Storm Childe: Daughter of the Storm (Original Title Storm Childe: Awakening)

By E. Don Harpe

When 15 year old Derek Wolfe and his friends learn that millions of dollars of Civil War gold is said to be buried somewhere in Taylor's Woods, they begin exploring the forest at every opportunity. When Derek and Tiffany discover a map in an old deserted house, it triggers a series of events that awaken old ghosts and allows a young girl to find out the truth about herself and her powers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E. Don Harpe
• Release date: Jul 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465804013

E. Don Harpe

Award winning author E. DON HARPE has had a varied career, from military service in the 60’s to years spent as a published songwriter in Nashville. During this time he won the coveted Silver Pen Award from the Nashville Banner newspaper. Since retiring from public work in 2004, Harpe has concentrated on writing novels, and continuing to move forward with his writing. He also has nearly 40 short stories available which can be found on Smashwords as well as other sites that feature ebooks. His book of memoirs, THE LAST OF THE SOUTH TOWN RINKY DINKS, published in September of 2008, was an instant success with friends and readers alike. The stories are touching, down to earth tales of small town America, and will bring tears and laughter to all who can remember when the world was a kinder, simpler place. It’s one of those books that you won’t be able to put down, and one that you will re-read many times over the years. Now living in Georgia, Harpe devotes his time to Helen, his wife of nearly 50 years, to his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and to his writing. “I’m pretty satisfied in my own skin right now,” Harpe says, “and I just want to continue to write things that will entertain and hold the readers interest.”

Book preview

STORMCHILDE

Daughter Of The Storm

By E. Don Harpe

Copyright 1994 - 2011 Ernest D. Harp

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work. This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any person, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

*****

- 1 -

IN 1861, WITH THE CIVIL WAR UNDERWAY, a plantation owner in Mississippi named Phillip B. Hunnicutt accepted a commission as a Colonel in the army of the South, and began fighting the war alongside his neighbors.

Hunnicutt's farm was large, encompassing over two thousand acres, and like many other plantation owners of the time, Hunnicutt used slaves to perform much of the farms labor.

Nearly fifty years of age, Phillip Hunnicutt was the son and grandson of southern plantation owners, and life in the huge Mississippi cotton fields was all he and his family had ever known.

Phillip Hunnicutt as tall, standing an inch over six feet, and weighed nearly 200 pounds, very little of which was fat. His back was straight and his shoulders square; he had coal black hair that was beginning to turn gray at the temples.

Even though civil war had broken out and times in the South were very serious, Phillip Hunnicutt's blue eyes flashed when he talked about the two things he loved in life. The only things that brought him joy were his cotton plantation and the newly formed Confederate States of America.

He admitted to one and all that he would never allow any carpetbagger from the north to take possession of anything he owned, and he would fight and die if need be to protect his family, his farm, and the South he loved.

The newly appointed Colonel Hunnicutt owned more than thirty slaves when the war broke out, and like many other men in both the South and the North, he truly believed it was his right to own them, regardless of what others thought. Colonel Hunnicutt, much like the other slave owners, was prepared to fight to the death for what he believed in.

However, there were a few differences between Colonel Hunnicutt and some of the other slave owners. He had once been a kind and well liked man, but after the untimely passing of Geneva Hunnicutt, his wife of 18 years, Phillip Hunnicutt had began to drink and had then turned mean, and for the past few years he had gained the reputation of being a harsh slave master. After he joined the Confederate Army, and after he saw how the war was going, Colonel Hunnicutt treated the people on his plantation even worse than before.

Hunnicutt's commission in the Army of the Confederate States of America, along with his new attitude, made the slaves even more afraid than before, and many of them began to look for a way to escape from his tyranny.

One of the slaves, a thirty-four year old man named Roscoe Taylor, saw the meanness in the Colonel and watched at the Colonel turned increasingly bitter. Roscoe became the first of the slaves actually do something about it.

In late November of 1861 only a short time after the beginning of the war, Roscoe decided to run away. He confided his plans to his young wife Missy, and early one morning, just before the first light of dawn crept over the slumbering cotton fields, Roscoe and Missy wrapped their only baby in a blanket, sneaked out of the straw pallets where they slept and slowly made their way to the barn.

Roscoe and Missy knew that if they were captured they would be severely punished, perhaps even killed, but they wanted their freedom more than they feared whatever uncertain future might lie ahead, or whatever punishment might lie in store should they be caught. They agreed that the punishment, whatever it was, could not be any worse than a life lived in slavery. For weeks they made their secret preparations for escape and when the time came to run they slipped out of their beds and headed away from the Delta as fast as their strong legs and a stolen mule could take them.

Roscoe and Missy made good their escape, and traveled North for almost two months before finally ending up in a sleepy little town in Northern Tennessee close to the Kentucky border. Roscoe looked at the gently rolling land, saw a place where a man could make a good home for his family, and determined that this was where they would stay. In short order, they settled down on a few acres outside a little town called Green Ridge and built a small split log house. There they began to raise a family, and both of them were determined never to run again and never again to live as a slave to any man.

It was close to a year after Roscoe and Missy had made their escape that Colonel Hunnicutt came to believe that the South was about to lose the war, and true to his nature, he acted in what he thought would be his own best interests. He turned traitor to the cause of the South and he and a hand picked group of soldiers began a short-lived career as desperados.

Being a man of few moral values, yet still having some feeling for the South, Colonel Hunnicutt took it upon himself to do as much damage to Grant's union forces as he could.

He and his band passed the spring of 1863 raiding Yankee supply trains and it was in May of that year that they accidentally robbed the biggest treasure train of them all.

In the early months of 1863, President Lincoln had made up his mind that the battle of Vicksburg was going to be one of the most important campaigns of the war, and was determined to break the Confederate forces by any means possible. Unknown to anyone except General Grant, a supply train carrying over three million dollars in gold bars and coins was making its way south, money to be used to supply the Union forces in what they feared may be a long, drawn out siege.

The Confederate commander, Lt. General John Pemberton, was making a determined stand, showing no signs of surrendering Vicksburg, and continued advances against his forces were doing very little good.

The New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad train was to have reached Grant's union army in Jackson on or about May 15, rightly thinking that the city of Jackson would be in Yankee hands by then. However, that was not to be the case.

Jackson did indeed fall to Grant's forces on May 14, but the gold train didn't show up on schedule. For a very good reason.

Striking a little after dawn on the morning of May 12, 1863, well to the north of Jackson, the Colonel and his troops liberated the train of all of the gold, but it wasn't without cost. The Union troops guarding the train killed most of the Colonel's men, and the Colonel left Mississippi, all that were left of his band of brigands were four soldiers and his three ferocious dogs.

Wounded and weary, the small group left Mississippi behind. They rode as fast as it was possible for them to ride, seeing as how they were pulling a wagon loaded with the gold. The Colonel and his men rode north, headed toward the backwoods of Kentucky, seeking a safe place to rest and recover. But that much gold was sure to be the object of an intensive search, and Colonel Hunnicutt knew that the only chance he had was to run as quickly and as far as he could, and then to bury the gold. He had to bury it deep, and then get rid of anyone who knew the location. Colonel Hunnicutt had long ago decided that he would have to kill most of his own men, as he didn't think they could be trusted not to try and recover the gold.

His plan took an unexpected turn, however, when his ragtag troops reached a small town in northern middle Tennessee.

It was simply by accident that in March of 1864 the Colonel and his men chose to rest for a few weeks in the little town of Green Ridge, the same town where Roscoe and Missy now lived.

For almost three weeks, the Colonel and his men holed up in a small house about a mile and a half from town. They kept the gold well hidden, waiting to see if the Yankee army was anywhere in the area. They minded their business and stayed out of town except to buy a few supplies now and then, and would have soon been on their way had the Colonel not had even another accident.

In what turned out to be the most serious accident of all, the Colonel found Roscoe and Missy.

Riding into town for supplies one day, Colonel Hunnicutt spotted Roscoe at the general store, recognized him at once as his own runaway slave, and quietly followed him back to the little house where he and Missy lived. It had not quite been three years since their escape from the plantation.

Colonel Hunnicutt quickly rode to his own house, gathered his men, and went back to the cabin looking for Roscoe and Missy. This time, when the two ex-slaves once again tried to escape, the Colonel and his men were close behind.

Colonel Hunnicutt and his men chased Roscoe and Missy all night, and when they finally got close enough, he slipped the leashes off his ferocious specially bred hunting dogs. After that, it was just a matter of time. The dogs ran Roscoe and Missy to ground a little after dawn the next day.

The Colonel took the prisoners back to the small cabin where he and his men had been staying, and kept them captive for a full day and night while he made up his mind what he wanted to do. On the second day they were there, he forced Roscoe to dig a large hole in the ground, but he never explained the reason.

Early the next morning, without benefit of a judge or jury, Roscoe and Missy Taylor were hanged from a sturdy limb of a young oak tree which stood in a grassy meadow not far outside the small country town.

The Colonel left the bodies hanging for the world to see, and it was two days later before a few people from the town came and cut down the remains. They buried Roscoe and Missy about a half-mile from the tree, in a small cleared meadow back in the woods, and marked the spot with two small wooden crosses. Years later, when Roscoe and Missy's children were grown, they placed a small stone marker at the gravesite, and tried to keep a few flowers there. Many years later, the small gravesite fell into disrepair, and over time, almost everyone in the small community forgot about it.

The narrow path which led through the meadow and past the tree had come to be called Hanging Tree Lane, and was known by that name until about 1940, when the people of Green Ridge let the name die away. They didn't like to think about what had happened there so many years ago, and they were certain that the past would be easier to forget if the name were changed.

The years passed, the small town grew, and by the early sixties, it had pushed its city limits beyond the empty meadow where the old oak tree still stood. There were very few people in town that recalled the tale of the hangings, and the county paved the small gravel road years ago. Its original name was now lost in the pages of history. The only remembrance of those times was the tall oak tree, and even it was now slowly dying due to old age and the ravages of time.

In 1989, the Cherry Grove Development Company bought the little meadow and 40 acres around it, and began building the first of the houses in the subdivision they had decided to name OakTree Estates.

That's where Derek Wolfe and his sister Nikki came in.

Derek and Nikki, along with their parents, moved to Green Ridge, Tennessee, from a town in Georgia just outside Atlanta, and the events that transpired over the course of the summer were strange, not to mention extremely dangerous.

Derek was 15 and Nikki was 17 when their Dad got transferred from Atlanta, Georgia to the small but growing town of Green Ridge, Tennessee, about thirty miles north of Nashville. Daniel Wolfe was an engineer and took the job in Green Ridge because it offered him a better chance of promotion and more money than the main company in Atlanta.

They bought a beautiful brick home in the OakTree subdivision, and as soon as school was out for the summer, the moving men came, packed up all of their belongings, and the family moved lock, stock, and barrel to Green Ridge, Tennessee.

The address of the house was 13 RavenWood Lane, at least that's what the developers called it, but of course, that didn't turn out to be exactly true. As it turned out, the street address wasn't all that was wrong with the new home; there were a few other little things that they found out about later. Derek and Nikki felt very lucky to have a beautiful new house, in a friendly little town, and to have such a beautiful old oak tree in their backyard.

If they had only known.

The old oak tree in the backyard was the same tree where the Colonel hanged Roscoe and Missy Taylor, and under the tree was where Colonel Hunnicutt and his men made their last stand. They later learned that over the years many people thought the tree was haunted. It was a fact that the tree had not been exactly friendly to anyone who dared disturb it.

It wasn't until later that they learned there was much more to the old tree and the legend of Roscoe and Missy Taylor than met the eye, and that there were a handful of people in the town who knew more than they had ever told.

Not only had a lot of strange things happened over the years in the vicinity of the tree, a lot of strange things had happened in Green Ridge that had never made the six o'clock news. Many people in town hunted the Colonel's gold had been hunted for years, but it was not common knowledge. As near as anyone could tell, no one had ever turned up a trace of it. No one ever found one single gold bar or even one small coin.

To complicate things even more, the contractors built the Wolfe's new house barely fifty feet from the site of an earlier Indian burial ground, fading evidence of the terrible march through Tennessee called the Trail Of Tears.

Nikki and Derek didn't know it then, but RavenWood Lane once was known as Hanging Tree Lane, and their first few weeks in Green Ridge were going to be very interesting.

The first summer in Green Ridge for Derek and Nikki Wolfe would turn out to be very long, very hot, and occasionally very stormy.

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- 2 -

MOVING TO A strange neighborhood, and especially to a new town is always a little scary, and most kids would much rather stay