Mystic Mountain

By William T. Lessig

Having read books all my life this is my first attempt at writing. I turned 80 just before I began thinking about and writing this story. Therefore I have a lot of life experiences and knowledge to use in crafting tales. I have always been interested in Science Fiction novels especially space warfare and historical fiction of exploration and warfare. This book is a combination of Science Fiction and American Indian (Cherokee) life. It is about a Cherokee village that was raided early one morning by Iroquois Indians from the north seeking female slaves and for young warriors to experience fighting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546249351

William T. Lessig

I lived in western North Carolina for much of my teen age years. Friends and I would explore the mountains and creeks every chance we got. We would fish the many streams and have impromptu fish frys on the banks with nothing but a frying pan and a bottle of vegetable oil. Trout was always available and easily caught on an old cane pole. We would explore the valleys and hills searching for strange rocks and gems. I visited the town of Cherokee several times and spent time in their museums and shops asking about the strange clothing and weapons on display. I was born in 1935 and grew up in the years before television. Children of my age spent much of their early years reading books from the public library and the school library. Books have always been my choice for entertainment even after television was invented and became popular. As a young boy and young man I would spend hours dreaming and thinking about the people of history and how they lived. This story is about a group of modern people traveling back in time to help rescue a Cherokee village that had been attacked and many killed.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

It was the first new moon of the spring season and the land was shrouded in almost complete darkness. The only light was from the many stars visible with a bright streak of stars that one day would be called the Milky Way.

The air was significantly warmer than it had been in the early hours of the last new moon but it was still cold enough to see the breath of the warriors as they silently crept toward the small sleeping Indian town. The war party consisted of some twenty-two pelt wrapped; face painted warriors; face painted in black across the eyes with red mouths; chests painted with black and red finger streaks. There were more warriors creeping toward the town than warriors that slumbered there. Full of excitement the young attacking warriors were eager to prove themselves and to reap the huge benefits of proving their bravery and hopefully ownership of a female captive. The Iroquois warriors had stalked the camp since late in the afternoon of the previous day. They had hidden on the steep slopes of the mountain just to the east of the town; watching and waiting. They had been lying in wait since sundown for the resident warriors to go to sleep and the town to settle down. Although there was a large difference in the numbers between the attackers and the defenders, most of the attackers were young un-blooded braves and this was their first invasion of another tribes land and village.

From the time that the last of the unsuspecting residents of the village entered their huts and the village became quiet, the attackers slowly and silently began moving closer till they were among the huts. At a quiet signal grunt, the attack began. Within moments the town was in an uproar; yelling, screaming, clubbing and stabbing. Even though the residents were taken by surprise they had often talked about and planned what they would do in case slavers attacked them while they slept. Their main goal, if they were outnumbered, was to only fight long enough for the women and children to flee to the thick forest that surrounded the town.

The fighting only went on for about five minutes or so. After that time the defenders slowly disengaged, and following well-known paths, fled into the thick underbrush. The attackers didn’t follow them because they were satisfied with the six young females they had captured in the first few minutes. It didn’t take long for the Iroquois to secure the slaves with hands tied behind them and course rawhide ropes connecting them by their necks. They marched them out of town toward the north and home. Several of their numbers were left in the town; two had been killed and three so badly injured they would not be able to make the arduous trip back to the North West. The town faired much worse with most of their strongest warriors killed or incapacitated and many of their women decimated as well.

The Chief, who survived because he’d been attacked by a very young warrior who was easily dispatched, saw and heard the raiders leaving and re-entered the town. He built up the central fire for light to begin binding wounds and taking care of the dead. He surveyed the town and found that three Cherokee warriors had been killed while they slept, their wives also killed along with two other young wives who had fought valiantly to escape capture. There were four other young warriors, who were badly injured but might recover in time,

There were three Iroquois captives who the Chief and his medicine man thought to be able to survive their injuries long enough to be tortured to death.

Aka-Adawene, the village medicine man, along with several older women, went among the injured binding wounds and splinting broken arms and legs. Aka-Adawene put healing poultices on cuts and scrapes and for two of the worst injuries he bound them with new bleached deer skin with a small purple crystal lying next to the injuries.

The mystic power of those crystals had long been known to Aka-Adawene. When his supply of the crystals got low he would spend days hiking to the east to a cave on Mystic Mountain where he found them. He believed that the Great Spirit had left them in the cave for him to find. He had discovered the cave when he was a young man. He had seen an eagle circling the mountain while on a trip of self-discovery and while walking over this mountain he saw a rabbit dart into a small crevice between two large boulders. When he slid between the rocks he discovered the cave with colored crystals covering the walls, floor and ceiling of the cave. His teacher and mentor had convinced him that wounds bound with one of the crystals would heal faster and would not fester, get hot and leak yellow pus. He was taught that after the wound healed he should soak the crystals in clear mountain water for a full moon to cleanse them for later use. However, over the years many of the crystals became broken or lost or kept by the one who they had helped recover.

He only had two very small crystals left after many years of repeated use, and he knew he would have to go back to the cave on Mystic Mountain for more if he wanted to help all the injured. He applied those two small crystals to the most severely injured Cherokee warriors and decided he would leave quickly. When the sun was directly overhead he began the trek to the cave. He told the Chief that he would return as fast as he could with more crystals, but it was going to take five or six days before he would return. Leaving the injured to the ministrations of the older women of the village he headed out with the sun at his back.

He ran most of the way to the mountain. He only walked when the slopes got too steep; only stopping to rest once during the trip and made it to the cave in record time. When he got to Mystic Mountain he’d hung a small rabbit he’d killed on the way, on a limb of a young oak tree and ate a small meal of ground corn meal and nuts before he entered the cave. He had to prepare himself with prayer and humility so that the spirits which dwelled in the cave would give up their treasures. As he finished his prayer he thought he felt the mountain move under his knees. He took the movement to mean that the spirits approved of his taking their treasures for the good of his tribe. He knew the movement would break lose the purple crystals so that he only had to gather them. So, with the belief that the spirit that dwelled in the cave would provide him with the healing crystals he needed, he gathered his equipment bag along with the sticks and sap filled pine knots he’d need to build a fire to see by. He knew he would have to go much deeper than he had on previous trips since he had taken all the mystic crystals from around the entrance of the cave on his previous journeys. Many of those crystals he had traded with other medicine men or given them to chronically ill members of the tribe.

He fashioned a torch out of a stout stick wrapped in tightly wound broom straw soaked in bear grease. He struck sparks with his flint fire maker and lit some moss tender and then the torch. The entrance was so small he had to crawl but after about ten paces the cave opened up and he could stand. The floor sloped downward and he cautiously walked deeper in the mountain. He came to a bend and leaving most of the daylight behind him, suddenly saw the cave lined with crystals of all shapes colors and sizes. Only broken crystals littered the floor and he knew that he would have to chip out whole crystals from the walls of the cave. The light from his torch was magnified and bent by the crystals and he stood still for a moment drinking in the wondrous sight. There were many of the purple crystals seemingly imbedded into the granite of the cave wall. He built a small fire ring out of white stones and broken crystals he found on the floor of the cave and using his torch and the pine knots he brought in with him built up a fire to give him plenty of light to work with. He used soft white stones from his bag to line the fire and to reflect its light further. A large collection of crystals just above the fire on the wall of the cave caught his eye. It seemed to intensify the light from the fire and as he watched a bubble of light flooded the cave for several paces around the collection. He had never seen anything like this display of light before. He felt that the Great Spirit was providing the light for him to collect the healing crystals; at the same time, infusing them with intense healing power.

While he was mesmerized by the light display, however, the earth began to shake and toss violently. He was thrown from his feet and he began to think that maybe the Great Spirit was telling him not to take any of the crystals. The mountain and the Great Spirit were talking to him! The shaking went on and on for many heartbeats and slowly began to diminish but not before huge clouds of dust and dirt flooded the cave from both the entrance and deeper in the mountain. The dust and dirt dimmed the light from the fire but he could see that the cave was blocked by huge rocks and dirt in both directions. There was about twenty paces of unblocked cave where he was kneeling. He had been pummeled by several smaller rocks and crystals that fell from the ceiling of the cave, but he checked himself and found no severe injury. He quietly began to sing his death song knowing that the Great Spirit was going to take him.

Aka-Adawene laid beside his small fire and watched as it grew smaller and smaller… eventually fading out completely. He closed his eyes and peacefully entered the eternal sleep.

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CHAPTER 1

Adam Jackson Returns

Jackson woke with a start. A bright sunbeam coming through the blinds was burning through his eyelids adding to the extreme discomfort inside his head. Turning over didn’t help much because the whole room was as bright as a TV studio. Even with his eyes closed he knew from the position of the sun that it was late morning. The pounding behind his eyes was not from the sun so much as the over abundance of alcohol he had absorbed at the going away party his friends threw for him that went on until the wee hours. While he couldn’t remember all of it, much of the banter, as usual, would best be forgotten. The only female at the party was Lilah the lesbian owner of the bar where Jackson and his cronies hung out. The lack of nice genteel females to govern the actions and verbiage assured that every other word was directly from the Blue Dictionary of Obscure and Obscene Language. But it also increased the hilarity of the proceedings by a huge factor… at least to alcohol addled minds. The party began with the weekly Hold-em poker game, but as usual, Lilah won most of the money so the party just became a drink fest, cum joke fest, till it broke up somewhere just south of daybreak.

Covering his eyes with a hand, Jackson tried to regain the dream he had been deeply involved with prior to awakening. As with most of his dreams, this one involved finding one of the many wrecked Spanish galleons littering the coast of southern Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. He could still see the ocean floor covered with gold coins in his mind’s eye. Jackson had, in actuality, been searching for an elusive treasure ship that sank somewhere along the Florida Keys in the middle of the 13th century. He’d been searching every winter for over 4 years; ever since his first marriage ended badly and he left his previous home in snowy Colorado for sunny Florida. The ship had eluded him just as a happy lasting relationship with a nice, intelligent, outdoorsy woman had eluded him from the time he was a teen, and discovered the joys and pains of male/female relationships. Ever the romantic, however, Jackson remained optimistic that the dream girl would come along one day and steal his heart.

Jackson, born Adam Manfred Jackson, had turned fifty-one this past fall and had spent his birthday on a small boat a few miles off shore in the Florida Gulf. He had spent it with just his four legged companion Binky and his diving buddy Mack Cuevas. While no one would call him handsome, Jackson had a rough outdoorsy face burned dark by the sun. He had never had a problem with finding women to hang on his arm or warm his bed but he really didn’t want to settle for that again. He had been married twice and both had ended about the time his wives began to try to get him to settle down; find a regular job and keep regular hours… usually about year four or five.

For the most part it was his personality that attracted both female and male friends, of which he had an abundance all across the country. He was outwardly friendly and was always ready with a quip, usually given in a dry monotone, increasing the humor of his somewhat profane observations. Just under six foot tall, and built like a linebacker, his body was fit with little or no excess weight. His muscles were the long stringy type found in runners and swimmers more so than the large developed muscles of weight lifters or linemen. His hair was just beginning to show a bit of grey at the sides which gave him a distinguished appearance although he seldom dressed in a suit or formal clothes. Most often he was seen in jeans and flannel shirt in cold weather or a t-shirt when warm, but sometimes when the occasion called for more formal attire he would wear a sport coat with turtle neck shirt. Needless to say he seldom went into establishments that required a tie and jacket.

Insistent pressure on his bladder indicated he needed to get out of the bed pretty soon. He could also hear Binky, his female, five year old, 15 inch, tri colored beagle and best friend; scratching at the back door also with a pressing need to relieve herself. Jackson moved to the side of the bed carefully making sure that he didn’t jostle his head any more than absolutely necessary. Getting to his feet carefully he slowly walked to the back door and let Binky out. Moving through the small kitchen of his bungalow he clicked on the radio as he usually did every morning to check on the weather and tide information. After relieving himself in the toilet with a deep sigh, he went to the kitchen and spooned half a can of dog food in Binky’s bowl for her breakfast. His stomach didn’t feel up to a heavy breakfast this morning, but since he was beginning his spring trip north later in the day he knew he had to get something on his stomach. Knowing that the refrigerator had already been cleaned out, he sniffed the can of dog food seriously considering a bite or two of it, but quickly decided to settle for grits mixed with a bit of cheddar cheese and butter. He took the cheese and butter from the cooler that also contained his remaining beer. Binky had already finished off her breakfast and came so sit beside him while he ate his grits; on station in case he dropped anything on the floor. As their morning ritual required, he saved the last spoonful of grits and cheese for the dog.

When he finished cleaning up the kitchen and taking out the trash, Jackson went back to his bedroom and finished packing his worn travel duffel with his usual summer clothes and equipment. Many people had remarked that Jackson lived the perfect life, although 99.99% of those people were males. During the winter he lived in the small bungalow on the beach in Key West and searched for Spanish gold. During the summer months he would go visit his sister in Asheville, North Carolina and prospect for gold and gems on a piece of land she owned in the Great Smoky Mountains. He had never really hit it huge at either location but he had found enough gold, precious and semi-precious gems, to give him a comfortable life without having to answer to a boss. He had a safety deposit box in a bank in Miami containing a full pound of gold dust and gold nuggets, along with several uncut gemstones. To date he had found scattered gold and silver coins from shipwrecks, but most often these were the leavings from well picked over ships that were well documented. The finds he enjoyed most, however, were in the mountains of North Carolina on land owned by his sister Allison McDonald. She inherited the land from her husband, Samuel McDonald, who was killed in Vietnam a year and a half after they wed. It was land her husband inherited from his family, although none in modern times had ever lived on it. Indeed other than hunting and fishing, no one had spent much time exploring the cliffs on the south side of the mountain that dropped off steeply to one of the many trout streams running off the higher elevations. Down that steep slope Jackson discovered several vents and small caves which produced quartz crystals sometimes mixed with pyrite crystals of various shapes.

These crystals were formed over many eons by the silicon rich vapors along with atoms of other elements from deep within the earth; deposited on the underlying granite and grew in various crystal shapes. These quartz crystals, while not true gems, were very lovely; generally perfectly clear and in shapes according to their atomic structure. Local gift shops and rock hound shops got a nice price for them. To date Jackson’s best find was a fairly large cluster of quartz crystals with a golden pyrite cube nestled in the middle. It had been sold to a collector for almost thirteen thousand dollars. These crystals with pyrite inclusions were rare and most had been found out west. To Jacksons knowledge none, other than the ones he’d located, had ever been found in the Smoky Mountain area. The Smoky Mountains, being much older than the Rocky Mountains of the west, had any crystal bearing caves weathered away over thousands of years.

Part of the value and collectability of these crystals and clusters was the metaphysical attributes given to them by some people. They were said to promote health, healing, love, energy, astral projections and other mythical properties. Jackson didn’t quite buy into these stories but he liked to believe that he had an open mind about their validity. One such crystal was the long thin deep purple double pyramid amethyst crystal he wore on a gold chain around his neck. He felt it had led him to a small pocket of silver coins off the Florida coast. Out in his boat one day the crystal seemed to be lying heavy around his neck and got his attention. He stopped the boat and he and Mack, his diving companion, soon located two large clumps of Spanish silver doubloons in about 30 feet of water. These coins had obviously been spilled out of a damaged ship that either wrecked elsewhere or was repaired enough to continue on to the old country. Often, since then, his crystal seemed to be pointing him in one direction or another but had not led him to another large find, yet he kept it and often let it lead him. Right now it was pulling him north, and seemed to be conveying a sense of urgency, but he thought that was probably just his wanderlust kicking in. He rinsed the bowl and spoon and left them on the drain board to dry.

Looking at Binky Jackson said, hey Bink girl are you ready to head out? Got your water and food bowls packed? She walked over to her double bowl and began talking as she did when she was excited. Bowerewoww growowerow she said, and taking her bowl in her teeth went to the door and looked over her shoulder as if to say I’m packed… lets hit the road!

Laughing to himself, Jackson lifted his duffel bag in one hand, the cooler in the other hand and after locking the door, walked out to his waiting Jeep Renegade. He threw his duffel in the back of the Jeep and putting the cooler within easy reach; he lifted Binky and her double bowl into the passenger seat and lowered her window enough so she could stick her head out. That was her favorite position when traveling unless it was raining or cold. Large dusty gobs of slobber lining the door and back quarter panel was proof of the manner she loved to travel, and the frequency.

Jackson started the Jeep and let it run a minute to get the oil hot and flowing. The Jeep was almost ten years old, and had over 140,000 miles on it. But it had never given him any problems, mainly because he changed the oil regularly and babied it. The Jeep was just a very basic vehicle. No power steering no automatic transmission no power windows and a fabric top that could be manually opened to let the sun in, He backed out of the driveway of the cottage and headed for the main road through the keys. The road north was only a few blocks away and after reaching it he picked up speed thinking he would make it to Miami by a little after noon.

The road passed by Lilah’s Bar and Grill and Jackson lifted a hand in a Farewell salute and pressed