The Silver Tomahawk
In Carter County, Kentucky, there is a legend which had its beginning long ago when Indian princesses roamed the Blue Ridge, and pioneers’ hopes were high of finding a lost silver mine said to be in caves close by.
Morg Tompert loved to tell the story. As long as he lived the old fellow could be found on a warm spring day sitting in the doorway of his little shack nearly hidden by a clump of dogwoods. A shack of rough planks that clung tenaciously to the mountain side facing Saltpeter, or as it was sometimes called—Swindle Cave. The former name came from the deposit of that mineral, the latter from the counterfeiters who carried on their nefarious trade within the security of the dark cavern.
As he talked, Morg plucked a dogwood blossom that peeped around the corner of his shack like a gossipy old woman. “See that bloom?” He held it toward the visitor. “Some say that a Indian princess who was slain by a jealous chieftain sopped up her heart’s blood with it and that’s how come the stains on the tip of the white flower. There have been Indian princesses right here on this very ground.” Morg nodded slowly. “There’s the empty tomb of one—yes, and there’s a silver mine way back yonder in that cave. They were there long before them scalawags were counterfeiting inside that cave. Did ever you hear of Huraken?” he asked with childish eagerness. Morg needed no urging. He went on to tell how this Indian warrior of the Cherokee tribe loved a beautiful Indian princess named Manuita:
“Men are all alike no matter what their color may be. They want to show out before the maiden they love best.Huraken did. He roved far away to find a pretty for her. That is to say a pretty he could give the chieftain, her father, in exchange for Manuita’s hand. He must have been gone a right smart spell for the princess got plum out of heart, allowed he was never coming back and, bless you, she leapt off a cliff. Killed herself! And all this time her own true love was unaware of what she had done. He, himself, was give up to be dead. But what kept him away so long was he had come upon a silver mine. He dug the silver out of the earth, melted it, and made a beautiful tomahawk. He beat it out on the anvil and fashioned a peace pipe on its handle. He must have been proud as a peacock strutting in the sun preening its feathers. Huraken was hurrying along, fleet as a deer through the forest, his shiny tomahawk glistening in his strong right hand. The gift for the chieftain in exchange for the princess bride. All of a sudden he halted right off yon a little way. There where the stony cliff hangs over. Right there before Huraken’s eyes at his feet lay the corpse of an Indian lass, face downward. When he turned the face upwards, it was the princess. Princess Manuita, his own true love. His sorryful cry raised up as high as the heavens. Huraken was plum beside himself with grief. He gathered up the princess in his arms and packed her off into the cave. Her tomb is right in there yet—empty.”
Old Morg paused for breath. “Huraken kept it secret where he had buried his true love. He meant to watch over her tomb all the rest of his life. Then the chieftain, Manuita’s father, got word of it somehow. He vowed to his tribe that Huraken had murdered his daughter in cold blood. So the chieftain and his tribe set out and captured Huraken. They bound him hand and foot with strips of buckskin out in the forest so that wild varmintscould come and devour his flesh and he couldn’t help himself. He’d concealed his tomahawk next to his hide under his heavy deerskin hunting coat. But the spirit of the dead princess pitied her helpless lover. Come a big rain that night that pelted him and soaked him plum to the skin. The princess had prayed of the Rain God to send that downpour. It soaked the buckskin through and through that bound Huraken’s hands and feet and he wriggled loose. Many a long day and night he wandered away off in strange forests, but all the time the spirit of his true love, the princess, haunted him. He got no peace till he came back and give himself up to the chieftain. Only one thing the prisoner asked. Would they let him go to the cave before they put him to death? Now the Cherokees are fearful of evil spirits. When they took Huraken to the mouth of the cave they would go no farther. ‘Evil spirits are inside!’ the chieftain said, and the rest of his tribe nodded and frowned. So Huraken went into the dark cave alone. From that to this he’s never been seen. And the corpse of the Princess Manuita, it’s gone too. Her empty tomb is in yonder’s cave. Not even a crumb of her bones can be found.”
Old Morg Tompert reflected a long moment. “I reckon when Huraken packed the princess off somewhere else her corpse come to be a heavy load. He dropped his silver tomahawk that he had aimed to give the chieftain for his daughter’s hand. It lay for a hundred year or more—I reckon it’s been that long—right where it was dropped. Off yonder in Smoky Valley under a high cliff some of Pa’s kinfolks found it. A silver tomahawk with a peace pipe carved on its handle. Pa’s own blood kin, by name, Ben Henderson, found that silver tomahawk but no living soul has ever found the lost silver mine. There’s bound tohave been a mine, else Huraken could never have made that silver tomahawk. Only one lorn white man knew where it was. His name was Swift. But when he died, he taken the secret of the silver mine to the grave with him. Swift ought to a-told some of the womenfolks,” declared old Morg, still vexed at the man Swift’s laxity though his demise had occurred ages ago. “Swift ought to a-told some of the womenfolks,” old Morg repeated with finality.
Black Cat
From where old Pol Gentry lived on Rocky Fork of Webb’s Creek she could see far down into the valley of Pigeon River and across the ridge on all sides. Her house stood at the very top of Hawks Nest, the highest peak in all the country around. Pol didn’t have a tight house like several down near the sawmill. She said it wasn’t healthy. Even when the owner of the portable mill offered her leftover planks to cover her log house where the daubin had fallen out, Pol refused. “The holes let the wind in and the cat out,” she’d say, “and a body can’t do without either.”
There was a long sleek cat, with green eyes and fur as black as a crow, to be seen skulking in and out of Pol Gentry’s place. If it met a person as it prowled through the woods, the cat darted off swift as a weasel into the bush to hide away. Young folks on Rocky Fork of Webb’s Creek learned early to snatch off hat or bonnet if the cat crossed their path, spit into it, and put it quickly on again—to break the witch of old Pol Gentry’s black cat. But never were the two, Pol and the cat, seen together.
Truth to tell there were some among the old folks on Rocky Fork who long had vowed that Pol and the catwere one and the same. They declared Pol was a witch in league with the Devil and that she could change herself from woman to cat when the spell was strong enough within her, when the evil spirits took a good strong hold upon her. Moreover, Pol Gentry had but one tooth. One sharp fang in the very front of her upper jaw. “A woman is bound to be a witch if she has just one tooth,” folks said and believed.
Pol Gentry was a frightful creature to look upon. She had a heavy growth of hair, coal black hair all around her mouth and particularly upon her upper lip. Her beard was plain to be seen even when she turned in at a neighbor’s lane, long before she reached the door. Little children at first sight of her ran screaming to hide their faces in their mother’s skirts.
There wasn’t a child old enough to give ear to a tale who hadn’t heard of Pol Gentry’s powers. How she had bewitched Dan Eskew’s little girl Flossie. It wouldn’t have happened, some said, if Flossie had spit in her bonnet when the black cat crossed her path as she trooped through the woods one day gathering wild flowers. That very evening when she got back home Flossie sank on the doorstep, the bonnet filled with wild flowers dropped from her arm. She moaned pitifully, holding her head between her hands and swaying to and fro. Right away her head began to swell and by the time they got word to Seth Eeling, the wizard doctor who lived in Mossy Bottom, Flossie’s head was twice its size. Indeed, Flossie Eskew’s head was as big as a full-grown pumpkin. The minute the wizard clapped eyes on the child he spoke out.
“Beat up eggshells as fine as you can and give them to this child in a cup of water. If she is bewitched this mixture will pass through her clear.”
Orders were promptly obeyed. Flossie drained the cup but no sooner had Flossie passed the powdered egg shells than the witch left her. Her head went back to its natural size. Nevertheless Flossie Eskew died that night.
“Didn’t send for the wizard soon enough,” Seth Eeling said.
Some believed in the powers of both, though neither witch nor wizard would give the other a friendly look, much less a word.
Pol Gentry was never downright friendly with any, though she would hoe for a neighbor in return for something to eat. “My place is too rocky to raise anything,” she excused herself. And whatever was given her, Pol would carry home then and there. “Them’s fine turnips you’ve got, Mistress Darby,” she said one day, and Sallie Darby up and handed her a double handful of turnips. Pol opened the front of her dirty calico mother-hubbard, put the turnips inside against her dirty hide and tripped off with them. Nor was Pol Gentry one to sit home at tasks such as knitting or piecing a quilt. But everyone admitted there never was a better hand the country over at raising pigs. So Pol swapped pigs for knitting. She had to have long yarn stockings, mittens, a warm hood, for her pigs had to be fed and tended winter and summer. Others needed meat as much as Pol needed things to keep her warm. Tillie Bocock was glad to knit stockings for the old witch in return for a plump shoat. Tillie had several mouths to feed. Her man was a no-account, who spent his time fishing in summer and hunting in winter, so that all the work fell to Tillie. Day by day she tended and fed the shoat. It was black-and-white-spotted and fat as a butterball, she and the little Bococks bragged.
“Another month and you can butcher that shoat.” OldPol would stop in at Tillie’s every time she went down the mountain, eyeing the fat pig. Sometimes she would put the palms of her dirty hands against her mouth and rub the black hair back to this side and to that, then she’d stroke her chin as though her black beard hung far down. Pol would make a clucking sound with her tongue. “Wisht I was chawin’ on a juicy sparerib or gnawin’ me a greasy pig’s knuckle right now,” she’d say. Then Pol would begin on a long tale of witchery: how she had seen young husbands under the spell of her craft grow faithless to young, pretty wives; how children gained power over their parents through her and had their own will in all things, even to getting title to house and land from them before it should have been theirs. She told how Luther Trumbo’s John took with barking fits like a dog and became a hunchback over night. “Why? Becaze he made mauck of Pol Gentry, that’s why!” She rubbed a dirty hand around her hairy mouth and cackled gleefully.
At that Tillie Bocock turned to her frightened children huddled behind her chair. “Get you gone, the last one of you out to the barn. Such witchy talk is not for young ears.”
Then old Pol Gentry scowled at Tillie and her sharp eyes flashed and she puffed her lips in and out. Pol didn’t say anything but Tillie could see she was miffed and there was in her sharp eyes a look that said, “Never mind, Tillie Bocock, you’ll pay for this.”
Next morning Pol Gentry was up bright and early, rattling the pot on the stove and grumbling to herself. “I’ll show Tillie Bocock a thing or two. So I will. Sending her young ones out of my hearing.”
Far down the ridge Tillie Bocock was up early too, foralready the sun was bright and there was corn to hoe. Tillie and the children had washed the dishes, and she had carried out the soapy dishwater with cornbread scraps mixed in it and poured it in the trough for the pig. “Spotty,” they called their pet. The Bococks had no planks with which to make a separate pen for the spotted pig so they kept its trough in a corner of the chicken lot.
“Mazie, you and Saphroney go fetch a bucket of cold water for Spotty,” Tillie called to her two eldest. “A pig likes a cold drink now and then same as we do.” So off the children went with the cedar bucket to the spring. When they returned they poured some of the water into the dishpan and Spotty sucked it up greedily while they hurried to pour the rest into the mudhole where the pig liked to wallow.
The sun caked the mud on the pig’s sides and legs as it lay grunting contentedly in the chicken yard.
And when Tillie and the children came in from hoeing corn at dinner time Spotty still lay snoozing in the sun. An hour later they returned to toss a handful of turnip greens into the pig. But Spotty didn’t even grunt or get up, for on its side was a sleek black cat. A cat with green eyes stretched full length working its claws into the pig’s muddy sides, now with the front paws, now with the hind ones.
The children screamed and stomped a foot. “Scat! Scat!” they cried but the black cat only turned its fierce eyes toward them.
Hearing their screams Tillie came running out. She fluttered her apron at the cat to scare it away but it only snarled, showing its teeth, lifting its bristling whiskers. Then Tillie picked up a stone and threw it as hard as she could, striking the cat squarely between the eyes. Itscreamed like a human, Tillie told afterwards. Loud and wild it screamed, and leaping off the pig it darted off quick as a flash.
When the cat reached the cliff halfway up the mountain that led toward Pol Gentry’s it turned around and looked back. With one paw uplifted it wiped its face for there was blood pouring out of the cut between its shining green eyes. It twitched its mouth till the black fur stood up.
“Come, get up, Spotty!” Tillie and the children coaxed the pig. “Here’s more dishwater slop for you. Here’s some cornbread!”
Slowly the pig got to its knees, then to its feet. It grunted once only and fell over dead.
After that old Pol Gentry wasn’t seen for days. But when Tillie Bocock did catch sight of her, Pol turned off from the footpath and hurried away. Even so Tillie saw the deep gash in Pol’s forehead oozing blood right between her eyes. She saw Pol Gentry’s mouth widen angrily and the black hair about it twitch like that of a snarling cat, as she slunk away.
The Deer Woman and the Fawn
Amos Tingley, a bachelor, and a miser as well, lived in Laurel Hollow. Nearby was a salt lick for deer. Often he saw them come there a few at a time, lick the salt, and scamper away. There were two he noticed in particular, a mother and its fawn. They had come nearer than the salt lick—into his garden—more than once and trampled what they did not like, or nibbled to the very ground things that suited their taste, vegetables that Amos had toiled to plant and grow. He didn’t want to harm theanimals if it could be helped so Amos thought to make a pet of the fawn. When a boy he had had a pet fawn, carried it in his arms. He even brought it into the house and when it grew older the little creature followed at his heels like a dog. He reached a friendly hand toward this fawn in his garden but it kicked up its heels and fairly flew down the garden path. However, the mother, watching her chance when Amos had returned to the house, led her fawn into the garden again and together they ate their fill of the choicest green things.
It annoyed Amos Tingley no little. He determined to put a stop to it. One evening he greased his old squirrel rifle. He took lead balls out of the leather pouch that hung on the wall, rolled them around in the palm of his hand, and wondered when his chance would come to use them. As he sat turning the thoughts over in his mind pretty Audrey Billberry and her little girl, Tinie, came along the road. Audrey was a widow. Had been since Tinie was six months old. Some wondered how she got along. But Audrey Billberry was never one to complain and if neighbors went there she always urged them to stay and eat. If it was winter, there was plenty of rabbit stew and turnips and potatoes, or squirrel and quail. Audrey loved wild meat. “It’s cleaner,” she’d say, “and sweeter. Sweet meats make pretty looks.” Audrey smiled and showed her dimples and little Tinie patted her mother’s hand and looked up admiringly into her face. Then off the two would skip through the woods to gather greens or berries, chestnuts or wild turkey eggs, whatever the season might bring.
Sometimes they went hand in hand, Audrey and the child, past Amos Tingley’s place.
“Good day, to you,” pretty Audrey Billberry wouldcall out and Tinie would say the same. “How goes it with you today, good neighbor?”
“Well enough,” Amos answered, “and better still if I can get rid of that pestering deer and her fawn. The two have laid waste my garden patch. See yonder!” he pointed with the squirrel rifle. “And it won’t be good for the two the next time they come nibbling around here!”
Pretty Audrey Billberry gripped little Tinie’s hand until the child squealed and hopped on one foot. They looked at each other, then at the gun. Fright came into their eyes. Audrey tried to laugh lightly. “When you kill that deer be sure to bring me a piece, neighbor Tingley,” she said, as unconcerned as you please, and away she went with the little girl at her side. When they reached home Audrey Billberry turned the wood button on the door and flung back her head. “Kill a deer and her fawn! There is no fear, Tinie. Why”—she scoffed—“Amos Tingley’s got only lead to load his rifle. I saw.” She put her hands to her sides and laughed and danced around the room. “Lead can’t kill a deer and her fawn. It takes silver! Silver! Do you hear that, Tinie? Silver hammered and molded round to load the gun. And when, I’d like to know, would skinflint Amos Tingley, the miser, ever destroy a silver coin by pounding it into a ball to load a gun? There’s nothing to fear. Rest easy, Tinie. Besides all living creatures must eat. It is their right. Only silver, remember, not lead, can harm the deer. A miser will keep his silver and let his garden go!” She caught little Tinie by both hands and skipped to and fro across the floor, saying over and over, “Only silver can harm the deer.”
The wind caught up her words and carried them through the trees, across the ridge into Laurel Hollow.
While Audrey and Tinie skipped and frolicked andchanted, “Only silver can harm the deer,” Amos Tingley, the miser, over in Laurel Hollow was busy at work. He took a silver coin from the leather poke in his pocket and hammered it flat on the anvil in his barn. Thin as paper he hammered it until he could roll it easily between thumb and finger. Then around and around he rolled it between his palms until there was a ball as round and as firm as ever was made with a mold. Amos put it in his rifle.
The next morning when he went out to work in his garden there was scarcely a head of cabbage left. The bunch beans he had been saving back and the cut-short beans had been plucked and the row of sweet corn which he had planted so carefully along the fence-row had been stripped to the last roasting ear. He stooped down to look at the earth. “Footprints of the deer and the fawn, without a doubt. But she must have worn an apron or carried a basket to take away so much.” Amos shook his head in perplexity. Then he hurried back to the house to get his gun.
“Right here do I wait.” He braced himself in the doorway, back to the jam, knees jackknifed, gun cocked. “Here do I wait until I catch sight of that doe and her fawn.”
It wasn’t long till the two appeared on a nearby ridge, pranking to and fro. Into the forest they scampered, then out again, frisking up their hind feet, then standing still as rocks and looking down at Amos Tingley in his doorway.
Then Amos lifted his gun, pulled the trigger.
The fawn darted away but the deer fell bleeding with a bullet in the leg.
“Let her bleed! Bleed till there’s not a drop of blood left in her veins and my silver coin is washed back to myown hands!” That was the wish of Amos Tingley, the miser. He went back into the house and put his gun in the corner.
When darkness came little Tinie Billberry stood sobbing at Amos Tingley’s door. “Please to come,” she pleaded. “My mother says she’ll die if you don’t. She wants to make amends!”
“Amends?” gasped Amos Tingley. “Amends for what?”
But Tinie had dashed away in the darkness.
When Amos reached pretty Audrey Billberry’s door, he found her pale in the candlelight, her ankle shattered and bleeding. The foot rested in a basin.
“See what you’ve done, Amos Tingley.” The pretty widow lifted tear-dimmed eyes, while Tinie huddled shyly behind her. “A pitcher of water, quick, Tinie, to wash away the blood!”
As the child poured the water over the bleeding foot, Amos heard something fall into the basin. He caught the flash of silver. Amos stood speechless.
In the basin lay the silver ball the miser had made from a coin.
“Never tell!” cried pretty Audrey Billberry, her dark eyes starting from the bloodless face. “Never tell and I promise, I promise and so does Tinie—see we promise together.”
The child had put down the pitcher and came shyly to rest her head upon her mother’s shoulder, her small hand in Audrey’s.
“We promise,” they spoke together, “never, never again to bother your garden!”
They kept their word all three, Amos Tingley and pretty Audrey Billberry and little Tinie. But somebodytold, for the tale still lives in Laurel Hollow of the miser and the deer woman and the little fawn.
Ghost of Devil Anse
Near the village of Omar, Logan County, in the hills of West Virginia there is a little burying ground that looks down on Main Island Creek. It is a family burying ground, you soon discover when you climb the narrow path leading to the sagging gate in the rickety fence that encloses it. There are a number of graves, some with head stones, some without. But one grave catches the eye, for above it towers a white marble statue. The statue of a mountain man, you know at once by the imposing height, the long beard, the sagging breeches stuffed into high-topped boots. Drawing nearer, you read the inscription upon the broad stone base upon which the statue rests:
Capt. Anderson Hatfield
Capt. Anderson Hatfield
and below the names of his thirteen children:
JOHNSON
WM. A.
ROBERT L.
NANCY
ELLIOTT R.
MARY
ELIZABETH
ELIAS
TROY
JOSEPH D.
ROSE
WILLIS E.
TENNIS
You lift your eyes again to the marble statue. If you knew him in life, you’ll say, “This is a fine likeness—and a fine piece of marble.”
“His children had it done in Italy,” someone offers the information.
“So,” you say to yourself, “this is the grave of Devil Anse Hatfield.”
You’ve seen all there is to see. You’re ready to go, if you are like hundreds of others who visit the last resting place of the leader of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. But, if you chance to tarry—say, in the fall when fogs are heavy there in the Guyan Valley, through which Main Island Creek flows—you may see and hear things strangely unaccountable.
Close beside the captain’s grave is another. On the stone is carved the name—Levisa Chafin Hatfield. If you were among the many who attended her funeral you will remember how peaceful she looked in her black burying dress she’d kept so long for the occasion. Again you will see her as she lay in her coffin, hands primly folded on the black frock, the frill of lace on the black bonnet framing the careworn face. You look up suddenly to see a mountain woman in a somber calico frock and slat bonnet. She is putting new paper flowers, to take the place of the faded ones, in the glass-covered box between the grave of Devil Anse and the mother of his children.
“You best come home with me,” she invites with true hospitality, after an exchange of greetings. You learn that Molly claims kin to both sides, being the widow of a Hatfield and married to a McCoy, and at once you are disarmed.
That night as you sit with Molly in the moonlight in the dooryard of her shack, a weather-beaten plank housewith a clapboard roof and a crooked stone chimney, she talks of life in the West Virginia hills. “There’s a heap o’ things happens around this country that are mighty skeery.” Suddenly in the gloaming a bat wings overhead, darts inside the shack. You can hear it blundering around among the rafters. An owl screeches off in the hollow somewhere. “Do you believe in ghosts and haynts?” There are apprehension and fear in Molly’s voice.
Presently the owl screeches dolefully once more and the bat wheels low overhead. A soft breeze stirs the pawpaw bushes down by the fence row. “Did you hearn something mourn like, just then?” Molly, the widow of a Hatfield and wife of a McCoy, leans forward.
If you are prudent you make no answer to her questions.
“Nothing to be a-feared of, I reckon. The ghosts of them that has been baptized they won’t harm nobody. I’ve heard Uncle Dyke Garrett say as much many’s the time.” The woman speaks with firm conviction.
A moth brushes her cheek and she straightens suddenly.
The moon is partly hidden behind a cloud; even so by its faint light you can see the clump of pawpaw bushes, and beyond—the outline of the rugged hills. Farther off in the burying ground atop the ridge the marble figure of the leader of the Hatfields rises against the half-darkened sky.
At first you think it is the sound of the wind in the pines far off in the hollow, then as it moves toward the burying ground it changes to that of low moaning voices.
You feel Molly’s arm trembling against your own.
“Listen!” she whispers fearfully, all her courage gone. “It’s Devil Anse and his boys. Look yonder!”—she tugs at your sleeve—“See for yourself they’re going down to the waters of baptism!”
Following the direction of the woman’s quick trembling hand you strain forward.
At first there seems to be a low mist rolling over the burying ground and then suddenly, to your amazement, the mist or cloud dissolves itself into shafts or pillars of the height of the white figure of Devil Anse above the grave. They form in line and now one figure, the taller, moves ahead of all the rest. Six there were following the leader. You see distinctly as they move slowly through the crumbling tombstones, down the mountain side toward the creek.
“Devil Anse and his boys,” repeats the trembling Molly, “going down into the waters of baptism. They ever do of a foggy night in the falling weather. And look yonder! There’s the ghost too of Uncle Dyke Garrett a-waiting at the water’s edge. He’s got the Good Book opened wide in his hand.”
Whether it is the giant trunk of a tree with perhaps a leafless branch extended, who can say? Or is nature playing a prank with your vision? But, surely, in the eerie moonlight there seems to appear the figure of a man with arm extended, book in hand, waiting to receive the seven phantom penitents moving slowly toward the water’s edge.
After that you don’t lose much time in being on your way. And if anyone should ask you what of interest is to be seen along Main Island Creek, if you are prudent you’ll answer, “The marble statue of Capt. Anderson Hatfield.” And if you knew him in life you’ll add, “And a fine likeness it is too.”
The Winking Corpse
On the night of June 22, 1887, the bodies of four dead men lay wrapped in sheets on cooling boards in the musty sitting room of an old boarding house in Morehead, Rowan County, Kentucky. Only the bullet-shattered faces, besmeared with blood, were exposed. Their coffins had not yet arrived from the Blue Grass. No friend or kinsman watched beside the bier that sultry summer night; they had prudently kept to their homes, for excitement ran high over the battle that had been fought that day in front of the old hostelry which marked, with the death of the four, the end of the Martin-Tolliver feud.
While the bodies lay side-by-side in the front part of the shambling house, there sat in the kitchen, so the story goes, a slatternly old crone peeling potatoes for supper—should the few straggling boarders return with an appetite, now that all the shooting was over.
It was the privilege of old women like Phronie in the mountains of Kentucky to go unmolested and help out as they felt impelled in times of troubles such as these between the Martins and Tollivers.
The place was strangely quiet. Indeed the old boarding house was deserted. For those who had taken the law in their own hands that day in Rowan County had called a meeting at the courthouse farther up the road. The citizenry of the countryside, save kin and friend of the slain feudists, had turned out to attend.
“Nary soul to keep watch with the dead,” Phronie complained under her breath. “It’s dark in yonder. Dark and still as the grave. A body’s got to have light. How else can they see to make it to the other world?” She paused tosharpen her knife on the edge of the crock, glancing cautiously now and then toward the door of the narrow hallway that led to the room where the dead men lay.
The plaintive call of a whippoorwill far off beyond Triplett Creek, where one of the men had been killed that day, drifted into the quiet house.
“It’s a sorry song for sorry times,” murmured old Phronie, “and it ought to tender the heart of them that’s mixed up in these troubles. No how, whosoever’s to blame, the dead ort not to be forsaken.”
There was a sound behind her. Phronie turned to see the hall door opening slowly. “Who’s there?” she called. But no one answered. The door opened wider. But no one entered.
“It’s a sign,” the old woman whispered. “Well, no one can ever say Phronie forsaken the dead.” It was as though the old crone answered an unspoken command. She put down the crock of potatoes and the paring knife. Wiping her hands on her apron, Phronie took the oil lamp, with its battered tin reflector, from the wall. “Can’t no one ever say I forsaken the dead,” she repeated, “nor shunned a sign or token. The dead’s got to have light same as the living.”
Holding the lamp before her, she passed slowly along the narrow hall on to the room where the dead men lay wrapped in their sheets. She drew a chair from a corner and climbed upon it and hung the lamp above the mantel. It was the chair on which Craig Tolliver, alive and boastful and fearless, had sat that morning when she had brought him hot coffee and cornbread while he kept an eye out for the posse, the self-appointed citizens who later killed the Tolliver leader and his three companions.
The flickering light of the oil lamp fell upon the ghastly faces of the dead men.
For a moment the old woman gazed at the still forms. Then suddenly her glance fixed itself upon the face of Craig Tolliver.
Slowly the lashes of Craig’s right eye moved ever so slightly.
Phronie was sure of it. She gripped the back of the chair on which she stood to steady herself, for now the lid of the dead man’s eye twitched convulsively. As the trembling old woman gaped, the eye of the slain feudist opened and shut. Not once, but three times, quick as a wink.
“God-a-mighty!” shrieked Phronie, “he ain’t dead! Craig Tolliver ain’t dead!” She leaped from the chair and ran fast as her crooked old limbs would carry her, shrieking as she went, “Craig Tolliver ain’t dead!”
Some say it was just the notion of an old woman gone suddenly raving crazy, though others, half believing, still tell the story of the winking corpse.
The House with the Green Gables
About halfway between the thriving, up-to-date, electrically lighted City of Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, with its million-dollar steel mills, and Grayson, the county seat of Carter County, Kentucky, there stands on the hillside a few rods from the modern highway U. S. 60, a little white cottage with green gables.
Within a mile or so of the place unusual road signs catch your eye. White posts, each surmounted by a white open scroll. There are ten of them, put there, no doubt, by some devoted pilgrim. There is one for each of the Ten Commandments. You read carefully one after the other. Theone nearest the point where you turn off on a dirt road that leads to the white house with the green gables reads
Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.
You leave your car at the side of the dirt road near U. S. 60, and go on foot the rest of the way.
You wonder, as you look at the beauty of the well-kept lawn, the carefully planted hedge and cedars, the step stone walk that leads up the sloping hill to the door, at the silence of the place. As you draw nearer, you wonder at the uncurtained windows, neat, small-paned casements with neither shade nor frill.
You learn that the place has stood untenanted for years. Truth to tell it has never been occupied. Some call it the haunted house with the green gables.
Some will tell you there is a shattered romance behind the empty, green-gabled house. Others contend itistenanted. They have seen a lovely woman, lamp in hand, move about from room to room through the quiet night and stand sometimes beside the window up under the green gable that looks toward the west. She seems to be watching and waiting, they say. But when the day dawns woman and lamp vanish into thin air.
Others will tell you that an eccentric old man built the house for his parents long since dead. He believes, so they say—this old eccentric man living somewhere in the Kentucky hills (they are not sure of the exact location)—that his parents will return. Not as an aged couple, feeble and bent as they died, but in youth, happy and healthful. This “eccentric” son himself now stooped with age, with silver hair and faltering step, built the pretty white house that his parents might have beauty in a dwelling such as theynever knew in their former life on earth. The old fellow himself, so the story goes, makes many a nocturnal visit to the dream house, hoping to find his parents returned and happily living within its paneled walls.
There are all sorts of stories, varying in their nature according to the distance of their origin from the green-gabled house.
Curious people have come all the way from the Pacific Coast to see it, from New England and Maine, from Canada and Utah.
As the years go by the legend grows.
“Oh, yes, I’ve seen the haunted house with the green gables,” some will say, glowing with satisfaction. “And they do say the eccentric old man who built it for his parents has silent, trusty Negro servants dressed in spotless white who stand behind the high-backed chair of the master and mistress at the table laden with gleaming silver and a sumptuous feast. The old man firmly believes his parents will return!”
What with the increasing stories you decide to take a look for yourself. I did, accompanied by a newsman and a photographer.
Nothing like getting proof of the pudding.
Out you go, under cover of darkness, equipped with flashlights and flash bulbs. A haunted house, you calculate, will be much more intriguing by night. Stealthily you draw near. You peer into the windows, the uncurtained windows, in breathless awe prepared to see the lady with the lamp floating from room to room, hoping to glimpse the spectral couple seated at table in the high-paneled dining hall of which you have heard so many tales. Tales of gleaming silver, white-clad Negro servantsbowing with deference before the master and mistress of the green-gabled house.
Through the uncurtained windows you gape wide-eyed. Instead of the scene you expected, there looms before your eyes plunder of all sorts tossed about helter-skelter: sections of broken bookcases, old tables, musty books, broken-down chairs.
You are about to retreat in utter disgust when you hear the sound of footsteps on the cobblestone walk that leads around the house. The sound draws nearer.
The wary photographer pulls his flashlight. Its bright beam plays upon the stone walk, catching first in its lighted circle the feet of a man. The light plays upward quickly. It holds now in its bright orb the smiling face of a man. A middle-aged man with pleasant blue eyes.
“—could—we see—the owner of this place?” stammers the reporter.
“You’re looking at him, sir!” the fellow replies courteously. “What can I do for you?” It is a pleasant voice with an accent that is almost Harvard.
“Who—who—are you?” the reporter stammers.
“Hedrick’s my name. Ray Hedrick! What’s yours?”
When the uninvited visitors have identified themselves the owner invites you most graciously to take a seat on the doorstep.
You learn that this “eccentric old man,” of whom you have heard such ridiculously fantastic tales, is and has been for a number of years telegraph operator for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad at their little wayside station, Kilgore. It is within a few miles of the mill town of thriving Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, and the county seat of Carter County. The little railroad station is within a stone’s throw, as the crow flies, of “the haunted house.”
“Pleasant weather we are having,” the owner observes casually.
“Yes,” the reporter replies reluctantly, “but this house—here”—the reporter is obviously peeved for having been snipe-hunting—“what about this house?”
“Well,” drawls the owner tolerantly, “a house can’t help what’s been told about it, can it?”
“But how did the story get started—about it being haunted?” the reporter is persistent.
The owner jerks a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of U. S. 60. “Is that your car parked over there?”
There is in his tone that which impels you to stand not on the order of your going. You go at once—annoyed at being no nearer the answer than when you came.
And still the curious continue to motor miles and miles to see the haunted house with the green gables.
8. Singing on the Mountain Side
Though there were and are people in the Blue Ridge Country who, like Jilson Setters, the Singin’ Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow, can neither read nor write, such obstacles have meant no bar to their poetic bent. They sing with joy and sorrow, with pride and pleasure, of the scene about them, matching their skill with that of old or young who boast of book learning.
Of Land and River
APPALACHIA
APPALACHIA
Clothed in her many hues of green,
Far Appalachia rises high
And takes a robe of different hue
To match the seasons passing by.
Her summits crowned by nature’s hand,
With grass-grown balds for all to see,
Her towering rocks and naked cliffs
Hid by some overhanging tree.
In early spring the Maple dons
Her bright red mantle overnight;
The Beech is clad in dainty tan,
The Sarvis in a robe of white.
The Red Bud in profusion blooms
And rules the hills a few short days,
And Dogwoods with their snowy white
Are mingled with its purple blaze.
High on the frowning mountain side
Azaleas bloom like tongues of flame,
The Laurel flaunts her waxy pink,
And Rhododendrons prove their fame.
Then comes the sturdy Chestnut tree
With plumes like waving yellow hair,
And Wild Grapes blossom at their will
To scent the glorious mountain air.
But when the frost of autumn falls,
Like many other fickle maids,
She lays aside her summer robes
And dons her gay autumnal shades.
Oh, Appalachia, loved by all!
Long may you reign, aloof, supreme,
In royal robes of nature’s hues,
A monarch proud—a mountain Queen.
—Martha Creech