A Man Called Mutt

By George M. Goodwin

Matthew Michaels was born in 1804 on the western border of North Carolina. A town called River Mills. As a kid, his name was shortened to Matt by the other boys and then after seeing the way all dogs seem attracted to him he became Mutt. The name stuck and he was fine with it. When he was twelve, his father left to go west and look for more and better farm land for his family. He never returned. After a long illness when his mother died at the time he was twenty Mutt himself made the decision to go west. His dream was not farm land though, but the great mountains he had heard of to the west. 
With no horse, he set out and by walking and some little distance as a pole man on a keel boat he made it to those mountains. After that his adventures became legends by the time of his death many years later. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pale Horse Publications
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227986474

George M. Goodwin

George was born in 1960 in Jefferson County Alabama. The fifth of nine children, eight boys and one girl. The family was raised poor, but not poorly raised. At home, George was taught morals, ethics and respect. Reading, writing and arithmetic at school. Love, honor and obedience to God at church. He grew up on John Wayne movies, country music and the writings of Louis L' Amour, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.  

Book preview

Chapter 1

At that time Eustis joined the fighting, in the war of independence from England in 1776.He came home five years later after losing his left leg from the knee down, but still with a strong determination to live a full life. In 1782 his son Arvis had been born.

Together Eustis and his son worked their farm until Eustis’ death in 1802. Arvis’ mother had died two years before. Arvis had married the year before and with his father’s death, he and his wife Alma made a decision and left Virginia. They settled in the town of Mills River, North Carolina. Two years later Mutt was born. It was the only home that he had ever known. Growing up with a father around was still a hard life on any boy of the time. All young boys were expected to help with the chores of daily life on a farm. After his father had left them to go west, Mutt had to do both his and his father’s share. He planted and tended their garden as well as hunted for meat up in the hills behind their farm. There was also firewood to be chopped, water to be toted, a cow to be milked, chickens to be fed and eggs gathered. It didn’t leave a lot of free time for a boy to do anything just because he wanted to, but the first two years he hadn’t minded so much that his father was gone. At twelve years old, it made him feel important and older to be caring for the place alone. As the years passed though and his father still did not return nor get word to them as to where he was that Mutt became angry with him.

He began to think that his father had left just because he didn’t want to be a farmer, a husband or a father any more.

Still Mutt worked every day to do what was needed for his mother and himself.

Chapter 2

Now his given name was not Mutt of course.

No loving mother would do such a thing to her son.

He had been born Matthew Thomas Michaels.

The other kids had shortened it to just Matt when he was about eight and then it became Mutt shortly after when some of them noticed that every dog in town seemed to be drawn to him for reasons unknown to anybody. They had given him the nickname of Mutt to pester and tease him, but it hadn’t bothered him one bit. At fourteen, his father still had not returned home and that was the year that his mother fell very ill. There was no real doctor in Mills River, but an old man who had helped with the wounded during the war with England lived there and he knew some little bit of medicine. After checking her over and asking many questions he told them the problem was that her heart was simply weak. From disease or birth, he wasn’t sure. Mutt never told anyone, but in his opinion her heart wasn’t weak, it was broken. Broken because of the way his father had left them and then never came back. For a while, she was still able to cook and keep the house, but by the time Mutt had reached sixteen, she was almost completely confined to her bed.

Chapter 3

Then in the first week of May of 1824, Mutt came in the cabin after all the chores of the farm were finally done for another day. He asked his mother if she was ready for him to make them something to eat, but got no answer. Getting no response from her, and thinking her to be asleep, he walked over to her bedside and found that his mother had quietly passed away in her sleep sometime between when he had made some lunch for her and now.

Four years she had been forced to remain in that bed almost constantly. ‘Now she was free of it at last,’ he thought. While he was deeply saddened by his mother’s death, Mutt thought, at least now maybe she was at peace. Things being what they were, his mother had no friends in town to speak of and he had very few himself. So, in the early light of morning, all alone, Mutt Michaels dug a grave near the back edge of the property and lay his mother to rest. He asked God to watch over her as she was a good mother and a good woman.

Going back in the cabin he made himself some coffee and sat down at the table. With tears in his eyes, he said aloud into the empty cabin, my mother deserved better than to be deserted and embarrassed as she was.

Standing up, he walked out the door and down the road toward Mr. Thrasher’s farm.

Burt Thrasher owned the land next to their’s. He had shown interest in buying their farm on several occasions.

‘Let’s see if he is still interested,’ thought Mutt. ‘If so, he will buy it this day. There is nothing else holding me here now. I will sell the farm and go to the western lands. There I will make a new life for myself.’

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