someplace deep within him. “This land was good then, weren’t it?”
The old gray-head only nodded, his lips pursed, eyes half-closed in reverie. “T’weren’t no others but you and the land back then.”
Bass quickly glanced at the old settler, seeing those old eyes glisten with pooling moisture in the dancing firelight.
“But the others come in,” Gamble continued. “They always come. One or two other families at first, I’d imagine. Then a handful not long after them. And the word was spreading, weren’t it? They was coming like bees to the honeycomb. Next thing there was towns where once lay only campsites. River ports and landings where you used to run up your canoe on the bank and not see another soul all evening. Roads where once there was only game trails or Injun footpaths going from one place off yonder t’other.”
The old man dragged a gnarled, wrinkled finger beneath one eye and said, “Land’s bound to change, man comes to it.”
“Don’t you see?” Gamble whispered, forcing the others to lean in to hear him over the crackle of the fire. “I want to go someplace where the land ain’t changed yet. Where it’s old, and new at the same time.”
“Ain’t much new land what ain’t been walked across to this side of the river,” one of the farmers said.
“There is out there,” Gamble said, pointing.
“There’s allays been two types of men, way I sees it,” the old settler spoke up. “Them few that comes to a place first—to discover it. And then there’s all the rest of us, by the hunnerts and hunnerts, and even more’n that: we come once the place’s been found. We come and move in, settle down. And them few what come first—well, that’s when they got to move on.”
“My time to move on,” Levi added.
The moon-faced farmer said, “There’ll be our kind what will follow along after you in the years to come.”
“We ain’t moving no more,” retorted the farmer’s wife, patting her husband on his shoulder as she stepped up behind him. “I come here when we was young to set down roots and raise up a family. We done that—so here we’ll stay.”
He looked up at her, taking her hand in his. “I was speaking of others, Mary. Others of our kind what will follow the first to go into a new land.”
“We’ve got young’uns,” she explained. “A man with babes to care for and feed don’t have no business uprooting his family to go traipsing off to the west.”
When Amy squeezed his hand in agreement, Titus looked down at it held between the two of hers. His eyes rose to find her smiling at him. From the look in her eyes he knew she was thinking about the baby. Their baby. The baby he had made for her there by the swimming pond.
And when he looked up, Titus found Levi gazing at him.
Gamble slowly took his eyes from the youngster and looked at those other, older men gathered round that fire this last night of the summer’s fair. “I ain’t got no babes, no children. Ain’t got no roots either, ma’am. I figure I don’t go west now—I won’t never have the chance. Man gets married, starts him a family … why, then—he never will move on.”
“True, true,” murmured the old settler.
“Time for us’ns be off to bed,” the farmer’s wife said, tugging lightly on her husband’s arm.
Reluctantly, that middle-aged settler rose beside her, draped an arm over her shoulder. His right hand he held out to the tall woodsman. “Levi Gamble, I wish you God’s speed on your journey.”
They shook as others stood and moved up to offer their own fare-thee-wells and parting words of encouragement.
“Man’s only young once’t,” the old settler advised, leaning on his cane. “Your sap only runs once in a young man’s life.”
“And a man should always go where his heart leads him,” Gamble replied.
In a matter of moments the hands had ceased shaking his and slapping the woodsman on the back. Shadows moved out of the ring of firelight, back to their tents and canvas shelters. Across the meadow in all directions, a number of the fires were still blazing strong. But most were dying, their caretakers moving off to blankets and blissful dreams of another summer’s Longhunters Fair come now to a close.
“Where’s your camp?” Titus asked.
Gamble swept his arm across the ground where he stood. “Any place I choose to lay my blanket for the night. Here’s as good a place as any. Fire’s banked good. Don’t need nothing else to make a place for Levi Gamble to sleep.”
“We oughtta be getting back to my folks’ camp,” Amy admitted.
Turning to the young woman, Levi smiled and said, “I’ll forever treasure your kiss, Amy. Even more’n the money I won for the shooting—your kiss for the winner is something I’ll remember for a long, long time.”
She blushed in the moonlight and turned toward Titus, her arms tightening around one of his.
“Ain’t there some way you’d stay on, Levi?” the youth finally blurted out his fervent wish. “Leastways for a few more days, a week or two so we got time to talk.”
Laying a hand on the young man’s shoulder, Gamble said, “Much as I’d love to, I best be moving on. Autumn coming. Winter right behind. Hoping to make it to the Mississippi before then, up to St. Lou afore the first snow if’n I can.”
Titus watched the tall woodsman bring up his right hand. He shook with Gamble, feeling tongue-tied with all that he wanted to ask, everything he wanted to say. Here was the sort of man he wanted to be: a man who had the will to leave everything behind in taking the risk of what might lie out there. The sort of man who wasn’t tied to place and people. A free man. Not a slave to the land.
Someone who would see and do things far west of Boone County before Titus would ever get the chance to clear the last of those stumps from that damned field.
“Let’s go, Titus,” Amy reminded. “I don’t wanna worry my folks.”
“You’re with me,” he replied sharply. “They damn well ought not to worry, you being with me.” Titus saw the wounded look in her eyes as he turned back to Gamble. “Maybe you write me when you get yonder, Levi.”
He looked at his moccasins a moment, his eyes lowered. “I don’t write at all, Titus. Not a lick.”
“Can you have someone else write a letter for you? Tell me you made it downriver, or when you reach St. Louie?”
“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” Gamble asked with a grin. “Yes. You damn right I’ll send word back to you, young’un.”
“I’ll count on it.”
“Count on it. Levi Gamble will send you word that I’m there and ready to jump off to the up-country. See them rivers, catch them beaver. Lay my eyes on places no white man ever laid eyes on. I’ll write to say when I’m going.”
“An’ say when you might be coming back this way.”
“If’n I ever come back this way,” Gamble admitted. “Not likely, Titus. Once a man gone out to see the elephant—he can’t really ever come home again.”
“You won’t ever be coming back? Not even to St. Louie?”
“Maybe there. Most like,” Levi replied.
“Then I could look you up if’n I come to St. Louie.”
Amy whirled on Titus, tightening her grip on his left arm. “Just when the devil would you be going off to St. Lou and for what purpose?”
He shrugged off her question, saying to Gamble, “You lemme know where you’re gonna be. When you’ll be coming back downriver—I’ll see you again, Levi Gamble. Count on it: I’ll see you again.”
Gamble gave a gentle slap to Bass’s shoulder, then turned from the young couple, settling down among the stumps where the others had been seated that evening. He snapped out his blankets and settled upon them with a sigh, his back to Titus.
It was another long moment more before he led Amy from that fire. From the tall man’s back. Into the darkness.
And though she was on his arm, even though they walked through that great summer’s crowded encampment, Titus Bass felt not only lonely, but unsettled, almost empty.
She was talking to him about their future once he finished his schooling that year, how she’d care for the
