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 uphousekeeping 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 pleasedwith 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 tosettlers, 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 despairwhen 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 onus 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 skilledperformer. 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 housestood, 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 tideswept 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 shewore 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’otherday. 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 outsideon 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, shotthe 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 theclans. 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 thedoor. 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 wasgive 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 herpeace 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.”
There was another time Dyke recalled when old GrannyPartlow sent word that she couldn’t hold out against the Lord no longer. Granny was nearing eighty and for thirty of her years she had sat a helpless cripple in a chair. At the birth of her seventeenth child, paralysis had overtaken Deborah, wife of Obadiah Partlow, rendering her useless to her spouse and their numerous offspring. She had protested bitterly, saying right out that it wasn’t fair and that so long as the affliction was upon her she meant to ask no favor of the Lord. Deborah Partlow was through with prayer and Scripture and Meeting, though in health never had been there a more pious creature than Obadiah Partlow’s wife. Neighbor folk saw her wither and pine through the years. A grim figure, she sat day in and day out in her chair wherever it was placed. Lifeless from the waist down, using her hands a little to peel potatoes or string beans, though so slow and laborious were the movements of the stiff fingers her children and Obadiah said they’d rather do any task themselves than to give it to her. At last she had become an old woman, shriveled, grim, still bitter about her fate.
No one was more surprised than Uncle Dyke Garrett when she sent for him.
“Granny Partlow craved baptism,” Uncle Dyke remembered the story as clearly as though it had happened but yesterday. “The ice was all of a foot thick in the creek but men cut it with ax and maddock, spade and saw. It had to be a big opening to make room for Deborah Partlow and her chair. Though her children and grandchildren and old Obadiah protested—‘It’ll kill you!’ ‘You’ll be stone dead before night!’—Granny had her way. Nor would she put on her bonnet or shawl. Resolute, she sat straight in her chair as neighbor men packed her through the snow to the creek. The women standing on the bank wept andwailed till they couldn’t sing a hymn. ‘It’ll kill Granny Partlow!’ they cried.”
Uncle Dyke was silent a long moment. “No one could ever rightly say how it come about. But the minute my two helpers brought the old woman up out of the icy waters she leaped out of her chair and took off up the bank for home, fleet as a partridge, through snow up to her knees, holding up her petticoats with both hands as she flew along. Lived to be a hundred and three. Hoed corn the day she died of sunstroke.” The Good Shepherd of the Hills sighed contentedly. “Deborah Partlow bein’ baptized under ice brought a heap of converts to religion.”
“But that baptizin’ caused me no end of anxiety,” Aunt Sallie took up the story. “That day when Dyke went out to saddle old Beck the snow was plum up to his boot tops. The mountains were white all around and the creek froze in a sheet of ice. But go Dyke would. I wropt his muffler twice around his neck, got his yarn mittens and pulse warmers too and throwed a sheep hide over the top of his wood saddle and one under it—to ease the nag’s back. He had wooden stirrups too. Made the whole thing himself. I dreaded to see Dyke ride off that winter’s day for there was a sharp wind that come down out of the hollow and froze even the breath of him on his long black beard till it looked white—white as it is today. I watched him ride off. Heard the nag’s feet crunching in the snow. All of three full days and nights he was gone, for at best the road to Hart County was rough and hard to travel. In the meantime come a blizzard. Not a soul passed this way, so I got no word of Dyke. I conjured a thousand thoughts in my mind. Maybe he’d met the same fate of old man Frasher who fell over a cliff in a blinding snowstorm. Maybe the nag had stumbled and sent Dyke headlong over some steepridge. The children, we had several then, could see I was troubled, though I tried to hide it. Finally on the third night I had put our babes to bed and was sitting by the fire too troubled to sleep. I had about give up hope of seeing Dyke alive again. It was in the dead of night I heard a voice. It sounded strange and far off, calling ‘Hallo! Hallo!’, more like a pitiful moan it was. I lighted a pine stick at the hearth and hurried as best I could through the snow to where the voice was coming from. I stumbled once and fell over a stump and the pine torch fell from my hand. It sputtered in the snow and nearly went out before I could pull myself up to my feet. And all the time the voice seemed to be getting farther away. But it wasn’t. It was just getting weaker. In a few more steps I come on the nag deep in a snowdrift up to its shanks and there slumped over in the saddle was Dyke. His feet were froze fast in the stirrups. He was numb and nigh speechless. I wropt my shawl around him and hurried, back to the house, heated the fire poker red hot and with it I thawed Dyke Garrett’s boots loose from them wooden stirrups.” Aunt Sallie sighed. “Of course no mortal can tell when salvation will take holt on their heart but after Granny Partlow’s baptizing and Dyke having to be thawed out of his stirrups I was powerful thankful when the Spirit descended on a sinner in fair weather.”
“It’s not always womenfolks like Granny Partlow who are slow to open their heart to the Spirit. Now take Captain Anderson!
“In his home there never lived a more free-hearted man. Loved to have folks come and stay as long as they liked. Once I recall a man came to the county seat in court week. He was making tintypes and charged a few cents for them. Captain Anderson had his picture made and was so pleasedwith it he coaxed the fellow to go home with him so that he could get a tintype of Levicy and the children. He never stopped until he had ten dollars’ worth of tintypes and then he didn’t want the fellow to leave. But he did. Finally settled over on Beaver. His name was Jerome Bailey and he died a rich man and always said he got his start with the ten dollars he earned making tintypes for Captain Anderson Hatfield.”
Uncle Dyke reflected a long moment. “There’s good in all of us no matter how wicked we may seem to others. And down deep in the heart of me I knew my Captain would one day open his heart to salvation.”
Anyone could tell you how the Good Shepherd of the Hills through the long years had pleaded and prayed with Devil Anse to forsake the thorny path, even far back when they returned from the Home War. Already the Captain of the Wildcats had made a notch on his gunstock by killing Harmon McCoy in 1863. He was already the leader of his clan. And all the time Uncle Dyke kept pleading with his comrade to give up sin. But not until Uncle Dyke Garrett had preached and prayed for nearly fifty years and Devil Anse too had become an old man did he admit the error of his way. Not until then were the patience, faith, and hope of Uncle Dyke rewarded.
“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” he told me, “when Captain Anderson took my hand. Sitting right here we were together. It was in the falling weather. These hills all around about were a blaze of glory, like they are today. And here sat Captain Anderson, in this very rocking chair where Miss Sallie is sitting now. We were alone. Miss Sallie was busy with her posies down yonder near the gate. ‘Dyke,’ says the Captain of the Logan Wildcats, in a voice so soft I could scarce hear, ‘I’ve come into the light! I craveto own my God and Redeemer. I long to go down into the waters of baptism and be washed spotless of my transgressions.’ I could not move hand or foot. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. Captain Anderson gripped the arms of the rocker there as if to steady himself. A man who had tracked mountain lion and bear, panther and catamount. I could see the face of him, that old daredeviltry vanish away and on his countenance a childlike look of repentance. It took a heap o’ courage for Captain Anderson to admit his transgressions even to me, his lifelong friend. But I always knew that down deep in the heart of him there was good and that his hour would come when he’d fall upon his knees before the Master and say, ‘Here I am, forgive me Lord, a poor sinner!’ But when the words fell from his trembling lips I could not even cry out in rejoicing, ‘Thank God!’, like I always aimed to do when my comrade should come within the fold. I sat with my jaws locked, my tongue stilled. Captain Anderson spoke again. ‘Dyke,’ sez he, ‘brother Dyke ...’ I could feel my heart pounding like it would burst out of my breast. ‘Brother Dyke,’ he repeated the words slowly, pleadingly, ‘ain’t you aimin’ to give me the hand of fellowship?’ Then, still unable to utter a word, I reached out my hand and my comrade seized it, gripped it tight. There we sat looking at each other and so Miss Sallie found us as she came up the path there with her arms filled with posies, golden glow, and scarlet sage, and snow-white pretty-by-night just burst into bloom for it was sundown. ‘Men!’ said she, ‘at last you’re brothers in the faith! I know it. Ah! I’d know it from the look of peace on the faces of the two of you, even if I did not witness the sign of your hands clasped in fellowship!’ The next Sabbath day, it fell like on the third Sunday of the month, we witnessed thebaptism of a once proud and desperate rebel. A rebel against the Master! The baptism of him and six of his sons as well who had not before received salvation.”
Swiftly the word passed along the creeks and through the quiet hollows. “Devil Anse has come through!” There was great rejoicing throughout the West Virginia hills, indeed throughout the southern mountains. Not only the leader of the Hatfields, but six of his sons, had “got religion” and “craved baptism.” Hundreds flocked from out the hollows of West Virginia and Kentucky to witness the Hatfield baptizing.
That was another autumn day only a few years ago as time goes.
The sun was sinking behind the mountain, casting long shadows on the waters of Island Creek when the Good Shepherd of the Hills moved slowly down the bank to the water’s edge. Behind him followed his old friend, no longer the emboldened Devil Anse with fire in his eagle eye, but a meek, a silent, penitent figure. The autumn breeze stirred his snow-white hair, his scant gray beard. Upon his breast the old clansman held respectfully his wide-brimmed felt as he walked with head uplifted in supplication. Behind him followed his six sons. Jonse came first, Jonse, who had loved pretty Rosanna McCoy, reckless Jonse, who like his father had slain he alone knew how many of the other side. Then came Cap, Elias, Joseph, Troy, Robert.
Slowly and with steady stride Uncle Dyke walked into the water. Up to the waist he stood holding the frayed Bible in his extended right hand. “Except ye shall repent and go into the waters of baptism ye shall perish. But if ye repent and accept salvation, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be washed whiter than snow,” the voiceof the Good Shepherd of the Hills drifted down the valley.
“Amen!” intoned the trembling voice of Devil Anse.
“Amen!” echoed the six sons grouped about their aged sire.
Then Aunt Levicy, wife of the grim clansman, began singing in a quavering voice:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
Was blind, but now I see.
The wives and daughters, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts of McCoys took up the doleful strain:
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
“Hit’s our sign of peace!” shouted old Aunt Emmie McCoy clapping her palsied hands high above her head, “the sign of peace ’twixt us and t’other side!” Whereupon Young Emmie McCoy, still in her teens, who had loved Little Sid Hatfield since their first day at school on Mate Creek, threw her arms about his sister and cried, “Can’t no one keep me and Little Sid apart from this day on.”
“Amen!” the voice of Devil Anse led the solemn chant. “Amen! God be praised!”
Jonse, the first-born of the Hatfields, bowed his head and his deep-throated “Amen! God be praised!” echoed down the valley. Then Cap and Troy, Tennis, Elias, Joe, Willis, and the rest joined in. All eyes turned towardJonse. He who had loved pretty Rosanna McCoy when he was a lad, she a shy little miss.
Many at the baptizing remembered the first meeting of the two star-crossed lovers one autumn day long ago on Blackberry Creek. The day when young Randall and Tolbert, her brothers, were there. Old folks remembered too the time when Devil Anse had slain Harmon McCoy. But that was long ago and forgiven. “Let bygones be bygones,” Levicy had pleaded with her mate, and Sarah, wife of Old Randall, did likewise with her spouse. But only Levicy, of the two sorely tried women, had survived to witness the answer to her prayers—peace between the households with the baptism of Devil Anse and his six sons.
As one by one they went down into the waters of baptism, it was the voice of Levicy Chafin Hatfield that led in that best-loved hymn tune of the mountains:
On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye
Toward Canaan’s fair and happy land where my possessions lie.
I’m bound for the Promised Land, I’m bound for the Promised Land.
Oh! who will come and go with me, I’m bound for the Promised Land.
The hills gave back the echo of their song.
It was a day of rejoicing.
As for Uncle Dyke Garrett he continued to journey up and down the broad valley and through the hills, preaching the Gospel of repentance, forgiveness, salvation. Above all he told of the baptism of Captain Anderson and his six boys.
From the very first Dyke Garrett was more than a preacher.
Along lonely creeks into quiet hollows he went to pray at the bedside of the dying, to comfort the bereft, to rejoice with the penitent. In the early days he was the only visitor beyond the family’s own blood kin, so remote were the homes of the settlers one from the other. Like a breath from the outside world were Uncle Dyke’s words of cheer, while to him they in the lonely cabins were indeed voices crying out in the wilderness. Nor did flood nor storm, his own discomfort and hardship deter him. Winter and summer, through storm and wind, he rode bearing the good tidings to the people of the West Virginia ruggeds.
And now here he sat this autumn day in 1937, alert and happy for all his ninety-six years. Bless you, he even talked of fighting!
“If anyone jumped on these United States without a good cause,” he declared vehemently, “I’d fight for my country—” Uncle Dyke didn’t quibble his words. “That is to say if Uncle Sam would take me. Me and my sword!” Again he faltered, adding reflectively, “But after all the Bible is the better weapon. With it I can conquer all things.”
Slowly he arose from his chair and Aunt Sallie and I did likewise.
“Come,” he invited, “I want you to see for yourself where I’ve baptized many a one that has come to me.” He pointed to a pool in the creek beyond the house where he had made a small dam. As we stood together it was on the tip of my tongue to ask how many couples he had baptized, how many he had married. Abruptly with the uncanny sense of the mountaineer he lifted the questions out of my mind, though it could have been because so many others had asked the same things. “I’ve never kept count of the wedding ceremonies I have performed, nor of thebaptisms,” he said thoughtfully. “I have always felt that if it was the Lord’s work I was doing, He would keep the count.”
You didn’t have to ask Uncle Dyke Garrett either which were the happiest days of his long life. You’d know from the look he bestowed upon his frail mate that his supreme happy hour was when he married Miss Sallie Smith. “My wedding day,” he was saying as if the question had been asked, “that was the happiest day of my whole life. And next to that comes the day when the Lord chose me to administer baptism to Captain Anderson and his six boys. Such hours as these are a taste of heaven upon earth.” His voice was hushed with solemnity. His brimming eyes were lifted to the hills. “Though it was a day of sorrow I am grateful that it also fell to my lot to preach the funeral of my lifelong friend Captain Anderson. Most of all though, my heart rejoiced because Captain Anderson had become like a little child, meek and penitent, worthy to enter the fold.”
Uncle Dyke sat silent a long time. His wrinkled hands cupped bony knees. “It brought peace to Levicy’s troubled heart.” His eyes grew misty with unshed tears. “I see her now as she lay so peaceful in her shroud and on her bosom the gold breast pin she prized so much that Captain Anderson brought her the time he was stormbound, when he met that scalawag brother of Jesse James. She loved posies did Levicy and every springtime we take some to her grave, me and Miss Sallie.”
At this, Miss Sallie, slipping her small hand through the bend of his arm, led the way down the flower-bordered path. “Posies are the brightness of a body’s days,” she said softly. “You can’t just set them out and they’ll bloom big. You have to work with them. Posies and human creaturesare a heap alike. Sometimes they have to be pampered. Like Dyke here,” she smiled up at her aged mate. “I had to understand his ways, else I’d never have tamed him,” she persisted. “He’s the last surviving one of his company—the Logan Wildcats.” Aunt Sallie’s blue eyes lighted with pride. “I like to think of him outlasting me too.”
I’d remember them always as they stood there in the sunset with the golden glow and scarlet sage and the snow-white pretty-by-night all about them, the two smiling contentedly as I waved them good-by far down at the bend of the road.
It was the last time I ever saw Uncle Dyke alive. The next May—1938—he died. I was gratified that it fell to my lot to attend his funeral. And what a worthy eulogy the Reverend John McNeely, whom Uncle Dyke always referred to as “my son in the Gospel,” preached, taking for his text “My servant, Moses, is dead,” a text that the two had agreed upon long before the Good Shepherd of the Hills passed away.
That day when the sermon was ended the great throng that filled the valley and the hillsides, gathering about the baptismal pool he himself had fashioned, sang Uncle Dyke’s favorite hymn. Their voices blending like the notes of a giant organ swelled and filled the deep valley:
Like a star in the morning in its beauty,
Like the sun is the Bible to my soul,
Shining clear on the way of life and beauty,
As I hasten on my journey to the goal.
’Tis a lamp in the wilderness of sorrow,
’Tis a light on the weary pilgrim’s way,
It will guide to the bright eternal morrow,
Shining more and more unto the Perfect Day.
’Tis the voice of a friend forever near me,
In the toil and the battle here below,
In the gloom of the valley, it shall cheer me,
Till the glory of the kingdom I shall know.
I shall stand in its glory and its beauty,
Till the earth and the heavens pass away,
Ever telling the wondrous, blessed story
Of the loving Lamb, the only living way.
Uncle Dyke chose also his own grave site in the family burying ground overlooking the house where he’d lived seventy-one years. Often he had visited the spot and picked out the place beside him where Miss Sallie should be laid to rest. His life had ended almost where it began. The house in which he was born stands only a few miles from that in which he died.
“He built this house his own self,” Aunt Sallie quietly reiterated that evening as some of us lingered to comfort her. “We came here to Big Creek soon as we married. We’ve lived here seventy-one year.” Through brimming eyes she gazed toward the new-made grave. “We traveled a long way together, me and Dyke—” a sob shook the frail little body—“and now, I’m goin’ to be mighty lonesome.”
Big Meeting is still carried on just as Uncle Dyke wished it.
In September, 1940, I went again to mingle with the hundreds who show their reverence for the Good Shepherd of the Hills by keeping fresh in memory his teaching through their prayers and hymns at the Big Meeting each autumn. And here again a worthy follower of Uncle Dyke Garrett eulogized his deeds and mourned his loss. And close by, for all her ninety-two years, his beloved Miss Sallie, with a trembling hand on the arm of a kinsman,listened intently while those who knew and loved him extolled her lost mate.
And now Miss Sallie is gone too. She died on July 28, 1941, at the age of ninety-three and loving hands place mountain flowers on her grave and that of Levicy Hatfield far across the mountain.