Otto Odo talking to Maharg Ydobon

I found this old notebook; it may be valuable.

I was helping Chuckawalla and Carter fix up the old cabin at Sunshine Meadow. We took out the rotten old floor boards to replace them with pressure treated two-by-fours and plywood. Under there we found a wooden box. We opened it and found an old notebook with hand-written pages.

We all looked at it, and of course I couldn't read it. Chuck said it was by some old Indian in Tennessee long ago. Carter said all it was good for was kindling.

I thought you might be interested in it, so I asked if I could have it. They just shrugged and got back to work. I put it in my pack.

So, here it is. See, that's some funny-lookin' writin', ain't it? Nobody writes like that now. It's all slanty and squiggley and runnin' together so's even somebody who can read can't tell where one letter ends and the next one starts. Did ya ever see such stuff?

Oh, cursive? Yeah, I heard of it, but I never thought it would look so weird. What was the point?

Oh, you don't know either. Well, then the question is -- can you decipher it? Can you read cursive as if you were an archeologist reading Sanskrit?

It's easier than Sanskrit? That's a relief. I wasn't sure. But, I thought that if anybody I know could read this stuff, it would be you, Ydobon.

Can you please read it into your tape recorder, so that you can play it back to me? Actually, you could just make me duplicate tapes so I can listen to it when I'm out herding sheep. That would be awesome.

Of course, I will give you the notebook -- actually it is three notebooks and some other papers. There was also an old hunting knife, which I'm keeping for myself.

All I ask in return is this: when you read the papers, please record your reading for me. Is that fair enough?

Good. We've got a deal. Your word is good enough for me.