“Rabbits at the Golden Hick’ry”

Gray fur bounded from beneath snow-packed twisted branches. The sear bar clicked. The Northwest gun’s tarnished brass buttplate swung higher. The Golden Hick’ry’s broad limbs sheltered underbrush before the fabled tree broke apart, but the calamity enhanced the cover. A cottontail or two made the area around the centuries-old monarch prime rabbit habitat… Old Northwest Territory, two hundred rods from the River Raisin, in the Year of our Lord, 1797.