Daniel blew hot
breath against his hands, watching it fog into the frigid night. He’d
counted on a nice warm bed; instead he shivered beneath the blanket of
boughs he’d scavenged from the banks of the Wabash, wondering even now
how he’d faired so poorly on today’s ride. He’d ponied horses many times
between the farm and Vincennes, in worse weather than this December had
to offer, but never had he been forced to bunk down for the night.
Something had these fillies agitated; even now, hobbled and free to
graze, they pawed the earth as if some demon hid just under the frosted
ground.
Well, one thing was certain, there was no point worrying; either Penfield would be waiting tomorrow or he wouldn’t. Best thing he could do was grab a few hours rest and start out at first light. Assuming he didn’t freeze first. He burrowed down, closed his eyes, and let Morpheus take over.
A crack of thunder jolted him upright, and he looked around befuddled, trying to make sense of the growing din around him. Thunder from a cloudless sky? No. This was wrong. He could hear water rushing and bubbling all around him, but it wasn’t rain.
A tree groaned behind him and only then did he realize the ground was alive, uncorking like a wild bronc. From habit, he reached for a fistful of mane, but only cold clay met his fingers.
No. Not a storm. Not anything he knew.
Time itself distorted while he took in the rippling ground, a veritable pond of rocks and earth, and the crescendo of wildlife giving voice to their confusion, his horses’ screams carried on the upsurge. “A great tempest rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks,” he said, a passage from the Bible memorized sometime in his youth, brought to mind by the brimstone burning his nostrils.
There was no safe place in this early morning Armageddon, so he huddled into himself and began to pray.
No ancestor captures my imagination quite like Daniel McDowell (and his wife, whom you haven’t yet met). Honestly, they talk to me so often that I started a novel for them; some folks just insist on being heard.
But, this venue is for fact (or near fact, in the case of my imagined scenario above), and the truth is
