Otto Brunk And The Bar

Otto Brunk And The Bar by Richard Relham Andy Crockett's store sat on the south bank of New River, a misnomer for a stream that was possibly the oldest on the North American continent . Not that the pioneer knew anything about geology, but he did know that the river rose in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina and after flowing north for a while turned westwards and flowed across Virginia to the Ohio, after gathering in its main tributaries—the Greenbrier , Gauley and Elk. From the junction of the New and Gauley rivers it was later called the Kanawha. It was originally named "New" because it was the first westward flowing river the Virginia explorers encountered as they pushed to the southwest. Its importance lay in the fact that it was an avenue to the Ohio and the west. Its upper waters were not navigable except by canoe but it provided a water level passage through the Alleghany mountains. At Andy Crockett's place the New River was wide, but shallow and fast flowing. When Andy's wife died he turned the room across the dog-trot into a trader's store. The room had formerly been the kitchen and a fire in th elarge fireplace made it a comfortable place in winter. Andy enlarged his storeroom by building a shedlike addition on the back where he kept his stores and did business with his customers across a counter that separated the shed from the main room. He carried the usual stock of a frontier store: sugar, salt, pepper and a few spcies, needles and thread, gunpowder and bullets, and he also kept on hand a couple of Pennsylvania rifles. Most other things the settlers provided for themselves or did without. He dealt mostly in kind. Customers paid for their purchases with skins, shoats, calves, eggs, butter or anything else he could dispose of in the settlements up and down the river. He also took "sang" and any other herbs that were in demand. Andy 's store was also a social center for the area as the people of the neighborhood dropped in to see each other or traders and travelers enroute down or up river stopped with information or gossip. Andy's was a good place to get news about the outside world. There was a tavern a few miles up the river on the north side but most of the time it was a wild and boisterous place and more peaceful folk preferred to stop at Andy's. Andy did not sell any kind of spirits but closed his eyes to customers who brought their own in a bottle or jug as long as they were temperate and did not cause trouble. On this particular evening Thomas Evans was sitting before the fire in Andy's store in rather low spirits. Ever since he had gotten word that his sister Martha was a captive of 8 the Shawnees he had vowed to effect her release. Accordingly he had visited all the Shawnee towns on the Scioto and traced her movements from place to place without being able to pinpoint where she was presently located. As usual the visitors in the store were trading tall tales to which he listened with half an ear since he had heard many of them before. His attention was captured, however, when a man called Little Ben—to distinguish him from his father Big Ben—asked, "Have you heered about Otto Brunk's fight with a b'ar?" The assembled group cheered him on with cries of, "Let's hear it." "Who won?" "Be sartain it's the truth." "It's the truth all right," replied little Ben. "Most of you fellers knows Otto Brunk and his wife Amanda who live over on the Bluestone. Well, one day last fall when it had gotten chilly enough to sleep under wraps but not cold 'nough to drive b'ars into hibernation , Otto and Mandy had gone to bed under a big b'arskin. During the night Mandy heered some scufflin' and snortin' outside and it being a full moon she gets up and peers out the winder to see what it is...