“That ain’t far down from Cincinnati,” Ovatt remarked. “Heard of it.”
“Ain’t much to the place,” Titus replied. “Few shops, a cooper and blacksmith is all.”
“Don’t matter how big a place is,” Kingsbury said. “All that matters is what you feel ’bout it after you’ve gone and left it behind.”
“You got you plans, Titus Bass?” Zane asked. “I mean—now that you’ve put Rabbit Hash at your back?”
He swallowed that bite almost whole, sensing it slide all the way down his gullet. Titus didn’t think he could take another bite, his belly suddenly complaining that it was stretched to its limit.
“Wanna go down to Louisville. Heard lots ’bout it. I was figuring on looking up some work.”
“Some work?” Root snarled acidly. “Why, who’d hire a skinny strap of chew leather like you to do anything?”
“I’ll do anything. I handled mules and a ox in the fields, an’ I can hunt—”
Root let out an explosive grunt. “Shit! Man can hunt wouldn’t come in here near starving like you was.”
His shoulders rounding with the man’s crude laughter rolling over him, Titus hung his head. “I just never … didn’t see no sign of any game.”
“Don’t pay him no mind,” Kingsbury said. “Root’s just the sort of critter what ain’t happy less’n he can complain till every other man’s feeling low as he is.”
“That’s right,” Zane added. “His mama raised him on sour milk!”
“Least my mama knowed better than to take a full-growed skinny boy like this to wet-nurse.”
Ebenezer Zane turned on the youngster. “Titus Bass, tell me true now: ain’t you been weaned and whelped?”
His eyes muled, not knowing just how to respond to such a damned silly question. “Sure … certainly I am. I’m full growed.”
Three of them roared with laughter, and Zane slapped his thigh while grumpy Root flung out the last of his coffee at the fire with a hiss.
“That settles it, Reuben,” Kingsbury said matter-of-factly. “The boy’s been weaned, so you don’t have to worry ’bout none of us gotta wet-nurse him.” Ovatt and Zane roared anew.
“That is, if Titus Bass figures on asking us for a ride down to Louisville,” Zane said.
Ovatt stepped closer as his laughter sputtered to an end. “What you say, Titus Bass?” He pointed toward the nearby river. “You wanna float down to Louisville on that there Kentuckyboat?”
“Kentuckyboat?”
The pilot answered, “Just ’nother name for a flatboat, Titus Bass.”
“Some calls ’em broadhorns too,” Hames Kingsbury explained.
“So, tell me, now,” Ebenezer Zane said, “you wanna walk downriver to Louisville—or you feel like floating with us?”
He studied the big flatboat tied up at the bank some twenty-five feet away and felt his mouth dry. “I ain’t … never been on a boat afore.”
“How long you been in Kentucky?” Kingsbury asked.
“All my life.”
“You was born a Kentucky boy?” Ovatt inquired.
He nodded. “My grandpap come in long back.”
“Before or after the French got throwed out?” Zane asked.
“Afore.”
Zane leaned back, smiling in that dark hair that fully framed his big face. “By damn, fellas—this here boy’s about as Kentucky as they come. Now, me, I was borned on the Kentucky side of the Big Sandy River—just ’cross from Virginia. Near a place called Savage Branch. But I was still young when my folks up and moved back to Point Pleasant in Virginia. My pa figured out he never was gonna be no good at farming.”
“That’s why I left to get down to Louisville,” Titus admitted.
“Makes us both Kentucky boys,” Zane replied. “You had your fill?”
“Yep, I have.”
“And you decided to float with us?” Ovatt asked.
“You might as well float,” Kingsbury said. “Damn sight easier’n walking.”
“He gonna ride for free, Ebenezer?” Reuben Root growled. “While’st the rest of us work?”
“I figure I can use Titus come the rapids below Louisville.”
Titus asked, “Below? You mean after we gone past Louisville?”
“We’ll be tying up at the wharf in Louisville—see if there’s any load we can float down to New Orleans. Then you help us get on through them chutes,” the pilot explained. “That’ll pay for your passage down. We’ll put over to the shore and let you off a few miles down from Louisville. You can walk back up. That work for you?”
After running it over in his mind quickly, he nodded once. “I s’pose it’ll do nicely.”
“By the by, Titus Bass,” Kingsbury said, “can you swim?”
“Yes, sir. I been swimming down to the crik ever since’t I was a young’un.”
“You ever swum in the Ohio?” Ovatt said gravely.
Bass only wagged his head.
“It’s different’n swimming in a swimming hole, son,” Zane declared. “Sinkholes and whirlpools, chutes and undertows—you a strong swimmer? Keep your head above water?”
“I can do that good as any man.”
“All right, then, I won’t feel need of tying a rope around you to keep you tied to me when we go through them Falls. You’ll be on your own—like the rest of these’r hired men.” Zane stood. “The bunch of you best bank that fire for the night and get to your blankets. I smell more rain afore morning, and that’ll make for a soggy getup. I figure we’ll cook coffee on the boat to make us a early start.”
Wiping the back of his forearm across his mouth, Titus asked, “’Sides the river giving you the fits—what about Injuns?”
They all stared at him a moment with strained faces. He felt his stomach flop, thinking he might just have hexed them for some strange reason.
“In … Injuns,” he repeated. “I just figured—”
“We don’t got no more worry ’bout Injuns,” Zane interrupted. “Leastwise, not on the Ohio no longer.”
With excitement tingling up from his toes, Titus leaned forward and prodded, “How ’bout down on the Messessap?” And he watched how they all went about their own affairs, their eyes busy at the fire, or what they were whittling, perhaps a new tattoo Heman Ovatt was scratching on his bare ankle.
“Injuns on the Messessap is just one of a whole shitbag full of dangers a boatman has to stare in the eye ever’ trip down to Norleans.”
Then Kingsbury chimed in, “Likely you won’t even see a Injun what ain’t got hisself drunk down to Natchez or Nawlins.”
“Don’t you even worry ’bout it, for the Ohio’s got real quiet these days, and the Messessap is a big, wide river,” Zane said, exuding confidence.
With Mad Anthony Wayne’s stunning victory over the Wyandot at Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the resultant Treaty of Greenville, Indian problems for Ohio riverboatmen had been eliminated. But—that was on the Ohio. South on the Mississippi and its tributaries the bellicose tribes continued to ambush, attack, and kill unwary boatmen.
Kingsbury suddenly stood and rubbed his hands down the front of his thighs. “You got a blanket there, Titus?”
“I do.”
“’Nough to keep you warm?” Zane inquired.
“It’s done me handsome so far.”
“You get cold—tell me,” Kingsbury said. “We got more blankets on the boat.”
“And if it starts to rain,” Ovatt added, “you can allays find a dry place with us up there under that roof.”
Bass looked over at the flatboat, nodding when his eyes came to rest on the canvas awning stretched over the ridgepole that ran nearly half the length of the flatboat. “Keeping dry does sound good. I thankee for the company.”
“And the victuals,” Reuben Root snarled.
