Chapter 219: Smith & Wright Son

Editor: nnpdad

When Jaques, the Smith, finished tutoring his apprentice in the mystic art of nail making, he came over to greet us with a quizzical smile on his face. He wasn’t a man who much tolerated interruptions of his busy schedule; that’s why I thought he would probably resist sending anyone out recruiting. It didn’t take long for him to make himself clear that he had too much work and too many untrained apprentices as it was. Adding more to the mix would simply slow things down further. As good a blacksmith as he was, his personality wasn’t much suited for leadership; he was not bad at tutoring but completely uninterested in anything but his craft. I didn’t blame him, singular focus tasks fit his personality to a tee. He was probably the most skilled and talented blacksmith on the frontier but as usual, talent and business acumen usually don’t go hand in hand.

I needed to find a good partner smith to team with him and handle the customer relations side of the house. It would probably be best to find him an administrative assistant, too, to keep the business running well. He flatly turned us down and went back to his forge, as quick and neat as you please. I’d simply focus on adding a senior smith with more business chops to work for him. Smithing was the only focus of our Jaques Forgeron.

Lunch time was upon us that quickly and we broke up to allow each of a to grab a quick snack and check up on other pressing matters. The temptation was to push on through without stopping since I was headed north after dinner, but as a group we resisted and stuck to schedule. It was a bad idea to run yourself ragged when trying to make sound decisions; that’s how bad ideas are implemented. I was running against a daylight clock while at the same time I wanted to have my wits about me should the unexpected occur and the day run late.

It was a short walk back to the town hall to fetch our gallant steeds. Mouse and I held hands and chatted on the way. She was super excited about the baby and was already dropping the phrase ‘house’ into every other sentence. I resigned myself to the fact that building a house had suddenly been promoted on my ‘to do’ list, it moved from ‘down the road a ways’ to ‘yup, that’ll happen very soon.’ I would be printing out and taking along some images from the drone on my next long trip because I needed to choose a good location. Spring would be an incredibly busy time this year.

We trotted back to the compound making very good time. The plan was to pack my bags and prepare for my Fort Atkinson run this afternoon. The goal was to get there before dark, otherwise we’d be sleeping aboard the boat. The nice thing about the mail run was there was room to sleep in the cargo house, we carried a much smaller crew and only about a quarter of the cargo space that our normal boats had. Intentionally running light for this run and burning coal, Sven was hoping for a quick trip, I myself didn’t think we’d make it – the numbers just didn’t add up. It wouldn’t be bad to spend the night on the water; we’d be able to make any adjustments before our maiden run down to St. Louis.