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Excerpts from Nathan's Valley.
by Bob Brown

In 1885 Nathan's simple act of chivalry ends with the accidental death of a taunting cowhand. This forces two lovers to bear their children in a Montana wilderness.   

Excerpt:

One morning Nathan had been gone for two hours and Nellie Lee was busy repairing Nathan’s work clothes. Little Jamie wanted to go outside so she said he could go on the front porch if he would stay there. A little while later, she was concentrating on her sewing when she was suddenly startled by Little Jamie’s loud voice. She jumped up, but stopped before she reached the door because she realized it was not a distress call. She peeped out the door and bit her lower lip. Little Jamie was sitting cross-legged like Nathan often did. He was pretending to whittle on a stick with the wooden knife Nathan had carved for him—and singing to the top of his voice—like Nathan sang:

I ‘ooked over ’ordan, and what did I see?

’oming for to hairy me ’ome,

A hand of angels ’omming after me,

’oming for to hairy me ’ome.

’wing low, wheat ’hariot,

’oming for to hairy me ’ome,

’wing low, wheat ’hariot,

’oming for to hairy me ’ome.

Be not dismayed when the chick crows like the rooster.

CHAPTER 34

Everybody thought I was deader’n a polecat, but Maw commenced cleaning on me for my upcoming burial while my brothers were digging a hole for my pine box. She slapped my face with cold water and I come to life, sudden like.” Willy shut his eyes and popped them open again with a startled look. “Ha, they told me Maw screamed and ran around the house like a loco coyote. Clem said that was some howdy do, what with them digging a nice neat hole for me, I was being plum unsociable not to go ahead and die on um.”

“They were going to bury you alive?”

“Reckon, but at least everybody but me enjoyed all the food that was brung by neighbor women. I was feeling too poorly to enjoy the celebration. Clem joshed that iffen I had to be reincornnated…”

“Reinord…?”

“Re-in-corn-nated.”

“Re-in-corn-nated?”

“Now you got it, Little Girl.”

“But what does it mean, Mr. Strom?”

“It means when you’re dead, but not dead enough, you come back to life. Iffen you’re a little too dead, you might not come back as you. You might come back as somebody else, or something less than somebody else, like a coyote, or a buffalo, or a mouse.”

“Ooooh, I see—I think.”

Hadley’s forehead had more wrinkles than a dried apple. He said, “I thought it meant, uh, er—I don’t know. Never mind. Go on, Willy .”

“Like I was sayin’, my brother Clem said, iffen I had to be reincornnated, why did I have to come back as me? He said that near about anybody else would have been more suitable to his mind. Anyways, laying around the ranch with miseries for six months gave me plenty of time to study things and I come to realize I brought it on my own self. I was just looking to have some fun out of Nathan and it turned as sour on me as month-old goat milk.”

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