had before, and a new focus on their goal, just when everything was coming apart at the seams. Yet the thought of the man with the humped back and his associates spooked her. She wanted to believe that any threat they posed, or the veiled threats they had referred to, had been left behind down the Missouri River, but she could not bring herself to query her son any more than she had in those first few desperate hours when Hephaestus slept like the dead from the drug the humped dandy had administered, and then thrashed in delirium when he came to. Lloyd had slipped off into a cloud of blank indifference and denial at the first hint of her interrogation then, and she did not want to risk another psychic retreat now. If she had known that the boy carried with him the device that had laid the Bushrod Rangers down, she would have been horrified. And if she suspected, as he did, that they had all been exposed to an equally potent and puzzling kind of weapon in the mechanical music, she might well have lost her bearings entirely. But she did not have this information or trepidation to hand and so turned her attention to the task that she and Lloyd had been assigned.
CHAPTER 6
Justice Street
HEPHAESTUS LOCATED PETRIE’S BLACKSMITH SHED AGAIN WITHOUT much difficulty, and found to his relief that Petrie was too busy to be mad at his late arrival—and too perplexed. As it turned out, his chief hand, Rawknor, had been one of the Bushrod Rangers who was struck blind. Petrie had no truck whatsoever with vigilantes, but he had benefited from Rawknor’s skill and was now ashamed of himself for not speaking out about his suspicions regarding his employee’s private activities. A bit of counsel at the right moment might have been all it took to turn the fellow back to the path of honesty and tolerance. Now it might well be too late. News, or rather rumors, about the incident had swept through the town, and, being more centrally located than the Clutters, Petrie had learned about the unheard-of occurrence just after breakfast. In fact, he had heard about it while astride the privy, his bowels greased with grits, and in his consternation had almost forgotten to hitch up his pants. Now blackened and sweating in his heavy apron, all he wanted was to put the matter out of mind in a banging frenzy of work, and he was just happy to have another set of hands to help him. Unlike the Clutters, Petrie ran a thriving enterprise.
Out of practice with his old trade, the lame Ohioan was hard-pressed to keep pace with his Missouri benefactor and to shake himself from the happenings, not to mention the difficult circumstances the family was continually having to adjust to, and the hopes and expectations regarding his brother’s legacy, which were beginning to reemerge with intensifying urgency as a consequence of his sobriety. But he and Petrie’s apprentice, a beefy, silent lad named Badger, set to with bellows, tongs, and hammers, and soon the familiar smells and sounds swept Hephaestus away from his and the family’s troubles. The best tonic for psychological tension is exacting physical work, and the clubfooted former inventor and drunkard found his body, if not his whole being, remembering the tasks, the touch, and the satisfaction in the exertion, as if he had stepped back into his old life again, like a worn, comfortable set of clothes. He figured if anyone knew the best way to locate a wagon and animals in Independence it would be Petrie, and so he set out to impress his employer with gusto for the job.
Meanwhile, Rapture and Lloyd, who had been entrusted with the family funds, turned their attention to the kinds of nonperishable foodstuffs and basic utensils they would need. Not surprisingly, everything seemed overpriced or of suspect quality. But they had been through so much already that this did not deter them. For mother and son, what had started off as an intimidating and alienating exercise turned into a bonding excursion. The economy of the town ran on a haggling/bartering basis, which worked to the Zanesvilleans’ advantage, for with her wits now cleared, Rapture had an arsenal of negotiating resources to draw upon, and with Lloyd’s shrewd eyes and his unexpected acuity, the two of them worked well as a team, managing to at least identify and reconnoiter the price of the bulk of