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| A Porcupine Hill |
Soon after we moved to The Jewel in 1976, I became friends with another young local professional who had lived here a lot longer than I - a fellow who not only was a dyed-in-the-wool rancher and hunter but one who had met the King Brothers in person. My impression was that he had visited them on several occasions, perhaps in his professional capacity, perhaps as a young man they took a liking to, probably both. (Like them, he is plain-spoken, smart as hell, loves the outdoors, and is tough as nails, so they may have seen something of themselves - when they were young - in him.) His description of their spartan living quarters matched that as related by Mary-Jo Burles in her book,
First And Second Kings. He once told me of a visit to the log house that had been their home for many, many years up in the Porcupine Hills, during which his conversation with them was continually interrupted by a mouse running back and forth along the wall opposite. Noticing that the mouse was distracting their visitor, one of the brothers took a jackknife out of his pocket, and deftly threw it across the room - impaling the mouse instantly. The dimensions of the room weren't related to me but we can assume a minimum distance wall-to-wall of ten feet, and the room, he said, was lit by a single light bulb hanging in the centre of it, so the throw was pretty amazing - at least to me. Considering the source of this little anecdote, I believe it to be true.
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