Titus finally seized the man’s hand again and shook hard, one sturdy pump of his arm. “Titus Bass, mister.”
“Nice to meet you, Titus Bass. A good grip you got.” He brushed the brim of his hat with a pair of fingers for Amy, then quickly looked back at Titus, eyes twinkling. “My friends call me Levi Gamble.”
4
Summer had a way of redeeming itself on an evening like this. These long, hot, and sticky Kentucky summer days grew tiresome in the Ohio country come late August.
Yet redemption arrived after sundown when the flies ceased droning and the mosquitoes no longer raised angry welts on what bare skin one had provided for their feast that afternoon. Cool breezes stirred the weeping willows and rustled the leaves of the red elm. The heavy air hung rich with the fragrance of sumac and trumpet- flower vines climbing the dogwood and pecan trees. Fires twinkled through that encampment like a sugar-coated crusting of flickering diamonds against the indigo seep of night.
It was as if Titus could breathe again. After the heat of that long afternoon. After the drama of the rifle match.
With Amy’s supper in his belly they had set off hand in hand in no certain direction once the youngest of the Whistler brood had been put in their blankets, seeking a stroll through camp beneath a half-moon this last night before the revelers would pack up come morning and drift off in all directions for home, to talk across another full year of the Longhunters Fair just past and gossip on what next summer would bring.
As long as this year was in passing, he doubted 1811 would ever arrive.
Days like this one went far to prove how reluctant summer was to lose its grip on the land. Yet day eventually gave way to night—balanced in the sort of evening that could stir a young man’s juices, cause him to think on little else but getting his girl off to himself—to touch all those forbidden places on her young body once more. As exciting and compelling as was his desire for Amy at this moment … his dread that he had already put her with child cooled his fevered ardor.
Once during their walk she had pulled him into the shadows of the overhanging umbrella of long weeping- willow branches and there put her mouth on his, stoking his fire with the sudden, fierce intensity of a blacksmith’s bellows. Amy took his hand and raised it to her breast, squeezing his fingers around and over that soft flesh covered by a thin layer of her summer dress. In that brief and stolen moment she groaned at the back of her throat, exciting him while aroused herself at the same time.
Her lips were moist, wet enough so that her mouth slid across his. It seemed she became hungrier as he grew breathless. Rolling her hips upward, Amy pressed herself into him, more insistent still as she sensed his flesh harden and grow. He had to have her.
Titus whispered, “Got to find us a place … some place—”
But as his mouth left hers, fear drenched him with cold once more.
A child. Marriage. Settling on the land. Rooted to one spot the way his father, and grandpap before him, had sunk their lives into a particular piece of ground. Great-grandpap before them had been a different tale: come here in the beginning when it was a new land, fresh and un-walked, when adventure waited among the wild critters and the Injuns too. Perhaps great-grandpap hadn’t realized what he was doing when he’d brought his family here to raise up a cabin and a passel of young’uns too.
Such was a legacy Titus feared he could not live up to.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered at his ear, her breath hot and moist. “Find us a place. Yes, yes! I promised you—touch me all over again like you done at the swimming hole.”
“You … you’re,” and he wanted desperately to find a way to say it. “Gimme a chance to figure it all out.”
Amy stiffened, drawing herself back to arm’s length. “Figure out what?”
“This being a father.”
“Already you learned that it don’t take nothing much to be a father,” she said, stepping back against him, her head below his chin. “I liked how quick you learned.”
“Scares me.”
“The babe scares you?” she asked, taking up his hand again, this time placing it against the flat of her belly. “This little child what brings us together as husband and wife?”
Extracting his hand from hers, Titus turned slightly, staring out at the flickering fires that pricked the meadow like dancing fireflies, campsites extending from tree line to tree line to tree line. In a gust of laughter carried to them on the breeze, he thought he recognized a voice drifting over from a nearby camp.
Turning to Amy, he said, “Ain’t the child what scares me. What I’m afeared of is living the life my pap cut out for hisself.”
“Don’t you want the same things he has, Titus? A home and family, making a living for us outta the ground?”
He looked away from her face, not able to gaze into those frightened eyes. “I think you always knowed the answer to your own question, Amy. Down inside, you knowed the answer all along.”
“There’s still time to decide, Titus,” she replied, pressing herself back against him. “Time for you to finish your schooling. Then you can figure out what we’re gonna do about a family and where we can put down roots.”
Gripping her shoulders, he stared intently into those doe eyes. “Sounds like you don’t have no idea what I’m trying to tell you. This ain’t about deciding where to put down roots, Amy. This got all to do with not putting down any roots at all.”
She lunged for his arm as he turned away. “Where you going?”
“C’mon,” he replied, taking one of her hands in his. “You come with me.”
As they stabbed their way through the spindly branches of weeping willow, Titus was sure, all the more determined, especially when he heard another burst of laughter. It was his voice.
Drawn to the tall, freedom-loving hunter every bit as much as he was drawn to the soft flesh of Amy Whistler. The sound of his laughter and the merry talk drew Titus on, tugging on her hand to keep up.
“Yo, ho!” Levi Gamble called out, turning as he spotted them come into the light. “Look here who approaches camp!”
He watched Gamble stand from the stump where he and three others were calling out their bets in playing quadrille, a most popular game played between four persons with the forty cards left in a deck after the tens, nines, and eights had been discarded. At that moment, backlit in firelight, the woodsman seemed even taller than he had that afternoon.
Titus shuffled nervously, explained his interruption. “We was out taking ourselves a walk and I heard your voice.”
“C’mon. C’mon—you’re among friends here, Titus Bass. Sit yourselves and join us.” He turned to the others at the fire as he swept up the greasy cards into his hands. “Titus is the lad nearly whupped me in the shooting match today. A likely hunter he’ll make one day soon.”
“Titus an’ me getting married,” Amy blurted to those gathered in that ring of firelight. “Settlin’ in to start our family.”
Each of them stared at the young couple for a heavy moment. And as quickly as the young woman had shattered the mood, Levi Gamble jumped in to work his magic.
“Then congratulations are in order!” he cheered. “You there—pass over that jug of cherry flip and we’ll send her round the circle for this young couple.”
They did, and Titus took him a taste of the sweet brandy after he and Amy settled atop a large tree trunk rolled close to the fire. At times his father cooked up some corn mash or made a strong potato beer, but nothing that had the sweet decadence of that brandy. He took a second taste upon his tongue as the first warmed his belly and handed it past Amy to Levi.
“The young lady here gave her husband-to-be a kiss when we all thought Titus was the winner of the shooting match,” Levi explained to the circle of those at the fire. Then he brought his hand to his chest expressively
