words would come out as a squeak. “W-what’s that, Ebenezer?”
“You’re gonna cut this arrow outta the back of my goddamned leg ’cause you’re the one I reckon got it put there in the first place.”
11
It was damned cold there in the dark—moonless the way it was. Their only light shook loose and rained down from those brilliant stars hoisted way up high in that tarry sky. Not near enough for him to tell much about where the crates and casks ended and the gunnel began.
Black, and bloody well cold enough that a man wanted nothing more than to stay wrapped in that blanket Titus had draped about him as he sat atop some hundred-weight barrels of flour lashed near the front of the awning. The rest slept, soundly, from what he could hear of them.
Titus let his heavy eyelids fall. What little sleep he had grabbed during the first two watches wasn’t near enough to let him fight off the mighty pull of slumber. What with the night quiet as cotton on the wind. Nothing more than the constant murmur of the river lapping against the yellow poplar sides of the flatboat, along with an occasional call of a owl on the hunt, maybeso the howl of a distant wolf on the prowl somewhere on that western side of the Mississippi.
Those nightsounds, and that muffled scrape at the stern of the boat. Likely a snag, he considered, letting his eyes close securely.
That was but one kind of terror that might “stove in” the bottom of a boat if a watchful crewman stationed at the bow did not push off that sort of hazard. A
More dangerous still were planters and sawyers—both of them trees freed from the river’s eroding banks. The
Either one—planter or sawyer—could put a quick end to a flatboat’s journey to New Orleans. Already Zane’s crew had passed the wrecks of half a dozen flatboats since leaving behind the mouth of the Ohio. A tree branch of no mean size could nonetheless still gouge a hole in the hull of a broadhorn with no more force behind it than the river’s current.
And when either hazard did crunch into a flatboat, the rivermen immediately had to begin bailing and using their leather pump while attempting to reach shore before they sank—there to effect repairs, if possible, before their expensive cargo disappeared at the muddy bottom of the Mississippi.
Come spring, the boatmen told Titus, the river was dang near choked full of planters and sawyers, sometimes so many that it might appear they were floating through a submerged grove of trees. Winter travel wasn’t near so bad. Still, they had seen some on this trip down, sure enough—more here on the Mississippi than on the less rambunctious Ohio.
From the sounds of it, likely a small snag had just bumped against the upriver end of the boat, scraped, and floated on by.
He opened his eyes and looked back at the stern. Nothing. No more sound now. And try as he might in the pitiful starshine, Titus couldn’t much make out anything on the surface of the river as the black water flowed on past.
Gone on by, he convinced himself. Then looked longingly at what few red embers remained in that sandbox where they had heated water he’d used in cutting on Zane’s leg. About the time the brass kettle had begun to boil, Kingsbury and Ovatt had heaved the flatboat over to the far western bank and tied up in some brush. They hadn’t needed to go ashore to secure the hawsers—simply lashing them to the roots of some sycamore trees exposed in the side of the bank like bared rib bones in some half-consumed carrion.
He turned and leaned against a crate, dragging the thick wool blanket back over his shoulder, smelling its musty river stench, then shifting the rifle across his lap Titus let his eyelids sink once more.
By the time they had secured the boat to those roots, Titus had pulled the kettle from the fire and sat there quivering as he honed his knife across the strop’s greased surface. Having no idea where to begin cutting on a man’s leg, digging out the shaft of an arrow from that man’s flesh, Bass figured he’d just wait for someone to tell him what to do—even if it had to be Ebenezer Zane himself.
The pilot drank long and hard at the rye they sloshed out of one of the gallon kegs the crew kept for their own use.
“Messessap water tastes like weak mud,” Ebenezer had explained in a slur.
“He’s right,” Kingsbury agreed as the rest gathered round, holding the lanterns close. “Ain’t no use in washing with it—a fella ends up just as dirty, smeared up too. Maybeso in coffee it’ll do.”
That seemed reasonable enough an explanation why liquor was always the drink of choice for a Mississippi boatman. The river rendered such a disagreeable drink that most men took to letting a pail of it set overnight, hoping to settle most of the dirt. Even then, many of those working flats down the Mississippi drank it right out of the river for its “medicinal qualities,” others claiming the Mississippi was a cure-all and “powerful cathartic,” even “a purifier of a hardy man’s blood.”
“Do like he told you,” Kingsbury said. “Cut that hole in his britches bigger so you can see to work on him.”
Without a word of reply Titus brought his trembling hands back to the base of the arrow shaft that Kingsbury attempted to hold steady. A squat and powerful man, Reuben Root had positioned himself between Zane’s legs, where he locked an arm around each ankle. Heman Ovatt squatted near the pilot’s head, helping Zane drink his liquor and staying ready to bear down on Ebenezer’s arms when the need arose. Across the steersman’s body Kingsbury laid his weight, there to assist the best he could as young Bass finished tearing the thick nankeen cloth nearly the whole length of the wounded man’s thigh from buttock to knee.
“You don’t need the whole goddamned arrow no more,” Zane slurred, the rye clearly beginning to work. “Figure you might just as well break off a big chunk of it and lemme have it.”
Titus asked, “What you want it for?”
Ebenezer twisted his head slightly, still not able to touch Bass with his eyes. “Gonna bite down on it, you stupid young’un. When you finally get around to cutting that son of a bitch outta my leg. Now, do as I said and break it off!”
Bass’s hands were shaking so when he took hold of the shaft that Zane yelped in pain, his leg twisting up, his body contorting in pain. Titus let go as if he had touched a hot fire poker.
“Here, lemme,” Kingsbury suggested softly. “See if I can do it.”
Steadying one hand against the back of Zane’s thigh and around the shaft, the boatman wrapped the other hand just above it, looked up at Titus, and closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he gave the shaft a snap. It broke smartly, making the sharpest sound in that quiet night tied against the west bank of the Mississippi.
Zane huffed, slowly quieting his breathing. “Gimme that, Hames, goddammit.”
Titus watched the pilot take the arrow shaft and jam it between his big teeth. Then he laid his cheek upon the blanket they had folded beneath him once more. He grumbled something Bass could not understand.
“W-what’d you say—”
“Get it done!” he ordered, having yanked the shaft from his mouth so his words weren’t so garbled.
Looking up at Kingsbury, Titus asked, “You figure we should see just how hard it’s buried in there?”
Kingsbury only nodded.
Taking hold of the last six inches of shaft, Bass pulled slightly. Zane groaned, but made no great cry of pain. Titus gave another, harder yank—and this time Zane nearly came off the deck of the boat with a stifled shriek. When Bass let go, Ebenezer lay there panting as the pain passed over him in waves.
“Gonna have to cut it out,” Root advised. “Just like he tol’t you at the start.”
“Y-you knowed I was gonna have to cut it out, didn’t you, Ebenezer?” Bass said.
