Chapter 1:The Varmint Of Cow Creek

 



image: Stone spring house



     "Jesse, no Jimmy, no Lewy," stammers Charity Reed attempting to call her grandson who's rolling jacks beside the woodstove in the chilly pre-dawn of an October morning. "Go get the milk from the spring house so's I can start the biscuits, will you honey?"

"Yeah Mamaw," answers the four-year-old already running for the back door of the two story log house, a flop-eared hound at his heels. 


     Lewis and his twin brother Jesse loved to play in the low stone structure built over the nearest of the many springs that formed Reed Branch. Tucked up into a shady nook on the north slope above the cabin, the spring house was cooler than the outside air in the summer and warmer in the winter. The clear water tinkling down a moss-covered aquaduct muffled the boys exclamations about Indian raids or panther attacks. Or so they thought.

     At seventy-two-years-old, Benjamin Reed spent many a morning on a log chair perched on a sunny overlook above the spring. He had passed the forge on to his eldest son James who spent his days smithing down at the confluence with Cow Creek, his nights in the upstairs master bedroom with wife Alicy and three young children. The whiskey still way back in the dark reaches of the branch went to second son Daniel who had the other upstairs bedroom with wife Patsy, the twins, and newborn James. At least daughter Nancy, on her way to Missouri Territory with new husband James Lewis, had just moved out of the increasingly crowded house that her father and two brothers had built ten years before.


     "What's that, Jack?" worries Lewis as the tall mutt named after President Andrew Jackson bristles, head cocked toward the chilly fog that thickens with each step up the little path to the spring house. 

"I feel it too" echoing out of the low cloud startles the boy until he sees Jack's wagging tail. 

"Aw Papaw, I'm not scared a no varmint."

"You'd best be," warns Benny Reed stepping down into view. "There's things in these hills that even the Indians is afraid of."



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