary a stronger back have I seen in many a year.”
Bass started to turn, nearly stumbling over his own feet as part of him began to move away in giddy anticipation, yet another part of him stood rooted to the spot in fear, uncertainty, and loss he sensed beginning to well up within.
“Now, get, Titus Bass,” Troost growled. “You’ll find a pack frame I left for you sitting on the top rail of that last corral down aside your stall.”
By then Bass was crying, bawling every bit as much as a babe. Tears spilled as he careened back close and swept up Hysham’s hand, squeezing it. “You … I’ll … can’t never forget you for this.”
“I don’t ’spect you ever will, Titus,” he said, his voice back to blustering. “Now, go and get yourself packed afore I find you something else to do round here.”
Titus whirled frenetically about the few square feet of that tiny stall he had turned into his home for those many seasons of waiting, of moving through one day after another without hope. Quickly he lashed up within the six blankets what he had purchased with Washburn: kettles and flints, beads and mirrors, vermilion and knives, camp axes and all the rest that together he and Isaac had purchased with Titus’s forge money. Then he took down that sawbuck pack saddle he had repaired just last week for Troost, realizing as he cinched it onto the back of that dun mare that the old blacksmith had planned even then to make a gift of it to Bass. New rawhide and iron rivets, brand-new sheep-hide padding. The mare turned at Titus’s gentle touch and nuzzled his shoulder as the man
