Hank of Twin Rivers, Book Two: The Eagle's Nest

By M. C. Arvanitis

Hank, now sixteen, settled with his Pa and Uncle Mac in the Platte Valley three years earlier. His father set up a trading post where immigrants traveling the Mormon or Oregon Trails stop for supplies. In the past Pa and Hank did not get along, although they had settled their main differences two years ago, but conflict arises between them again when Pa remarries. Hank's Uncle Mac is always there to ease the tension.
When life gets too tedious, Hank finds comfort in his "Eagle’s Nest, " a tall cottonwood tree that grows in the valley overlooking the merging North and South Platte Rivers. Here he watches the growth of the town. New people settle near Twin Rivers including Preacher Twiddle and his large family. Hank likes the daughter, Becca. Although Becca’s father forbids them to be together, they become good friends and only she knows about his eagle’s nest.
Much to his stepmother's dismay, Hank makes friends with a Pawnee boy. She refuses to allow him in her house. Straight-laced and prejudiced, she also refuses to help a slave family escape from bounty hunters.
The winter is hard and long. Food is scarce. When Hank goes hunting rabbits in the valley, he gets lost in a sudden blizzard and tangles with a mysterious wild creature.
Encouraged by his new wife, Pa enrolls Hank in an Eastern school where he can prepare to be a doctor. Hank refuses to go. He runs away with horse wranglers who hunt for wild horses in Western Nebraska. When he comes home with his new horse, Lady, he finds that Becca’s father has taken her and her family back to Missouri.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. C. Arvanitis
• Release date: Apr 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9780988982123

M. C. Arvanitis

M. C. Arvanitis resides in Freemont, Nebraska. She has a degree in Early Childhood Education. She taught preschool and early elementary for over thirty years until her retirement two years ago. She now spends her time writing elementary chapter books and Young Adult novels. Her short stories have been published in Skipping Stones Magazine, Totline Teaching Tales (Warren Publishing Co.), and Building Blocks for Bright Beginnings.

Book preview

Hank of Twin Rivers

Book Two: The Eagle’s Nest

M. C. Arvanitis

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All rights reserved including the rights of reproduction in whole or in part in any form without permission of the author, M. C. Arvanitis.

Copyright 2014 M. C. Arvanitis

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-0-9889821-2-3

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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Cover Design by Dori Murnieks

Dedication

To the other ‘Hank’ in my heart, my father,

Henry W. Wellman

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my beta reader, Helen Worthington, to Dori Murnieks, cover artist, to Sunshine Keck, Consultant, and especially to the Oregon Coast Writers Focus Group, for their wise and timely critiques.

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Hank of Twin Rivers

Book Two: The Eagle's Nest

M. C. Arvanitis

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Map of the trek Hank and the wranglers took to find the wild horse herd.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: View From the Eagle's Nest

Chapter 2: Spooked in the Valley

Chapter 3: Corn Husking Party

Chapter 4: Bounty Hunters

Chapter 5: Family Reunited

Chapter 6: The Vote

Chapter 7: Slaves’ Escape

Chapter 8: Pa’s New House

Chapter 9: Wedding on the Prairie

Chapter 10: A Chivaree

Chapter 11: Ta Ha Zouka

Chapter 12: Snow Bound

Chapter 13: Wild Woman

Chapter 14: Home for the Wild Woman

Chapter 15: New Plans

Chapter 16: Unexpected News

Chapter 17: New Boy In Town

Chapter 18: What Whisky Brings

Chapter 19: The New Minister

Chapter 20: Hank Makes a Decision

Chapter 21: Riding with the Wranglers

Chapter 22: The Drop

Chapter 23: Wild Horses

Chapter 24: Breaking Lady

Chapter 25: Prairie Rodeo

Chapter 26: Twister

Chapter 27: Becca’s Gone

Chapter 28: Leaving Twin Rivers

Book Three Preview

About the Author

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Prologue

Hank, now sixteen, has settled with his Pa and Uncle Mac in the Platte Valley, where the North and South Platte Rivers merge. Pa and Major Beams set up a trading post between the Mormon and Oregon Trails for the pioneers who pass day by day. In the past Pa and Hank did not get along although they had settled their main differences three years ago, but when Pa remarries, conflict arises once again between them. Hank makes friends with the preacher’s daughter which does not set well with her father or Hank's stepmother.

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Chapter 1

View From the Eagle's Nest

Hank scratched at the mosquito bite on his elbow. He knew he shouldn’t scratch -- he had scabs up and down his arms -- but it itched like the devil. He’d be glad when the first frost came to free the area of the pesky insects. It seemed they weren’t so thick in his eagle's nest -- a perch in the top of a tall cottonwood tree that grew in the Platte River Valley.

He thought about his birthday coming in September. Not that it mattered much. Birthdays were for little boys who had mothers to bake cakes for them. Sixteen wasn’t anything to celebrate anyway. Pa kept reminding him he was still a boy. You’re still wet behind the ears, seemed to be his favorite saying. Lately, though, things were going good between him and Pa.

It hadn’t always been that way. Back in Iowa, when Ma and his baby sister, Amanda, died of cholera four years ago, Pa had turned cold and distant. Uncle Mac said it was Pa’s way of sorrowing. Hank had handled his own sorrow by keeping Ma’s memory fresh in his mind. He touched the ring tied on the string around his neck, Ma’s wedding ring, the only thing he had to remember her by. He considered it his lucky piece.

The bawling of his pet cow, Clementine, sounded loud across the water. She and her three-year-old calf, Trouble, grazed in the lower pasture between the rivers, swishing their tails to ward off flies. Trouble had grown to be a fine bull. Below on the river’s bank Uncle Mac, whistling an Irish tune, pulled in a fish. Hank hoped it was catfish. There was nothing better than Uncle Mac’s cornmeal-coated fried catfish. ’Tis a meal fit for a king, Uncle Mac bragged.

The colors of the early sunset reflected in the waters as the North Platte and South Platte merged together flowing eastward to join the great Missouri. He wished he were an artist and could paint a picture of the fall-colored maples, cottonwood, and willow trees that lined the steep cliff separating the settlement from the valley. He grinned at the thought. Pa wouldn’t approve of him spending time painting pictures. It was only through Uncle Mac’s interference that Pa had allowed him to finish eighth grade back in Buck Creek, Iowa. And even now he complained about the time Hank spent reading.

The Nebraska prairie, dotted with sagebrush, stretched above both sides of the valley as far as he could see. During the summer months, wagon trains rolled from sunup to sundown on trails deeply rutted by thousands of wagon wheels. The Mormon Trail on the north of the Platte River valley and the Oregon Trail on the south led to faraway places like Oregon and California. Hank often wondered what the travelers found in these places, free land for growing crops or the gold in California? Hank thanked his lucky stars that when Pa decided to leave Buck Creek he hadn’t headed to Oregon or California. All the land they needed was right here in Nebraska.

He looked across at his town built on the north bluff four years ago where Pa and his partner, Major Grant Beams, decided to set up a trading post. Hank had had the privilege of naming their new home. With the two Platte Rivers merging, ‘Twin Rivers’ came to his mind. Good name, Sonny, the Major had praised. Pa and Uncle Mac agreed.

Wagon trains, following both trails, stopped for supplies and through the years Pa’s business grew. While he and Major Beams traveled back and forth to Omaha to buy merchandise, Hank helped Uncle Mac plant the crops, take care of the animals, and harvest the trees from the land his uncle had claimed in the valley.

Late sunlight reflected from the new glass windows which replaced the original thin oiled paper in their sod house. He and Uncle Mac had built this house when they first came to the Platte Valley. Uncle Mac called it the bachelor house since only men lived in it. The privy, a place where they could do their business in privacy, stood near the chicken coop. The prairie town had grown from this sod house and a lean-to barn into a main street consisting of Pa’s store/warehouse, a livery station and blacksmith, and the newest establishment, a barbershop/bath/shoe store. On his last trip to Omaha, Pa had brought back two Chinese brothers, Chung Lee and Chung Yao. Chung Lee was a barber and his brother, a cobbler. They lived in a small room in the back of the shop.

Looking small in the distance, Uncle Mac’s friend, Johnny Kelly, bent over shoeing a horse in front of the livery barn. Recently from Texas, Johnny had been one of those passing through who decided to stay. Pa put him to work managing the livery stable. With his ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, and his gun holster tied to his right thigh, he looked like a real cowboy. Johnny was Hank’s hero, a true wrangler, said to be the best in the West at breaking broncos.

The clucking of chickens came softly to his ears and an occasional honking of the Monster Goose, which strutted around the barnyard among the other geese. He was getting pretty old for a goose, but he still could take a nip out of any person who wasn’t watching him. Hank had been deathly afraid of the Monster Goose when he was a kid back in Buck Creek. When they left for Nebraska, the crazy goose had followed them. Pa finally decided to put it in the crate with the chickens.

A voice interrupted his thoughts. Hank, are you up there? He smiled at the sound of Becca Twiddle’s voice. Preacher Zechariah Twiddle, his wife and their nine children had been the first ones to settle near Twin Rivers. Their oldest child, Becca, became Hank’s special friend. He could tell her thoughts that he would tell no one else, not even Uncle Mac.

Come on up, he called, it’s cooler up here. He watched her freckled face break through the thick leaf cover.

Pulling herself up on the branch beside Hank, she pushed back the wisps of red-blonde curls straying from her braids. I can’t stay long. If Papa finds me with you, he’ll tan my hide. I told him I was going to gather chokecherries. She looked down at her bare feet perched on the branch below. I wish he wasn’t so grumpy.

Maybe he will change. Pa did. I thought he hated me until I got the sunstroke. When he thought I was dying he changed.

Becca shook her head. Papa will never change. He thinks he’s God’s voice and everyone has to listen to him. She sighed. Did I tell you Mama is going to have another baby? She keeps having them, and I keep having to take care of them. I wish I’d been born a boy.

I’m glad you weren’t. Hank teasingly tugged on her braid.

Embarrassed, Becca changed the subject. The crickets sure are loud.

"Uncle