It is not an easy task I set for you. It is a long and difficult route and not without danger. Yet I still ask. Come, Hephaestus. Beyond my own selfish desire to share something of this life with you before I am gone, I have a suspicion that if you were to take up residence on this property and hold it you would find that it holds more value than I can speak of here. I have enclosed what money I have to offer to help you afford the journey, or to use as you see fit. Set out as soon as you can if you are able, or forget me and carry on with your life with my blessings.
MJS
PS. You may inquire of me at the trading station in Perryton and head south to the Canadian River. A man named Bloxcomb will assist you.
CHAPTER 3. The Necessity of Adventure
HEPHAESTUS CONFIRMED THAT BOTH THE LETTER AND THE MAP were evidence of his brother’s handwriting. None of the Sitturds could sleep or eat (which was just as well, because there was precious little for the pot). The proposition that the letter advanced, with its combination of familial support and an invitation to adventure, was, in their current state of finances and mind, irresistible. Still, it left them with what Rapture could not stop describing as a “big’un recishun!”
Despite their avowed intention of mulling over the matter in detail, come the next morning, by the time Rapture had prepared their daily dose of tansy bitters to keep off the ague, Micah’s proposal had been embraced by the whole family with the unquestioning conviction that desperation can bring. There was no “recishun” to be made. They had to leave Zanesville. That Texas lay a long distance away, and a war with Mexico could break out any day, did not dissuade them. This was an offer and a request that could not be refused. Not in their present circumstances-and not in Hephaestus’s heart, either. There was about the communication a suggestive timeliness and a hint of redemptive possibility that hooked him as cleanly as the sturgeon he used to pull from the head of the falls.