A Yondering Read online

A Yondering

  By Darrel Bird

  Copy©right 2014 by Darrel Bird

  In the dim light before dawn I slammed the door hard enough to shake the rafters. I was aiming to wake my older brother Jedediah, knowing he would come tearing out of the back bedroom where he slept with his rifle to hand, which he done.

  “What's all the racket?”

  “Time to get up Jed, daylights a comin'.

  “I ought to shoot you with this here rifle.” He said, wiping sleep from his eyes.

  “What you ought to do is make biscuits...I made them yesterday.”

  “What you made yesterday wasn't biscuits...them was rocks. Jason you really goin' yondering?”

  “I reckon I am. Since Ma and Pa died and there's just the two of us, I aim to leave you and Linda Barnsley something to live on.”

  “We ain't married yet, and it don't seem right for you to leave because of that nohow.”

  “You done asked her, and she agreed, I got to go saddle the mule, and get goin'.”

  “It just don’t seem right, I wish you would stay, Pa left this place to the both of us.”

  “I want to see the western lands that uncle Ed always talked about, I got me a good mule, and a hunting rifle, so don’t you worry none about me. I am going to drop down to Asheville to hand you clear title to the land, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “Then there is no stopping you?”

  “Nope.”

  I know Jed didn’t care for it too much, but I had a powerful hankering to see lands I hadn’t laid eyes on, although I would miss my brother. Our folks had hacked the farm out of pure dee wilderness, but had gotten along with the Cherokee. My family had come over by ship from Ireland before the war of 1775-1783, and after the war, kept moving west until they settled on the Clinch Mountains of Tennessee. My great, great grandpa Bernard Allen had felt he had gone far enough to stay out of everybody’s way.

  There was a passel of Allen’s in them mountains. I had cousins galore clean over to Virginia. Folks referred to us mostly as ‘them wild Clinch mountain boys’ I guess because we Allen’s ran to boys who mostly staid close to home. What girls there was married quickly and disappeared into other families like a skunk down a skunk hole, and didn’t come back around except to Sunday dinner or election time down at Asheville.

  There was some low land Allen’s I’d heard tell of, but our boys mostly ran to the long hunt. They just sort of faded out of the woods, and then when the doin’ was done, faded back in again. Sometimes never to be heard from again. An awful lot of things can happen to a man who spends most of his time in the woods.

  I reckon I took after them, because I was at home in the woods, along the forest trails, the creeks and rivers. My Ma used to say that if it weren’t for the woods I wouldn’t have any place to stay at all. One thing in our favor was that if any one of us was in trouble the rest would come a running. I remember an incident where a family by the name of Jergens started a scat with a couple of us Allen’s down at Asheville, figuring to lessen our clan. The Clinch Mountain Allen’s came down out of those mountains like peaches falling off a tree at first frost. The Jergens bunch backed their ears and went home.

  Jed begged me to stay until the next morning which was the 1st day of April, 1852. I agreed, but the next morning I saddled my mule early, and by the time Jedediah awoke I was putting my foot in the stirrup. He walked out on the front porch and scowled.

  “I guess you are going, and ain’t nothing I can say to stop you is there?”

  “Nope…I’ll miss you brother.”

  “You got everything you need little brother?”

  He called me that when he was feeling all misty like, even though I was taller and broader about the shoulders than he was, and when we got to wrestling, I would beat him every time.

  “Yep…see you big brother.” I was feeling a mite misty myself as I stepped that mule down the trail towards Asheville. An hour and a half later I was walking my mule down the streets of Asheville. I say streets, but there was only one street which wasn’t wider than two wagons. I was heading to the land office when I spied a sign that read ‘Horse race today’ and it dawned on me that I needed some cash money. I only had six dollars in my pocket to get me to the Western lands, and if I could win the race, I could double that up easy like. After I got finished signing over title of our land to Jed, I sashayed on over to where a feller was registering the racers names at a table set up under a tree.

  “Could I sign up for the race?”

  A sour looking old gent looked me up and down, “Boy, ain’t that a mule you got there? This is a horse race!”

  “Well, he’s got four legs ain’t he?” The man kind of put me in a sour mood myself.

  “What you got to wager son?”

  “I got me six dollars.”

  “Well, if you want to part with it that bad, put your mark, and your money down on the table.” A couple of the fellows watching kind of snickered, but I knew my mule was fast as all get-out so I signed up, and gave the man my money.

  Some of the men were getting liquored up by the time they began lining up in the middle of the street. There was four horses that looked fairly formidable all prancing around like they was at a church social, but prancing don’t mean a thing in a horse race. They all looked at my mule, who was looking like he was near to sleep, and guffawed. I paid them no mind when I woke the mule and lined him up with the other four horses, then he went back to sleep, and the group guffawed some more.

  The old man got in front of us and announced in his sour mash voice, “Now boys, the race is to the Tucker road tree, you round the tree and head back. It’s a long half mile race so you know what to expect. They’s a man posted at the tree so if anyone breaks the rules, he’ll be disqualified and forfeit his money on the spot. This here is a fair race, and the winner doubles his money and gets twenty five dollars extra for his horse.” He looked at me, “Or mule.”

  He raised his pistol and fired. Those horses took out of there like they was on fire and left my mule a standing there still asleep. I laid spurs to the mule, and he took off like the devil himself was after him, and I quickly closed the gap between me and them horses. It was a long race for any horse and I held him back a little so as not to tucker him out right off. When I rounded the tree the third in the race was even, and the man kicked out at me with his foot, trying to knock my mule off balance. I left him in the dust, as I headed back towards the finish line, which was where we started.

  I decreased the distance between me and the lead horse which was a Kentucky thoroughbred. I could see the owner flogging his horse with a quirt, and I spurred my mule. I was feeling the win going out of me as that horse seemed like he was flying low, but my mule got the idea, and we pulled neck and neck a bit at a time. That mule seemed to get his second wind, and when we crossed the finish line I was a full neck ahead of the thoroughbred.

  I heard whoops and hollers behind me as I let the mule slow to a walk. I walked him slow back down the street so as to let him cool down, and by the time I got back to the finish line, that mule was not much more than breathing hard. The gent that owned the Kentucky thoroughbred began to object, “That ain’t a fair race cause he ain’t no horse. Anybody can see a mule don’t belong in this here horse race!”

  “He’s got four legs ain’t he?” The old man said with a grin, and handed me up my money.

  “Where you be off to with your money son?” The old man asked.

  “I am for the western lands.”

  “Well, good luck son and be off with you before they hang you for racing your mule.”

  I had all my business done so I walked the mule out of town, and set his nose looking west toward the sun going down. I was feeling a mite richer with thirty seven dollar
s in my pocket. I made camp a couple miles down the road, and warmed up some beans, and corn pone I had cooked the day before.

  The last light was just fading when I heard the crackle of a dead branch being stepped on in them woods the back of me, and I raised my rifle to the ready. I listened real well, and I heard a mans clothes being scuffed on a tree. I was used to listening to sounds in the night at camp. Those sounds could tell the difference between an animal and a man, even a white man from an Indian, and that sound told me it was no animal or Indian out there.

  “Mister, you better come out of there slow like, or this here squirrel gun won’t miss!” I said to the shadows. I wasn’t