Saturday Night was a private family party with only our core group invited. Everyone travelling with me had their own families to spend time with that night, so it was just us on our own again, and that was just fine by me. I’d gone over the town map with Thomas earlier and he was happy to map out a small chunk of about three hundred acres. I told him how to put up markers and we officially drew it on the large map I had hanging in the camper. He and his family headed home shortly thereafter.

Our family party was fairly subdued; it wasn’t a jump around type of party. Everyone had overeaten at dinner, so we had a light supper and then enjoyed wine and beer for a couple of hours more, while I did research and wrote out plans. Michelle and Mouse both fawned over me all evening. ‘Lovey dovey’ would be the correct phrase. It was a laid back evening and I, for one, was definitely getting laid that night.

****

Amos became ‘Boy’ again Sunday morning. It was an ugly thing, but he had to stay in character once we headed south. I was also aware that you didn’t have to mistreat your slaves and I treated him with the respect he deserved. I also knew that I had to keep him close to me at all times. Away from my homestead, I had little to fall back on in the way of support, and zero contacts of consequence. He was also responsible for Brin. I knew that dog was going to be a pain on the boat ride down. Coming down from Ft. Dickson, the kids had kept him occupied. On this journey, he’d be bored and likely to do something really stupid. We also packed fishing gear for Amos so he could try to feed us some fresh food on the journey. Around people, however, he had to be my shadow and act like my personal servant.

Amos, on his part, didn’t care. He was going on a long adventure, which is the heart's desire of many a young man. I was proud of him. I spent a lot of time that day explaining things to him. Timmons would explain a lot more to us on the trip down. I did mention that our first stop would be to get proper city clothing since people would treat him differently as soon as he dressed the part. He’d have to act the part, though, and would still be running and fetching. Timmons assured me he knew of a tailor shop that would serve our needs so we’d have Amos dressed as a rather proper young manservant.

Amos brought me my morning coffee and laid out my clothes for the day. It was like my mother was with me again, to have someone fussing over me in this manner. Still, I had told him to shadow me and act like a servant, so that’s what he did. It would take me a while to get used to this because privacy was almost non-existent when you had a personal servant.

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I then went about pulling together gold and silver for deposit. I decided to take down 250 lbs. of each. I’d store them on the boat, under guard, until I found a bank or two. Then I'd have the banks pick the metals up for deposit. Most of the banks in town had disappeared due to the Panic of 1819 and the problems at the 2nd National US Bank. Sadly, that became a trend in US history - the trustworthiness of banks was always in doubt. I needed to find a way to move my money to Brown Brothers or New York City Bank. I hoped to find a way to do that soon. I went back to the archives and wrote out a list of banks I would seek out.

Dinner was the only meal worthy of discussion that day. Matilda just stuck to one of my favorites - she made us her famous steak burritos with beans and young corn on the cob. That was the nice thing about indeterminate crops: you could harvest them all year, instead of all at once. In the modern world, most farmers had changed to determinate food, which meant that each type matured and needed to be harvested at the same time. It was the only way to run a large farm, but not a way to raise food for eating. Old Oscar had planned to jump into the farmer's market early with indeterminate tomatoes and corn. That gave him the ability to sell all summer long, but increased overall harvesting costs because someone had to actually decide whether and when to harvest each and every fruit. Basically, you had to harvest daily with indiscriminate crops. Good for eating, but it increased the overall costs.

Any way you looked at it, you couldn’t complain much about an ear of fresh sweet corn placed in front of you. I ate three of them. We also had roasted spring onions and some roasted baby squash, all beautiful stuff and amazing to eat. I ate well.

After dinner we began to haul everything down to the boat. We loaded the ore onto the dog cart and fitted our travel packs onto a couple of llamas. It was time to say our good-byes and take our leave. We would have supper down at the boat and sleep there.

Jeb and his family had shown up and there was quite a crowd of folks trying to say goodbye. Far too many tears for my liking; we’d only be gone a month or so. But women will be women and I enjoyed the hugs and kisses.

With that, I took one last inventory of our medical and ammo supplies then we grabbed our weapons. I whistled up Brin and we left. Staying around any longer would have just caused another round of goodbyes and I really didn’t want that. It was going to be hard enough to walk with the results of four different women’s grinding goodbye kisses. I think I may have limped my way down the road.

We set up our lean-tos near the boatman’s tent, built a small camp fire, and ate our supper of burritos supplied by Matilda. After that, it was basically good night sweetheart and we turned in to sleep.