Kent Horner

Beyond Cumberland Gap Kent Horner

"Another traumatic blow to your head may cause hallucinations ranging from brilliancy to absurdity," said the brain surgeon at the Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany where Staff Sergeant Travis Morgan first received medical evaluation following a mortar blast in Afghanistan. That explosion wounded Travis and killed Mojo, his German shepherd patrol dog. Three years later, Travis received such a severe whack when Bruno Tron, a strong, young Al Capone imitator, hoped to become rich by shooting the two security officers and robbing their armored truck at a Walmart Super Center near Neosho, Missouri. The robber, a self-proclaimed squatter, intended to use the Morgan family wilderness upon the Ozark Plateau to receive aerial drug drops flown from Mexico. Thus Travis, his father, mother, and Honcho, their family dog must be eliminated. After whacking Travis over his skull with a sack of stolen quarters at Walmart, Bruno tossed him into a sinkhole on the Morgan family wilderness and used the $400,000 for his start into crime. Travis hallucinating back and forth through time and space, helped: the founding fathers within the colonial era, George Washington winning the American Revolutionary War, Daniel Boone cutting through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, Lewis and Clark finding the Pacific Ocean, and Wells-Fargo starting stagecoach routes to California. His Grandma's skeleton, sitting with her back to wall of the sinkhole, enabled Travis's two-way communications by way of his hallucinations. Ironically, Bruno Tron met an unusual fate. However, after his rescue, Travis realized his dream of lecturing about colonial history at the University of Virginia, his alma mater, buying a house, and marrying the beautiful brunette, Abby Principe, his childhood sweetheart.