Blood Gold Read Free Page A

had been an expert gunsmith, when the carriage-repairing business was slow. He had always praised my willingness to put in extra hours repairing weapons.
    I knew enough to say, “The gunpowder’s so wet it wouldn’t spark anyway, Colonel.”
    I had test-fired a few guns with Mr. Ansted, and I knew that at twenty paces you had a better chance of hitting a man with a frying pan than a musket ball.
    Colonel Legrand gave a laugh and put the musket into my hands. The weapon was heavy, and gave off the scent of gun oil.
    â€œIt’ll shoot,” said the colonel simply. He meant: be careful.
    Ben hoped someday to study Shakespeare at a university, but I had more lowly ambitions. I had dreams of redesigning carriages, or repairing the fowling pieces of clergymen and scholars. Reverend Spinks was the master of the Methodist School of Classics and the Arts I had attended; Ben had studied at Professor and Mrs. Holliday’s Boys’ School. Ben and I had been friends and neighbors since childhood, and we both enjoyed the same stories of King Arthur and Richard Lionheart. I was not destined to be a gentleman, however. A skilled craft, working with my hands, would be enough for me.
    The other guard the colonel posted that night was Isom Gill, a man who had been seasick every day on the side-wheeler out of New York. A cabinetmaker by trade, he was, like me, neither lofty gentleman nor unlettered day laborer. He was one of the few among us to have a really decent gun, a double-barreled English firearm with one barrel rifled, the other smoothbore.
    Ben said he would stand watch with me, but I told him to get some rest. Mr. Gill had a determined set to his mouth, eager to prove himself, and I believed we would be in good hands. A few of us had packed guns or pistols when we left our families and homes, but all day we had been passing cast-off fowling pieces and flintlock pistols, already rusting in the vegetation, along with piles of heavy wool clothing. Dr. Merrill kept a Navy Colt revolver in a mahogany case, the sole example of the newly invented repeating pistol I had ever seen.
    The doctor bent down over Aaron Sweetland, asked a question, and straightened, heading back to his trunk for a blue bottle of laudanum, the one sure medicine for cramps. He administered the potion to his shivering, sweating patient. We had buried a blacksmith at the trail-head by the river, and a jolly gray-haired cooper named O. P. Schuster, and Dr. Merrill had confided to me that he suspected there would be more outbreaks of fever.
    The doctor met my eye as he stepped back to his medical bag, pressing the stopper back into the bottle. “Mr. Dwinelle, every bandit in Central America would faint dead away at the sight of you.”
    I laughed. It was true that I was tall enough, and sturdily built enough to fancy myself a man among men. But inside I knew I was a rank novice at adventure, and just for now I was happy to keep dramatic thrills in the distant future.
    The musket the colonel thrust into my hands was an old Brown Bess—type weapon, the sort the British army had used for generations, the barrel well oiled but the lock tarnished from the damp. I imagine I made a tough-looking figure, in my slouch hat and heavy trousers, a foot-long knife in my belt. In fact, any one of my traveling companions would have frightened off the toughest alley fighter in New York or Philadelphia. A more dirty-looking set of men I had never seen.
    Many other traveling companies were camped in the same clearing, and it was some time before tents had been arranged in spots that were not knee-deep in water. After Ben brought me a plate of fried salt beef and a cup of thick, sweet coffee, I felt about ready to fight off an army of robbers.
    Later I would marvel at my confidence that all would be well.
    The night was pure darkness, and the smoke from our fire lifted straight up. I tried to find a place where the smoke drifted down again, weighed down