The hunting camp was located on Douthat Creek in Pocahontas County at the head of Three Mile Run and Devils Hollow. The poker playing and the late hours of the previous night had taken their  toll on Jim Rowe, the intoxicant that the others had forced him to drink the night before had also had some effect upon  his head and his stomach! 

His head was big and it throbbed and his stomach felt even worse. 5 a.m. was way too early and the sound of the others belching and farting and eating food was enough to make a well man ill. The sound of the door slamming as the others went to the outhouse and behind the bushes near the cabins sounded like the start of WW 3, his head from where Grayson Housby had stepped on it sometime in the night as he got down from his upper bunk, was as sore on the outside as it was on the inside. 

Jim announced to his fellows that he was going to stay in camp and clean up the filthy place and put on a pot of brown beans for supper, he might even make slaw and have cornbread to go with the beans. 

Nature called sometime later and after a set-to in the frigid privy and exposure to the more or less fresh air therein, he decided to put some clothes on over his long johns, but the exertion made his head throb and he was forced to lay his tired body down. After a short 3 hour nap he awoke with a start and realized he’d told his buddies he’d cook. 

The water buckets were, of course, empty, someone, probably that damn sissy Shawver, he thought, had actually washed that morning! The spring was about two hundred yards up Devil’s Hollow and there wasn’t a darn thing to do but go get a bucket of two. 

Putting on his old Ritchie Coat, he decided he might as well take his Browning 16, for a man in good health it was an easy walk to the spring, but to Jim the walk just made his head start throbbing again. At the spring, he brushed the leaves from the surface of the dark water and dipped in the buckets.  His head hurt so badly and the water was so cool and inviting he lay down in the snow and buried his head in it, it felt so good.

He finally had to breath, raised his head and “God almighty “coming down the hill just in front of him was a flock of about 25 turkeys just a hustling. He pulled his Browning ever so slowly up beside him, and took dead aim on a big Gobbler with about a 12-15 inch beard. 

Cletis Shawver and I topped the hill in pursuit of the turkeys just in time to see them spot Jim and fly crashing through the trees.  Rushing down to the spring,  Shawver demanded of Jim,  “ Dammit Rowe, why in the hell didn’t you shoot and break them up, they would have flown right back toward us”? 

Jim, in a defiant, yet chagrined and quiet voice said, “I had a bead on him and then I thought of the kick and the noise of that shotgun and I just decided to put my head back in the water”!