Free Dance on the Wind by Terry C. Johnston

finest in the way of a purse for the winner, with a few prizes donated for second, third, and fourth places—those who had been bested. Serious enough business that the contest had long had three divisions: one contest held between all those men who were clearly long in the tooth yet still possessed a clear eye and a steady hand; another match that allowed the county’s youth to pit their skills one against the other; and the final competition—the annual fair’s most-watched event—pitting young men from sixteen and up from all the farms and towns to compete for the right to be known as Boone County’s best marksman.
    For the last three summers Titus had carried home his prizes from the fair, taking first place against the county’sother youth each August. For the last two years how he had looked forward to this seventeenth summer: eligible to match his skill against the finest marksmen he had watched shoot ever since he was a wee lad big enough to load his own rifle.
    In the last few months Thaddeus Bass had been preaching to his son, “It makes little shake what those men do toeing that line and firing their muskets at a distant mark. No, Titus—in life what matters only is what a man does to provide for those who count on him.”
    More than just about anything, Titus wanted to change his father’s tune—to have his pap pound him on the back gleefully once he won the shooting contest and say that, yes, there was something worthwhile in being the best, after all, something worthwhile in his son having a dream different from his own. He knew he could never be what his father wanted him to be, for he realized he was not stamped to walk the same path his pap had taken. So it was that this year Titus carried great hope in his heart that once he proved himself not only capable, but the best, his father would finally relent and remove the tight harness he had buckled around his eldest son.
    “Titus?”
    He pushed back the floppy brim and gazed up at the sound of her voice. The summer’s light lit the copper strands in her dusty hair with tongues of flame. How he stirred to see her, gratified she had come to find him.
    “Amy. I looked for you this morning down at the shooting line.”
    With a shrug she replied, “Helping mama with her baking. Lunch is done and the other’ns’re all fed, so she said I could come look you up for a bit. Leastwise till it’s time to go help her put supper together. The young’uns is going crazy—running here and there.”
    He shifted himself up against the tree and pulled the hat off his head, pushing back a thick shock of dark, damp hair out of his eyes. “I … I need to ask you something.”
    “What?”
    “Something been … what I been meaning to ask for last couple weeks.”
    “Yes?” she prodded, settling near his knee, her legsfolded to the side in that way of hers that hid her bare feet and ankles beneath her faded dress, one of her mother’s best.
    “You …,” he started, then cleared his throat as his eyes retreated from her face and he went to scratching at the old hound’s ear. For some time now he’d been brooding on just how to get this said—choosing his words carefully from what he realized was a most limited vocabulary of a young man totally ignorant of such mysteries in life. “I figure a girl knows about such things. ’Specially you since’t you was around when all your brothers and sisters was borned, and it seems only natural that a girl pays proper attention to such things.”
    Her eyes darted back and forth between his. “What you wanna ask me, Titus?”
    Again he looked into those green eyes. “T-tell me how a woman knows she’s gonna have a baby.”
    Her cheeks flushed with a tint of pale strawberry, and her eyes dropped a moment. Amy yanked up a tall blade of grass and brought it to her lips. Sucking on the green shoot, she finally said, “If a woman ain’t with child, once a moon she gets a visit of a particular ailment,