Chapter II: Part 2

There was unity in thought and purpose among the Scotch-Irish whether they lived in highland or lowland and their purpose was to gain freedom and independence. A bond of feeling that could not have existed among the Dutch of New York, the Puritans of New England, the English of Virginia, even if they had not been so widely separated geographically. Moreover, the isolation of the Scotch-Irish in the wilderness, though it cut them off from voice in the government or protection by it, made them self-reliant people. They had had enough of royal government. Added to this was their natural hatred of British aggression, distaste for the unfairness of those in political power from whom they were so far removed by miles and mountains. They thought for themselves and acted accordingly. Their individualism marked them for leadership that was readily followed by others who also had known persecution: the Palatine Germans, the Dutch, and the Huguenots. They had another strong ally in the English who had come from Virginia to settle in the mountains and whose traditions of resolute action added to the mountaineer's spirit of independence. The flame of agitation was fanned by the unfairness of government officials in the lowlands. The mountain people had long since looked to their own protection and their Scotch-Irish nature persisted in resentment of unfairness from authority of any source. This spirit prevailed among the incoming settlers in Carolina. There was dissatisfaction between them and the planters, the men of means and influence who with unfair taxation and injustice persecuted the less prosperous newcomers. Discontent grew and brought on events that were forerunners of the expansive militant movement that came in American life.

First was the Declaration of Abingdon, Virginia, in January, 1775. Daniel Boone had led an expedition there sixteen years earlier and may have planted the seed in the minds of those who stayed on, while he went on to Kentucky. Title to much of the land which embraced Kentucky was claimed by the Cherokees. England still claimed the right to any territory in America and the war's beginnings left the whole thing in doubt. England might even make void Virginia's titles if she were so inclined. In the midst of these doubts and disputed claims several North Carolina gentlemen, including Richard Henderson and Nathaniel Hart, in the spring of 1775 formed themselves into the Transylvania Company for the purpose of acquiring title to the territory of Kentucky from the Cherokees. They meant to operate on a great scale, to establish an independent empire here in the "expansive West." They looked about for a man to help them. They didn't have to look long.

There was Daniel Boone. He had a background. He'd scouted all over the country. He'd fought with Washington against the French when he was only in his teens. He was a fearless fellow; he knew how to deal with the Indian. So the Transylvania Company employed Daniel as their representative to negotiate with the Cherokees. The council met at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, a tributary of the Holston River. There the Cherokees ceded to the company for "ten thousand pounds, all the vast tract of land lying between the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, and west and south of the Kentucky." This region was called Transylvania.

So, just six years after his first hunting trip to Kentucky, Boone began to colonize it and that in flat defiance of the British government. He thumbed his nose too at a menacing proclamation of North Carolina's royal governor.

Now that the land was acquired by the Transylvania Company they would have to charter a course leading to and through it for prospective settlers. For theirs was a "land and improvement company." Again Daniel Boone was employed. This time his task was to open a path through the wilderness.

With ax and tomahawk, with fighting and tribulations, he blazed the trail from Holston River to the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River. "Boone's Trace," they called it, connecting with the Warrior's Path and its extensions into eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina through Cumberland Gap and even beyond. It became the Wilderness Trail or Wilderness Road. It was the first through course from the mother state of Virginia to the West.

In spite of the purchase of land from the Indian, in spite of all the treaties of peace, the cunning warrior persisted in attack upon the white men, in massacre of women and children, in capture of hunter and trapper.

Daniel Boone and his men had to safeguard their families and the future of their company. They set about building a fort. As for Boone, he felt himself "an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness." No hardship was too great, no sorrow too deep to deter him in his mission of "pioneering and subduing the wilderness for the habitation of civilized men."

After two years of hardship and toil a fort was built on the banks of the Kentucky River. It consisted of cabins of roughhewn logs surrounded by a stockade. Over this crude fort, in one cabin of which Boone and Rebecca lived with their family, a flag was raised on May 23, 1775. It marked a new and independent nation called Transylvania.

Only a week after the flag-raising in Kentucky the people of Mecklenburg, which had been established only eleven years, made another step toward independence. On May 31, 1775, the Mecklenburg Resolutions were adopted in North Carolina.

In the meantime the Revolution had begun and mountain men were first to join Washington against the British in the forces of Morgan's Riflemen and Nelson's Riflemen. Their skill with firearms, their fearlessness, made them invaluable to Washington. "It was their quality of cool courage and personal independence," said Raine, "that won the battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens and drove Lord Cornwallis to his surrender at Yorktown."

Each movement toward independence in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina had been under the leadership of mountain men and the accomplishment of their several declarations paved the way for the more widespread Continental Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia, July 4, 1776.

It echoed around the world, but Daniel Boone, that young rebel, didn't even hear of it until the following August. Whereupon the fearless hunter with the abandon of a happy lad danced a jig around the bonfire inside the stockade. It could have been an Elizabethan jig, ironically enough, for the Boones were English. Daniel tossed his coonskin cap into the air again and again and let out a war whoop that brought the terrified Rebecca hurrying to the cabin door, a whoop that pierced the silence of the forest beyond.

By the time the Declaration was signed the mountain people constituted one sixth of the settlement of the United States.

As for Daniel Boone, twenty-five years had passed since he, a boy of sixteen, had left Pennsylvania with his father and brothers. He was forty-one years old when he set up housekeeping at Boonesborough where the fort stood on the banks of the Kentucky. Never in all his life had he been quite so settled. Daniel had acquired title to lands from the Transylvania Company and things looked promising. Rebecca too must have been happy in their security. The children could safely play inside the stockade even if they did squabble with the neighbors' children. Rebecca must have sung a ballad betimes as she cooked venison or wild turkey at the hearth, or swept the floor with her rived oak broom. For Daniel could whittle a broom for her while he sat meditating aloud on his past adventures. Daniel was satisfied. Rebecca could see that. Now with the colony established in the wilderness Daniel Boone had realized the dream of his life.

In the thirteen years Boone lived in Kentucky he continued to hunt and trap and explore. He took others along with him on his various expeditions. In January, 1778, with a party of thirty men he went to make salt at Blue Lick. He knew the places to go for he had found them previously by following the path of buffalo, deer, and bear that had gone there to lick salt. Boone and his men threw up rough shelters for themselves. Soon the kettles were boiling, the salt was made. They were in the midst of preparations to pack up their belongings and load the salt into bags when Daniel's keen ears caught the sound of moccasined feet in the underbrush nearby. Suddenly as if they had popped up out of the ground a band of Indians pounced upon the white men. All but three of Boone's party were captured. They escaped and after hiding the kettles took the salt back to the stockade. Daniel and two of his companions were borne off to Detroit.

Boone was a wary fellow, so he pretended to be quite contented with his lot and the Indians were so pleased with him they adopted him as a son into their tribe. He would have looked a fright to Rebecca for the Indians cropped his hair close to the scalp save a tuft on the top of his head which was bedecked with trinkets--shells, teeth of wild animals, feathers. The women dressed him up in this fashion, first taking him to the river and giving him a thorough scrubbing "to take out his white blood." Then they painted his face with colors as bright as those of any chieftain in the tribe. Daniel was a good actor. He pretended to be highly pleased, but he was only awaiting the chance to escape. One day there was quite a stir in the camp. Daniel observed many new faces among the warriors. They talked and gesticulated excitedly, and Boone soon gathered the purpose of the powwow. "They're going on the warpath," Daniel said to himself, "and to my notion they're headed toward our stockade." While they continued to harangue among themselves Daniel stealthily made his escape. He covered the intervening one hundred and sixty miles in five days.

The Indians didn't carry out their plan to attack the fort until some weeks later and when they did march into view they were led by Captain Duquesne of the English Army.

The siege lasted for nine days but the veteran riflemen of the fort, under Boone's skillful direction, gained the day with only a loss of three or four men, while many of the four hundred Indians fell.

There were many other battles with the Indians who crossed the Ohio into Kentucky, and though Boone was always in the thick of the fray he came out uninjured.

And then misfortune came in another way.

Things had looked fair enough in the beginning when the Transylvania Company sold boundaries of land to settlers, with Colonel Henderson, a bright lawyer who had once been appointed Associate Chief Justice, to look after the legal side of the transactions. The company asked only thirteen and one third cents per acre for the land for one year and an added half cent per acre quitrent to begin in 1780. At such a low rate it was possible for a man to purchase a boundary of six hundred acres. When Daniel talked it over with Rebecca they concluded he would not be overreaching himself to invest in such an acreage.

The Transylvania Company did a land-office business. By December of the first year after Colonel Henderson opened up his office for business in Boonesborough 560,000 acres were sold. That was all right for the company, but what of the purchaser? What with the squabbles and disputes concerning title between Indian and settler, English and French, Boone like others soon found himself with not a leg to stand on. He had bought "wildcat" land. Land-sharks cleaned him out.

At the age of fifty-four, in 1788, Daniel had to start all over again. With Rebecca at his side and a larger family he moved on.

Boone had scouted through the West Virginia country long before, when he had passed a solitary winter in a hut on the Big Sandy. So now once more he turned in that direction, pressing on until he reached the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. He lived from place to place in the Kanawha country, following his old pursuits of hunting and trapping, and as usual absented himself from his fireside for long days at a stretch. But Rebecca was used to his ways. She looked after the family, cooked and mended. When Daniel returned home Rebecca always cleaned him up again before he started on another hunting trip.

Eleven years passed without a word being said about land titles. Then one day Daniel found himself facing the same situation that had robbed him of his acres in Kentucky. A man of sixty-five, and with a family of seven, three boys and four girls--two of their boys had been killed in battle with the Indians--Daniel, though still a fearless hunter, didn't want to be bothered with squabbles over land titles. He told Rebecca there was an easier way around. There were places outside of the jurisdiction of the United States altogether. "We don't have to be beholden to anyone," he said boastfully.

Pioneer women followed their men. So once more Rebecca made ready for the journey. She mended garments; she gathered up their few cooking utensils and the furry hides that were their blankets. She tied some of her choice things in her apron. That she'd carry right on her arm. The boys helped their father make ready the great cumbersome cart that was to carry their possessions. When all was in readiness Daniel pulled on his coonskin cap and whistling up his dogs he started off resolutely ahead of his family.

On and on they went until they reached Spanish territory beyond the Mississippi in Upper Louisiana. There at Charette (fifty miles west of St. Louis) Daniel Boone remained for a score of years, still hunting and trapping.

Even after Rebecca died he stayed on in the log cabin that had been their home for so long. An old man of seventy-eight he was, with many a sorrow to look back upon. For him the trail had been a "bloody one," Daniel often reflected. He had seen two of his boys fall under the tomahawk, and his brothers too. He had seen Rebecca's grief and terror at bloodshed; her anxiety in the lonely life of the wilderness. He had seen her despair when the very ground in which they had taken root was torn from under their feet. He had known the suffering of winter winds, the desolation of the forest. He had suffered innumerable hardships. All these things he lived again as he sat alone in the house where Rebecca had died.

But the spirit of the hunter still burned in the old man's bosom at the age of eighty-five. Even then he was all for shouldering his gun once more and setting out with an Indian lad to explore the Rockies. His son persuaded him to give up the thought. "You're too old, Pa. If you fall over a cliff your bones would be broke to smithereens. Come and live with me. My house is safe. It's all built of stone. The Indians can't burn down a stone house." After much bickering Daniel finally heeded his son and went to live with him. He died there in 1822.

The fort which he so proudly built and valiantly defended continues to bear his name, being one of at least thirty localities in the United States which take their name from the first pioneer of the great valley of the Mississippi. His body lies in a little cemetery in Kentucky's capital. A humble grave, though as you stand beside it you feel the spirit of the great hunter hovering near. A courageous explorer in leather breeches and coonskin cap blazed the trail through an unbroken wilderness to help build America.

At length through Cumberland Gap following Boone's Wilderness Trail came the ancestors of David Crockett, Samuel Houston, John C. Calhoun, "Stonewall" Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. The Boones and Lincolns had been neighbors back in Pennsylvania in one of the most German settlements. Yet both families themselves were English.

THE MOUNTAINEER

Difficulties of communication are enough to explain the isolation of mountaineers. For long years, even until yesterday, the only roads were the beds of tortuous and rockstrewn watercourses that were dry when you started at sunup and were suddenly transformed by a downpour to swollen, turbulent streams, perilous even to ford.

But for all that, in 1803 there were a million settlers in the southern highlands. Hardships of life there might have shaken a man's faith but not his love of the country. In Kentucky alone in 1834 there were 500 pensioners of the Revolution. And when the guns roared at the opening of the Civil War, the southern highlanders sent 180,000 riflemen to the Union Army.

An isolated people drops easily into illiteracy. Cut off as the mountain men were from the outside world, they knew little of what was going on beyond their mountain walls. Even if newspapers had found their way to the mountaineer's cabin they would have been of little use to men who could not read. On the other hand, had the mountain men known of the great westward movement toward the plains few of them could have joined the caravans. The mountaineer had no money because he had no way to produce money. For that reason he could not even reach the nearest lowlands. Even if he had moved down into the lowlands he could not hope to own land but would only have fallen once more into the unbearable state of his forbears in Ulster--that of tenant, or menial, with proprietors and bosses to harass his life. This peril alone was enough, aside from the lack of money, to make the highlander shrink from the society of the lowlands. The few who straggled down were glad enough to return to the cloister of the mountains. Besides the mountaineer didn't like the climate or the water down there. The sparkling, cool mountain brook, the constant breeze and bracing air were much more to his liking. Indeed the climate has had its effect upon the mountaineer, not only upon his physical being--he is tall and stalwart; few mountain men are dwarfed--but the bracing air enables him to toil for long days in the open. He can walk--or hoe corn on an almost perpendicular corn patch--from daylight till dark. He is patient and is never in a hurry. Time means nothing to him. Down in the Unakas a mountaineer once had a cataract removed from the right eye. The surgeon told him to return in a couple months when it would be safe to operate upon the other eye. Twenty years elapsed before the fellow returned to the doctor's office; when he was chided for the delay he answered unconcernedly, "I 'lowed 'twas no use to be in a hurry about it."

Yet for all their seeming indifference the people of the Blue Ridge, who locked their offspring generation after generation in mountain fastnesses that have barred the world, have kept alive and fresh in memory the unwritten song, the speech, the tradition of their Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic ancestors.

Down through the centuries the blood and traditions of the pioneers have carried, creating a stalwart, a fearless people. Hidden away in the high crannies of the Blue Ridge they have come to be known as Mountaineers, Southern Highlanders, Appalachian Mountaineers, and Southern Mountaineers. But if you should ask a name of any of the old folk of the Blue Ridge country they doubtless will tell you, "We are mountain people." Never hill-billies! A hill-billy, the true mountain man or woman would have you know, is one born of the mountains who has got above his raising, ashamed to own his origin, one who holds his own mountain people up for scorn and ridicule. To mountain folk the word hill-billy is a slur of the worst sort. A slur that has caused murder.

They recognize no caste in the Blue Ridge Country. They are hospitable beyond measure, I have come to know in my long years of roaming through the mountains, first as court stenographer in isolated courts, then as ballad collector. I have never entered a mountain home throughout the Blue Ridge, no matter how humble the fare, where man, woman, or child offered apology for anything, their surroundings or the food and hospitality given to the stranger under their roof. "You're welcome to what we've got," is the invariable greeting--though the bed be a crude shuck tick shared with the children of the family, the fare cornbread and sorghum.

As a child I used to go to the cabin home of one of my father's kinsmen, a man who could neither read nor write, though he knew his Bible from cover to cover and could cite accurately chapter and verse of any text from which he chose to preach. There was but one room in his house of logs with its lean-to kitchen of rough planks, but never did I hear father's kinsman or his wife offer any word of excuse for anything. When it was time for victuals his wife, with all the graciousness of nobility, would stand behind her guests, while her man, seated at the head of the table, head bowed reverently, offered thanks. Then, lifting his head, he would fling wide his open palms in hospitality, "Thar hit is afore you. Take holt and eat all you're a-mind to!" And turning to his wife, "Marthie! watch their plates!" My great-aunt kept a vigilant eye on us as she walked around the table inviting us to partake, "Hure, have more of the snaps. Holp yourself to the ham meat. Take another piece of cornbread. 'Pon my word, you're pickin' like a wren. Eat hearty!" she urged, while above our heads she swished the fly-brush, a branch from the lilac bush in summer, otherwise a fringed paper attached to a stick.

They learned through necessity to put to use the things at hand, made their own crude implements to clear and break the stubborn soil; they learned to do without.

Their poteen (whiskey) craft, handed down by their Scotch-Irish ancestors, survives today in what outlanders term moonshining. Resentment against taxation of homemade whiskey survives too. The mountaineer reasons--I've heard them frequently in court--that the land is his, that he "heired it from his Pa, same as him from hisn," that he plants him some bread without no tax. Why can't he make whiskey from his corn without paying tax?

As for killing in the Blue Ridge Country. In my profession of court stenographer I have reported many trials for killing and almost invariably my sympathy has been with the slayer. Usually he admits that he had it to do either for a real or fancied wrong, or for a slur to his womenfolks. I've never known of gangsters, fingermen, or paid killers in the Blue Ridge Country.

With an inherent love of music, handed down from the wandering minstrels of Shakespeare's time, and with a wealth of ballads stored up in their heads and hearts, they found in these a joyful expression. Even the children, like their elders, can turn a hand to fashion a make-believe whistle of beech or maple, although they may never know that in so doing they are making an imitation of the Recorder upon which Queen Elizabeth herself was a skilled performer. Little Chad at the head of Raccoon Hollow will cut two corn stalks about the length of his small arms and earnestly proceed to make music by sawing one across the other, singing happily:

Corn stalk fiddle and shoe-string bow,
Best old fiddle in the country, oh!

not knowing that Haydn, the child, likewise sawed one stick upon another in imitation of playing the fiddle. And there's Little Babe of Lonesome Creek who delights in a gourd banjo. His grandsir, finding a straight, long-necked gourd among those clustered on the vine over kitchen-house door, fashioned it into a banjo for the least one. Cut it flat on one side, did the old man, scooped out the seed, then covered the opening with a bit of brown paper made fast with flour paste, strung it with cat gut. And there, bless you, as fine a banjo as ever a body would want to pick.

They are neighborly in the Blue Ridge Country. They ask no favor of any man. Yet the road is never too rough, the way too far, for one neighbor to go to the aid of another in time of sickness or death. I knew a little boy who was dangerously sick with a strange ailment that primitive home remedies could not heal. Neighbor boys made a slide, a quilt tied to two strong saplings, and carried their little friend some ten miles over a rough mountain footpath to the nearest wagon road. There, placing him in a jolt wagon, the bed of which had been filled with hay to ease his suffering in jolting over the rough creek-bed road, they continued the journey on for thirty miles to the wayside railroad station where the cars bore the afflicted child on to town and the hospital.

A feud is the name given to their family quarrels by the level-landers. Mountain people never use the word. They say war or troubles. Their clannishness was inherited from their Scotch ancestors, and the wild, rugged mountains lent themselves perfectly to warfare among the clans. They had lived apart so long, protected from invasion and interference by their high mountain walls, that they learned to settle their own differences in their own way. They knew no law but the gun. If John warned his neighbor Mark that Mark's dog was killing his sheep and the neighbor did nothing about it, John settled the matter forthwith by shooting the dog. Families took sides. The flame was fanned. The feud grew.

However, in time of disaster, with grim faces and willing hands, they come to the aid of an unfortunate neighbor. Once when a terrible flood caused Troublesome to overflow its banks, carrying everything in its raging course, I saw a team of mules, the only means of support of a widowed mother of a dozen children, swept away. She hired the team to neighbors and thus earned a meager living. I remember the despair of that white, drawn face as the widow looked on helplessly at the destruction. Not a word did she speak. But before darkness the next day neighbor men far and wide, and none of them were prosperous, chipped in from their small hoards and got another team for the woman.

2. LAND OF FEUDS AND STILLS

HATFIELDS AND MCCOYS

When Dr. Walker, the Englishman, the first white man in Cumberland Gap, followed the course of Russell Fork out of Virginia into Kentucky back in 1750, he came upon a wooded point of land shaped like a triangle which was skirted by two forks of tepid water. The one to the left, as he faced westward, this English explorer called Levisa after the wife of the Duke of Cumberland.

Generations later a lovely mountain girl wore the name he had given the stream and she became the wife of the leader of a blood feud in the country where he set up his hut. It was a blood feud and a war of revenge that lasted more than forty years, the gruesome details of which have echoed around the world, cost scores of lives, and struck terror to the hearts of women and innocent children for several decades.

Devil Anse Hatfield, the leader of his clan, himself told me much of the story when I lived on Main Island Creek in Logan County, West Virginia, and on Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. His wife Levicy--she who had been Levicy Chafin--did not spell her name as the name of the stream was spelled though she pronounced it the same way. It was a story that began with the killing of Harmon McCoy in 1863 by Devil Anse, who was a fearless fighter, a captain in a body of the Rebel forces known as the Logan Wildcats. Later, when Jonse Hatfield, the leader's oldest boy, grew to young manhood, he set eyes upon Rosanna McCoy, old Randall's daughter, and loved her at sight. But Devil Anse, because of the hatred he bore Rosanna's father, wouldn't permit his son to marry a McCoy. Rosanna loved Jonse madly. And he, swept away with wild, youthful passion, determined to have her. He did, though not in lawful wedlock.

Quarrels and bickerings between the sides sprang up at the slightest provocation. Even a dispute over the ownership of a hog resulted in another killing. Old Randall grew more bitter as time went on, what with Rosanna the mother of an illegitimate child and Jonse, even though he lived with her under his father's own roof, being faithless to the girl. And when, after the McCoys stabbed Ellison Hatfield to death, Devil Anse avenged his brother's death by inciting his clan to slay Randall's three boys, Little Randall, Tolbert and Phemer, the leader of the McCoys vowed he'd not rest until he wiped out the last one of the other clan.

There were killings from ambush, open killings, threats, house-burnings. Once the McCoys had outtricked Devil Anse and had stolen his favorite son Jonse away while he was courting Rosanna. They meant to riddle him with bullets. But the Hatfields got word of it. Rosanna had betrayed her own family, so the McCoys felt, for the love of Jonse. The Hatfields came galloping along the road by moonlight, surrounded the McCoys, demanded the release of the prisoner, young Jonse, and even made a McCoy dust young Hatfield's boots.

When the law tried to interfere, Devil Anse built a drawbridge to span the creek beside which his house stood, stationed a bevy of armed Hatfields around his place, and ruled his clan like a czar, directing their every deed.

The bloody feud did not end until 1920, after Sid Hatfield on Tug Fork, which with Levisa forms Big Sandy, had shot to death some nine men led by Baldwin-Felts detectives. They had killed Mayor Testerman of the village of Matewan. And when they came to arrest Sid on what he termed a trumped-up charge he reached for his gun. Sid, then chief of police of Matewan, West Virginia, had been accused of opposing labor unions among the coal miners and the coming of the detectives was the result. Though Hatfields and McCoys were both miners and coal operators, the killing of the detectives by Sid had no direct bearing upon the early differences between the clans. But the wholesale killing on the streets of Matewan in 1920 marked the end of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Devil Anse lived to see peace between his family and the McCoys.

Through thick and thin Levicy Chafin Hatfield stood by her man, though she pleaded with him to give up the strife.

They waged their blood battles on Levisa Fork and Tug, on Blackberry and Grapevine, creeks that were tributaries to the waters that swelled the Big Sandy as they flowed down through the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky, emptying at last into the Ohio.

Levicy bore her mate thirteen children and died a few years after 1921 when the old clansman had passed to the beyond. There was not even a bullet mark on the old clansman. He died a natural death, mountain kinsmen will tell you proudly. He was buried with much pomp, as pomp goes in the mountains, on Main Island Creek of West Virginia, in the family burying ground.

I knew Devil Anse and "Aunt" Levicy quite well. For, long centuries after my illustrious kinsman had returned to Merrie England to report upon his expedition for the Loyal Land Company in the Blue Ridge, I followed the same course he had blazed out of Virginia into the mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia. I lived for a number of years on Levisa Fork and Tug Fork and on Main Island Creek in West Virginia, where my nearest neighbors and best friends were Hatfields and, strangely enough, McCoys.

One day Devil Anse stopped at my house out of a downpour of rain and as he sat looking out of the open door he fell to talking of another rainy day many years before. "This puts me in the mind of the time I had to go away on business down to the mouth of Big Sandy," he said in his slow, even tones. All the time his eagle eyes were fixed on me. "I had to go down to the mouth of Big Sandy," he repeated, "on some business of my own. A man has a right to protect his family," he interrupted himself and arched a brow. "Anyway there come an awful rainstorm and creeks busted over their banks till I couldn't ford 'em--not even on Queen, as high-spirited a nag as any man ever straddled. But she balked that day seeing the creeks full of trees pulled up by the roots and even carcasses of calves and fowls. Queen just nat'erly rared back on her haunches and wouldn't budge. Couldn't coax nor flog her to wade into the water. A feller come ridin' up on a shiny black mare. Black and shiny as I ever saw and its neck straight as a fiddle bow. He said the waters looked too treacherous and turned and rode off over the mountain, his black hair drippin' wet on his shoulders. Anyway there I was held back another day and night till that master tide swept on down to the Big Waters [the Ohio]. When I got home my little girls Rosie and Nancy come runnin' down the road to meet me. 'Pappy, look! what a strange man give us!' Rosie held out her hand and there was a sil'er dollar in it and Nancy brought her hand from behind her and openin' her fist she had a sil'er dollar too and little Lizbeth she come runnin' to show me what she had. Another sil'er dollar, bless you. 'This strange man were most powerful free-hearted,' sez I, gettin' off of Queen. I throwed the bridle over the fence rail and went on up to the house, packin' my saddle pockets over my arm and my gun and cartridge belt over my shoulder. My little girls come troopin' behind. Their Ma stood waitin' in the door twistin' the end of her apron like she ever did when she was warned. 'Captain Anderson!' sez she, that were her pet name for me, 'I've been nigh in a franzy. I 'lowed sure you and Queen had been washed plum down in the flood. Here, let me have them soppin' clothes and them muddy boots.' Levicy was the workinest woman you ever saw. Washed and scoured till my garmints looked like new. And after I'd got on clean dry clothes such a feast she set before me. 'Pon my word, it made me feel right sheepish. 'A body would think, Levicy,' sez I, 'that I were the Prodigal Son come home.' She spoke right up. 'See here, Anderson Hatfield, I won't have you handlin' no such talk about the sire of my little girls,' sez she, spoonin' the sweet potatoes on my plate, and smilin' so tender and good on me. Then my little girls gathered round to see what I'd fetched them. There was store candy and a pretty hair ribbon for each one that I taken out of the saddle pockets. And a gold breast pin for Levicy. Never saw a woman so pleased in my life. 'I don't aim to hold it back just to wear to meetin',' sez she. And she didn't. From then on she wore that gold breast pin every day of her life. Said she meant to be buried with it. Well, 'ginst my little girls had et their candy and plaited each other's hair and tied on their new ribbons they hovered around me again to show their sil'er the strange man had give them. 'Captain Anderson,' sez Levicy, 'he was handsome built and set his saddle proud and fearless. But not half so proud and fearless as you. Nor were he half so handsome.' I could feel her hand on my shoulder a-quiverin' a little grain like Levicy's hand ever did when she was plum happy. Then she went on to tell as she washed the dishes and Nancy and Rosie dried them and Lizbeth packed them off to the cupboard, about the strange man. 'He laid powerful admiration on our little girls.' Levicy was wipin' off the oilcloth on the table with her soapy dish rag. 'He had them line up in a row to see which was tallest, whilst I set him a snack. "Shut your eyes," sez he, "and open your mouth." They did, and bless you, Captain Anderson, what did he do but put a sil'er dollar in their mouth--each one.' By this time Nancy and Rosie and Lizbeth had finished the dishes and they come hoverin' round my knee again whilst I cleaned and polished my gun. Each one holdin' proud their sil'er dollar, turnin' it this way and that, rubbin' it on their dress sleeve to make the eagle shine. Just then, Jonse, my oldest boy, come gallopin' up the road on Prince, his little sorrel. He never stopped till he got right to the kitchen-house door. The chickens made a scattermint before him. 'Pa!' he shouted out, throwin' Prince's bridle out of his hand and jumpin' down to the ground. 'They've caught him! Robbed the bank at Charleston!' Levicy was drying the tin dishpan. She starred at Jonse and so did I. 'Caught who?' sez I. 'Jesse James' brother, Frank! It was him that was here. Him that Ma fed t'other day. Him that give Nancy and Rosie and Lizbeth a sil'er dollar!' Levicy dropped the dishpan and retched a hand to the table. 'Mistress Levicy Chafin Hatfield!' sez I, 'never again can I leave this house in peace. A man's family's not safe with such scalawags prowlin' the country!'"

Then Devil Anse went on with the rest of the story.

Devil Anse, the leader of the Hatfield clan whose very name struck terror to the hearts of people, and Jesse James' brother Frank, highwayman and bank robber, had met on a mountain road, each unaware of the other's identity, each intent on his own business. Captain Anderson had gone down to the mouth of Big Sandy, the county seat, Catlettsburg, Kentucky, to buy ammunition with which to annihilate the McCoys. That story too the outside world heard afterward, for the clans met on Blackberry Creek and engaged in battle for several hours with dead and dying from both sides on the field--or rather in the bushes.

Whatever else has been attributed to Devil Anse he liked to prank as well as anyone. He took particular glee in telling the following story to me, his eagle eyes twinkling:

"One day a tin peddler come with his pack of shiny cook vessels in a shiny black oilcloth poke on his back. The fellow wore red-topped boots and a red flannel shirt, for all it was summer. His breeches had more patches than a scarecrow and his big felt hat had seen its best days too. He kept at Levicy to buy his wares but she was one that didn't favor shiny tinware. 'It rustes out,' she told the peddler. 'Nohow I've got plenty of iron cook vessels.' All the time the old peddler was trying to wheedle and coax her into buying something, a quart cup, a milk bucket, a dishpan, a washpan. I was inside in the sitting room resting myself on the sofa. I could hear the peddler outside on the stoop, bickering and haranguing at Levicy to buy. Finally I got my fill of it and I tiptoed out through the kitchen-house, my gun over my shoulder. I went to the barn lot and turned loose Buck, a young bull we had that I'd been aimin' to swop Jim Vance. I give Buck one good wollop across the rump with the pam of my hand. He kicked up his heels and rushed forward, me close behind with my gun. The peddler took one look at Buck, so it peered to me, and Buck took one look at the peddler, lowered his head and charged. The peddler let out a war whoop and flew down the hillside like a thousand hornets had lit on him. The pack fell from his back and there was a scattermint of tinware from top to bottom of that hill. Buck shook his head and snorted. His eyes bugged outten the sockets. I couldn't tell if he was ragin' mad at the shiny tin cook vessels that was tanglin' his hoofs, or if it was the red shirt and red-topped boots of the peddler that riled Buck. Nohow Buck ducked his head again and bellowed, caught a shiny quart cup on each horn and a couple washpans on his forefeet and kept right on down the hill. By this time the tin peddler had scooted up a tall tree quick as a squirrel and there he set on a limb. Buck was ragin' and chargin' in circles around that tree. That bull was riled plum to a franzy and that tin peddler was yaller as a punkin. Skeert out of his wits. 'Come on down, you pore critter!' sez I. But he just opened his mouth and couldn't say a word, just a dry croak like a frog bein' swallored in sudden quicksand. 'Come on down,' I coaxed, 'I'll quile Buck down till he's peaceable as a kitten.'

"But the peddler just starred at me and shivered on the limb like a sparrow bird freezin' of a winter time in the snow. 'I'll tend to Buck!' I promised him. 'Come on down!' And to put his mind at ease I up with my rifle-gun, shot the quart tin cups offen Buck's horns and the washpans offen his front hoofs. 'Now get back to the barn where you belong and behave yourself!' I sez to Buck and he scampered back up the hill as frolicsome as a lamb, pickin' his way careful like as a Jenny Wren through that scattermint of tinware.

"The peddler was still shiverin' on the tree limb overhead and his eyes buggin' out worser'n Buck's had when he ketched first sight of the feller's red shirt and the shiny tinware. 'Buck's gone,' I sez to him coaxin' like. 'You don't need to be skeert of him no more!' 'T-t-tain't B-b-buck!' the feller's teeth chattered. 'It's you, D-d-evil A-a-nse!' With that he drapped off the limb down to the ground at my feet. Swoonded dead away!"

Devil Anse Hatfield chuckled heartily. "'T-t-ain't Buck! B-b-uck,' sez he when he ketched his wind and revived up. 'It's you--D-d-evil Anse!'"

The rest of the story Captain Anderson himself would never tell but Aunt Levicy told me how he packed the tin peddler back up the hill to the house on his shoulder and had her cook him a big dinner of fried chicken and cornbread; how he gave the peddler a couple greenbacks that made him plum paralyzed with pleasure and surprise; and how he had Jonse take the peddler back to the county seat, the peddler riding behind Jonse on Queen, where he bought a new supply of tinware and went on his way.

Except for such interludes of pranking, doubtless Aunt Levicy and old Randall's wife, Sarah McCoy, could never have survived the ordeal of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

The women of both households lived days of torture, ever watchful of the approaching enemy. They spent sleepless nights of anguish, knowing too well the sound of gunshot, the cry of terror that meant another outbreak of the clans. And when the cross grew too heavy even for their stoic shoulders to bear they ventured unbeknownst to their menfolks to the Good Shepherd of the Hills to beg his intercession, his prayers for peace.

PEACEMAKER

Autumn had painted the wooded hillside bright scarlet, golden brown, vivid orange, and yellow that shone in the late September sunlight like a giant canvas beyond the rambling farmhouse at the head of Garrett's Fork of Big Creek where dwelt the Good Shepherd of the Hills, William Dyke Garrett and his gentle wife. Here in Logan County in the heart of the rugged West Virginia country, Uncle Dyke and Aunt Sallie lived in the selfsame place for all of seventy years. Sallie Smith, she was, of Crawley's Creek, a few miles away, before she wed the young rebel of the Logan Wildcats. That was away back in 1867, February 19th, to be exact. He was twenty, she in her teens. He had been born and grew to young manhood in a cabin only a stone's throw from where he and Miss Sallie, as he always called her, went to housekeeping. As for their neighbors, there wasn't a person in the whole countryside that didn't love Sallie Garrett, nor one that didn't revere the kindly Apostle of the Book. So long had Dyke Garrett traveled up and down the valley comforting the sick, praying with the dying, funeralizing the dead.

I had heard him preach in various places through the West Virginia hills.

"Hello, Uncle Dyke!" I called from the roadside one autumn day in 1936.

"Howdy! and welcome!" he replied cheerily, rising at once from his straight chair and taking his place in the door. His wife stepped nimbly to his side, for all her ninety-odd years, and echoed the husband's greeting.

It is the way of the mountains.

I lifted the wood latch on the gate and went up the white-pebbled path. Flower-bordered it was, with brilliant scarlet sage, purple bachelor buttons, golden glow. There was pretty-by-night, too, though their snow-white blossoms were closed tight in the bud for it was not yet sundown; only in the twilight and by night did the buds bloom out. "That's why they wear the name Pretty-by-Night," mountain folk will tell you. There were clusters of varicolored seven sisters lifting up their bright petals. Moss, some call it in the mountains. There were bright cockscomb and in a swamp corner of the foreyard a great bunch of cat-o'-nine tails straight as corn stalks.

Tall, erect stood the Good Shepherd of the Hills, fully six feet three in his boots, his white patriarchal beard pillowed on his breast. The blue-veined hands rested upon the back of his chair as he gazed at me from friendly eyes. Aunt Sallie, a slight bird-like little creature, reached scarcely to his shoulder. Her black sateen dress with fitted basque and full skirt was set off with a white apron edged with crocheted lace. The small knot of silver hair atop her head was held in place with an old-fashioned tucking comb. About her stooped shoulders was a knitted cape of black yarn.

"Take a chair," invited Uncle Dyke when I reached the porch, waving me to a low stool. "Miss Sallie al'lus favors the rocker yonder on account the high back eases her shoulders. She's not quite as peert as she was back in 1867."

"It took a bit of strength to tame Dyke and I had it to do." She addressed me rather than her husband. "He was give up to be the wildest young man in the country when he came back from the Home War."

The Civil War having been ended for some two years and the young private of the Logan Wildcats having been tamed, he became converted to religion. Thereupon he began to preach the Gospel.

But never in all the years of his ministry from 1867 to 1938, when failing health took him from the pulpit, did Uncle Dyke Garrett receive a penny for preaching. He never had a salary. William Dyke Garrett got his living from the rugged little hillside farm that he tended with his own hands.

"Before I was converted to religion," he said, straightening in his chair, "I played the fiddle and many a time went to square dances. But once I got the Spirit in here,"--placing a wrinkled hand upon his breast--"I gave up frolic tunes and played only religious music. There are other ways for folks to get together and enjoy themselves without dancing. Now there's the Big Meeting! Every year on the first Sunday of September folks come from far and near here to Big Creek and bring their basket dinner."

"Dyke started it many a year ago," Aunt Sallie interposed with prideful glance at her mate.

Again he took up the story. "After we've spread our basket dinner out on the grass all under the trees we have hymn-singing and--"

"Dyke reads from the Scripture and preaches a spell." Aunt Sallie meant that nothing should be left out. Nor did the old man chide her.

"Many a one has been converted at the Big Meeting"--his eyes glowed--"and nothing will stop it but the end of time. They'll have the Big Meeting every year long after I'm gone. I'm certain of that."

Presently his thoughts looped back to his wedding to Sallie Smith. "Our infare-wedding lasted three days. The first day at Sallie's, the second day at Pa's house, and the third right here in our own home. That was the way in those times. And I got so gleeful I fiddled and danced at the same time! That'll be seventy-one year come February of the year nineteen thirty-seven." Slowly he rolled his thumbs one around the other, then he stroked his long beard, eyes turned inward upon his thoughts. "Well, sir, if I should get married one hundred times I'd marry Miss Sallie Smith every time. We've traveled a long way together and we've had but few harsh words."

His mate lifted faded eyes to his. "Dyke, it was generally my fault," she said contritely, "but I was bound to scold when you'd get careless about your own self. I vow," the little old lady turned to me, "he took no thought of his health nor his life nor limb. There was nothing he feared--man nor beast nor weather. In the early days there were no roads in this country and he rode horseback from one church to another through the wilderness. In the dead of night I've known him to get up out of bed and go with a troubled neighbor who had come for him to pray with the dying."

Uncle Dyke chuckled softly. "Sometimes they were not as near death as I thought. Once I remember John Lawton came from way over in Hart County. His wife was at the point of death, he said. She had lived a mighty sorry life had Dessie Lawton."

"Parted John and his wife!" piped Aunt Sallie, "and that poor girl went to her grave worshiping the ground John Lawton walked on; hoping he'd come back to her. Dyke claims there's ever hope for them that repent, so when John brought word that Dessie wanted to make her peace with the Lord before she died, Dyke said nothin' could stay him. So off he rode behind John to pray over that trollop!" Aunt Sallie's eyes blazed. "They forded the creek no tellin' how many times. They got chilled to the bone. When they got there Dyke stumbled into the house as fast as his cold, stiff legs could pack him, fell on his knees 'longside Dessie's bed and begun to pray with all his might. Then he tried to sing a hymn, but still never a word nor a moan out of Dessie, covered over from head to foot in the bed. Directly John reached over to lay a hand on her shoulder. 'Dessie, honey,' he coaxed, 'Brother Dyke Garrett's come to pray with you!' He shook the heap of covers. And bless you, what they thought was Dessie turned out to be a feather bolster. John snatched back the covers. The bed was empty except for that long feather bolster that strumpet had covered over lengthwise of the bed. Come to find out Dessie had sent John snipe huntin', so to speak, and she skipped out with a timber cruiser. Dyke was laid up for all of a week; took a deep cold on his chest from riding home in his wet clothes."

The old preacher smiled at the memory. "Could have been worse, like John Lawton said that night. 'Dessie's got principle!' said he. 'She could a-took my poke of seed corn, but there it is a-hangin' from the rafters. And she could a-took my savin's.' With that John Lawton pried a stone out of the hearth with the toe of his boot. Underneath it lay a little heap of silver coins. John blinked at it a moment. 'There it is. Dessie's shorely got principle. No two ways about it.' He shifted the stone back to place, tilted back in his chair, and patting his foot began to whistle a rakish tune. He was still whistling as I rode off into the bitter night."