"He's Simple," the Judge Told the Town—She Taught the Mountain Man Chess to Beat Him for His Land
The Snowline Cabin
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Judge Alcott Harrowgate asked Tavish MacLaren three questions in front of the whole hotel hall, then waited while the big man tried to answer the first. "How many trees on your claim?" Sixty people watched him try, and nothing came. "The man is simple," the judge said, and named his nephew guardian of all six hundred and forty acres of standing timber. When his own sister-in-law, Almira, stood up at the back and said Tavish only does not talk to the judge, he told her she might go and live with him.
The judge's houseman tipped her trunk into a snowdrift, Percival Harrowgate nailed the guardianship notice to the hotel post, and the last stage had left at noon. The town calls Tavish the Ox and swears he snapped a mill man's arm like kindling. Almira is forty-seven, has spent twelve winters keeping the judge's house, and follows a stranger up a mountain trail with his trunk on his shoulder and a bolt on the door, her side. What does a judge fear about a man he calls simple?
A Western story about a silent mountain man, a woman turned out into the snow, and a verdict the town believed too easily. This is original fiction: every person in it is invented and a grown adult. Subscribe to The Snowline Cabin for more mountain stories.
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"He's Simple," the Judge Told the Town—She Taught the Mountain Man Chess to Beat Him for His Land
The Snowline Cabin
3,233 views
Judge Alcott Harrowgate asked Tavish MacLaren three questions in front of the whole hotel hall, then waited while the big man tried to answer the first. "How many trees on your claim?" Sixty people watched him try, and nothing came. "The man is simple," the judge said, and named his nephew guardian of all six hundred and forty acres of standing timber. When his own sister-in-law, Almira, stood up at the back and said Tavish only does not talk to the judge, he told her she might go and live with him.
The judge's houseman tipped her trunk into a snowdrift, Percival Harrowgate nailed the guardianship notice to the hotel post, and the last stage had left at noon. The town calls Tavish the Ox and swears he snapped a mill man's arm like kindling. Almira is forty-seven, has spent twelve winters keeping the judge's house, and follows a stranger up a mountain trail with his trunk on his shoulder and a bolt on the door, her side. What does a judge fear about a man he calls simple?
A Western story about a silent mountain man, a woman turned out into the snow, and a verdict the town believed too easily. This is original fiction: every person in it is invented and a grown adult. Subscribe to The Snowline Cabin for more mountain stories.