Free Over the Misty Mountains by Gilbert Morris

the brush. The weeds were dead and dry, rustling under his feet. He began to break off small stems, and when he had a double handful, he moved back and made a small pyramid of them. He made two more trips, each time bringing back larger twigs, until finally he had a pyramid nearly a foot in diameter. His hands were numb, and when he pulled out his powder horn, he could hardly feel the smoothness of the horn. Pouring a small amount of powder on the pile, he capped the powder horn carefully—very carefully. His life depended on his rifle, and if it had no powder, he was helpless.
    His face was rapt and intent as he worked. When he pulled flint and steel from his possible bag and struck it, a spark fell on the powder, igniting it with a small puff of sound. “That’s it,” he muttered as he nursed the tiny blaze.
    Carefully he fed small twigs onto the growing blaze, adding larger ones, then he sat back on his heels and stared at the orange and red tongues of fire with satisfaction. Holding his palms out, he felt the warmth slowly creep into his frozen hands, until finally he singed his left palm and jerked it back.
    He impaled the fish on a sharp green stick that he had sharpened to a point, then held it over the fire. Soon the delicious smell of seared fish filled the air, and his stomach knotted. Pulling the fish back, he added a pinch of salt, then pulled off a piece of the flaky white flesh with his thumb and forefinger. He juggled it around until it cooled, then popped it into his mouth and savored the hot meal. He devoured all the fish, then said, “Should have caught another one—reckon I can cook me up another breakfast. Two breakfasts never hurt a man.” He moved to the creek, drank thirstily, then filled the small sauce pan with creek water.
    Walking back to the fire, he dug into the leather sack that held the rest of the ingredients for his meal. He kneaded the dough on a clean slab of bark, wetted it with the river water, added a pinch of salt, and then rapidly and skillfully molded it into cakes. After setting them on a flat stone and moving the stone into the heat of the fire, he took a handful of dried meat from another pouch. Taking a long piece of curled bark, he laid the meat on it and poured water over the strips to soften them. When he had laid out half a dozen strips, he stretched them across the prongs of a forked stick. Hunched by the fire, he held the stick of meat over the coals. When the meat sizzled out its fat and curled crisp and brown to the edges, he pulled it off the stick, onto another piece of bark, and then began taking up the cakes, shifting them rapidly so he would not burn his fingers. Finally he picked up the iron pot, moved over, and sat down.
    Hungrily he devoured the food, and then for a while he sat there thinking of where he was. He had a mind that could hold a piece of country in it, almost as if it were on the pages of a book. He had gone over it carefully, retracing the steps and the route he had taken since leaving Williamsburg, and he knew that he was now close to Holston country near the Watauga River. Soon he would be reaching the area Daniel Boone had told him about. There had been something about the man that had drawn Josh, and now he thought of the lean face and the light blue eyes with something almost mystical in them. He smiled as he thought of the time he asked Boone, “Were you ever lost, Daniel?”
    “Lost? Well, not so’s you’d mention it. Of course”—the blue eyes had lit up with mild amusement—“I was a little bit confused once for about a week—but not so as you might say, lost.”
    “Must be nice to be like that,” Josh said aloud. “Most of us stay lost all of our lives.” His quick shift from the physical to the spiritual was a habit of his. The lostness of a man in a woods was a simple and uncomplicated affair—unlike the kind of lostness that had fallen upon him when Faith had passed out of his life. The thoughts disturbed him, and he