Read The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time for Free Online Page B

noisy. I had just lain down in the grass, using my bag of clothes for a pillow, but discomfort was not the problem with my sleeping, either. My problem was with the stars.
    When I started scanning the sky to make my computations, I had spotted immediately that something was different about the Big Dipper—and all the other constellations I could find. It was not just that I was seeing them from a different latitude (by a few degrees) and longitude (by many), there was something amiss. They were not where they should be. It was just barely tangible, but I couldn't grasp it. It was rather like a non-musical person like me, who hears a song and knows that a certain note is off but can't quite tell whether its because the note was flat, sharp or natural and was supposed to be something else. The constellations were there, they were just a little bit off.
    Finally, I forced the problem of the stars from my head and was able to drift off to sleep. It was a sleep filled with strange and foreboding dreams. In them, I was trapped in the meadow and—try as I might—I could not return to La Plata Canyon. I kept trying to walk out of the meadow only to find myself back in the middle after a few steps. Ever so often, I'd get tired of this dream and wake myself up, but after I had fed the fire and gone back to sleep I was back in that same dream.
    Then there were the meadow noises. I cannot imagine being able to sleep well with all the noise the birds in this meadow make. I have often heard people say they were going to go out to the country for peace and quiet—and I had said it myself; but I was referring to a house in the country. With the cacophony of birds, crickets and frogs, there is no quiet in this country. Not like the La Platas, where all sensible animals and insects look for some place warm when the sun goes down. If you are looking for quiet, my money says you get more of it down by the railroad yard than you would in this meadow.
     
    Wherever he was, he supposed his first order of business was to get back home. He briefly wondered why that would be his first order of business. He had no family. He had very few friends.
    "Two," he muttered to himself. "I have two friends. And one of them I have not idea how to contact."
    He had seen that friend just the day before. As he lay there on the hard ground, trying to sleep, his last visit with Tex kept replaying through his mind. Why, he suddenly wondered, did the thought that it was his last visit with Tex stick in his mind so?
     
     
     
     
    Excerpt from A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes
    Darius records that he stayed with the Cherokee through the winter of 1779-80, learning from them and trying to find news about the west. While many of them had traveled some distance in their lifetime, Darius could find none who knew anything about the lands beyond the great river (which later proved to be the Mississippi).
    Darius wrote:
    "I find their reluctance to speak about the western lands surprising as I have found them be an otherwise fearless people. I am most curious, though, about a legend I have heard spoken of more than once in this village and also by elders in villages I have been taken to as a visitor.
    "Though no one seems to have seen the beast themselves, they all speak of grandfathers or uncles who once saw a beast which sounds to me like some sort of hairy elephant. Having seen elephants only in picture books, and having always been told that none exist on this continent and never have, I was at first skeptical of their legend. The fact that the legend is so wide-spread, however, makes me wonder. How could a people who had never seen an elephant invent one? Was an extremely large buffalo sighted by a distant ancestor and the story has somehow grown into this? If so, how could some story teller invented the long nose? Why invent the long nose? Was there really such a creature as they describe? Are all these stories just the outgrowth of some fable told to