250 ZIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
__anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of
no consequence—none in the world—both families was rich. The
thing could have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't
do. Rough words had been passed; and so, nothing but blood
could fix it up after that. That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost
sixty years of killing and crippling 1 Every year or so somebody
was shot, on one side or the other; and as fast as one generation
was laid out, their sons took up the feud and kept it a-going. And
it's just as I say; they went on shooting each other, year in and
year out—making a kind of a religion of it, you see—till they'd done
forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever a Darnell caught
a Watson, or a "Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was going to get
hurt—only question was, which of them got the drop on the other.
They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the family.
They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet,
they pulled and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot
men. A man shot a boy twelve years old—happened on him in the
woods, and didn't give him no chance. If he had V given him a
chance, the boy'd V shot him. Both families belonged to the same
church (everybody around here is religious); through all this fifty
or sixty years' fuss, both tribes was there every Sunday, to worship.
They lived each side of the line, and the church was at a landing
called Compromise. Half the church and half the aisle was in
Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. Sundays you'd see the
families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes, men, women, and
children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and orderly, one
lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on the Kentucky
Bide; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against the
wall, handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and
praise; though they say the Tnan next the aisle didn't kneel down,
along with the rest of tiae family; kind of stood guard. I don't know;
never -wns at that church in my life; but I remember that that's
what used to be said.
* Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud families caught
a young man. of nineteen out and killed him. Don't remember
whether it was the Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other feuds;
imfc anyway, this young Tnan rode up—steamboat laying there at the