The Third Life Of Old Benny Reed

       "Woa Marty," Benjamin commands his favorite quarter horse with a little pull on the reins as they approach the spinning mill wheel of the Cane Hill trading post. "What in tarnation?" "Soldiers taking them dirty Indians to Oklahoma," a teenager calls up in the steady rain as he offers to hobble the sorrel gelding. "You'd be a might worse off herded five-hundred miles," Benny mumbles as he slips in the mud while swinging off the young horse named for President Martin Van Buren.  "Still sir," the boy calls back leading the skittish animal to a long hitching post beside a nibbled down canebrake on the high prairie of the Springfield plateau west of the Ozarks. "Cherokee don't belong out here."      That was precisely the problem for the eastern tribes being displaced west since the Indian Removal Act of 1830 - not belonging anywhere. Van Buren had been elected in 1836 and continued the removal policies of his Democr...

       "Damnedest thing up to Cave Mountain last night," proclaims a wrinkled man from a rocking chair on the front porch of an old cabin sinking into the hillside.  "You don't say," Benjamin prods as he gingerly slips back into a neighboring chair and passes the powder horn. "Plumb near tuckered out when I gets to the crag," Whitaker continues, uncorking the makeshift flask and taking a slug. "Looked down and seed a herd shuffling along the Military Road." "Whewee, ain't seen a line of buffalo in many a year," Benny marvels, pulling the strap back from the older man and tipping back his own shot.    Benjamin Reed had seen many changes in the four years he'd been in Arkansas. A rapid influx of settlers from the east along with their livestock and horses had driven the formerly vast bison herds farther west. Trading posts had sprouted along all the trails for the farming, hunting, and household needs of the newcomers. Longhor...

       " Morning rounds, Pop?" queries James Reed from the top of the stairs as his father shuffles for the door of their log house nestled into a cool hollow on the southern slope of the Boston Mountains.  "You know what they say about the early bird," Benjamin calls back in the orange glow from the hearth where he had just stoked the fire against the chill of an autumn morning. "You got that worm long ago," the son laughs as he tosses a walking stick to the old man.       The Reeds had settled onto an ideal eighty acres four years ago upon emerging from the Ozarks on the Old Southwest Trail. The lower acreage of short-grass prairie along a clear creek lined by cottonwoods would grow the corn they needed for animals and food, with a little left over for the family recipe. The sloped back forty were graced by an oak and hickory forest that would feed the fires for James's smithy and Benjamin's still.       The father was n...