Read Online Blood Gold by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page A

the iron—broke with a load crack. Spokes popped out, both wagons instantly crippled, and both Ben and I were surrounded by bits of wagon spokes and shouting men.
    I had spent long hours in the carriage shop on Harrison Street shaping such ash or white oak spokes with a drawshave. I used to help quench the wheels, heating the iron rim and lowering it sizzling and spitting into water. I used to paint the fine red lines on the spokes and polish the brass lamps on either side of the driver’s seat. I helped fit the best Norway iron onto the hub collars, and in every way came to love carriages and wagons.
    I hated to see the sudden wreck that chance had made of two serviceable, if inelegant, mud wagons. Both wagon drivers set their brakes, by habit, brakes being only partially useful in such a situation, and climbed down into the street. Each driver had assistants, boys in oversized, floppy caps, with dirty, hard-looking hands, evidently traveling to help load freight. These helpers leaped down to the muddy street, their fists bunched and ready for a fight.
    Both drivers were equipped with whips. Wagon spokes lay strewn about, and the mules shied nervously, lifting up their hooves and gingerly putting them down the way animals do when they want to run away but are forced to stay put. But the moment of greatest tension seemed about to pass without a blow being struck.
    Without a word of command, the assistants eased the two wagons apart as one of the mules laid back his ears and took a chomp out of a sleeve. Observers laughed, and I had the hopeful intuition that everything was going to be all right.
    It was not the first time I had been badly mistaken.
    The two drivers had plenty of help, men gathering spokes, assistants heaving the wheel rims over to the buildings, where several chairs lined up along the street allowed a few gentlemen a view of the ongoing tumult. One of the drivers, a big man with a bald head and a flowing blond beard, declared, “I don’t like to see a drunken poltroon handle a team of mules in a city street.”
    Poltroon is the basest sort of coward, and I could not see how lack of courage had anything at all to do with the mishap. The remark had been made as though to the surrounding, cigar-smoking observers.
    But the words were just loud enough so the opposing driver—a tall, clean-shaven man—could not keep from hearing them.
    The tall driver’s jaw worked angrily at the tobacco in his mouth. He continued examining his mules, and checking over the harness, bending down to observe the singletree under the wagon. Cordial voices called out for the two drivers to calm down and get the wrecks out of the street. A burly man with a gray beard and a businessman’s gray frock coat strode down out of a shop and said, “Let’s hurry up and get these wagons out of the way.”
    I stepped in to lend a hand with one of the wagons, which were badly balanced on their three wheels and beginning to teeter. Ben joined in with the attempts to keep the adjoining wagon from falling over. There was still one mule in a troubled mood. The angry animal showed its teeth again, and lunged at the gray-coated businessman. The mule’s harness jangled, and the white teeth snapped together with an instant corona of mule sweat and spit. The gray-clad man wheeled his arms as he retreated, staggering, bystanders breaking his fall.
    But we were too many, too close together, and two men tumbled backward, puddles splashing. I was one of them.
    I landed hard on my rear end.
    I sat there feeling embarrassed, but aware that no one was taking any special notice of me. I was about to hoist my body up off the street, when a well-polished boot struck my ribs, and a large body tumbled on top of me.
    The breath was shocked right out of my body, an elbow in my chest.
    â€œGod damn it,” said a strong male voice, his chin right beside my ear.
    He picked himself up.
    â€œGod damn it,” he