The Oasis: The White Mountain Bigfoot, #1

By Bobby Clark III

This is the fascinating tale of a man and a beast who work together solving mysteries and righting wrongs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Carney
• Release date: Oct 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781702166706

Book preview

Dedication

This book and the following book are dedicated to Mrs Juddy Johnson. She was my constant inspiration through the writing of both the first and second volume. Her regular phone calls to tell me how much she had enjoyed the latest chapter as well as her help in editing the writing was a constant encouragement. The character named Ma Johnson in the second book was written into the story with Mrs Juddy in mind, including the broken hip and spritely attitude.  She was loved and will be missed.

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Cover Art

Cover art was done by American Honey Art. Follow her on Instagram @american._.honeyart or on Etsy under shops @AmericanHoneyArt. Contact her though either site if you ae interested in having your art brought to life.

About the Author

It was a cold winter night in 1984. I was 12 years old. My family and I lived in an old farmhouse, built back around the turn of the century in Tennessee, on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau at the end of a gravel road. It had no insulation in the walls and an open fireplace for heat. We had no Internet, no computers and no TV.

For entertainment we would sit around Saturday night and listen to the Grand old Opry and eat popcorn with yeast flakes sprinkled generously on it.

Like most 12-year-old boys I hated reading but on this particular night everyone was busy with their own activities. My dad loved to read. Finding nothing to do that interested me, I became bored and I asked my dad what I could do. He handed me a Louis L'Amour book called Hondo, and suggested that I give it a try.    

Reading a book was the last thing I wanted to do, but since the livingroom room was the only room warm enough to be in, and I could find nothing else to do,  I finally sat down in front of the fireplace and began reading.

I was hooked! That began a lifelong love of reading, especially anything western. Through those books also began a lifelong passion for the west and anything western. I did not know it at the time but the stories of grit, determination and hard work coupled with danger and doing the right thing no matter the odds were having an effect on my thinking.     

During my teen and young adult years I had the privilege of making two trips out through the west and was determined to come back.

Louis L'Amour describes the magnetic pull the west has on men and women who have been there, and I can attest to having experienced that very sensation. As a young boy I dreamed of someday owning a cattle ranch somewhere out west. I have since read every Louis L’Amour book on the shelf  as well as most of the Zane Grey collection, JT Edson and many other writers as well.

As I grew older I got married, had a family and settled down in Tennessee. But always that dream of the west was in the back of my mind. I would read about the rider on his horse, with his hat brim pulled down low against the steady rain with his slicker turned up to keep the water out. I would picture in my mind that rider working his way along the slope of the mountain just the way Louis L'Amour described it. The water coming down through the leaves and dripping off his hat brim. The rider would emerge on the shoulder of a mountain and look out across the valley as the rain came down.

When I got older and got a place of my own with a few acres I built a barn and bought some horses. I learned how to train horses and how to use a round pen to de-spook them. I bought that hat and slicker that I had always worn in my dreams and finally got to experience the the feel of a horse on the mountain trail with the rain coming down. The creak of saddle leather as I shifted my weight. 

It was exactly like I thought it would be. Only a hundred times better. I was overcome by a feeling of freedom and nostalgia as I sat there listening to the rain and the other forest sounds. Being almost completely dry while the rain comes down all around me, I felt like an explorer from the 1800s. Feeling the horse moving under me along the mountain trail, smelling the rain in the forest and even the wet horse smell brought back the emotions I felt while reading those westerns. It was magical as I rode onto the shoulder off the mountain, and came out into a clearing where I could look along the mountain and into the valley.

I imagined  myself 150 years ago seeing the world as it was then. A cold drop of rain made its way inside my slicker and down my spine. I shivered as I hitched my gun belt into a more comfortable position. My horse twitched his ears and cocked one backwards towards me as though to ask me if I was out of my mind being out there in the rain like that instead of back inside the warm barn. I couldn't blame the horse, but I was having the time of my life.

I went on to do many trail rides including one from Kentucky all the way down into Alabama. All of this just made me want to see the west from between the ears of a horse all the more. As life would have it though, I settled into a career in Tennessee where my wife and I raised our children. I joined the local volunteer fire department in 1996. By 1998 I had my EMT license. In 2001 I graduated paramedic school. I worked full-time as a paramedic for years after that. I had the privilege of joining my local sheriffs department as a tactical medic. Otherwise known as a SWAT medic. I went through combat medic training, basic and advanced SWAT, basic and advanced weapons and a number of other classes. The last nine years that I was a paramedic I also served as a coroner, investigating all types of death scenes in my county. 

Eventually I realized that I wanted more in life, and I was ready for a change. I had been managing and building a small trucking company on the side, hauling cars and taking some trips out to the west coast and back. I had obtained my commercial drivers license back in 2007 and decided to put it to