Read Online On Kingdom Mountain by Howard Frank Mosher - Free Book Online Page A

Academy. She, of course, had won.
    Eventually the freight passed, the yard engine finished making up the local, the radiators subsided into a steady, whispering conspiracy, and the judge called the court to order. He looked at Eben over the top of his reading spectacles. “Where are your clients, sir?”
    â€œI’m representing myself, Your Honor.”
    â€œIsn’t the new road, the Connector, a town road? Where are the selectmen of the town of Kingdom Common?”
    â€œYour Honor, my clients are exceedingly busy men. Their time is very valuable, so they have asked me to represent them today and to convey their regrets that they could not be here.”
    â€œJust how valuable is the selectmen’s time, Eben?”
    â€œHow valuable?”
    â€œYes. How valuable per day do you estimate the selectmen’s time to be?”
    â€œI should hazard, Your Honor, that their combined time is worth a cool hundred dollars a day.”
    â€œWell, Eben, that is very impressive. Please thank the selectmen for conveying their regrets that they could not come to court this morning, as summoned, to explain why I should not grant Miss Jane’s request for an immediate injunction to prevent the Connector from infringing on her property. And please convey the following message to them. That, notwithstanding their exceedingly busy schedule, they will appear in person at these proceedings and that, furthermore, I am fining them one hundred dollars per day for each day they miss, starting today, up to the end of this workweek, at which time I will issue a summary ruling in favor of Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson of Kingdom Mountain.”
    Here Judge Allen was interrupted by a veritable ovation of clattering from all of the radiators at once. But he was not quite finished. “Also, kindly inform your clients that I am an avid fisherman myself,” he said. “An avid speckled trout fisherman.”
    â€œChar,” Miss Jane said.
    â€œPardon me?”
    â€œTechnically, Ira, there’s no such fish as a speckled trout. They’re char. Therefore, you are a char fisherman.”
    â€œThis has not been a banner morning in my life,” Judge Allen said. “I am about to go trout—
char
—fishing myself. These proceedings will be renewed afresh tomorrow. Let us all hope that we will get off to a more promising start.”

11
    â€œT EN THOUSAND YEARS AGO ,” Miss Jane began her testimony the next morning, “Kingdom County was a boreal fastness of soaring mountains, free-running rivers, and dense coniferous forests.”
    She was standing at the front of the courtroom, gesturing with her schoolteacher’s pointer at some crude mountains she’d sketched on a portable blackboard. For all her great gifts as a sculptor, the Duchess couldn’t draw a lick, a fact that somehow endeared her to Henry Satterfield, who again sat beside her at the plaintiff’s table in his gleaming white suit, newly whitewashed shoes, and crimson vest.
    The three selectmen of Kingdom Common, President George Quinn of the First Farmers and Lumberers Bank, Prof Chadburn, headmaster of the Kingdom Common Academy, and the Reverend, from the Congregational church, sat with Eben Kinneson Esquire at the defense table.
    At the blackboard Miss Jane stood as straight as the tree her white-ash pointer had come from. As always, she wore black, with no jewelry or makeup. But this morning her light hair cascaded down her back. She certainly didn’t look like a spinster schoolteacher, but rather, Henry thought admiringly, like an exceedingly attractive middle-aged woman. And the rainmaker, watching with courteous, unobtrusive interest, was sure that Miss Jane knew it. Showman that he was, Henry Satterfield was quite vain of his own appearance, and he sensed, perhaps, an opportunity here. Exactly what kind of opportunity, however, even he could not have said.
    â€œTen thousand years ago,” Miss