Benjamin Nathan Tuggle thinks he's just like any other twelve-year- old growing up in Eastern Kentucky in 1976-until he learns he can travel back in time. He knows for sure that he's not dreaming when he meets Daniel Boone, a hunter, woodsman, and adventurer. The year is 1776, and Boone and the other settlers of Boonesborough are braving the dangers of the wilderness to open up an unexplored frontier. Wild bears and marauding Indians are no match for Boone. The woodsman has never met a situation he couldn't talk, fight, or run his way out of, but he might not be able to match Benjamin's wit and energy. Despite their differences of personality and time period, the two develop a kinship as they discover the passion that they share for nature, adventure, and justice. To truly make a difference and prove that he belongs, Benjamin must overcome his fears and get involved in events he's only read about in school. Join him as he journeys back in time, meets legends from the past, and explores the wonderful wilderness of the American frontier in Benjamin Nathan Tuggle: Adventurer

Benjamin Nathan Tuggle ADVENTURER

Daniel Boone and the Settlement of Boonesborough, KentuckyBy Russell Lunsford

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Russell Lunsford
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-3360-6

Chapter One

Now, I'm not saying I'm a time traveler or nothing like that. It's just that sometimes strange things happen that take me back in history to places right when things are happening.

Confused? Well, that's how I felt my first time. I'm just a farm boy from eastern Kentucky. I've never been out of the state, much less out of my place in time.

There may be others who can do the same. You may be one, but we can talk about that later. I'm just talking to you about me right now. Who am I? Why, I'm Benjamin Nathan Tuggle, of course, traveler and adventurer.

I live on a small farm with my mom and dad outside Irvine, Kentucky. If you've never heard of Irvine, it sits on the Kentucky River right where the mountains kiss the bluegrass. My dad likes to say it's the best of two worlds-the beauty of the mountains and the fertile flatlands.

Did I mention my older brother, Blake? I didn't? Well, we'll just leave it that way for right now. Why ruin a friendly conversation, I like to say.

You should have already seen my self-portrait, a pencil representation, if you will, of yours truly, standing next to my grandpa's pickup truck. I like to say I got my pa's good looks, my mom's intelligence, and my granddad's pleasant personality.

I've always fancied myself as quite an artist. Some of my friends say the pictures I draw of Mr. Polk, our principal at middle school, are the funniest drawings in any public school classroom in Estill County. My reputation as an artist has grown to the point that whenever someone puts a mark on a bathroom wall, yours truly is blamed: "Ben Tuggle, report to Principal Polk's office, Ben Tuggle, report to the principal's office immediately."

As a true artisan, I don't work in public bathrooms, but that hasn't kept me from being accused of such. On more than one occasion, Ms. Miller, my art teacher, saved my hide by telling Mr. Polk the drawings on the bathroom stalls were just too childish to be the work of Ben Tuggle. I gotta like that Ms. Miller.

But back to the point of my story. I'm Ben Tuggle, adventurer. Did I say that already?

All I have to do is hold something old or something made by a person who lived and died years before I was born, and suddenly, zippity do da, I'm there at that time in history. I've stood next to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War, run alongside Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad, and sat in council with the Cherokee chiefs long before our ancestors ever set foot on the North American continent.

I'm actually there, visiting places I've only read about in history books. I thought I was dreaming the first time it happened, but I found out real quickly that I was awake. One hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years or more, I end up in the middle of whatever was happening.

I've never tried to push the limit on how far back I can go. I guess I could go back a far piece if I chose to. Just by taking hold of a dinosaur bone, I'd go back to the days before man, but I'd probably get eaten by one of those big meat eaters. Then I'd be dinosaur poo in some swamp, making oil for Mom's station wagon or Mr. Orbey's school bus.

No sir, traveling through history is serious business. I like to think I have control; but the fact is, I don't plan my little trips, they just happen in a spontaneous kind of way.

Mom says I've been a spontaneous kind of kid since the day I was born. I just happened.

What! You don't believe me? Let me remind you that some things in life require a little faith. Like the faith I have that, in spite of myself, my parents like me ... most of the time. Well, that's not really a good example. How about the faith that my grandparents love me no matter how goofy I act? That's what I'm talking about, that's the faith I have when I leave the here and now and travel back ... back to the there and then. I have faith that I will survive all that history and get back to my time. I've met some real interesting folks on my adventures-some nice and some not so nice. It's always a hoot, and I bring a lot of learning back with me.

You may have doubts, so sit back and listen. Let me tell you about my first adventure, my very first trip back in time. It happened last summer, the day I turned twelve. My family spent a long weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's farm in a little community called Redhouse, just outside the big city of Richmond, Kentucky.

I stood out in Grandpa's field, down by the spring, and my older brother was being his usual rude self. You could say my first trip back in history was a field trip. Mrs. Dabney, my sixth grade teacher, says I got a way with words-field trip. I amaze myself.

Chapter Two

"What you doing, bonehead?" yelled my brother Blake as he walked down the hillside toward me. "Grandma says supper is ready. Go wash up."

"I'm not hungry," I responded as I picked up a fresh chunk of plowed dirt and hurled it at Blake. He was walking toward the putt, putt sound of Grandpa's tractor somewhere over the hill. He easily dodged the clod and turned to give me a mean look.

"Mom don't care if you're hungry, she just wants you at the table. Your stomach will do the rest," shouted Blake. "You ever hit me with one of those, you're a dead man, bonehead!"

I reached down and picked up a softball-sized clod and took aim at Blake as he stumbled over the plowed rows of dirt. As I reared back to hurl the clod at his backside, I felt a hard object in the dirt-something "undirt," if you will. Breaking loose the dirt, I found a metal object about five inches long. I don't care to tell ya, the thought that I might have actually hurt Blake was a bit unsettling. Not that I'm against inflicting him with pain, I'm just against the pain Pa would inflict on my backside.

I bent down and washed the thing off in the spring. I figured it was part of a disk or some other piece of farm equipment that had broken off one of Grandpa's or maybe even Great Grandpa's farm machinery a long time ago. There's no telling how long it had been buried in the dirt next to the spring. As the water washed away the dirt, I was shocked to find it had a golden luster.

"Gold!" I whispered excitedly.

My mind raced. Now maybe I could buy that shiny red bike in the front window of Western Auto in Irvine.

I washed faster and realized I was holding something much more valuable than gold, something every young boy in America would trade his best Mickey Mantle baseball card for. I was holding a genuine American Indian tomahawk head!

It had a brass pipe on one end, the middle was brass, and the sharp tomahawk head on the other end was made of iron. I had struck it rich!

My brother Blake had a small arrowhead collection that he had gathered from around the farm. He often found arrowheads when Grandpa plowed a field, especially after a hard rain. I was secretly jealous of his collection, but he had nothing as good as this.

I felt as though my horse had won the Kentucky Derby or that I had hit the mother lode. This was the mother lode of all Indian relics, the ... uh oh ... my mother was going to kill me if I didn't get up the hill to the house ...

But I didn't care. Not one bit 'cause Blake was going to wet his britches with envy when he saw my tomahawk. Heck, I nearly wet on myself. My heart was racing; my knees were...