Andy Jackson’s Water Well

In frontier days, Nashville was just a fistful of log cabins. But people needed lawing done for them, and young lawyer Andy Jackson, who settled wrathy arguments cheap, was kept as busy as a mouse in a meal bag. Then came a monstrous bad drought. Why, it was so dry that when a man shot a deer, he didn’t have to jerk the meat, and there was no point in chewing tobacco for you couldn’t spit no matter what! Things got so bad that Andy finally decided to journey over to East Tennessee and fetch back some water. So he and his friend Chief Ticklepitcher, who kept his bow and arrow tied up in his hair, set out — and a dangerous journey it was! Their horses nearly died of thirst, a viscious hoopsnake rolled after them in a frightening attack — there were all manner of troubles. Once there, Andy wanted to tie a rope around a river and drag it home, but the Chief explained that East Tennessee rivers were a heap smaller than they looked and by the time you shelled out the rocks and husked off the mud, there wouldn’t be much left. “All right,” said Andy, “I aim to do things right, so I’ll fetch back a water well instead.” How they did just that, in spite of the ferocious Land Pirates, and how Andy learned to keep his temper and then to let it out at just the right time, makes one of William O. Steele’s most hilarious and irresistible tall tales. With its rich and spontaneous humor, this new book by the author of Daniel Boone’s Echo and Davy Crockett’s Earthquake is in the best tradition of American folkore. Michael Ramus’s line drawings perfectly interpret Andy Jackson’ extraordinary adventures.