Chapter 2: Whitaker Point

 



     "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. Longhorns grazed on the Texas plains were continually rustled north through the Ozarks to markets in St. Louis. The wild territory Benjamin had dreamed of had become populous enough by 1836 to become the twenty-fifth American state. 



     "Tweren't bison them soldiers was ushering west," Whitaker cries, shaking his head side-to-side in time to the to-and-fro of his creaky wooden rocker.

"Why would they be bringing beeves thataway?" Bennie wonders aloud.

"Not cows or pigs," the older man whispers, bringing his rocker to a stop. "Pitiful sight, it was people."

"Where you reckon they was heading?"

"Cane Hill's the next trading post."

"I'll be," Benny declares. "That's where I'm going of a morning."




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