to continue, “But she never give me a kiss when we discovered I beat the lad by a hair.”
“Maybe next year, young Titus Bass,” a moon-faced man across the flames called out. “Levi Gamble here tells us he won’t be here to steal first prize from you.”
“Why not next year?” Titus asked.
Gamble’s eyes took on a glaze weighed both in time and distance. “I’ll be far, far from the Ohio country come this time next year.” Of a sudden he turned on Amy. “So—sweet lady. What say you to giving Levi Gamble a winner’s kiss?”
Her eyes dropped. “I cannot.”
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“I’m spoke for, and it would not be the thing to do when a girl’s spoke for.”
“Titus?” Gamble asked, raising his head to look at the youth. “What say you about my kiss? Will you let your sweet Amy put a kiss here, on the cheek of the winner who whupped you in our gallant match this day?”
“Sure,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation.
“Now, sweet Amy—come give me my prize.” Gamble turned his face to the side and leaned toward her. “I’m ready when you are.”
The girl glanced once at Titus, then turned to Levi and leaned his way with her lips puckered. Just as she drew close, Gamble suddenly turned and planted his mouth on hers with a resounding smack. Amy leaped back so far she collided with Titus, and they both spilled over the tree trunk.
Gamble rose to his feet and held out his hands to them. “I’ve never done that before, Amy. Honest. To kiss a beautiful young woman and knock her off her feet that way—and you was even sitting down when I did it!”
The group at the fire roared anew with laughter as Titus and Amy settled once more. Gamble bowed to them.
“If I have caused you trouble in any way with my silly prank, I beg your forgiveness. It’s only my happiness to be off to the western waters, with money in my purse enough to see me on my way.”
“You said you’d be far away from here come this time next year,” Titus replied, seizing hold of Gamble’s wrist with worry. Now he was confused—wanting to know more about this Boone County neighbor. “You’re not staying on here?”
“No, I move on tomorrow.”
“You leave family behind?”
One of the men at the fire explained, “Levi’s from Pennsylvania.”
“P-pennsylvania?” Titus asked. “What brings you here to our country?”
“Just the road, Titus,” Gamble explained. “Going west to see the far mountains and the rivers so mighty they say a man can’t dare cross ’em come spring when the snow on those high places is melting.”
“W-where is it you come from?”
“I hail from western Pennsylvania. Family from a little town called Emsworth on the Ohio, just downriver from Pittsburgh. I was following the river west when I happed onto a shopkeeper in Cincinnati what knew of this fair taking place across the Ohio. Every fair I know of has a shooting match—a likely place for me to win some money to fatten my traveling purse.”
“Money to go west,” Titus repeated, his eyes going to stare at the fire as Amy took his hand in the two of hers.
“If I make good time, I should be well downriver come the first hard snow, and by then I can find me somewhere to winter up and wait out the spring if’n I have to. Work as I need to. Always work and wages along the river, I say. And if’n I ain’t there afore spring, then I can go on down to the Mississippi, north from there.”
“Where?” Titus asked. “Where is it you’re bound for?”
“St. Louie.”
A large man leaned forward, his elbows on knees as he asked, “What do you know of this St. Louie?”
“I’ve heard it’s a lively place ever since Tom Jefferson’s expedition come back from the western ocean with word of beaver and other fine furs to be got from those western lands.”
“What of the Injuns?” a woman asked, speaking for the first time as she came into the firelight, wiping her hands on a long apron.
“Yes,” a man replied. “There must be Injuns there the likes have never see’d a white man.”
“And perhaps they’re better for that,” Gamble said, “what with the way the English stirred up these Injuns agin us during the war for our freedom, as I hear it.”
“They did, that’s for sure!” one of the men roared.
“But those Injuns out there,” Levi continued, “I hear they come walk the streets of St. Louie—looking to talk with the redheaded chief who went west to find them.”
“Who’s that redheaded chief?” Titus asked.
“William Clark,” Gamble replied. “Aye, they come to St. Louie dressed in all their feathers and shells, paint and hides. From what we heard last winter back to Pittsburgh, the Injuns up the Missouri River been quite peaceable ’bout traders coming among ’em.”
“That what you’re fixing to do out west, Levi?” Titus inquired. “Go into the trade with them Injuns?”
He wagged his head. “No. I’m fixing to join up with a man called Manuel Lisa. He’s been working the Injun trade on the upriver for three years now.”
“Sound of his name,” a man commented, “he must be one of them Frenchies.”
“Spanish, he told me,” Levi answered.
In a flush of astonishment Titus asked, “You … you met him?”
Gamble nodded. “He come through Pittsburgh late winter. Town was all abuzz with it. He’d been up to Vincennes looking to supply a whole new kind of outfit. Couldn’t get what he needed up there, so he had to keep on east. Come to Pittsburgh, and that’s how I happed onto talking with him.”
The moon-faced man asked, “You said a whole new kind of outfit. What’s new about it?”
“That’s what got my attention, it did,” Levi answered. “Manuel Lisa was the first to go farther upriver than any of them Frenchies out of St. Louis, but ever before he’d allays just traded the Injuns for the furs. Took ’em blankets and powder and coffee and bells, that such.”
“What’s he figure to do now that’s so different?” the big farmer asked.
“Lisa told me that last year he was the first to take some white men upriver—not to trade with the Injuns— but to trap for themselves and sell their beaver back to him.”
“Injuns take to that sort of thing?” one of them asked. “Taking the fur out of their country like that?”
“Yeah,” agreed another of the farmers. “That Spaniard better be careful, or he’ll find his hair gone.”
“Yup—we ought’n just leave that country for the Injuns. We got plenty enough this side of the river for ourselves. Let ’em have whatever’s left over yonder.”
Gamble said, “I aim to find out just how much country is left over yonder.”
Titus watched the tall man’s eyes, his entire countenance—a bit relieved to consider that Levi Gamble just might have the same fear of taking root in one place that Titus Bass himself suffered. Ever since their afternoon match he had hoped Gamble was a Boone County man, someone Titus could look up from time to time, someone he could confide in and take solace with, kindred spirits they.
But now he had learned Levi wasn’t from Kentucky at all. And worse yet, the hunter was merely passing through, taking first place in Titus’s shooting match only to pay his way west, there to push on for a far country filled with beaver and Injuns and all the adventure a man could want for himself.
“And now,” Gamble continued, patting the skin pouch that hung at his belt with a dull clatter of coin, “I am flush enough to pay for food, lodging, and what fare my journey might need of me.”
“I still say it should have been Titus’s money,” Amy grumbled.
Gamble grinned. “Second place to Levi Gamble is nothing he can be ashamed of.”
“It’s a lot of money he should have won,” Amy added. “It would’ve give us a good start on our life raising young’uns and settling down.”
Gamble studied Titus a moment before he said, “Aye, I will admit that was a goodly sum of money I won me for first prize. But money is not the object. Leastways not for me. Look here,” and he tore the pouch from his belt, yanking at the drawstring to open it up. From the pouch he poured a few coins into his palm with a clink.
“You can go far with that, Levi Gamble,” the moonfaced man commented.
Ignoring the farmer, Gamble leaned closer to Amy and Titus. “Look there. It’s hard. It’s solid.” He bit on one
