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Blue-grass and
Rhododendron

a »

Melissa.

Blue-grass and
Rhododendron

Out-doors in
Old Kentucky

By

John Fox, Jr.

Charles Scribner's Sons
New York :::::::::: 1 90 1

V45

Copyright, 1901, by
Charles Scribner*s Sons

Published, October, 1901

Trow Directory

Printing &* Bookbinding Company

New York

JOSHUA F. BULLITT

HENRY CLAY McDOWELL

HORACE ETHELBERT FOX

THE

FIRST THREE CAPTAINS

OF

THE GUARD

M27117

Contents

Page

The Southern Mountaineer i

The Kentucky Mountaineer 25

Down the Kentucky on a Raft - > • > SS
After Br*er Rabbit in the Blue-grass . . 77

Through the Bad Bend loi

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky . . . . , .123

To the Breaks of Sandy 149

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 177

Civilizing the Cumberland 207

The Hanging of Talton Hall .... 237
The Red Fox of the Mountains . . .261
Man-Hunting in the Pound 275

List of Illustrations

Melissa

Frontispiece

Page

8

Interior of a Log-cabin on Brownie's Creek

" Gritting " Corn and Hand Corn-mill . .16

Breaking Flax near the mouth of Brownie's Creek 22

A Moonshine Still 40

Rockhouse Post-office and Store, Letcher County 48
Ferrying at Jackson, Ky. . . . . -58

Down goes her pursuer on top of her . . -94

The rest of us sat on the two beds . . .106

Calling off the Dogs . . . . • 132

Listening to the Music of the Dogs . . -136

A Bit of Brush ...... 142

They took us for the advance-guard of a circus . 158
Along roads scarce wide enough for one wagon . 162
At the Breaks 168

" Go it. Black Babe ! Go it, my White Chile ! " . 196

ix

List of Illustrations

Page
The Infant of the Guard 234

Hall stood as motionless as the trunk of an oak . 258

Going to Circuit Court ..... 266

" Hev you ever searched for a dead man ? " . . 290

The Southern Mountaineer

The Southern Mountaineer

IT was only a little while ago that the materialists
declared that humanity was the product of he-
redity and environment; that history lies not
near but in IN'ature; and that, in consequence, man
must take his head from the clouds and study himself
with his feet where they belong, to the earth. Since
then, mountains have taken on a new importance
for the part they have played in the destiny of the race,
for the reason that mountains have dammed the streams
of humanity, have let them settle in the valleys and
spread out over plains; or have sent them on long
detours around. When some unusual pressure has
forced a current through some mountain-pass, the hills
have cut it off from the main stream and have held
it so stagnant, that, to change the figure, mountains
may be said to have kept the records of human history
somewhat as fossils hold the history of the earth.

Arcadia held primitive the primitive inhabitants of
Greece, who fled to its rough hills after the Dorian

3

, ! ' JBlue-grass and Rhododendron

invasion. Viie Pyrenees kept unconqnered and strik-
ingly unchanged the Basques — sole remnants perhaps
in western Europe of the aborigines who were swept
away by the tides of Aryan immigration; just as the
Eocky Mountains protect the American Indian in
primitive barbarism and not wholly subdued to-day,
and the Cumberland range keeps the Southern moun-
taineer to the backwoods civilization of the revolution.
The reason is plain. The mountain dweller lives apart
from the world. The present is the past when it
reaches him; and though past, is yet too far in the
future to have any bearing on his established order of
things. There is, in consequence, no incentive what-
ever for him to change. An arrest of development fol-
lows; so that once imprisoned, a civilization, with its
dress, speech, religion, customs, ideas, may be caught
like the shapes of lower life in stone, and may tell the
human story of a century as the rocks tell the story
of an age. For centuries the Highlander has had plaid
and kilt; the peasant of Norway and the mountaineer
of the German and Austrian Alps each a habit of his
own; and every Swiss canton a distinctive dress.
Mountains preserve the Gaelic tongue in which the
scholar may yet read the refuge of Celt from Saxon,
and in turn Saxon from the ITorman-French, just as
they keep alive remnants like the Rhaeto-Roman, the

4

The Southern Mountaineer

Basque, and a number of Caucasian dialects. The Car-
pathians protected Christianity against the Moors, and
in Java the Brahman faith took refuge on the sides
of the Volcano Gunung Lawa, and there outlived the
ban of Buddha.

So, in the log-cabin of the Southern mountaineer,
in his household furnishings, in his homespun, his
linsey, and, occasionally, in his hunting-shirt, his coon-
skin cap and moccasins, one may summon up the garb
and life of the pioneer; in his religion, his politics, his
moral code, his folk-songs, and his superstitions, one
may bridge the waters back to the old country, and
through his speech one may even touch the remote
past of Chaucer. For to-day he is a distinct remnant of
Colonial times — a distinct relic of an Anglo-Saxon past.

It is odd to think that he was not discovered until
the outbreak of the Civil War, although he was nearly
a century old then, and it is really startling to realize
that when one speaks of the Southern mountaineers,
he speaks of nearly three millions of people who live
in eight Southern States — Virginia and Alabama and
the Southern States between — and occupy a region
equal in area to the combined areas of Ohio and Penn-
sylvania, as big, say, as the German Empire, and richer,
perhaps, in timber and mineral deposits than any other
region of similar extent in the world. This region was

5

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and is an unknown land. It has been aptly called
" Appalachian America/' and the work of discovery
is yet going on. The American mountaineer was dis-
covered, I say, at the beginning of the war, when the
Confederate leaders were counting on the presumption
that Mason and Dixon's Line was the dividing line
between the I^orth and South, and formed, therefore,
the plan of marching an army from Wheeling, in West
Virginia, to some point on the lakes, and thus dissever-
ing the iN^orth at one blow. The plan seemed so feasible
that it is said to have materially aided the sale of
Confederate bonds in England, but when Captain Gar-
nett, a West Point graduate, started to carry it out,
he got no farther than Harper's Ferry. When he
struck the mountains, he struck enemies who shot at
his men from ambush, cut down bridges before him,
carried the news of his march to the Federals, and
Gamett himself fell with a bullet from a mountaineer's
squirrel rifle at Harper's Ferry. Then the South began
to realize what a long, lean, powerful arm of the
Union it was that the Southern mountaineer stretched
through its very vitals; for that arm helped hold Ken-
tucky in the Union by giving preponderance to the
Union sympathizers in the Blue-grass; it kept the East
Tennesseans loyal to the man; it made West Virginia,
as the phrase goes, " secede from secession " ; it drew

6

The Southern Mountaineer

out a horde of one hundred thousand volunteers, when
Lincoln called for troops, depleting Jackson County,
Ky., for instance, of every male under sixty years of
age and over fifteen, and it raised a hostile barrier
between the armies of the coast and the armies of the
Mississippi. The North has never realized, perhaps,
what it owes for its victory to this non-slaveholding
Southern mountaineer.

The war over, he went back to his cove and his
cabin, and but for the wealth of his hills and the pen
of one Southern woman, the world would have for-
gotten him again. Charles Egbert Craddock put him
in the outer world of fiction, and in recent years rail-
roads have been linking him with the outer world of
fact. Religious and educational agencies have begun
work on him; he has increased in political importance,
and a few months ago he went down, heavily armed
with pistol and Winchester — a thousand strong — to
assert his political rights in the State capital of Ken-
tucky. It was probably one of these mountaineers
who killed William Goebel, and he no doubt thought
himself as much justified as any other assassin who
ever slew the man he thought a tyrant. Being a
Unionist, because of the Revolution, a Republican,
because of the Civil War, and having his antagonism
aroused against the Blue-grass people, who, he believes,

7

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

are trying to rob him of his liberties, he is now the
political factor with which the Anti-Goebel Demo-
crats— in all ways the best element in the State — have
imperilled the Democratic Party in Kentucky. Sooner
or later, there will be an awakening in the mountainous
parts of the seven other States; already the coal and
iron of these regions are making many a Southern ear
listen to the plea of protection; and some day the Na-
tional Democratic Party will, like the Confederacy,
find a subtle and powerful foe in the Southern moun-
taineer and in the riches of his hills.

In the march of civilization westward, the Southern
mountaineer has been left in an isolation almost beyond
belief. He was shut off by mountains that have
blocked and still block the commerce of a century, and
there for a century he has stayed. He has had no
navigable rivers, no lakes, no coasts, few wagon-roads,
and often no roads at all except the beds of streams.
He has lived in the cabin in which his grandfather was
bom, and in life, habit, and thought he has been
merely his grandfather bom over again. The first gen-
eration after the Revolution had no schools and no
churches. Both are rare and primitive to-day. To this
day, few Southern mountaineers can read and write
and cipher; few, indeed, can do more. They saw little
of the newspapers, and were changeless in politics as

8

(2Q

be

o

to OOOJ

The Southern Mountaineer

in everything else. They cared little for what was
going on in the outside world, and indeed they heard
nothing that did not shake the nation. To the average
mountaineer, the earth was still flat and had four
comers. It was the sun that girdled the earth, just
as it did when Joshua told it to stand still, and pre-
cisely for that reason. The stories of votes yet being
cast for Andrew Jackson are but little exagger-
ated. An old Tennessee mountaineer once told me
about the discovery of America by Columbus. He
could read his Bible, with marvellous interpretations
of the same. He was the patriarch of his district, the
philosopher. He had acquired the habit of delivering
the facts of modem progress to his fellows, and it never
occurred to him that a man of my youth might be
acquainted with that rather well-known bit of history.
I listened gravely, and he went on, by and by, to speak
of the Mexican War as we would speak of the fighting
in China; and when we got down to so recent and
burning an issue as the late civil struggle, he dropped
his voice to a whisper and hitched his chair across the
fireplace and close to mine.

" Some folks had other idees," he said, " but hit's
my pussonal opinion that niggahs was the cause 6' the
war"

When I left his cabin, he followed me out to the
fence.

9

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

" Stranger," he said, " I'd nither you wouldn' say
nothin' about whut I been tellin' ye." He had been
a lone rebel in sympathy, and he feared violence at
this late day for expressing his opinion too freely. This
old man was a " citizen " ; I was a " f urriner " from
the " settlements " — that is, the Blue-grass. Colum-
bus was one of the " outlandish," a term that carried
not only his idea of the parts hailed from but his
personal opinion of Columbus. Living thus, his in-
terest centred in himself, his family, his distant
neighbor, his grist-mill, his country store, his county
town; unaffected by other human influences; having
no incentive to change, no wish for it, and remaining
therefore unchanged, except where civilization during
the last decade has pressed in upon him, the Southern
mountaineer is thus practically the pioneer of the Revo-
lution, the living ancestor of the Modern West.

The national weapons of the pioneer — the axe and
the rifle — are the Southern mountaineer's weapons to-
day. He has still the same fight with Nature. His
cabin was, and is yet, in many places, the cabin of the
backwoodsman — of one room usually — sometimes two,
connected by a covered porch, and built of unhewn
logs, with a puncheon floor, clapboards for shingles,
and wooden pin and auger-holes for nails. The crev-
ices between the logs were filled with mud and stones

lO

The Southern Mountaineer

when filled at all, and there were holes in the roof for
the wind and the rain. Sometimes there was a window
with a batten wooden shutter, sometimes no window
at all. Over the door, across a pair of buck antlers,
lay the long, heavy, home-made rifle of the back-
woodsman, sometimes even with a flint lock. One
can yet find a crane swinging in a big stone fireplace,
the spinning-wheel and the loom in actual use; some-
times the hominy block that the pioneers borrowed
from the Indians, and a hand-mill for grinding com
like the one, perhaps, from which one woman was
taken and another left in biblical days. Until a decade
and a half ago they had little money, and the medium
of exchange was barter. They drink metheglin still,
as well as moonshine. They marry early, and only
last summer I saw a fifteen-year-old girl riding behind
her father, to a log church, to be married. After the
service her pillion was shifted to her young husband's
horse, as was the pioneer custom, and she rode away
behind him to her new home. There are still log-
rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuck-
ings, and quiltings. Sports are still the same — as they
have been for a hundred years — wrestling, racing,
jumping, and lifting barrels. Brutally savage fights
are still common in which the combatants strike, kick,
bite, and gouge until one is ready to cry " enough."

II

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Even the backwoods bully, loud, coarse, profane,
bantering — a dandy who wore long hair and em-
broidered his hunting-shirt with porcupine-quills — is
not quite dead. I saw one not long since, but he wore
store clothes, a gorgeous red tie, a dazzling brass scarf-
pin — in the bosom of his shirt. His hair was sandy,
but his mustache was blackened jet. He had the air
and smirk of a lady-killer, and in the butt of the
huge pistol buckled around him was a large black
bow — the badge of death and destruction to his ene-
mies. Funerals are most simple. Sometimes the
coffin is slung to poles and carried by four men. While
the begum has given place to hickory bark when a
cradle is wanted, baskets and even fox-horns are still
made of that material.

Not only many remnants like these are left in the life
of the mountaineer, but, occasionally, far up some
creek, it was possible, as late as fifteen years ago, to
come upon a ruddy, smooth-faced, big-framed old
fellow, keen-eyed, taciturn, avoiding the main-trav-
elled roads; a great hunter, calling his old squirrel
rifle by some pet feminine name — who, with a coon-
skin cap, the scalp in front, and a fringed hunting-
shirt and moccasins, completed the perfect image of
the pioneer as the books and tradition have handed
him down to us.

12

The Southern Mountaineer

It is easy to go on back across the water to the
Old Country. One finds still among the mountaineers
the pioneer's belief in signs, omens, and the practice
of witchcraft ; for whatever traits the pioneer brought
over the sea, the Southern mountaineer has to-day.
The rough-and-tumble fight of the Scotch and the
English square stand-up and knock-down boxing-
match were the mountaineer's ways of settling minor
disputes — one or the other, according to agreement
— until the war introduced musket and pistol. The
imprint of Calvinism on his religious nature is yet
plain, in spite of the sway of Methodism for nearly
a century. He is the only man in the world whom
the Catholic Church has made little or no effort to
proselyte. Dislike of Episcopalianism is still strong
among people who do not know, or pretend not to
know, what the word means.

" Any Episcopalians around here? " asked a clergy-
man at a mountain cabin. " I don' know," said the
old woman. " Jim's got the skins of a lot o' varmints
up in the loft. Mebbe you can find one up thar."

The Unionism of the mountaineer in the late war is
in great part an inheritance from the intense American-
ism of the backwoodsman, just as that Americanism
came from the spirit of the Covenanters. His music is
thus a trans- Atlantic remnant. In Harlan County,

13

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Ky., a mountain girl leaned her chair against the wall
of her cabin, put her large, bare feet on one of the
rungs, and sang me an English ballad three hundred
years old, and almost as long as it was ancient. She
said she knew many others. In Perry County, where
there are in the French-Eversole feud Mclntyres, Mc-
Intoshes, McKnights, Combs, probably McCombs and
Fitzpatricks, Scotch ballads are said to be sung with
Scotch accent, and an occasional copy of Burns is to
be found. I have even run across the modern survival
of the wandering minstrel — two blind fiddlers who
went through the mountains making up " ballets " to
celebrate the deeds of leaders in Kentucky feuds. One
of the verses ran:

The death of these two men
Caused great trouble in our land,
Caused men to say the bitter word,
And take the parting hand.

Nearly all songs and dance tunes are written in the
so-called old Scotch scale, and, like negro music, they
drop frequently into the relative minor; so that if
there be any truth in the theory that negro music
is merely the adaptation of Scotch and Irish folk-
songs, and folk-dances, with the added stamp of
the negro's peculiar temperament, then the music

14

The Southern Mountaineer

adapted is to be heard in the mountains to-day as the
negro heard it long ago.

In his speech the mountaineer touches a very re-
mote past. Strictly speaking, he has no dialect. The
mountaineer simply keeps in use old words and mean-
ings that the valley people have ceased to use; but
nowhere is this usage so sustained and consistent as
to form a dialect. To writers of mountain stories the
temptation seems quite irresistible to use more peculiar
words in one story than can be gathered from the
people in a month. Still, unusual words are abundant.
There are perhaps two hundred words, meanings, and
pronunciations that in the mountaineer's speech go
back unchanged to Chaucer. Some of the words are:
afeerd, afore, axe, holp, crope, clomb, peert, beest
(horse), cryke, eet (ate), farwel, fer (far), fool (foolish
— " them fool-women " ), heepe, hit (it), I is, lepte,
pore (poor), right (very), slyk, study (think), souple
(supple), up (verb), ^^ he up and done it," usen, yer
for year, yond, instid, yit, etc. There are others which
have English dialect authority: blather, doated, antic,
dreen, brash, faze (now modern slang), fernent, fer-
ninst, master, size, etc. Many of these words, of course,
the upper classes use throughout the South. These,
the young white master got from his negro play-
mates, who took them from the lips of the poor whites.

15

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

The double negative, always used by the old English,
who seem to have resisted it no more than did
the Greeks, is invariable with the mountaineer. With
him a triple negative is common. A mountaineer had
been shot. His friends came in to see him and kept
urging him to revenge. A woman wanted them to
stop.

" Hit jes' raises the ambition in him and donH do
no good nohow.^^

The " dialect " is not wholly deterioration, then.
What we are often apt to regard as ignorance in the
mountaineer is simply our own disuse. Unfortunately,
the speech is a mixture of so many old English dialects
that it is of little use in tracing the origin of the people
who use it.

Such has been the outward protective effect of
mountains on the Southern mountaineer. As a human
type he is of unusual interest.

No mountain people are ever rich. Environment
keeps mountaineers poor. The strength that comea
from numbers and wealth is always wanting. Agri-
culture is the sole stand-by, and agriculture distributes
population, because arable soil is confined to bottom-
lands and valleys. Farming on a mountain-side is not
only arduous and unremunerative — it is sometimes
dangerous. There is a well-authenticated case of a

i6

The Southern Mountaineer

Kentucky mountaineer who fell out of his own corn-
field and broke his neck. Still, though fairly well-
to-do in the valleys, the Southern mountaineer can
be pathetically poor. A young preacher stopped at
a cabin in Georgia to stay all night. His hostess, as
a mark of unusual distinction, killed a chicken and
dressed it in a pan. She rinsed the pan and made up her
dough in it. She rinsed it again and went out and
used it for a milk-pail. She came in, rinsed it again,
and went to the spring and brought it back full of
water. She filled up the glasses on the table and gave
him the pan with the rest of the water in which
to wash his hands. The woman was not a slattern; it
was the only utensil she had.

This poverty of natural resources makes the moun-
taineer's fight for life a hard one. At the same time
it gives him vigor, hardihood, and endurance of body ;
it saves him from the comforts and dainties that
weaken; and it makes him a formidable competitor,
when it forces him to come down into the plains, as it
often does. For this poverty was at the bottom of the
marauding instinct of the Pict and Scot, just as it
is at the bottom of the migrating instinct that sends
the Southern mountaineers west, in spite of a love for
home that is a proverb with the Swiss, and is hardly
less strong in the Southern mountaineer to-day. In-

17

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

variably the Western wanderer comes home again.
Time and again an effort was made to end a feud in
the Kentucky mountains by sending the leaders away.
They always came back.

It is this poverty of arable land that further isolates
the mountaineer in his loneliness. For he must live
apart not only from the world, but from his neighbor.
The result is an enforced self-reliance, and through
that, the gradual growth of an individualism that has
been " the strength, the weakness; the personal charm,
the political stumbling-block; the ethical significance
and the historical insignificance of the mountaineer the
world over." It is this isolation, this individualism,
that makes unity of action difficult, public sentiment
weak, and takes from the law the righting of private
wrongs. It is this individualism that has been a rich
mine for the writer of fiction. In the Southern moun-
taineer, its most marked elements are religious feel-
ing, hospitality, and pride. So far these last two traits
have been lightly touched upon, for the reason that
they appear only by contrast with a higher civilization
that has begun to reach them only in the last few
years.

The latch-string hangs outside every cabin-door if
the men-folks are at home, but you must shout " hello "
always outside the fence.

i8

The Southern Mountaineer

" We uns is pore," you will be told, " but y'u're
welcome ef y'u kin put up with what we have."

After a stay of a week at a mountain cabin, a young
" furriner " asked what his bill was. The old moun-
taineer waved his hand. " NothinV' he said, " 'cept
come agin! "

A belated traveller asked to stay all night at a cabin.
The mountaineer answered that his wife was sick and
they were " sorter out o' fixin's to eat, but he reckoned
he mought step over to a neighbor's an borrer some."
He did step over and he was gone three hours. He
brought back a little bag of meal, and they had corn-
bread and potatoes for supper and for breakfast, cooked
by the mountaineer. The stranger asked how far away
his next neighbor lived. " A leetle the rise o' six miles
I reckon," was the answer.

" Which way? "

" Oh, jes' over the mountain thar."

He had stepped six miles over the mountain and
back for that little bag of meal, and he would allow
his guest to pay nothing next morning.

I have slept with nine others in a single room. The
host gave up his bed to two of our party, and he and
his wife slept with the rest of us on the floor. He gave
us supper, kept us all night, sent us away next morning
with a parting draught of moonshine apple-jack, of

19

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

his own brewing, by the way, and would suffer no one
to pay a cent for his entertainment. That man was
a desperado, an outlaw, a moonshiner, and was running
from the sheriff at that very time.

Two outlaw sons were supposed to be killed by offi-
cers. I offered aid to the father to have them decently
clothed and buried, but the old man, who was as bad
as his sons, declined it with some dignity. They had
enough left for that; and if not, why, he had.

A woman whose husband was dead, who was sick to
death herself, whose four children were almost starved,
said, when she heard the " furriners " were talking
about sending her to the poor-house, that she " would
go out on her crutches and hoe com fust '' (and she
did), and that " people who talked about sending her
to the po'-house had better save their breath to make
prayers with."

It is a fact — in the Kentucky mountains at least —
that the poor-houses are usually empty, and that it is
considered a disgrace to a whole clan if one of its
members is an inmate. It is the exception when a
family is low and lazy enough to take a revenue from
the State for an idiot child. I saw a boy once, astride
a steer which he had bridled with a rope, barefooted,
with his yellow hair sticking from his crownless hat,
and in blubbering ecstasy over the fact that he was

20

The Southern Mountaineer

no longer under the humiliation of accepting $75 a
year from the State. He had proven his sanity by his
answer to one question.

"Do you work in the field?" asked the commis-
sioner.

" "Well, ef I didn't," was the answer, " thar wouldn't
be no work done."

I have always feared, however, that there was an-
other reason for his happiness than balm to his suf-
fering pride. Relieved of the ban of idiocy, he had
gained a privilege — unspeakably dear in the mountains
— the privilege of matrimony.

Like all mountain races, the Southern mountaineers
are deeply religious. In some communities, religion
is about the only form of recreation they have. They
are for the most part Methodists and Baptists — some-
times Ironsides feet-washing Baptists. They will walk,
or ride when possible, eight or ten miles, and sit all
day in a close, windowless log-cabin on the flat side
of a slab supported by pegs, listening to the high-
wrought, emotional, and, at times, unintelligible rant-
ing of a mountain preacher, while the young men sit
outside, whittling with their Barlows and huge jack-
knives, and swapping horses and guns.

" If anybody wants to extribute anything to the ex-
port of the gospels, hit will be gradually received." A

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Blue-grass and Rhododendron

possible remark of this sort will gauge the intelligence
of the pastor. The cosmopolitanism of the congrega-
tion can be guessed from the fact that certain elders,
filling a vacancy in their pulpit, once decided to " take
that ar man Spurgeon if they could git him to come."
It is hardly necessary to add that the " extribution
to the export of the gospels " is very, very gradually
received.

Naturally, their religion is sternly orthodox and
most literal. The infidel is unknown, and no moun-
taineer is so bad as not to have a full share of religion
deep down, though, as in his more civilized brother,
it is not always apparent until death is at hand. In
the famous Howard and Turner war, the last but one
of the Turner brothers was shot by a Howard while he
was drinking at a spring. He leaped to his feet and
fell in a little creek, where, from behind a sycamore-
root, he emptied his Winchester at his enemy, and be-
tween the cracks of his gun he could be heard, half
a mile away, praying aloud.

The custom of holding funeral services for the dead
annually, for several years after death, is common. I
heard the fourth annual funeral sermon of a dead
feud leader preached a few summers ago, and it was
consoling to hear that even he had all the virtues that
so few men seem to have in life, and so few to lack

22

t,i*- 4-

The Southern Mountaineer

when dead. But in spite of the universality of religious
feeling and a sui'prising knowledge of the Bible, it
is possible to find an ignorance that is almost incredible.
The mountain evangelist, George O. Barnes, it is said,
once stopped at a mountain cabin and told the story
of the crucifixion as few other men can. When he was
quite through, an old woman who had listened in ab-
sorbed silence, asked:

" Stranger, you say that that happened a long while
ago?"

"Yes," said Mr. Barnes; "almost two thousand
years ago."

"And they treated him that way when he'd come
down fer nothin' on earth but to save 'em? "

" Yes."

The old woman was crying softly, and she put out
her hand and laid it on his knee.

" Well, stranger," she said, " let's hope that hit
ain't so."

She did not want to believe that humanity was
capable of such ingratitude. While ignorance of this
kind is rare, and while we may find men who know
the Bible from " kiver to kiver," it is not impossible
to find children of shrewd native intelligence who have
not heard of Christ and the Bible.

Now, whatever interest the Southern mountaineer
23

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

has as a remnant of pioneer days, as a relic of an Anglo-
Saxon past, and as a peculiar type that seems to be
the invariable result of a mountain environment — the
Kentucky mountaineer shares in a marked degiee.
Moreover, he has an interest peculiarly his own; for
I believe him to be as sharply distinct from his fellows,
as the blue-grass Kentuckian is said to be from his.

24

The Kentucky Mountaineer

The Kentucky Mountaineer

THE Kentucky mountaineers are practically
valley people. There are the three forks of
the Cumberland, the three forks of the Ken-
tucky, and the tributaries of Big Sandy — all with
rich river-bottoms. It was natural that these lands
should attract a better class of people than the average
mountaineer. They did. There were many slave-
holders among them — a fact that has never been
mentioned, as far as I know, by anybody who has
written about the mountaineer. The houses along
these rivers are, as a rule, weather-boarded, and one
will often find interior decorations, startling in color
and puzzling in design, painted all over porch, wall,
and ceiling. The people are better fed, better clothed,
less lank in figure, more intelligent. They wear less
homespun, and their speech, while as archaic as else-
where, is, I believe, purer. You rarely hear " you
uns " and " we uns," and similar untraceable con-
fusions in the Kentucky mountains, except along the

27

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

border of the Tennessee. Moreover, the mountaineers
who came over from West Virginia and from the
southwestern corner of old Virginia were undoubtedly
the daring, the hardy, and the strong, for no other kind
would have climbed gloomy Black Mountain and the
Cumberland Kange to fight against beast and savage
for their homes.

However, in spite of the general superiority that
these facts give him, the Kentucky mountaineer has
been more isolated than the mountaineer of any other
State. There are regions more remote and more
sparsely settled, but nowhere in the Southern moun-
tains has so large a body of mountaineers been shut oif
so completely from the outside world. As a result, he
illustrates Mr. Theodore Koosevelt's fine observation
that life away from civilization simply emphasizes the
natural qualities, good and bad, of the individual. The
effect of this truth seems perceptible in that any trait
common to the Southern mountaineer seems to be in-
tensified in the mountaineer of Kentucky. He is more
clannish, prouder, more hospitable, fiercer, more loyal
as a friend, more bitter as an enemy, and in simple
meanness — when he is mean, mind you — ^he can out-
Herod his race with great ease.

To illustrate his clannishness : Three mountaineers
with a grievance went up to some mines to drive the

28

The Kentucky Mountaineer

book-keeper away. A fourth man joined them and
stood with drawn pistol during the controversy at the
mines, because his wife was a first cousin by marriage
of one of the three who had the grievance. In Re-
publican counties, county officers are often Democratic
— blood is a stronger tie even than politics.

As to his hospitality: A younger brother of mine
was taking dinner with an old mountaineer. There
was nothing on the table but some bread and a few
potatoes.

" Take out, stranger," he said, heartily. " Have a
'tater — take two of 'em — take damn nigh all of 'em! "

A mountaineer, who had come into possession of a
small saw-mill, was building a new house. As he had
plenty of lumber, a friend of mine asked why he did
not build a bigger house. It was big enough, he said.
He had two rooms — " one fer the family, an' t'other
fer company." As his family numbered fifteen, the
scale on which he expected to entertain can be im-
agined.

The funeral sermon of a mountaineer, who had been
dead two years, was preached in Turkey Foot at the
base of Mount Scratchum in Jackson County. Three
branches run together like a turkey's foot at that point.
The mountain is called Scratchum because it is hard
to climb. " A funeral sermon," said the old preacher,

29

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

" can be the last one you hear, or the fust one that's
preached over ye atter death. Maybe I'm a-preachin'
my own funeral sermon now." If he was, he did him-
self justice, for he preached three solid hours. The
audience was invited to stay to dinner. Forty of them
accepted — there were just forty there — and dinner was
served from two o'clock until six. The forty were
pressed to stay all night. Twenty-three did stay, sev-
enteen in one room. Such is the hospitality of the
Kentucky mountaineer.

As to his pride, that is almost beyond belief. I
always hesitate to tell this story, for the reason that
I can hardly believe it myself. There was a plague
in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia,
and the southwest comer of old Virginia in 1885. A
cattle convention of St. Louis made up a relief fund
and sent it for distribution to General Jubal Early of
Virginia. General Early sent it to a lawyer of Ab-
ingdon, Va., who persuaded D. E. Campbell, another
lawyer now living in that town, to take the money
into the mountains. Campbell left several hundred
dollars in Virginia, and being told that the West Vir-
ginians could take care of themselves went with the
balance, about $1,000, into Kentucky, where the
plague was at its worst. He found the suffering great
— ^nine dead, in one instance, under a single roof.

30

The Kentucky Mountaineer

He spent one month going from house to house in the
counties of Letcher, Perry, and Pike, carrying the
money in his saddle-bags and riding unarmed. Every
man, woman, and child in the three counties knew
he had the money and knew his mission. He left $5
at a country store, and he got one woman to persuade
another woman whose husband and three children were
just dead, and who had indignantly refused his per-
sonal offer of assistance, to accept $10. The rest of
the money he took back and distributed without
trouble on his own side of the mountain.

While in Kentucky he found trouble in getting
enough to eat for himself and his horse. Often he had
only bread and onions; and yet he was permitted to
pay but for one meal for either, and that was under
protest at a regular boarding-house in a mountain town.
Over the three counties, he got the same answer.

" You are a stranger. We are not beggars, and
we can take care of ourselves." '

" They are a curious people over there," said Camp-
bell, who is a born Virginian. " Ko effort was made
to rob me, though a man who was known as ' the only
thief in Perry County,' a man whom I know to have
been trusted with large sums by his leader in a local
war, sent me a joking threat. The people were not sus-
picious of me because I was a stranger. Theycon-

31

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

cealed cases of suffering from me. It was pride that
made them refuse the money — nothing else. They
are the most loyal friends you ever saw. They will do
anything for you, if they like you. They will get up
and go anywhere for you day or night, rain or snow.
If they haven't a horse, they'll walk. If they haven't
shoes, they'll go barefooted. They will combine
against you in a trade, and take every advantage they
can. A man will keep you at his house to beat you
out of a dollar, and when you leave, your board-bill is
nothing."

This testimony is from a Virginian, and it is a par-
ticular pleasure for a representative of one of the
second-class families of Virginia who, as the first fami-
lies say, all emigrated to Kentucky, to prove, by the
word of a Virginian, that we have some advantage in
at least one section of the State.

Indeed, no matter what may be said of the mountain-
eer in general, the Kentucky mountaineer seems to
go the fact one better. Elsewhere, families are large
— " children and heepe," says Chaucer. In Jackson
County a mountaineer died not long ago, not at an
extreme old age, who left two hundred and seven de-
scendants. He had fifteen children, and several of his
children had fifteen. There was but one set of
twins among them — both girls — and they were called

32

The Kentucky Mountaineer

Louisa and Louisa. There is in the same county a
woman forty-seven years of age, with a grand-daugh-
ter who has been married fifteen months. Only a
break in the family tradition prevented her from be-
ing a great-grandmother at forty-seven.

It may be that the Kentucky mountaineer is more
tempted to an earlier marriage than is the mountaineer
elsewhere, for an artist who rode with me through the
Kentucky mountains said that not only were the
men finer looking, but that the women were far hand-
somer than elsewhere in the southern Alleghanies.
While I am not able to say this, I can say that in the
Kentucky mountains the pretty mountain girl is not
always, as some people are inclined to believe, pure
fiction. Pretty girls are, however, rare; for usually
the women are stoop-shouldered and large waisted
from working in the fields and lifting heavy weights;
for the same reason their hands are large and so are
their feet, for they generally go barefoot. But usually
they have modest faces and sad, modest eyes, and in
the rich river-bottoms, where the mountain farmers
have tenants and do not send their daughters to the
fields, the girls are apt to be erect and agile, small of
hand and foot, and usually they have a wild shyness
that is very attractive. I recall one girl in crimson
homespun, with very big dark eyes, slipping like a

33

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

flame through the dark room, behind me, when I was
on the porch; or gliding out of the one door, if I
chanced to enter the other, which I did at every oppor-
tunity. A friend who was with me saw her dancing
in the dust at twilight, next day, when she was driving
the cows home. He helped her to milk and got to
know her quite well, I believe. I know that, a year
later, when she had worn away her shyness and most
of her charm at school in her county seat, she asked
me about him, with embarrassing frankness, and a
look crept into her eyes that told an old tale. Pretty
girls there are in abundance, but I have seen only one
very beautiful mountain girl. One's standard can
be affected by a long stay in the mountains, and
I should have distrusted mine had it not been for
the artist who was with me, fresh from civilization.
We saw her, as we were riding up the Cumberland,
and we silently and simultaneously drew rein and
asked if we could get buttermilk. We could, and we
swung from our horses. The girl was sitting behind
a little cabin, with a baby in her lap, and her loveliness
was startling. She was slender; her hair was gold-
brown; her hands were small and, for a wonder, beau-
tifully shaped. Her teeth, for a wonder, too, were very
white and even. Her features were delicately perfect ;
her mouth shaped as Cupid's bow never was and never

34

The Kentucky Mountaineer

would be, said the artist, who christened her eyes after
Trilby's — " twin gray stars " — to which the eyebrows
and the long lashes gave an indescribable softness. But
I felt more the brooding pathos that lay in them, that
came from generations of lonely mothers before her,
waiting in lonely cabins for the men to come home
— back to those wild pioneer days, when they watched
with an ever-present fear that they might not come
at all.

It was late and we tried to get to stay all night,
for the artist wanted to sketch her. He was afraid
to ask her permission on so short an acquaintance,
for she would not have understood, and he would
have frightened her. Her mother gave us buttermilk
and we furtively studied her, but we could not stay
all night: there were no men-folks at home and no
" roughness " for our horses, and we rode regretfully
away.

!N'ow, while the good of the mountaineer is empha-
sized in the mountaineer of Kentucky, the evil is
equally marked. The Kentucky mountaineer may be
the best of all — he can be likewise the worst of alL

A mountaineer was under indictment for moon-
shining in a little mountain town that has been under
the refining influence of a railroad for several years.
Unable to give bond, he was ordered to jail by the

35

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

judge. When the sheriff rose, a huge mountaineer
rose, too, in the rear of the court-room and whipped
out a big revolver. " You come with me," he said,
and the prisoner came, while judge, jury, and sheriff
watched him march out. The big fellow took the pris-
oner through the town and a few hundred yards up
a creek. " You go on home," he said. Then the
rescuer went calmly back to his house in town, and
nothing further has been said or done to this day. The
mountaineer was a United States deputy marshal, but
the prisoner was his friend.

This marshal was one of the most picturesque figures
in the mountains. When sober, he was kind-hearted,
good-tempered, and gentle ; and always he was fearless
and cool. Once, while firing at two assailants who
were shooting at him, he stopped long enough to blow
his nose deliberately, and then calmly went on shooting
again. He had a companion at arms who, singularly
enough, came from the !N'orth, and occasionally these
two would amuse themselves. When properly exhil-
arated, one would put a horse-collar on the other, and
hitch him to an open buggy. He would fill the buggy
with pistols, climb in, and drive around the court-
house— each man firing off a pistol with each hand and
yelling himself hoarse. Then they would execute
an Indian war-dance in the court-house square — firing

36

The Kentucky Mountaineer

their pistols alternately into the ground and into the
air. The town looked on silently and with great
respect, and the two were most exemplary until next
time.

A superintendent of some mines near a mountain
town went to the mayor one Sunday morning to get
permission to do some work that had to be done in the
town limits that day. He found the august official
in his own jail. Exhilaration!

It was at these mines that three natives of the town
went up to drive two young men into the bushes. Be-
ing met with some firmness and the muzzle of a
Winchester, they went back for reinforcements. One
of the three was a member of a famous fighting clan,
and he gave it out that he was going for his friends
to make the " furriners " leave the country. The
young men appealed to the town for protection for
themselves and property. There was not an officer
to answer. The sheriff was in another part of the
county and the constable had just resigned. The
young men got Winchester repeating shot-guns and
waited a week for their assailants, who failed to come;
but had they been besieged, there would not have been
a soul to give them assistance, except perhaps the mar-
shal and his New England friend.

In this same county a man hired an assassin to kill
37

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

his rival. The assassin crept to the window of the
house where the girl lived, and, seeing a man sitting
by the fire, shot through the window and killed him.
It was the wrong man. Assassinations from ambush
have not been uncommon in every feud, though, in
almost every feud, there has been one faction that
refused to fight except in the open. I have even heard
of a snare being set for a woman, who, though repeat-
edly warned, persisted in carrying news from one side
to the other. A musket was loaded with slugs and
placed so that the discharge would sweep the path
that it was believed she would take. A string was tied
to the trigger and stretched across the foot road and
a mountaineer waited under a bluff to whistle, so that
she would stop, when she struck the string. That
night the woman happened to take another path.
This, however, is the sole instance I have ever known.
Elsewhere the Southern mountaineer holds human
life as cheap; elsewhere he is ready to let death settle
a personal dispute ; elsewhere he is more ignorant and
has as little regard for law; elsewhere he was divided
against himself by the war and was left in sub-
sequent conditions just as lawless; elsewhere he has
similar clannishness of feeling, and elsewhere is an
occasional feud which is confined to family and close
kindred. But nowhere is the feud so common, so

38

The Kentucky Mountaineer

old, so persistent, so deadly, as in the Kentucky
mountains. Nowhere else is there such organization,
such division of enmity to the limit of kinship.

About thirty-five years ago two boys were playing
marbles in the road along the Cumberland River —
down in the Kentucky mountains. One had a patch
on the seat of his trousers. The other boy made fun
of it, and the boy with the patch went home and told
his father. Thirty years of local war was the result.
The factions fought on after they had forgotten why
they had fought at all. While organized warfare is
now over, an occasional fight yet comes over the patch
on those trousers and a man or two is killed. A county
as big as Rhode Island is still bitterly divided on the
subject. In a race for the legislature not long ago,
the feud was the sole issue. And, without knowing
it, perhaps, a mountaineer carried that patch like a
flag to victory, and sat under it at the capital — making
laws for the rest of the State.

That is the feud that has stained the highland border
of the State with blood, and abroad, has engulfed the
reputation of the lowland blue-grass, where there are,
of course, no feuds — a fact that sometimes seems to
require emphasis, I am sorry to say. Almost every
mountain county has, or has had, its feud. On one
side is a leader whose authority is rarely questioned.

39

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Each leader has his band of retainers. Always he arms
them; usually he feeds them; sometimes he houses
and clothes them, and sometimes, even, he hires them.
In one local war, I remember, four dollars per day
were the wages of the fighting man, and the leader
on one occasion, while besieging his enemies — in the
county court-house — tried to purchase a cannon, and
from no other place than the State arsenal, and from
no other personage than the governor himself.

It is the feud that most sharply differentiates the
Kentucky mountaineer from his fellows, and it is
extreme isolation that makes possible in this age such
a relic of mediaeval barbarism. For the feud means,
of course, ignorance, shiftlessness, incredible lawless-
ness, a frightful estimate of the value of human life;
the horrible custom of ambush, a class of cowardly
assassins who can be hired to do murder for a gun,
a mule, or a gallon of moonshine.

'Now these are the blackest shadows in the only
picture of Kentucky mountain life that has reached
the light of print through the press. There is another
side, and it is only fair to show it.

The feud is an inheritance. There were feuds before
the war, even on the edge of the blue-grass; there
were fierce family fights in the backwoods before and
during the Revolution — when the war between Whig

40

The Kentucky Mountaineer

and Tory served as a pretext for satisfying personal
animosities already existing, and it is not a wild fancy
that the Kentucky mountain feud takes root in Scot-
land. For, while it is hardly possible that the enmities
of the Revolution were transmitted to the Civil War,
it is quite sure that whatever race instinct, old-world
trait of character, or moral code the backwoodsman
may have taken with him into the mountains — it is
quite sure that that instinct, that trait of character,
that moral code, are living forces in him to-day. The
late war was, however, the chief cause of feuds. When
it came, the river-bottoms w-ere populated, the clans
were formed. There were more slave-holders among
them than among other Southern mountaineers. For
that reason, the war divided them more evenly against
themselves, and set them fighting. When the war
stopped elsewhere, it simply kept on with them, be-
cause they were more isolated, more evenly divided;
because they were a fiercer race, and because the issue
had become personal. The little that is going on now
goes on for the same reason, for while civilization
pressed close enough in 1890 and 1891 to put an end to
organized fighting, it is a consistent fact that after
the failure of Baring Brothers, and the stoppage of the
flow of English capital into the mountains, and the
check to railroads and civilization, these feuds slowly

41

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

started up again. When I left home for the Cuban
war, two companies of State militia were on their way
to the mountains to put down a feud. On the day of
the Las Guasimas fight these feudsmen fought, and
they lost precisely as many men killed as the Rough
Riders — eight.

Again: while the feud may involve the sympathies
of a county, the number of men actually engaged in
it are comparatively few. Moreover, the feud is
strictly of themselves, and is based primarily on a privi-
lege that the mountaineer, the world over, has most
grudgingly surrendered to the law, the privilege of
avenging his private wrongs. The non-partisan and
the traveller are never molested. Property of the
beaten faction is never touched. The women are safe
from harm, and I have never heard of one who was
subjected to insult. Attend to your own business, side
with neither faction in act or word and you are much
safer among the Kentucky mountaineers, when a feud
is going on, than you are crossing Broadway at
Twenty-third Street. As you ride along, a bullet
may plough through the road ten yards in front of
you. That means for you to halt. A mountaineer
will come out of the bushes and ask who you are and
where you are going and what your business is. If
your answers are satisfactory, you go on unmolested.

42

The Kentucky Mountaineer

Asking for a place to stay all night, you may be told,
" Go to So and So's house; he'll pertect ye; " and he
will, too, at the risk of his own life when you are past
the line of suspicion and under his roof.

There are other facts that soften a too harsh judg-
ment of the mountaineer and his feud — harsh as the
judgment should be. Personal fealty is the comer-
stone of the feud. The mountaineer admits no higher
law; he understands no conscience that will violate that
tie. You are my friend or my kinsman ; your quarrel
is my quarrel; whoever strikes you, strikes me. If
you are in trouble, I must not testify against you. If
you are an officer, you must not arrest me, you must
send me word to come into court. If I'm innocent,
why, maybe I'll come.

Moreover, the worst have the list of rude virtues
already mentioned; and, besides, the mountaineer is
never a thief nor a robber, and he will lie about one
thing and one thing only, and that is land. He has
cleared it, built his cabin from the trees, lived on it
and he feels that any means necessary to hold it are
justifiable. Lastly, religion is as honestly used to
cloak deviltry as it ever was in the Middle Ages.

A feud leader who had about exterminated the op-
posing faction, and had made a good fortune for a
mountaineer while doing it, for he kept his men busy

43

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

getting out timber when they weren't fighting, said
to me, in all seriousness:

" I have triumphed agin my enemies time and time
agin. The Lord's on my side, and I gits a better and
better Christian ever' year."

A preacher, riding down a ravine, came upon
an old mountaineer hiding in the bushes with his
rifle.

" What are you doing there, my friend? "

" Ride on, stranger," was the easy answer. " I'm
a-waitin' fer Jim Johnson, and with the help of the
Lawd I'm goin' to blow his damn head off."

Even the ambush, the hideous feature of the feud,
took root in the days of the Revolution, and was
borrowed, maybe, from the Indians. Milfort, the
Frenchman, who hated the backwoodsman, says Mr.
Roosevelt, describes with horror their extreme malevo-
lence and their murderous disposition toward one an-
other. He says that whether a wrong had been done
to a man personally or to his family, he would, if
necessary, travel a hundred miles and lurk around
the forest indefinitely to get a chance to shoot his
enemy.

But the Civil War was the chief cause of bloodshed;
for there is evidence, indeed, that though feeling be-
tween families was strong, bloodshed was rare and the

44

The Kentucky Mountaineer

English sense of fairness prevailed, in certain com-
munities at least. Often you shall hear an old moun-
taineer say: " Folks usen to talk about how fer they
could kill a deer. N^ow hit's how fer they can kill
a man. Why, I have knowed the time when a man
would hev been druv outen the county fer drawin' a
knife or a pistol, an' if a man was ever killed, hit wus
kinder accidental by a Barlow. I reckon folks got
used to weepons an' killin' an' shootin' from the bresh
endurin' the war. But hit's been gettin' wuss ever
sence, and now hit's dirk an' Winchester all the time."
Even for the ambush there is an explanation.

" Oh, I know all the excuses folks make. Hit's
fair for one as 'tis fer t'other. You can't fight a man
far and squar who'll shoot you in the back. A pore
man can't fight money in the courts. Thar hain't no
witnesses in the lorrel but leaves, an' dead men don't
hev much to say. I know hit all. Looks like lots o'
decent young folks hev got usen to the idee; thar's
so much of it goin' on and thar's so much talk about
shootin' from the bresh. I do reckon hit's wuss'n
stealin' to take a feller critter's life that way."

It is also a fact that most of the men who have been
engaged in these fights were born, or were children,
during the war, and were, in consequence, accustomed
to bloodshed and bushwhacking from infancy. Still,

45

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

even among the fighters there is often a strong preju-
dice against the ambush, and in most feuds, one or the
other side discountenances it, and that is the faction
usually defeated. I know of one family that was one
by one exterminated because they refused to take to
the " bresh."

Again, the secret of the feud is isolation. In the
mountains the war kept on longer, for personal hatred
supplanted its dead issues. Railroads and newspapers
have had their influence elsewhere. Elsewhere court
circuits include valley people. Civilization has pressed
slowly on the Kentucky mountains. The Kentucky
mountaineer, until quite lately, has been tried, when
brought to trial at all, by the Kentucky mountaineer.
And when a man is tried for a crime by a man who
would commit that crime under the same circum-
stances, punishment is not apt to follow.

Thus the influence that has helped most to break
up the feud is trial in the Blue-grass, for there is no
ordeal the mountaineer more hates than trial by a jury
of bigoted " furriners."

"Who they are — these Southern mountaineers — is
a subject of endless conjecture and dispute — a question
that perhaps will never be satisfactorily solved. "While
there are among them the descendants of the old bond
servant and redemptioner class, of vicious runaway

46

The Kentucky Mountaineer

criminals and the trashiest of the poor whites, the
ruling class has undoubtedly come from the old free
settlers, English, German, Swiss, French Huguenot,
even Scotch and Scotch-Irish. As the German and
Swiss are easily traced to N'orth Carolina, the Hugue-
nots to South Carolina and parts of Georgia, it is more
than probable, from the scant study that has been
given the question, that the strongest and largest cur-
rent of blood in their veins comes from none other
than the mighty stream of Scotch-Irish.

Briefly, the theory is this: From 1720 to 1780, the
settlers in southwest Virginia, middle North Carolina
and western South Carolina were chiefly Scotch and
Scotch-Irish. They were active in the measures pre-
ceding the outbreak of the Revolution, and they
declared independence at Abington, Ya., even before
they did at Mecklenburg, K. C. In these districts
they were the largest element in the patriot army, and
they were greatly impoverished by the war. Being
too poor or too conscientious to own slaves, and unable
to compete with them as the planter's field hand, black-
smith, carpenter, wheelwright, and man-of-all-work,
especially after the invention of the cotton-gin in
1792, they had no employment and were driven to
mountain and sand-hill. There are some good reasons
for the theory. Among prominent mountain fami-

47

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

lies direct testimony or unquestioned tradition point
usually to Scotch-Irish ancestry, sometimes to pure
Scotch origin, sometimes to English. Scotch-Irish
family names in abundance speak for themselves, as
do folk-words and folk-songs and the characteristics,
mental, moral, and physical, of the people. Broadly
speaking, the Southern mountaineers are characterized
as " peaceable, civil, good-natured, kind, clever, nat-
urally witty, with a fair share of common-sense, and
morals not conscientiously bad, since they do not
consider ignorance, idleness, poverty, or the ex-
cessive use of tobacco or moonshine as immoral or
vicious/'

Another student says; " The majority is of good
blood, honest, law-abiding blood." Says still another:
" They are ignorant of books, but sharp as a rule."
Says another: " They have great reverence for the
Bible, and are sturdy, loyal, and tenacious." More-
over, the two objections to this theory that would
naturally occur to anyone have easy answers. The
mountaineers are not Presbyterian and they are not
thrifty. Curiously enough, testimony exists to the
effect that certain Methodist or Baptist churches were
once Presbyterian; and many preachers of these two
denominations had grandfathers who were Presby-
terian ministers. The Methodists and Baptists were

48

The Kentucky Mountaineer

perhaps more active; they were more popular in the
mountains as they were in the backwoods, because they
were more democratic and more emotional. The back-
woodsman did not like the preacher to be a preacher
only. He, too, must work with his hands.

Scotch-Irish thriftiness decayed. The soil was
poor; game was abundant; hunting bred idleness.
There were no books, no schools, few church privileges,
a poorly educated ministry, and the present illiteracy,
thriftlessness, and poverty were easy results. Deed-
books show that the ancestors of men who now make
their mark, often wrote a good hand.

Such, briefly, is the Southern mountaineer in gen-
eral, and the Kentucky mountaineer in particular.
Or, rather, such he was until fifteen years ago, and
to know him now you must know him as he was
then, for the changes that have been wrought in the
last decade affect localities only, and the bulk of the
mountain-people is, practically, still what it was one
hundred years ago. Still, changes have taken place
and changes will take place now swiftly, and it
rests largely with the outer world what these changes
shall be.

The vanguards of civilization — railroads — unless
quickly followed by schools and churches, at the ratio
of four schools to one church, have a bad effect on

49

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

the Southern mountaineer. He catches up the vices
of the incoming current only too readily. The fine
spirit of his hospitality is worn away. He goes to some
little " boom " town, is forced to pay the enormous
sum of fifty cents for his dinner, and when you
go his way again, you pay fifty cents for yours. Care-
lessly applied charity weakens his pride, makes him
dependent. You hear of arrests for petty thefts some-
times, occasionally burglaries are made, and the moun-
taineer is cowed by the superior numbers, superior
intelligence of the incomer, and he seems to lose his
sturdy self-respect.

And yet the result could easily be far different.
!N'ot long ago I talked with an intelligent young fellow,
a young minister, who had taught among them many
years, exclusively in the Kentucky mountains, and is
now preaching to them. He says, they are more
tractable, more easily moulded, more easily uplifted
than the people of a similar grade of intelligence in
cities. He gave an instance to illustrate their general
susceptibility in all ways. When he took charge of
a certain school, every boy and girl, nearly all of them
grown, chewed tobacco. The teacher before him used
tobacco and even exchanged it with his pupils. He
told them at once they must stop. They left off in-
stantly.

50

The Kentucky Mountaineer

It was a " blab " school, as the mountaineers char-
acterize a school in which the pupils study aloud. He
put an end to that in one day, and he soon told them
they must stop talking to one another. After school
they said they didn't think they could ever do that,
but they did. In another county, ten years ago, he
had ten boys and girls gathered to organize a Sunday-
school. None had ever been to Sunday-school and
only two knew what a Sunday-school was. He an-
nounced that he would organize one at that place a
week later. When he reached the spot the following
Sunday, there were seventy-five young mountaineers
there. They had sung themselves quite hoarse wait-
ing for him, and he was an hour early. The Sunday-
school was founded, built up and developed into a
church.

When the first printing-press was taken to a certain
mountain-town in 1882, a deputation of citizens met
it three miles from town and swore that it should go
no farther. An old preacher mounted the wagon and
drove it into town. Later the leader of that crowd
owned the printing-press and ran it. In this town
are two academies for the education of the moun-
taineer. Young fellows come there from every moun-
tain-county and work their way through. They curry
horses, carry water, work about the houses — do every-

51

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

thing; many of them cook for themselves and live
on four dollars a month. They are quick-witted,
strong-minded, sturdy, tenacious, and usually very
religious.

Indeed, people who have been among the Southern
mountaineers testify that, as a race, they are proud,
sensitive, hospitable, kindly, obliging in an unreckon-
ing way that is almost pathetic, honest, loyal, in spite
of their common ignorance, poverty, and isolation ; that
they are naturally capable, eager to learn, easy to
uplift. Americans to the core, they make the South-
ern mountains a store-house of patriotism; in them-
selves, they are an important offset to the Old World
outcasts whom we have welcomed to our shores; and
they surely deserve as much consideration from the
nation as the negroes, for whom we have done, and
are doing so much, or as the heathen, to whom we
give millions.

I confess that I have given prominence to the best
features of mountain life and character, for the reason
that the worst will easily make their own way. It is
only fair to add, however, that nothing that has ever
been said of the mountaineer's ignorance, shif tlessness,
and awful disregard of human life, especially in the
Kentucky mountains, that has not its basis, perhaps,
in actual fact.

52

The Kentucky Mountaineer

First, last, and always, however, it is to be remem-
bered that to begin to understand the Southern moun-
taineers you must go back to the social conditions
and standards of the backwoods before the Revolu-
tion, for practically they are the backwoods people and
the backwoods conditions of pre-Revolutionary days.
Many of their ancestors fought with ours for American
independence. They were loyal to the Union for
one reason that no historian seems ever to have guessed.
For the loyalty of 1861 was, in great part, merely
the transmitted loyalty of 1776, imprisoned like a
fossil in the hills. Precisely for the same reason, the
mountaineer's estimate of the value of human life, of
the sanctity of the law, of a duty that overrides either
— the duty of one blood kinsman to another — is the
estimate of that day and not of this; and it is by the
standards of that day and not of this that he is to be
judged. To understand the mountaineer, then, you
must go back to the Revolution. To do him justice
you must give him the awful ordeal of a century of
isolation and consequent ignorance in which to de-
teriorate. Do that and your wonder, perhaps, that he
is so bad becomes a wonder that he is not worse. To
my mind, there is but one strain of American blood
that could have stood that ordeal quite so well, and
that comes from the sturdy Scotch-Irish who are slowly

53

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

wresting from Puritan and Cavalier an equal share
of the glory that belongs to the three for the part
played on the world's stage by this land in the heroic
role of Liberty.

54

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

THE heart of the Blue-grass in the middle of a
sunny afternoon. An hour thence, through a
rolling sweep of greening earth and woodland,
through the low, poor hills of the brush country and
into the oasis of Indian Old Fields, rich in level
meadow-lands and wheat-fields. In the good old days
of the war-whoop and the scalping-knife, the savage
had there one of the only two villages that he ever
planted in the " Dark and Bloody Ground." There
Daniel Boone camped one night and a pioneer read
him " Gulliver's Travels," and the great Daniel called
the little stream at their feet Lullibigrub — which name
it bears to-day. Another hour between cliffs and
pointed peaks and castled rocky summits, and through
laurel and rhododendron to the Three Forks of the
Kentucky. Up the Middle Fork then and at dusk
the end of the railroad in the heart of the mountains
and Jackson — the county-seat of " Bloody Breathitt "
— once the seat of a lively feud and still the possible

57

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

seat of anotlier, in spite of the fact that with a manual
training-school and a branch of a Blue-grass college, it
is also the seat of learning and culture for the region
drained by Cutshin, Hell-fer-Sartain, Kingdom Come,
and other little streams of a nomenclature not less
picturesque. Even Hell-fer-Sartain is looking up. A
pious lady has established a Sunday-school on Hell-fer-
Sartain. A humorous bookseller has offered to give
it a library on the condition that he be allowed to
design a book-plate for the volumes. And the Sun-
day-school is officially known as the " Hell-fer-Sartain
Sunday-school." From all these small tributaries of
the Kentucky, the mountaineer floats logs down the
river to the capital in the Blue-grass. 'Not many
years ago that was his chief reason and his only one
for going to the Blue-grass, and down the Kentucky
on a raft was the best way for him to get there. He
got back on foot. But, coming or going, by steam,
water, horseback, or afoot, the trip is well worth while.
At Jackson a man with a lantern put me in a
" hack," drove me aboard a flat boat, ferried me over
with a rope cable, cracked his whip, and we went up
a steep, muddy bank into the town. All through the
Cumberland valleys, nowadays, little " boom " towns
with electric lights, water-works, and a street-railway
make one think of the man who said " give him the

58

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

luxuries of life and he would do without the neces-
saries." I did not know that Jackson had ever had
a boom, but I thought so when I saw between the flap-
ping curtains of the "hack" what seemed to be a
white sidewalk of solid cement.

" Hello," I said, " is that a sidewalk? " The driver
grunted, quickly:

" Hit's the side you walk on! "

A wheel of the hack went down to the hub in mud
just then and I felt the force of his humor better next
morning — I was to get such humor in plenty on the
trip — when I went back to the river that same way.
It was not a sidewalk of cement but a whitewashed
board fence that had looked level in the dark, and
except along a muddy foot-wide path close to the fence,
passing there, for anything short of a stork on stilts,
looked dangerous. I have known mules to drown in
a mountain mud-hole.

The " tide," as the mountaineer calls a flood, had
come the day before and, as I feared, the rafts were
gone. Many of them had passed in the night, and
there was nothing to do but to give chase. So I got
a row-boat and a mountaineer, and, taking turns at the
oars, we sped down the swift yellow water at the clip-
ping rate of ten miles an hour.

As early as the late days of August the mountaineer
59

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

goes " logging " in order to cut the trees before the
sap rises, so that the logs can dry better all winter and
float better in the spring. Before frost comes, on
river-bank, hill-side, and mountain-top, the cool morn-
ing air is resonant with the ring of axes, the singing
whistle of big saws, the crash of giant poplar and oak
and chestnut down through the lesser growth under
them, and the low boom that echoes through the
woods when the big trees strike the earth. All winter
this goes on. "With the hammer of the woodpecker
in the early spring, you hear the cries of ox-drivers
" snaking " the logs down the mountain-side to the
edge of some steep cliff, where they are tumbled pell-
mell straight down to the bank of the river, or the
bank of some little creek that runs into it. It takes
eight yoke of oxen, sometimes, to drag the heart of a
monarch to the chute, and there the logs are " rafted "
— as the mountaineer calls the work; that is, they are
rolled with hand-spikes into the water and lashed side
by side with split saplings — lengthwise in the broad
Big Sandy, broadside in the narrow Kentucky. Every
third or fourth log is a poplar, because that wood is
buoyant and will help float the chestnut and the oak.
At bow and stern, a huge long limber oar is rigged on
a turning stile, the raft is anchored to a tree with a
cable of rope or grapevine, and there is a patient wait

60

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

for a " tide." Some day in March or April — some-
times not until May — mist and clouds loose the rain
in torrents, the neighbors gather, the cable is slipped,
and the raft swings out the mouth of the creek on its
long way to the land of which, to this day, the average
mountaineer knows hardly less than that land knows
of him.

Steadily that morning we kept the clumsy row-boat
sweeping around green-buttressed points and long
bends of the river, between high vertical cliffs over-
spread with vines and streaked white with waterfalls,
through boiling eddies and long, swift, waving riffles,
in an exhilaration that seems to come to running blood
and straining muscles only in lonely wilds. Once a
boy shied a stone down at us from the point of a cliff
hundreds of feet sheer overhead.

" I wish I had my 44," said the mountaineer, look-
ing wistfully upward.

" You wouldn't shoot at him? "

" I'd skeer him a leetle, I reckon," he said, dryly,
and then he told me stories of older and fiercer days
when each man carried a " gun," and often had to
use it to secure a landing on dark nights when the log-
gers had to tie up to the bank. When the moon
shines, the rafts keep going night and day.

" When the river's purty swift, you know, it's hard
6i

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

to stop a raft. IVe seen a raft slash down tlirougli
the bushes for two miles before a fellow could git a
rope around a tree. So sometimes we had to ketch
hold of another feller's raft that was already tied up,
and, as there was danger o' pullin' his loose, the f eller'd
try to keep us off. That's whar the 44's come in.
And they do it yit," he said, as, later, I learned for
myself.

Here and there were logs and splintered saplings
thrown out on the bank of the river — signs of wreck-
age where a raft had " bowed " ; that is, the bow had
struck the bank at the bend of the river, the stem had
swung around to the other shore, and the raft had
hunched up in the middle like a bucking horse.
Standing upright, the mountaineer can ride a single
log down a swift stream, even when his weight sinks
it a foot or two under the surface, but he finds it hard
and dangerous to stay aboard a raft when it " bows."

" I was bringin' a raft out o' Leatherwood Creek
below heah " — only that was not the name he gave
the creek — " and we bowed just before we got to the
river. Thar was a kind of a idgit on board who was
just a-ridin' down the creek fer fun, and when I was
throwed out in the woods I seed him go up in the air
and come down kerflop in the water. He went under
the raft, and crawled out about two hundred yards

62

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

down the river. We axed him to git on agin, but
that idgit showed more sense than I knowed he had.
He said he'd heerd o' hell and high water, and he'd
been under one and mighty close to t'other, and he
reckoned he'd stay whar he was."

It was getting toward noon now. "We had made
full forty miles, and Leatherwood was the next stream
below.

" We mought ketch a raft thar," said the moun-
taineer; and we did. Sweeping around the bend I
saw a raft two hundred feet long at the mouth of the
creek — tugging at its anchor — and a young giant of a
mountaineer pushing the bow-oar to and fro through
the water to test its suppleness. He had a smile of
pure delight on his bearded, winning face when we
shot the row-boat alongside.

" I tell you, Jim," he said, " hit's a sweet-puUin'
oar."

" It shorely is, Tom," said Jim. " Heah's a furri-
ner that wants to go down the river with ye."

" All right," said the giant, hospitably. " We're
goin' just as soon as we can git off."

On the bank was a group of men, women, and chil-
dren gathered to watch the departure. In a basin of
the creek above, men up to their waists in water were
" rafting " logs. Higher above was a chute, and down

63

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

it rolled more logs, jumping from end to end, like jack-
straws. Higher, I could hear the hammer of a wood-
pecker; higher still, the fluting of a wood-thrush, and
still higher, an ox-driver's sharp cry. The vivid hues
of dress and shawl on the bank seemed to strike out
sharply every color-note in the green wall behind them,
straight up to the mountain-top. It was as primitive
and simple as Arcady.

Down the bank came old Ben Sanders, as I learned
later, shouting his good-byes, without looking behind
him as he slipped down the bank. Close after him,
his son, young Ben, with a huge pone of corn-bread
three feet square. The boy was so trembling with
excitement over his first trip that he came near drop-
ping it. Then a mountaineer with lank, long hair,
the scholar of the party, and Tim, guilty of humor but
once on the trip — solemn Tim. Two others jumped
aboard with bacon and coffee — passengers like myself.
Tom stood on sh€)re with one hand on the cable, while
he said something now and then to a girl in crimson
homespun who stood near, looking downward. !N'ow
and then one of the other women would look at the
two and laugh.

" All right now, Tom," shouted old Ben, " let her
loose!"

Tom thrust out his hand, which the girl took shyly.

64

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

" Don't fergit, Tom/' she said. Tom laughed —
there was little danger that Tom would forget — and
with one twist of his sinewy hands he threw the loop
of the grapevine clear of the tree and, for all his great
bulk, sprang like a cat aboard the raft, which shot for-
ward with such lightness that I was nearly thrown
from my feet.

^'Good-by, Ben!"

"Good-by, Molly!"

" So long, boys! "

" Don't you fergit that caliker, now, Ben."

" I won't."

" Tom," called a mountaineer, " ef you git drunk
an' spend yo' money, Nance heah says she won't marry
ye when you come back." Nance slapped at the fel-
low, and the giant smiled. Then one piping voice :

" Don't fergit my terbacky, Ben."

" All right. Granny — I won't," answered old Ben,
and, as we neared the bend of the river, he cried back:

" Take that saddle home I borrowed o' Joe Thomas,
an' don't fergit to send that side of bacon to Mandy
Longnecker, an' — an' — " and then I got a last glimpse
of the women shading their patient eyes to watch the
lessening figures on the raft and the creaking oars flash-
ing white in the sunlight; and I thought of them go-
ing back to their lonely little cabins on this creek to

65

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

await the home-coming of the men. If the mountain-
women have any curiosity about that distant land, the
Blue-grass " settlemints," they never show it. I have
never known a mountain-woman to go down the river
on a raft. Perhaps they don't care to go; perhaps it
is not proper, for their ideas of propriety are very-
strict; perhaps the long trip back on foot deterred them
so long that the habit of not going is too strong to
overcome. And then if they did go, who would tend
the ever-present baby in arms, the ever-numerous chil-
dren; make the garden and weed and hoe the young
corn for the absent lord and master. I suppose it was
generations of just such lonely women, waiting at their
cabins in pioneer days for the men to come home,
that gives the mountain-woman the brooding look of
pathos that so touches the stranger's heart to-day;
and it is the watching to-day that will keep unchanged
that look of vacant sadness for generations to come.

" Ease her up now ! " called old Ben — we were
making our first turn — and big Tom at the bow, and
young Ben and the scholar at the stem oar, swept the
white saplings through the water with a terrific swish.
Footholes had been cut along the logs, and in these
the men stuck their toes as they pushed, with both
hands on the oar and the oar across their breasts. At
the end of the stroke, they threw the oar down and up

6^

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

with rhythm and dash. Then they went back on a
run to begin another stroke.

" Ease her up — ease her up," said old Ben, sooth-
ingly, and then, suddenly:

" Hit her up — ^hit her up— hell! "

Solemn Tim began to look ashore for a good place
to jump. The bow barely slipped past the bend of the
river.

"That won't do," said old Ben again; "Hell!"
Big Tom looked as crestfallen as a school-boy, and said
nothing — we had just escaped " bowing " on our first
turn. Ten minutes later we swept into the Narrows
— the " Nahrers " as the mountaineer says; and it
was quick and dangerous work keeping the unwieldy
craft from striking a bowlder, or the solid wall of a
vertical cliff that on either side rose straight upward,
for the river was pressed into a narrow channel, and
ran with terrific force. It was one long exhilarating
thrill going through those Narrows, and everybody
looked relieved when we slipped out of them into
broad water, which ran straight for half a mile —
where the oars were left motionless and the men got
back their breath and drew their pipes and bottles. I
knew the innocent white liquor that revenue man and
mountaineer call " moonshine," and a wary sip or two
was enough for me. Along with the bottle came the

67

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

inevitable first question that, under any and all circum-
stances, every mountaineer asks the stranger, no mat-
ter if the stranger has asked him a question first.
" Well, stranger, what mought yo' name be ? "
Answering that, you are expected to tell in the same
breath, as well, what your business is. I knew it was
useless to tell mine — ^it would not have been under-
stood, and would have engendered suspicion. I was
at Jackson; I had long wanted to go down the river
on a raft, and I let them think that I was going for
curiosity and fun; but I am quite sure they were not
wholly satisfied until I had given them ground to be-
lieve that I could afford the trip for fun, by taking
them up to the hotel that night for supper, and giv-
ing them some very bad cigars. For, though the
moon was full, the sky was black with clouds, and old
Ben said we must tie up for the night. That tying
up was exciting work. The raft was worked cautious-
ly toward the shore, and a man stood at bow and stern
with a rope, waiting his chance to jump ashore and
coil it about a tree. Tom jumped first, and I never
realized what the momentum of the raft was until I
saw him, as he threw the rope about a tree, jerked
like a straw into the bushes, the rope torn from his
hands, and heard the raft crashing down through the
undergrowth. Tom gave chase along the bank, and

68

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

everybody yelled and ran to and fro. It was crash —
swish — bump — ^grind and crash again; and it was only
by the hardest work at the clumsy oars that we kept
the raft off the shore. From a rock Tom made a fly-
ing leap aboard again, and luckily the river broadened
there, and just past the point of a thicket we came
upon another raft already anchored. The boy Ben
picked up his rope and prepared to leap aboard the
stranger, from the other end of which a mountaineer
ran toward us.

" Keep off," he shouted, " keep off, I tell ye," but
the boy paid no attention, and the other man pulled
his pistol. Ben dropped his rope, then looked around,
laughed, picked up his rope again and jumped aboard.
The fellow lowered his pistol and swore. I looked
around, too, then. Every man on board with us had
his pistol in his hand. We tugged the stranger's cable
sorely, but it held him fast and he held us fast, and
the tying up was done.

" He'd 'a' done us the same way," said old Ben, in
palliation.

JSText day it was easy sailing most of the time,
and we had long rests from the oars, and we
smoked, and the bottles were slowly emptied, one by
one, while the mountaineers " jollied " each other and
told drawling stories. Once we struck a long eddy,

69

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and were caught by it and swept back up-stream; twice
this happened before we could get in the current again.
Then they all laughed and " jollied " old Ben.

It seemed that the old fellow had taken too much
one dark night and had refused to tie up. There was
a house at the head of this eddy, and when he struck
it there was a gray horse hitched to the fence outside;
and inside was the sound of fiddles and furious danc-
ing. 'Next morning old Ben told another raftsman
that he had seen more gray horses and heard more
fiddling that night than he had seen and heard since
he was bom.

" They was a-fiddlin' an' a-dancin' at every house
I passed last night/' he said, " an' I'm damned if I
didn't see a gray boss hitched outside every time I
heerd the fiddlin'. I reckon they was ha'nts." The
old fellow laughed good-naturedly while the scholar
was telling his story. He had been caught in the
eddy and had been swung around and around, passing
the same house and the same horse each time.

I believe I have remarked that those bottles were
emptying fast. By noon they were quite empty, and
two hours later, as we rounded a curve, the scholar
went to the bow, put his hands to his mouth and
shouted :

"Whis-kee!"

70

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

And again:

"Whiss-kee-ee!"

A girl sprang from the porch of a cabin far down
the stream, and a moment later a canoe was pushed
from the bushes, and the girl, standing erect, paddled
it up-stream close to the bank and shot it out alongside
the raft.

" Howdy e,Mandy!"

" Howdy e, boys! "

Young Ben took two bottles from her, gave her
some pieces of silver, and, as we sped on, she turned
shoreward again and stood holding the bushes and
looking after us, watching young Ben, as he was
watching her; for she was black-eyed and pretty.

The sky was broken with hardly a single cloud that
night. The moon was yellow as a flame, and we ran
all night long. I lay with my feet to the fire that Ben
had built on some stones in the middle of the raft,
looking up at the trees that arched over us, and the
steep, moonlit cliffs, and the moon itself riding high
and full and so brilliant that the stars seemed to have
fallen in a shower all around the horizon. The raft
ran as noiselessly as a lily-pad, and it was all as still
and wild as a dream. Once or twice we heard the
yelp of a fox-hound and the yell of a hunter out in
the hills, and the mountaineers yelled back in answer

71

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and hied the dog on. Sometimes young Ben and the
scholar, and even solemn Tim, sang some weird old
ballad that one can hear now only in the Southern
hills; and twice, to my delight and surprise, the scholar
" yodelled/' I wondered where he had learned how.
He did not know — he had always known how. It was
perhaps only another of the curious Old World sur-
vivals that are of ceaseless interest to a speculative
" furriner," and was no stranger than the songs he
sang. I went to sleep by and by, and woke up shiv-
ering. It was yet dark, but signs of day were evi-
dent; and in the dim light I could see young Ben at
the stern-oar on watch, and the huge shape of big Tom
standing like a statue at the bow and peering ahead.
We had made good time during the night — the moun-
taineers say a raft makes better time during the night
— ^why, I could not see, nor could they explain, and at
daybreak we were sweeping around the hills of the
brush country, and the scholar who had pointed out
things of interest (he was a school-teacher at home)
began to show his parts with some pride. Every rock
and cliff and turn and eddy down that long river has
some picturesque name that the river-men have given
it — ^names known only to them. Two rocks that
shoved their black shoulders up on either side of the
stream have been called Buck and Billy, after some

72

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

old fellow's favorite oxen, for more than half a cen-
tury. Here was an eagle's nest. A bear had been
seen not long ago, looking from a black hole in the
face of a cliff. How he got there no one could un-
derstand. The scholar told some strong stories — ^now
that we were in a region of historical interest — where
Boone planted his first fort and where Boonesborough
once stood, but he always prefaced his tale with the
overwhelming authority that —

"Hist'ry says!"

He declared that history said that a bull, seeing
some cows across the river, had jumped from the point
of a high cliff straight down into the river; had
swum across and fallen dead as he was climbing the
bank.

" He busted his heart," said the scholar.

Oddly enough, solemn Tim, who had never cracked
a smile, was the first to rebel.

" You see that cliff yander? " said the scholar.
" Well, history says that Dan'l Boone druv three
Injuns once straight over that cliff down into the
river."

I could see that Tim was loath to cast discredit on
the facts of history. If the scholar had said one or
even two Indians, I don't think Tim would have called
a halt; but for Daniel, with only one load in his gun

7Z

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

— and it not a Winchester — to drive three — it was too
much. And yet Tim never smiled, and it was the
first time I heard him voluntarily open his lips.

" Well, history mouglit 'a' said that," he said, " but
I reckon DanH was in the lead! " The yell that went
up routed the scholar and stilled him. History said
no farther down that stream, even when we were pass-
ing between the majestic cliffs that in one place are
spanned by the third highest bridge in the world.
There a ferry was crossing the river, and old Ben grew
reminiscential. He had been a ferryman back in the
mountains.

" Thar was a slosh of ice runnin' in the river," he
said, " an' a feller come a-lopin' down the road one
day, an' hollered an' axed me to take him across. I
knowed from his voice that he was a-drinkin', and I
hollered back an' axed him if he was drunk.

"'Yes, I'm drunk!'

"'How drunk?' I says.

" ' Drunk as hell! ' he says, ' but I can ride that
boat.'

" Well, there was a awful slosh o' ice a-runnin', but
I let him on, an' we hadn't got more'n ten feet from
the bank when that feller fell off in that slosh o' ice.
Well, I ketched him by one foot, and I drug him an'
I drug him an' I drug his face about twenty feet in

74

Down the Kentucky on a Raft

the mud, an' do you know that damn fool come might'
nigh a-drownin' before I could change eends ! "

Thence on, the trip was monotonous except for the
Kentuckian who loves every blade of grass in his land
— ^f or we struck locks and dams and smooth and slower
water, and the hills were low but high enough to shut
off the blue-grass fields. But we knew they were
there — slope and woodland, bursting into green — and
the trip from highland to lowland, barren hillside to
rich pasture -land — from rhododendron to blue-grass
— was done.

At dusk that day we ran slowly into the little Ken-
tucky capital, past distilleries and brick factories with
tall smoking stacks and under the big bridge and,
wonder of wonders to Ben, past a little stem-wheel
steamboat wheezing up-stream. We climbed the
bank into the town, where the boy Ben and solemn
Tim were for walking single file in the middle of the
streets until called by the scholar to the sidewalk.
The boy's eyes grew big with wonder when he saw
streets and houses of stone, and heard the whistles of
factories and saw what was to him a crush of people
in the sleepy little town. I parted from them that
night, but next morning I saw big Tom passing the
station on foot. He said his companions had taken
his things and gone on by train, and that he was

75

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

going to walk back. I wondered, and while I asked
no questions, I should like to wager that I guessed
the truth. Tom had spent every cent of his money
for the girl in crimson homespun who was waiting for
him away back in the hills, and if I read her face
aright I could have told him that she would have
given every trinket he had sent her rather than wait
a day longer for the sight of his face. We shook
hands, and I watched him pass out of sight with his
face set homeward across and beyond the blue-grass,
through the brush country and the Indian Old Fields,
back to his hills of laurel and rhododendron.

After Br'er Rabbit in the Blue-grass f;

^«.r /(,.;.,

After Br'er Rabbit in the Blue-grass

FOR little more than a month Jack Frost has
been busy — that arch-imp of Satan who has
got himself enshrined in the hearts of little
children. After the clear sunset of some late October
day, when the clouds have hung low and kept the air
chill, he has a good night for his evil work. By dawn
the little magician has spun a robe of pure white, and
drawn it close to the breast of the earth. The first
light turns it silver, and shows the flowers and jewels
with which wily Jack has decked it, so that it may
be mistaken for a wedding-gown, perhaps, instead of
a winding-sheet. The sun, knowing better, lifts, lets
loose his tiny warriors, and, from pure love of beauty,
with one stroke smites it gold. Then begins a battle
which ends soon in crocodile tears of reconciliation
from dauntless little Jack, with the blades of grass
and the leaves in their scarlet finery sparkling with
the joy of another day's deliverance, and the fields
grown gray and aged in a single night. On just such
a morning, and before the fight is quite done, saddle-

79

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

horses are stepping from big white bams in certain
counties of the Blue-grass, and, sniffing the cool air,
are being led to old-fashioned stiles, from which a lit-
tle later they bear master or mistress out to the turn-
pike and past flashing fields to the little county-seat
several miles away. There in the court-house square
they gather, the gentlefolk of country and town, and
from that point they start into the country the other
way. It is a hunting-meet. Br'er Rabbit is the
quarry, and they are going for him on horseback with-
out dog, stick, snare, or gun — a unique sport, and, so
far as I know, confined wholly to the Blue-grass.
There is less rusticity than cosmopolitanism in that
happy land. The townspeople have farms, and the
farmers own stores; intercourse between town and
country is unrestrained ; and as for social position, that
is a question one rarely hears discussed: one either has
it unquestioned, or one has it not at all. So out they
go, the hunters on horseback, and the chaperons and
spectators in buggies, phaetons, and rockaways,
through a morning that is cloudless and brilliant, past
fields that are sober with autumn, and woods that are
dingy with oaks and streaked with the fire of sumac
and maple. N"ew hemp lies in shining swaths on each
side, while bales of last year's crop are going to mar-
ket along the white turnpike. Already the farmers

80

After Br'er Rabbit

are turning over the soil for the autumn sowing of
wheat. Corn-shucking is just over, and ragged
darkies are straggling from the fields back to town.
Through such a scene move horse and vehicle, the rid-
ers shouting, laughing, running races, and a quartet,
perhaps, in a rockaway singing some old-fashioned
song full of tune and sentiment. Six miles out, they
turn in at a gate, where a big square brick house with
a Grecian portico stands far back in a wooded yard,
with a fish-pond on one side and a great smooth lawn
on the other. Other hunters are waiting there, and
the start is made through a Blue-grass woodland,
greening with a second spring, and into a sweep of
stubble and ragweed. There are two captains of the
hunt. One is something of a wag, and has the voice
of a trumpet.

" Form a line, and form a good un! " he yells, and
the line stretches out with a space of ten or fifteen feet
between each horse and his neighbor on each side.
The men are dressed as they please, the ladies as they
please. English blood gets expression, as usual, in in-
dependence absolute. There is a sturdy disregard of
all considerations of form. Some men wear leggings,
some high boots; a few have brown shooting-coats.
Most of them ride with the heel low and the toes
turned, according to temperament. The Southern

8i

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

woman's long riding-skirt has happily been laid aside.
These young Dianas wear the usual habit; only the
hat is a derby, a cap, sometimes a beaver with a white
veil, or a tam-o'-shanter that has slipped down behind
and left a frank bare head of shining hair. They hold
the reins in either hand, and not a crop is to be seen.
There are plenty of riding-whips, however, and some-
times one runs up the back of some girl's right arm,
for that is the old-fashioned position for the whip when
riding in form. On a trip like this, however, every-
body rides to please his fancy, and rides anywhere but
off his horse. The men are sturdy country youths,
who in a few years will make good types of the beef-
eating young English squire — sunburned fellows with
big frames, open faces, fearless eyes, and a manner
that is easy, cordial, kindly, independent. The girls
are midway between the types of brunette and blonde,
with a leaning toward the latter type. The extreme
brunette is as rare as is the unlovely blonde, whom
Oliver Wendell Holmes differentiates from her daz-
zling sister with locks that have caught the light of the
sun. Radiant with freshness these girls are, and with
good health and strength; round of figure, clear of eye
and skin, spirited, soft of voice, and slow of speech.

There is one man on a sorrel mule. He is the host
back at the big farm-house, and he has given up every

82

After Br'er Rabbit

horse he has to guests. One of the girls has a broad
white girth running all the way around both horse and
saddle. Her habit is the most stylish in the field ; she
has lived a year in Washington, perhaps, and has had
a finishing touch at a fashionable school in New York.
Near her is a young fellow on a black thoroughbred
— a graduate, perhaps, of Yale or Princeton. They
rarely put on airs, couples like these, when they come
back home, but drop quietly into their old places with
friends and kindred. From respect to local prejudice,
which has a hearty contempt for anything that is not
carried for actual use, she has left her riding-crop at
home. He has let his crinkled black hair grow rather
long, and has covered it with a black slouch-hat. Con-
tact with the outer world has made a difference, how-
ever, and it is enough to create a strong bond of sympa-
thy between these two, and to cause trouble between
country-bred Phyllis, plump, dark-eyed, bare-headed,
who rides a pony that is trained to the hunt, as many of
the horses are, and young farmer Corydon, who is near
her on an iron-gray. Indeed, mischief is brewing
among those four. At a brisk walk the line moves
across the field, the captain at each end yelling to the
men — only the men, for no woman is ever anywhere
but where she ought to be in a Southern hunting-field
— to keep it straight.

83

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

" Billy," shouts the captain with the mighty voice,
"I fine you ten dollars." The slouch-hat and the
white girth are lagging behind. It is a lovers' quar-
rel, and the girl looks a little flushed, while Phyllis
watches smiling. " But you can compromise with
me," adds the captain, and a jolly laugh runs down
the line. I^ow comes a " rebel yell." Somewhere
along the line, a horse leaps forward. Other horses
jump too; everybody yells, and everybody's eye is on
a little bunch of cotton that is being whisked with
astonishing speed through the brown weeds. There
is a massing of horses close behind it; the white girth
flashes in the midst of the melee, and the slouch-hat
is just behind. The bunch of cotton turns suddenly,
and doubles back between the horses' feet. There is
a great crash, and much turning, twisting, and sawing
of bits. Then the crowd dashes the other way, with
Corydon and Phyllis in the lead. The fun has begun.

n

From snow to snow in the Blue-grass, Br'er Rabbit
has two inveterate enemies — ^the darky and the school-
boy — and his lot is a hard one. Even in the late
spring and early summer, when " ole Mis' " Rabbit is
keeping house, either one of her foes will cast a de-

84

After Br'er Rabbit

atructive stone at her, if she venture into open lane or
pasture. When midsummer comes even, her tiny,
long-eared brood is in danger. 'Not one of the little
fellows is much larger than your doubled fist when
the weeds get thick and high, and the elderberries are
ripe, and the blackberries almost gone, but he is a ten-
der morsel, and, with the darky, ranks in gastronomical
favor close after the 'possum and the coon. You see
him then hopping about the edge of hemp and har-
vest fields, or crossing the country lanes, and he is very
pretty, and so innocent and unwary that few have the
heart to slay him, except his two ruthless foes. When
the fields of grain are cut at harvest-time, both are on
a close lookout for him. For, as the grain is mown
about him, he is penned at last in a little square of
uncut cover, and must make a dash for liberty
through stones, sticks, dogs, and yelling darkies. Af-
ter frost comes, the school-boy has both eyes open for
him, and a stone ready, on his way ta and from his
books, and he goes after him at noon recess and on
Saturdays. The darky travels with a " rabbit-stick "
three feet long in hand and a cur at his heels. Some-
times he will get his young master's bird-dog out, and
give Br'er Rabbit a chase, in spite of the swearing that
surely awaits him, and the licking that may. Then
he makes a ^' dead fall " for him — a broad board sup-

85

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

porting a heavy rock, and supported by triggers that
are set like the lines of the figure 4; or he will bend
the top of a young sapling to the ground, and make
a snare of a string, and some morning there is innocent
Br^er Kabbit strung up like a murderer. Sometimes
he will chase him into a rock fence, and then what is
a square yard or so of masonry to one fat rabbit?
Sometimes Br'er Eabbit will take a favorite refuge,
a hollow tree; for, while he cannot climb a tree in the
usual way, he can arch his back and rise spryly enough
on the inside. Then does the ingenious darky con-
trive a simple instrument of torture — a long, limber
stick with a prong, or a split end. This he twists into
Br^er Rabbit's fur until he can gather up with it one
fold of his slack hide, and down comes the game. This
hurts, and with this provocation only will the rabbit
snap at the hunter's hand. If this device fails the
hunter, he will try smoking him out; and if that fails,
there is left the ax. Always, too, is the superstitious
darky keen for the rabbit that is caught in a grave-
yard, by a slow hound, at midnight, and in the dark
of the moon. The left hind foot of that rabbit is a
thing to conjure with.

On Saturdays, both his foes are after him with dog
and gun. If they have no dog they track him in the
snow, or they " look for him settin' " in thick bunches

86

After Br'er Rabbit

of winter blue-grass, or under briers and cut tbom-
bushes that have been piled in little gullies; and, alas!
they " shoot him settin' " until the darky has learned
fair play from association, or the boy has had it
thumped into him at school. Then will the latter give
Br'er Eabbit a chance for his life by stirring him up
with his brass-toed boot and taking a crack at him as
he lopes away. It will be a long time before this boy
will get old enough, or merciful enough to resist the
impulse to get out of his buggy or off his horse, no
matter where he is going or in how great a hurry, and
shy a stone when a cottontail crosses his path. In-
deed, a story comes down that a field of slaves threw
aside their hoes once and dashed pell-mell after a pass-
ing rabbit. An indignant observer reported the fact
to their master, and this was the satisfaction he got.

" Kun him, did they? " said the master, cheerfully.
" Well, I'd have whipped the last one of them, if
they hadn't."

And yet it is not until late in October that Br'er
Rabbit need go into the jimson-weeds and seriously
" wuck he haid " (work his head) over his personal
safety; but it is very necessary then, and on Thanks-
giving Day it behooves him to say his prayers in the
thickest cover he can find. Every man's hand is
against him that day. All the big hunting-parties are

87

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

out, and the Iroquois Club of Lexington goes for him
with horse and greyhound. And that is wild sport.
Indeed, put a daredevil Kentuckian on a horse or be-
hind him, and in a proper mood, and there is always
wild sport — ^for the onlooker as well. It is hard to
fathom the spirit of recklessness that most sharply dif-
ferentiates the Southern hunter from his !N'orthem
brother, and that runs him amuck when he comes into
contact with a horse, whether riding, driving, or bet-
ting on him. If a thing has to be done in a hunting-
field, or can be done, there is little difference between
the two. Only the thing must, with the ITorthemer,
be a matter of skill and judgment, and he likes to
know his horse. To him, or to an Englishman, the
Southern hunter's performances on a green horse look
little short of criminal. In certain counties of Vir-
ginia, where hunters follow the hounds after the Eng-
lish fashion, the main point seems to be for each man
to " hang up " the man behind him, and desperate
risks are run. " I have stopped that boyish foolish-
ness, though," said an aged hunter under thirty; " I
give my horse a chance." In other words, he had
stopped exacting of him the impossible. In Georgia,
they follow hounds at a fast gallop through wooded
bogs and swamps at night, and I have seen a horse
go down twice within a distance of thirty yards, and

88

After Br'er Rabbit

the rider never leave his back. The same is true of
Kentucky, and I suppose of other Southern States. I
have known one of my friends in the Blue-grass to
amuse himself by getting into his buggy an unsus-
pecting friend, who was as sedate then as he is now
(and he is a judge now), and driving him at full speed
through an open gate, then whizzing through the
woods and seeing how near he could graze the trunks
of trees in his course, and how sharply he could turn,
and ending up the circuit by dashing, still at full
speed, into a creek, his companion still sedate and
fearless, but swearing helplessly. Being bantered by
an equally reckless friend one dark midnight while
going home, this same man threw both reins out on
his horse's back, and gave the high-strung beast a
smart cut with his whip. He ran four miles, kept the
pike by some mercy of Providence, and stopped ex-
hausted at his master's gate.

A I>rorthern visitor was irritated by the apparently
reckless driving of his host, who is a famous horseman
in the Blue-grass.

" You lunatic," he said, " you'd better drive over
those stone piles! " meaning a heap of unbroken rocks
that lay on one side of the turnpike.

" I will," was the grave answer, and he did.

This is the Kentuckian in a buggy.

89

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Imagine him on Tiorseback, witli no ladies present
to check the spirit or the spirits of the occasion, and
we can believe that the Thanksgiving hunt of the Iro-
quois Club is perhaps a little more serious business
than playing polo, or riding after anise-seed. And
yet there is hardly a member of this club who could
sit in his saddle over the course at Meadowbrook or
Chevy Chase, for the reason that he has never prac-
tised jumping a horse in his stride, and because when
he goes fast he takes the jockey seat, which is not, I
believe, a good seat for a five-foot fence; at the same
time, there is hardly a country-bred rider in the Blue-
grass, man or woman, who would not try it. Still,
accidents are rare, and it is yet a tenet in the creed
of the Southern hunter that the safer plan is to take
no care. On the chase with greyhounds the dogs run,
of course, by sight, and the point with the huntsman
is to be the first at the place of the kill. As the grey-
hound tosses the rabbit several feet in the air and
catches it when it falls, the place is seen by all, and
there is a mad rush for that one spot. The hunters
crash together, and often knock one another down. I
have known two fallen horses and their riders to be
cleared in a leap by two hunters who were close be-
hind them. One of the men was struck by a hoof fly-
ing over him.

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After Brer Rabbit

" I saw a shoe glisten," he said, " and then it was
darkness for a while."

But it is the hunting without even a dog that is in-
teresting, because it is unique and because the ladies
share the fun. The sport doubtless originated with
school-boys. They could not take dogs, or guns, to
school ; they had leisure at " big recess," as the noon
hour was called; they had horses, and the rabbits were
just over the school-yard fence. One day two or
three of them chased a rabbit down, and the fun was
discovered. These same boys, perhaps, kept up the
hunt after their school-days were over, and gave the
fever to others, the more easily as foxes began to get
scarce. Then the ladies began to take part, and the
sport is what it is to-day. The President signs a great
annual death-warrant for Br'er Kabbit in the Blue-
grass when he fixes a day for Thanksgiving.

ni

Again Br'er Kabbit twists, and Phyllis's little horse
turns after him like a polo pony after a ball. The
black thoroughbred makes a wide sweep; Corydon's
iron-gray cuts in behind, and the whole crowd starts
in a body toward the road. This rabbit is an old hand
at this business, and he knows where safety lies. A

91

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

moment later the horses come to their haunches at the
pike fence. Br'er Rabbit has gone into a culvert un-
der the road, and already a small boy and a yellow
dog are making for that culvert from a farm-house
near. Again the trumpet, " Form a line ! " Again
the long line starts. There has been a shifting of po-
sitions. Corydon is next the white girth and stylish
habit now, and he looks very much pleased. The
slouch-hat of the college man and Phyllis's bare head
are together, and the thoroughbred's master is talking
earnestly. Phyllis looks across the field and smiles.
Silly Corydon ! The slouch-hat is confessing his trou-
ble to Phyllis and asking advice. Yes, she will help, as
women will, out of pure friendship, pure unselfish-
ness; sometimes they have other reasons, and Phyllis
had two. Another yell, another rabbit. Off they go,
and then, midway, still another cry and still another
rabbit. The hunters part in twain, the black thorough-
bred leading one wing, the iron-gray the other. Watch
the slouch-hat now, and you shall see how the thing is
done. The thoroughbred is learning what his master
is after, and he swerves to the right; others are com-
ing in from that direction ; the rabbit must turn again ;
others that way, too. Poor Mollie is confused ; which-
ever way her big, startled eyes turn, that way she sees
a huge beast and a yelling demon bearing down on

92

After Br er Rabbit

her. The slouch-hat swoops near her first, flings him-
self from his horse, and, in spite of the riders pressing
in on him, is after her on foot. Two others swing
from their horses on the other side. Mollie makes
several helpless hops, and the three scramble for her.
The riders in front cry for those behind to hold their
horses back, but they crowd in, and it is a miracle that
none of the three is trampled down. The rabbit is
hemmed in now; there is no way of escape, and in-
stinctively she shrinks frightened to the earth. That
is the crucial instant; down goes her pursuer on top
of her as though she were a football, and the quarry
is his. One blow of the hand behind the long ears,
or one jerk by the hind legs, which snaps the neck as
a whip cracks, and the slouch-hat holds aloft the brush,
a little puff of down, and turns his eye about the field.
The white girth is near, and as he starts toward her
he is stopped by a low " Ahem! " behind him. Cory-
don has caught the first rabbit, and already on the
derby hat above the white girth is pinned the brush.
The young fellow turns again. Phyllis, demure and
unregarding, is there with her eyes on the horns of
her saddle; but he understands, and a moment later
she smiles with prettily feigned surprise, and the white
puff moves off in her loosening brown hair. The
white girth is betrayed into the faintest shadow of

93

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

vexation. Corydon heard that eloquent little clear-
ing of the throat with a darkling face, and, indeed, no
one of the four looks very happy, except Phyllis.

"Form aline!"

Again the rabbits jump — one, two, three — and the
horses dash and crash together, and the men swing to
the ground, and are pushed and trampled in a mad
clutch for Mollie^s long ears; for it is a contest be-
tween them as to who shall catch the most game. The
iron-gray goes like a demon, and when Corydon drops,
the horse is trained to stop and to stand still. This
gives Corydon an advantage which balances the su-
perior quickness of the thoroughbred and the agility
of his rider. The hunting-party is broken up now
into groups of three and four, each group after a rab-
bit, and, for the time, the disgusted captains give up
all hope of discipline. A horse has gone down in a
gully. Two excited girls have jumped to the ground
for a rabbit. The big mule threshes the weeds like
a tornado. Crossing the field at a heavy gallop, he
stops suddenly at a ditch, the girth of the old saddle
breaks, and the host of the day goes on over the long
ears. When he rises from the weeds, there is a shriek
of laughter over the field, and then a mule-race, for,
with a bray of freedom, the sorrel makes for home.
Not a rabbit is jumped on the next circuit; that field

94

c

o
Q

After Br er Rabbit

is hunted out. No matter; there is another just
across the meadow, and they make for it. More than
a dozen rabbits dangle head downward behind the sad-
dles of the men. Corydon has caught seven, and the
slouch-hat five. The palm lies between them plainly,
as does a bigger motive than the game. It is a mat-
ter of gallantry — conferring the brush in the field;
indeed, secrets are hidden rather than betrayed in that
way : so Corydon is free to honor the white girth, and
the slouch-hat can honor Phyllis without suspicion.
The stylish habit shows four puffs of down; Phyllis
wears five — every trophy that the slouch-hat has won.
That is the way Phyllis is helping a friend, getting
even with an enemy, and putting down a rebellion in
her own camp. Even in the meadow a rabbit starts
up, and there is a quick sprint in the open; but Br'er
Eabbit, another old hand at the hunt, slips through
the tall palings of a garden fence. In the other field
the fun is more furious than ever, for the rabbits are
thicker and the rivalry is very close. Corydon is get-
ting excited; once, he nearly overrides his rival.

The field has gone mad. The girl with the white
girth is getting flushed with something more than ex-
citement, and even Phyllis, demure as she still looks,
is stirred a little. The pony's mistress is ahead by two
brushes, and the white girth is a little vexed. She

95

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

declares she is going to catch a rabbit herself. The
slouch-hat hears, and watches her, thereafter, uneasily.
And she does spring lightly, recklessly, to the ground
just as the iron-gray and the thoroughbred crash in
toward her, and, right between the horses' hoofs, Br'er
Kabbit is caught in her little black riding-gloves. In-
deed, the front feet of a horse strike her riding-skirt,
mashing it into the soft earth, and miss crushing her
by a foot. The slouch-hat is on the ground beside her.
" You mustn't do that again! " he says with sharp
authority.

" Mr. ," she says, quietly, but haughtily, to

Corydon, who is on the ground, too, " will you please
help me on my horse? "

The slouch-hat looks as red as a flame, but Phyllis
whispers comfort. " That's all right," she says, wise-
ly; and it is all right. Under the slouch-hat, the white
face meant fear, anxiety, distress. The authority of
the voice thrilled the girl, and in the depths of her
heart she was pleased, and Phyllis knew.

The sun is dropping fast, but they will try one more
field, which lies beyond a broad pasture of blue-grass.
Now comes the chase of the day. Something big and
gray leaps from a bunch of grass and bounds away.
It is the father of rabbits, and there is a race indeed
— an open field, a straight course, and no favor. The

96

After Br'er Rabbit

devil take the hindmost! Listen to the music of the
springy turf, and watch that thoroughbred whose
master has stayed behind to put up the fence! He
hasn't had half a chance before. He feels the grip of
knees as his master rises to the racing-seat, and know-
ing what that means, he lengthens. No great effort
is apparent; he simply stretches himself close to the
earth and skims it as a swallow skims a pond. Within
two hundred yards he is side by side with Corydon,
who is leading, and Corydon, being no fool, pulls in
and lets him go on. Br'er Rabbit is going up one side
of a long, shallow ravine. There is a grove of locusts
at the upper end. The hunters behind see the slouch-
hat cut around the crest of the hill, and, as luck would
have it, Br'er Eabbit doubles, and comes back on the
other side of the ravine. The thoroughbred has
closed up the gap that the turn made, and is not fifty
yards behind. Br'er Rabbit is making either for a
rain-washed gully just opposite, or for a brier-patch
farther down. So they wait. The cottontail clears
the gully like a ball of thistledown, and Phyllis hears
a little gasp behind her as the thoroughbred, too, rises
and cleaves the air. Horse and rabbit dash into the
weedy cover, and the slouch-hat drops out of sight as
three hunters ride yelling into it from the other side.
There is a scramble in the bushes, and the slouch-hat

97

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

emerges with the rabbit in his hand. As he rides
slowly toward the waiting party, he looks at Phyllis
as though to receive further orders. He gets them.
Wily Phyllis shakes her head as though to say:

" Not me this time; /ler."

And with a courtly inclination of the slouch-hat,
the 'big brush goes to the white girth, in lieu of an
olive-branch, for peace.

The shadows are stretching fast; they will not try
the other field. Back they start through the radiant
air homeward, laughing, talking, bantering, living
over the incidents of the day, the men with one leg
swung over the pommel of their saddles for rest; the
girls with habits disordered and torn, hair down, and
a little tired, but all flushed, clear-eyed, and happy.
The leaves, russet, gold, and crimson, are dropping
to the green earth; the sunlight is as yellow as the
wings of a butterfly; and on the horizon is a faint haze
that foreshadows the coming Indian summer. If it
be Thanksgiving, a big dinner will be waiting for them
at the stately old farm-house, or if a little later in the
year, a hot supper instead. If the hunt is very in-
formal, and there be neither, which rarely happens,
everybody asks everybody else to go home with him,
and everybody means it, and accepts if possible. This
time it is warm enough for a great spread out in the

98

After Br'er Rabbit

yard on the lawn and under the big oaks. What a
feast that is — chicken, turkey, cold ham, pickles,
croquettes, creams, jellies, "beaten" biscuit! And
what happy laughter, and thoughtful courtesy, and
mellow kindness!

Inside, most likely, it is cool enough for a fire in
the big fireplace with the shining old brass andirons;
and what quiet, solid, old-fashioned English comfort
that light brings out! Two darky fiddlers are wait-
ing on the back porch — waiting for a dram from
" young cap'n," as " young marster " is now called.
They do not wait long. By the time darkness settles,
the fiddles are talking old tunes, and the nimble feet
are busy. Like draws to like now, and the window-
seats and the tall columns of the porch hear again what
they have been listening to for so long. Corydon has
drawn near. Does Phyllis sulk or look cold? Not
Phyllis. You would not know that Corydon had ever
left her side. It has been a day of sweet mischief to
Phyllis.

At midnight they ride forth in pairs into the crisp,
brilliant air and under the kindly moon. The white
girth turns toward town with the thoroughbred at her
side, and Corydon and Phyllis take the other way.
They live on adjoining farms, these two. Phyllis has
not forgotten; oh, no! There is mild torture await-

99

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

ing Corydon long after he shall have forgotten the
day, and he deserves it. Silly Corydon! to quarrel
over nothing, and to think that he could make her
jealous over that — ^the white girth is never phrased,
for Phyllis stops there. It is not the first time these
two girls have crossed foils. But there is peace now,
and the little comedy of the day, seen by nearly every
woman and by hardly a man, comes that night to a
happy end.

lOO

Through the Bad Bend

' O • «' c

V>-i'-5>S!S'

Through the Bad Bend

A WILDLY beautiful cleft through the Cum-
berland Range opens into the head of Powell's
Valley, in Virginia, and forms the Gap.
From this point a party of us were going bass-fishing
on a fork of the Cumberland River over in the Ken-
tucky mountains. It was Sunday, and several
Kentucky mountaineers had crossed over that day to
take their first ride on the cars, and to see " the city "
— as the Gap has been prophetically called ever since
it had a cross-roads store, one little hotel, two farm-
houses, and a blacksmith's shop. From them we
learned that we could ride down Powell's Valley and
get to the fork of the Cumberland by simply climb-
ing over the mountain. As the mountaineers were
going back home the same day, Breck and I boarded
the train with them, intending to fish down the fork
of the river to the point where the rest of the party
would strike the same stream, two days later.

At the second station down the road a crowd of
Virginia mountaineers got on board. Most of them

103

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

had been drinking, and tlie festivities soon began. One
drunken joung giant pulled bis revolver, swung it
back over his shoulder — the muzzle almost grazing a
woman^s face behind him — and swung it up again to
send a bullet crashing through the top of the car.
The hammer was at the turning-point when a com-
panion caught his wrist. At the same time, the fel-
low^s sister sprang across the aisle, and, wrenching the
weapon from his grasp, hid it in her dress. Simul-
taneously his partner at the other end of the car was
drawing a .45 Colt's half as long as his arm. A
quick panic ran through the car, and in a moment
there was no one in it with us but the mountaineers,
the conductor, one brakeman, and one other man, who
sat still in his seat, with one hand under his coat. The
prospect was neither pleasant nor peaceful, and we
rose to our feet and waited. The disarmed giant was
raging through the aisle searching and calling, with
mighty oaths, for his pistol. The other had backed
into a corner of the car, waving his revolver, turning
his head from side to side to avoid a surprise in the
rear, white with rage, and just drunk enough to
shoot. The little conductor was unmoved and smiling,
and, by some quiet mesmerism, he kept the two in
subjection until the station was reached.

The train moved out and left us among the drunken
104

Through the Bad Bend

maniacs, no house in sight, the darkness settling on
us, and the unclimbed mountain looming up into it.
The belligerents paid no attention to us, however, but
disappeared quickly, with an occasional pistol-shot
and a yell from the bushes, each time sounding
farther away. The Kentucky mountaineers were
going to climb the mountain. A storm was coming,
but there was nothing else to do. So we shouldered
our traps and followed them.

There were eight of us — an old man and his two
daughters, the husband of one of these, the sweet-
heart of the other, and a third man, who showed sus-
picion of us from the beginning. This man with a
flaring torch led the way; the old man followed him,
and there were two mountaineers deep between the
girls and us, who went last.

It was not long before a ragged line of fire cut
through the blackness overhead, and the thunder
began to crash and the rain to fall. The torch was
beaten out, and for a moment there was a halt.
Breck and I could hear a muffled argument going on
in the air above us, and, climbing toward the voices,
we felt the lintel of a mountain-cabin and heard a
long drawl of welcome.

The cabin was one dark room without even a loft,
the home of a newly married pair. They themselves

105

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

had evidently just gotten home, for the hostess was
on her knees at the big fireplace, blowing a few coals
into a blaze. The rest of us sat on the two beds in
the room waiting for the fire-light, and somebody
began talking about the trouble on the train.

^* Did you see that feller settin' thar with his hand
under his coat while Jim was tryin' to shoot the brake-
man?" said one. "Well, Jim killed his brother a
year ago, an' the feller was jus' waitin' fer a chance
to git Jim right then. I knowed that.''

" Who was the big fellow who started the row, by
flourishing his pistol around? " I asked.

A man on the next bed leaned forward and
laughed slightly. " Well, stranger, I reckon that
was me."

This sounds like the opening chapter of a piece of
fiction, but we had really stumbled upon this man's
cabin in the dark, and he was our host. A little
spinal chill made me shiver. He had not seen us yet,
and I began to wonder whether he would recognize
us when the light blazed up, and whether he would
know that we were ready to take part against him in
the car, and what would happen, if he did. When the
blaze did kindle, he was reaching for his hip, but he
drew out a bottle of apple-jack and handed it over the
foot of the bed.

io6

Through the Bad Bend

" Somebody ought to 'a' knocked my head off," he
said.

" That's so," said the younger girl, with sharp bold-
ness. " I never seed sech doin's."

The old mountaineer, her father, gave her a quick
rebuke, but the man laughed. He was sobering up,
and, apparently, he had never seen us before. The
young wife prepared supper, and we ate and went to
bed — the ten of us in that one room. The two girls
took off their shoes and stockings with frank inno-
cence, and warmed their bare feet at the fire. The
host and hostess gave up their bed to the old moun-
taineer and his son-in-law, and slept, like the rest of
us, on the floor.

We were wakened long before day. Indeed it was
pitch dark when, after a mountain custom, we stum-
bled to a little brook close to the cabin and washed
our faces. A wood-thrush was singing somewhere in
the darkness, and its cool notes had the liquid fresh-
ness of the morning. We did not wait for breakfast,
so anxious were the Kentuckians to get home, or so
fearful were they of abusing their host's hospitality,
though the latter urged us strenuously to stay. ^N'ot
a cent would he take from anybody, and I know now
that he was a moonshiner, a f eudsman, an outlaw, and
that he was running from the sheriff at that very time.

107

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

With a parting pull at the apple-jack, we began, on
an empty stomach, that weary climb. Not far up the
mountain Breck stopped, panting, while the moun-
taineers were swinging on up the path without an
effort, even the girls; but Breck swore that he had
heart disease, and must rest. When I took part of
his pack, the pretty one looked back over her
shoulder and smiled at him without scorn. Both
were shy, and had not spoken a dozen words with
either of us. Half-way up we overtook a man and a
boy, one carrying a tremendous demijohn and the
other a small hand-barrel. They had been over on
the Virginia side selling moonshine, and I saw the
light of gladness in Brock's eye, for his own flask was
wellnigh empty from returning our late host's cour-
tesy. But both man and boy disappeared with a
magical suddenness that became significant later.
Already we were suspected as being revenue spies,
though neither of us dreamed what the matter was.

We reached the top after daybreak, and the beauty
of the sunrise over still seas of white mist and wave
after wave of blue Virginia hills was unspeakable, as
was the beauty of the descent on the Kentucky side,
down through primeval woods of majestic oak and
poplar, under a trembling world of dew-drenched
leaves, and along a tumbling series of waterfalls that

io8

Through the Bad Bend

flashed through tall ferns, blossoming laurel, and
shining leaves of rhododendron.

The sun was an hour high when we reached the
foot of the mountain. There the old man and the
young girl stopped at a little cabin where lived the
son-in-law. "We, too, were pressed to stop, but we
went on with the suspicious one to his house, where
we got breakfast. There the people took pay, for
their house was weather-boarded, and they were more
civilized; or perhaps for the reason that the man
thought us spies. I did not like his manner, and I
got the first unmistakable hint of his suspicions after
breakfast. I was down behind the barn, and he and
another mountaineer came down on the other side.

" Didn't one o' them fellers come down this way? "
I heard him ask.

I started to make my presence known, but he spoke
too quickly, and I concluded it was best to keep still.

" 'No tellin' whut them damn fellers is up to. I
don't like their occupation."

That is, we were the first fishermen to cast a
minnow with a reel into those waters, and it was
beyond the mountaineer's comprehension to under-
stand how two men could afford to come so far and
spend time and a little money just for the fun of fish-
ing. They supposed we were fishing for profit, and

109

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

later they asked us how we kept our fish fresh, and
how we got them over the mountain, and where we
sold them. "With this idea, naturally it was a puzzle
to them how we could afford to give a boy a quarter
for a dozen minnows, and then, perhaps, catch not a
single fish with them.

When I got back to the house, Breck was rigging
his rod, with a crowd of spectators around him. Such
a rod and such a fisherman had never been seen in
that country before. Breck was dressed in a white
tennis-shirt, blue gymnasium breeches, blue stockings,
and white tennis-shoes. With a cap on his shock of
black hair and a .38 revolver in his belt, he was a
thing for those women to look at and to admire, and
for the men to scorn — secretly, of course, for there
was a look in his black eyes that forced guarded re-
spect in any crowd. The wonder of those moun-
taineers when he put his rod together, fastened the
reel, and tossed his hook fifty feet in the air was worth
the morning's climb to see. At the same time they
made fun of our rods, and laughed at the idea of get-
ting out a big " green pyerch '^ — as the mountaineers
call bass — with " them switches." Their method is
to tie a strong line to a long hickory sapling, and, when
they strike a bass, to put the stout pole over one
shoulder and walk ashore with it. Before the sun

no

Through the Bad Bend

was over the mountain, we were wading down the
stream, while two boys carried our minnows and
clothes along the bank. The news of our coming
went before us, and every now and then a man would
roll out of the bushes with a gun and look at us with
much suspicion and some wonder. For two luckless
hours we cast down that too narrow and too shallow
stream before we learned that there was a dam two
miles farther down, and at once we took the land for
it. It was after dinner when we reached it, and
there the boys left us. We could not induce them to
go farther. An old miller sat outside his mill across
the river, looking at us with some curiosity, but no
surprise, for the coming of a stranger in those moun-
tains is always known miles ahead of him.

We told him our names and that we were from
Virginia, but were natives of the Blue-grass, and we
asked if he could give us dinner. His house was half
a mile farther down the river, he said, but the women
folks were at home, and he reckoned they would give
us something to eat. When we started, I shifted my
revolver from my pocket to a kodak-camera case that
I had brought along to hold fishing-tackle.

" I suppose I can put this thing in here ? " I said
to Breck, not wanting to risk arrest for carrying con-
cealed weapons and the confiscation of the pistol,

III

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

which was valuable. Breck hesitated, and the old
miller studied us keenly.

" Well," he said, " if you two air from Kanetucky,
hit strikes me you ought to know the laws of yo' own
State. You can carry it in thar as baggage," he
added, quietly, and I knew that my question had
added another fagot to the flame of suspicion kindling
against us.

In half an hour we were in the cool shade of a
spreading apple-tree in the miller's yard, with our
bare feet in thick, cool grass, while the miller's wife
and his buxom, red-cheeked daughter got us dinner.
And a good dinner it was ; and we laughed and cracked
jokes at each other till the sombre, suspicious old lady
relaxed and laughed, too, and the girl lost some of her
timidity and looked upon Breck with wide-eyed ad-
miration, while Breck ogled back outrageously.

After dinner a scowling mountaineer led a mule
through the yard and gave us a surly nod. Two
horsemen rode up to the gate and waited to escort
us down the river. One of them carried our baggage,
for no matter what he suspects, the mountaineer will
do anything in the world for a stranger until the
moment of actual conflict comes. In our green in-
nocence, we thought it rather a good joke that we
should be taken for revenue men, so that, Breck's flask

112

Through the Bad Bend

being empty, he began by telling one of the men that
we had been wading the river all the morning, that
the water was cold, and that, anyway, a little swallow
now and then often saved a fellow from a cold and
fever. He had not been able to get any from any-
body— and couldn't the man do something? The
mountaineer was touched, and he took the half-dollar
that Breck gave him, and turned it over, with a whis-
pered consultation, to one of two more horsemen that
we met later on the road. Still farther on we found
a beautiful hole of water, edged with a smooth bank
of sand — a famous place, the men told us, for green
" pyerch." Mountaineers rolled out of the bushes to
watch us while we were rigging up, some with guns
and some without. We left our pistols on the shore,
and several examined them curiously, especially mine,
which was hammerless. Later, I showed them how it
worked, and explained that one advantage of it was
that, in close quarters, the other man could not seize
your pistol, get his finger or thumb under your ham-
mer, and prevent you from shooting at all. This
often happens in a fight, of course, and the point ap-
pealed to them strongly, but I could see that they
were wondering why I should be carrying a gun that
was good for close quarters, since close quarters are
rarely necessary except in case of making arrests.

113

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Pretty soon the two men who had gone for Breck's
^^ moonshine '^ returned, and a gleam rose in Break's
eye and went quickly down. Instead of a bottle, the
boy handed back the half-dollar.

" I couldn't git any,'' he said. He lied, of course,
as we both knew, and the disappointment in Breck's
face was so sincere that his companion, with a gesture
that was half sympathy, half defiance, whisked a
bottle from his hip.

" Well, by I'll give him a drink! "

It was fiery, white as water, and so fresh that we
could taste the smoke in it, but it was good, and we
were grateful. All the afternoon, from two to a
dozen people watched us fish, but we had poor luck,
which is never a surprise, fishing for bass. Perhaps
the fish had gone to nesting, or the trouble may have
been the light of the moon, during which they feed all
night, and are not so hungry through the day; or it
may have been any of the myriad reasons that make
the mystery and fascination of catching bass. At
another time, and from the same stream, I have seen
two rods take out one hundred bass, ranging from
one to five pounds in weight, in a single day. An
hour by sun, we struck for the house of the old man
with whom we had crossed the mountain, and, that
night, we learned that we had passed through a local-

114

Through the Bad Bend

ity alive with moonshiners, and banded together with
such system and determination that the revenue
agents rarely dared to make a raid on them. We were
supposed to be two spies who were expected to come
in there that spring. "We had passed within thirty
yards of a dozen stills, and our host hinted where we
might find them. We thanked him, and told him we
preferred to keep as far away from them as possible.
He was much puzzled. He also said that we had been in
the head-quarters of a famous desperado, who was the
leader of the Howard faction in the famous Howard-
Turner feud. He was a non-combatant himself, but
he had " feelin's," as he phrased it, for the other side.
He was much surprised when we told him we were
going back there next day. We had told the people
we were coming back, and next morning we were
foolish enough to go.

As soon as we struck the river, we saw a man with
a Winchester sitting on a log across the stream, as
though his sole business in life was to keep an eye on
us. All that day we were never out of sight of a
mountaineer and a gun; we never had been, I pre-
sume, since our first breakfast on that stream. Still,
everybody was kind and hospitable and honest —
how honest this incident will show. An old woman
cooked dinner especially for us, and I gave her two

115

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

quarters. She took them, put them away, and while
she sat smoking her pipe, I saw something was
troubling her. She got up presently, went into a
room, came back, and without a word dropped one of
the quarters into my hand. Half a dollar was too
much. They gave us moonshine, too, and Breck
remarked casually that we were expecting to meet
our friends at Uncle Job Turner's, somewhere down
the river. They would have red whiskey from the
Blue-grass and we would be all right. Then he
asked how far down Uncle Job lived. The remark
and the question occasioned very badly concealed ex-
citement, and I wondered what had happened, but I
did not ask. I was getting wary, and I had become
quite sure that the fishing must be better down, very
far down, that stream. When we started again, the
mountaineers evidently held a quick council of war.
One can hear a long distance over water at the quiet
of dusk, and they were having a lively discussion about
us and our business over there. Somebody was de-
fending us, and I recognized the voice as belonging to
a red-whiskered fellow, who said he had lived awhile
in the Blue-grass, and had seen young fellows starting
to the Kentucky River to fish for fun. " Oh, them
damn fellers ain't up to nothin'," we could hear him
say, with the disgust of the cosmopolitan. " I tell

ii6

Through the Bad Bend

ye, they lives in town an' they likes to git out this
way! "

I have always believed that this man saved us
trouble right then, for next night the mountaineers
came down in a body to the house where we had last
stopped. But we had gone on rather hastily, and
when we reached Uncle Job Turner's, the trip behind
us became more interesting than ever in retrospect.
All along we asked where Uncle Job lived, and once
we shouted the question across the river, where some
women and boys were at work, weeding corn. As
usual, the answer was another question, and always
the same — what were our names? Breck yelled, in
answer, that we were from Virginia, and that they
w^ould be no wiser if we should tell — an answer that
will always be unwise in the mountains of Kentucky
as long as moonshine is made and feuds survive. We
asked again, and another yell told us that the next
house was Uncle Job's. The next house was rather
pretentious. It had two or three rooms, apparently,
and a loft, and was weather-boarded; but it was as
silent as a tomb. We shouted "Hello! " from out-
side the fence, which is etiquette in the mountains.
!N'ot a sound. We shouted again — once, twice, many
times. It was most strange. Then we waited, and
shouted again, and at last a big gray-haired old fel-

117

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

low slouched out and asked rather surlily what we
wanted.

" Dinner."

He seemed pleased that that was all, and his man-
ner changed immediately. His wife appeared; then,
as if by magic, two or three children, one a slim,
wild, dark-eyed girl of fifteen, dressed in crimson
homespun. As we sat on the porch I saw her passing
through the dark rooms, but always, while we were
there, if I entered one door she slipped out of the
other. Breck was more fortunate. He came up
behind her the next day at sundown while she was
dancing barefooted in the dust of the road, driving her
cows home. Later I saw him in the cow-pen, helping
her milk. He said she was very nice, but very shy.

We got dinner, and the old man sent after a bottle
of moonshine, and in an hour he was thawed out won-
derfully.

We told him where we had been, and as he slowly
began to believe us, he alternately grew sobered and
laughed aloud.

" Went through thar fishin', did ye? Wore yo'
pistols? Axed whar thar was branches whar you
could ketch minners? Oh, Lawd! Didn't ye know
that the stills air aFays up the branches? ToF 'em
you was goin' to meet a party at my house, and stay

ii8

Through the Bad Bend

here awhile fishin^f Oh, Lawdy! Ef that ain't a
good un! "

We didn't see it, but we did later, when we knew
that we had come through the " Bad Bend," which
was the head-quarters of the Howard leader and his
chief men; that Uncle Job was the most prominent
man of the other faction, and lived farthest up the
river of all the Turners; that he hadn't been up in
the Bend for ten years, and that we had given his
deadly enemies the impression that we were friends of
his. As Uncle Job grew mellow, and warmed up in
his confidences, something else curious came out.
Every now and then he would look at me and say:

" I seed you lookin' at my pants." And then he
would throw back his head and laugh. After he had
said this for the third time, I did look at his " pants,"
and I saw that he was soaking wet to the thighs —
why, I soon learned. A nephew of his had killed a
man at the county-seat only a week before. Uncle
Job had gone on his bond. When we shouted across
the river, he was in the cornfield, and when we did
not tell our names, he got suspicious, and, mistaking
our rod-holders for guns, had supposed that his nephew
had run away, and that we were officers come to arrest
him. He had run down the river on the other side,
had waded the stream, and was up in the loft with his

119

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Winchester on us while we were shouting at his gate.
He told us this very frankly. Nor would even he
believe that we were fishing. He, too, thought that
we were ofiicers looking through the Bad Bend for
some criminal, and the least innocent mission that
struck him as plausible was that, perhaps, we might be
looking over the ground to locate a railroad, or pros-
pecting for coal veins. When Uncle Job went down
the road with us the next morning, he took his wife
along, so that no Howard would try to ambush him
through fear of hitting a woman. And late that
afternoon, when we were fishing with Uncle Job's son
in some thick bushes behind the house, some women
passed along in the path above us, and, seeing us, but
not seeing him, scurried out of sight as though fright-
ened. Little Job grinned.

" Them women thinks the Howards have hired you
fellers to layway dad."

The next morning I lost Breck, and about noon I
got a note from him, written with a trembling lead-
pencil, to the effect that he believed he would fish up a
certain creek that afternoon. As the creek was not
more than three feet wide and a few inches deep, I
knew what had happened, and I climbed one of Job'g
mules and went to search for him. Breck had
stumbled upon a moonshine still, and, getting hilari-

120

Through the Bad Bend

ous, had climbed a barrel and was making to a crowd
of mountaineers a fiery political speech. Breck had
captured that creek, " wild-cat " still and all, and to
this day I never meet a mountaineer from that region
who does not ask, with a wide grin, about Breck.

When we reached the county-seat, the next day, we
met the revenue deputy. He said the town was talk-
ing about two spies who were up the Fork. We told
him that we must be the spies. The old miller was
the brains of the Bend, he said, both in outwitting the
revenue men and in planning the campaign of the
Howard leader against the Turners, and he told us of
several fights he had had in the Bad Bend. He said
that we were lucky to come through alive; that what
saved us was sticking to the river, hiring our minnows
caught, leaving our pistols on the bank to be picked
up by anybody, the defence of the red-whiskered man
from the Blue-grass, and Brock's popularity at the
still. I thought he was exaggerating — that the
mountaineers, even if convinced that we were spies,
would have given us a chance to get out of the
country — but when he took me over to a room across
the street and showed me where his predecessor, a man
whom I had known quite well, was shot through a
window at night and killed, I was not quite so sure.

But still another straw of suspicion was awaiting us.

121

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

When we readied tlie railroad again — ^by another
route, you may be sure — Breck, being a lawyer, got
permission for us to ride on a freight-train, and thus
save a night and a day. The pass for us was tech-
nically charged to the mail service. The captain and
crew of the train were overwhelmingly and mysteri-
ously polite to us — an inexplicable contrast to the
surliness with which passengers are usually treated
on a freight-train. When we got off at the Gap,
and several people greeted us by name, the captain
laughed.

" Do you know what these boys thought you two
were?" he asked, referring to his crew. "They
thought you were freight ' spotters.' ''

The crew laughed. I looked at Breck, and I didn't
wonder. He was a ragged, unshaven tramp, and I
was another.

Months later, I got a message from the Bad Bend.
Breck and I mustn't come through there any more.
We have never gone through there any more,
though anybody on business that the mountaineers
understand, can go more safely than he can cross
Broadway at Twenty-third Street, at noon. As a
matter of fact, however, there are two other forks to
the Cumberland in which the fishing is very good
indeed, and just now I would rather risk Broadway.

122

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

THE Judge parted his coat-tails to the big pine-
wood blaze, and, with one measuring, vertical
glance, asked me two questions:
" Do you hunt coons? Do you hunt gray foxes? "
A plea of not guilty was made to both, and the
Judge waved his hand.

"If you do," he said, "I decline to discuss the
subject with you."

Already another fox-hunter, who was still young,
and therefore not quite lost to the outer world, had
warned me. " They are cranks," he said, " fox-hunt-
ers are — all of 'em."

And then he, who was yet sane, went on to tell about
his hound. Red Star: how Eed Star would seek a lost
trail from stump to stump, or on top of a rail-fence;
or, when crows cawed, would leave the trail and make
for the crows; how he had once followed a fox twenty
hours, and had finally gone after him into a sink-hole,

125

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

from which he had been rescued several days later,
almost starved. On cold winter nights the young
hunter would often come on the lonely figure of the
old Judge, who had walked miles out of town merely
to sit on the fence and listen to the hounds. Against
him, the warning was particular. I made a tentative
mention of the drag-hunt, in which the hounds often
ran mute, and the fun was in the horse, the ride,
and the fences. For a moment the Judge was re-
flective.

" I remember," he said, slowly, as though he were
a century back in reminiscence, " that the darkies used
to drag a coonskin through the woods, and run mon-
grels after it."

A hint of fine scorn was in his tone, but it was the
scorn of the sportsman and not of the sectionalist,
though the Judge, when he was only fifteen, had
carried pistol and sabre after John Morgan, and was,
so the General said, a moment later, the gamest man
in the Confederacy.

" Why, sir, there is but one nobler animal than a
long-eared, deep-mouthed, patient fox-hound — and
that is a woman! Think of treating him that way!
And the music is the thing! Many an old Virginian
would give away a dog because his tongue was not in
harmony with the rest. The chorus should be a

126

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

chord. I shall never hear sweeter music, unless, by
the grace of Heaven, I hear some day the choiring of
angels/'

I was about to speak of the Maine and Massachu-
setts custom of shooting the fox before the hounds, but
the Judge forestalled me.

" I believe, sir, that is worse — if worse be possible.
I do not know what excuse the gentlemen make.
They say, I believe, that their dogs cannot catch their
red fox — that no dogs can. Well, the ground up
there, being rough, is favorable to the fox, but our.
dogs can catch him. Logan, a Kentucky dog, has
just caught a Massachusetts fox for the Brunswick
Fur Club, and we have much better dogs here than
Logan.

" Yes," he added, tranquilly; " I believe it is gen-
erally conceded now that the Kentucky dog has taken
a stand with the Kentucky horse. The winnings on
the bench and in the field, the reports wherever Ken-
tucky dogs have been sent, the advertisements in the
sporting papers, all show that. Steve Walker, who, by
the way, will never sell a dog, and who will buy any
dog that can beat his own, has tried every strain in
this country except the Wild Goose Pack of Tennes-
see. He has never gone outside the State without
getting a worse dog. I reckon phosphate of lime has

127

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

something to do with it. The same natural forces in
the Blue-grass region that make horses better im-
prove the dogs. Since the war, too, we have bred
with more care; we have hunted more than people
elsewhere, and we have bred the dog as we have the
race-horse. Why, the Walkers — ah! " — the Judge
stopped to listen — " There's Steve's horn now ! "

Only one man could blow that long mellow call,
swelling and falKng without a break, and ending like
a distant echo.

" We better go, boys," he said.

Outside the hotel, the hunter's moon was tipped
just over one of the many knobs from which Daniel
Boone is said to have looked first over the Blue-grass
land. A raindrop would have slipped from it into
the red dawn just beneath. And that was the trouble,
for hunters say there is never rain to drop when the
moon is tipped that way. So the field trials had been
given up; the country was too rough; and the ele-
ments and the local sportsmen, who hunted the ground
by night that we were to hunt by day, held the effort
in disfavor. That day everybody and everybody's
hound were to go loose for simple fun, and the fun was
beginning before dawn. In the stable-yard, darkies
and mountaineers were bridling and saddling horses.
The hunters were noisily coming and going from the
128

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

little hotel that was a famous summer-resort in the
Bath County Hills forty years ago, and, once owned by
a great Kentuckian, was, the tradition goes, lost by him
in a game of poker. Among them were several Blue-
grass girls in derby hats, who had been in the saddle
with us on the previous day from dark to dark, and on
to midnight, and who were ready to do it again.
There were fox-hunters from Maine, the Virginias,
Ohio, and from England; and the contrasts were
marked even among the Kentuckians who came from
the Iroquois Club, of Lexington, with bang-tailed
horses and top-boots; from the Strodes Valley Hunt
Club and the Bourbon Kennels, who disdain any ac-
coutrement on horseback that they do not wear on
foot; and from the best-known fox-hunting family in
the South, who dress and hunt after their own way, and
whom I shall call Walkers, because they are never seen
on foot. No Walker reaches the age of sixteen with-
out being six feet high. There were four with us,
and the shortest was six feet two, and weighed 185
pounds. They wore great oilskin mackintoshes, and
were superbly mounted on half thoroughbreds. N'ot
long ago they carried their native county Democratic
for one friend by 250 majority. At the next election
they carried it Kepublican by the same majority for an-
other friend. ^^ We own everything in common," said

129

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

one, who asked me to come over and spend a few
months, or a year, or the rest of my natural life with
him, " except our dogs." l^o Walker's dog will follow
any other Walker, or come to his horn. All the Walk-
ers had great, soft musical voices and gentle manners.
All were church members, and, mirahile diduy only
one of the four touched whiskey, and he lightly.
About one of them the General told a remarkable
story.

This Walker, he said, got into a difficulty with an-
other young man just after the war. The two rode
into the county town, hitched their horses, and met
in the court-house square. They drew their pistols,
which were old-fashioned, and emptied them, each
man getting one bullet. Then they drew knives.
They closed in after both had been cut slightly. The
other man made for Walker's abdomen, just as
Walker's knife was high over his head for a terrible
downward stroke. Walker had on an old army belt,
and the knife struck the buckle and broke at the hilt.
Walker saw it as his knife started down. He is a man
of fierce passion, but even at that moment he let his
knife fall and walked away.

" It's easy enough in a duel," commented the Gen-
eral, " when everything is cool and deliberate, to hold
up if your adversary's pistol gets out of order; but in

130

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

a hand-to-hand fight like that! They have been close
friends ever since — naturally."

Being such a company, we rode out of the stable-
yard through the frosty dawn toward the hills, which
sink by and by to the gentle undulations of Blue-grass
pasture and woodland.

n

In Kentucky, the hunting of the red fox antedates
the war but little. The old Kentucky fox-hound was
of every color, loose in build, with open feet and a
cowhide tail. He had a good nose, and he was slow,
but he was fast enough for the gray fox and the deer.
Somewhere about 1855 the fox-hunters discovered
that their hounds were chasing something they could
not catch. A little later a mule-driver came through
Cumberland Gap with a young hound that he called
Lead. Lead caiight the eye of old General Maupin,
who lived in Madison County, and whose name is
now known to every fox-hunter North and South.
Maupin started poor, and made a fortune in a frolic.
He would go out hunting with his hounds, and would
come back home with a drove of sheep and cattle. He
was a keen trader, and would buy anything. He
bought Lead, and, in the first chase. Lead slipped away

131

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

from the old deer-hounds as though he knew what he
was after; and it was not long before he captured the
strange little beast that had been puzzling man and
dog so long. Lead was thus the first hound to catch
a red fox in Kentucky; and since every fox-hound in
the State worthy of the name goes back to Lead, he is
a very important personage. General Maupin never
learned Lead's exact origin; perhaps he did not try
very hard, for he soon ran across a suspicion that Lead
had been stolen. He tried other dogs from the same
locality in Tennessee from which he supposed the
hound came, but with no good results. Lead was a
lusus naturcBy and old fox-hunters say that his like
was never before him, and has never been since.

People came for miles to see the red fox that Lead
ran down, and the event was naturally an epoch in the
history of the chase in Kentucky. ITobody knows
why it took the red fox so long to make up his mind
to emigrate to Kentucky, not being one of the second
families of Virginia, and nobody knows why he came
at all. Perhaps the shrewd little beast learned that
over the mountains the dogs were slow and old-fash-
ioned, and that he could have great fun with them and
die of old age; perhaps the prescience of the war
moved him; but certain it is that he did not take the
" Wilderness Eoad " until the fifties, when began the
132

I

Xi
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o

be

s

^>-'

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

inexplicable movement of his race south and south-
west. But he took the trail of the gray fox then, just
as the tide-water Virginians took the trail of the
pioneers, and the gray fox gave way, and went
farther west, as did the pioneer, and let the little red-
coated aristocrat stamp his individuality on the Blue-
grass as his human brother had done. For a long
while he did have fun with those clumsy old hounds,
running a hundred easy lengths ahead, dawdling time
and again past his den, disdaining to take refuge, and
turning back to run past the hounds when they had
given up the chase — great fun, until old Lead came.
After that. General Maupin and the Walkers imported
Martha and Kifler from England, and, since then, the
red fox has been kept to his best pace so steadily that
he now shows a proper respect for even a young Ken-
tucky fox-hound. He was a great solace after the war,
for Kentucky was less impoverished than other South-
ern States, horses were plentiful, it was inexpensive to
keep hounds, and other game was killed off. But
fox-himting got into disrepute. Hunting in Southern
fashion requires a genius for leisure that was taken
advantage of by ne'er-do-weels and scapegraces, young
and old, who used it as a cloak for idleness, drinking,
and general mischief. They broke down the farmer's
fences, left his gates open, trampled his grain, and

133

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

brought a reproach on the fox-hunter that is alive yet.
It is dying rapidly, however, and families like the
Clays, of Bourbon, the Robinsons and Hamiltons, of
Mount Sterling, the Millers and Winns, of Clark, and
the Walkers, of Garrard, are lifting the chase into
high favor. Hitherto, the hunting has been done in-
dividually. Now hunt clubs are being formed.
Chief among them are the Bourbon Kennels, the
Strodes Valley Hunt Club, and the Iroquois Club, the
last having been in existence for ten years. This club
does not confine itself to foxes, but is democratic
enough to include coons and rabbits.

Except in Maine and Massachusetts, where the fox
is shot before the hounds, fox-hunting in the ITorth ia
modelled after English ways. In Kentucky and else-
where in the South, it is almost another sport. The
Englishman wants his pack uniform in color, size,
tongue, and speed — a hound that is too fast must be
counted out. The Kentuckian wants his hound to
leave the rest behind, if he can. He has no whipper-
in, no master of the hounds. Each man cries on his
own dog. ISTor has he any hunting terms, like " cross-
country riding," or " riding to hounds." To hunt for
the pleasure of the ride is his last thought. The fun
is in the actual chase, in knowing the ways of the
plucky little animal, in knowing the hounds indi-

134

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

vidually, and the tongue of each, in the competition
of one man's dog with another, or of favorites in the
same pack. It is not often that the hounds are fol-
lowed steadily. The stake-and-ridered fences every-
where, and the barbed wire in the Blue-grass, would
make following impossible, even if it were desirable.
Instead, the hunters ride from ridge to ridge to wait,
to listen, and to see. The Walkers hunt chiefly at
night. The fox is then making his circuit for food,
and the scent is better. Less stock is moving about to
be frightened, or among which the fox can confuse
the hounds. The music has a mysterious sweetness,
the hounds hunt better, it seems less a waste of
time, and it is more picturesque. At night the hounds
trot at the horses' heels until a fire is built on some
ridge. Then they go out to hunt a trail, while the
hunters tie their horses in the brush, and sit around
the fire telling stories until some steady old hound
gives tongue.

"There's old Rock! Whoop-ee! Go it, old
boy!" Only he doesn't say "old boy" exactly.
The actual epithet is bad, though it is endearing. It
reaches old Eock if he is three miles away, and the
crowd listens.

" There's Eanger! Go it, Alice, old girl! Lead's
ahead!"

135

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Then they listen to the music. Sometimes the fox
takes an unsuspected turn, and they mount and ride
for another ridge; and the reckless, daredevil race
they make through the woods in the dark is to an out-
sider pure insanity. Sometimes a man will want to
go on one side of the tree when his horse prefers an-
other, and the man is carried home senseless. Some-
times a horse is killed, but no lesson is learned. The
idea prevails that the more reckless one is, the better
is his chance to get through alive, and it seems to hold
good. In their county, the Walkers have both hills
and blue-grass in which to hunt. The fox, they say,
is leaving the hills, and taking up his home in the plan-
tations, because he can get his living there with more
ease. They hunt at least three nights out of the week
all the year around, and they say that May is the best
month of the year. The fox is rearing her young
then. The hunters build a fire near a den, the she-
fox barks to attract the attention of the dogs, and the
race begins. At that time, the fox will not take a
straight line to the mountains and end the chase as at
other times of the year, but will circle about the den.
It is true, perhaps, that at such times the male fox
relieves the mother and takes his turn in keeping
the hounds busy. The hunters thus get their pleas-
ure without being obliged to leave their camp-fire.
136

Listening to the Music of the Dogs.

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

Karely at this time is the fox caught, and provided he
has had the fun of the chase, the Kentucky hunter is
secretly glad, I believe, that the little fellow has gone
scot-free.

Such being the hunt, there is, of course, no cere-
mony whatever in its details; it is " go as you please,"
as to horse, way of riding, dress, and riding accoutre-
ments. The effect is picturesque and individual.
Each man dresses, usually, as he dresses on foot, his seat
is the military seat, his bridle has one rein, his horse
is bridle-wise, and his hunter is his saddle-horse. The
Kentuckian does not like to trot anywhere in the
saddle. He prefers to go in a " rack," or a running
walk. His horse, when he jumps at all, does not take
fences in his stride, but standing. And I have yet to
see anything more graceful than the slow rear, the
calculating poise, the leap wholly from the hind feet,
and the quick, high gather to clear the fence. It is
not impossible to find a horse that will feel for the top
rail with his knees, and if they are not high enough,
he will lift them higher before making his leap. I
have known of one horse that, while hitched to a stake-
and-ridered fence, would jump the fence without
unhitching himself.

It was an odd and interesting crowd that went
through the woods that morning — those long-maned,

137

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

long-tailed horses, and their riders, the giants in
slouched hats and oilskins, the pretty girls with a soft
fire of anticipation in their straight, clear eyes —
especially to the hunters from the East, and to the
Englishman with his little hunting-saddle, his short
stirrups, his top-boots thrust into them to the heels,
and his jockey-like seat — ^just as he was odd to them.
I saw one Kentuckian double on his horse, laughing
at the apparent inefficiency of his appearance, little
knowing that in the English hunting-field the laugh
would have been the other way.

To the stranger, the hounds doubtless looked small
and wiry, being bred for speed, as did the horses, be-
cause of the thoroughbred blood in them, livery hacks
though most of them were. Perhaps he was most
surprised at the way those girls dashed through the
woods, and the way the horses galloped over stones and
roots, and climbed banks, for which purpose the East-
em hunter would have been inadequate, through lack
of training. The Southern way of riding doubtless
struck him as slovenly — the loose rein, the toes in the
stirrups (which upheld merely the weight of the legs),
the easy, careless, graceful seat; but he soon saw that
it was admirably adapted to the purpose at hand —
staying on the horse and getting out all that there was
in him. For when the Southern fox-hunter starts
138

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

after his hounds through wood and thicket, in day-
light or dark, you know whence came the dashing
horsemanship that gave the South a marked advantage
some thirty years ago. And when he gets warmed
up, and opens his throat to cry on his favorite hound,
you know at last the origin of the " rebel yell," and
you hear it again but little changed to-day.

m

Within ten minutes after the dogs were unleashed,
there was an inspiriting little brush through the
woods. A mule went down, and his rider executed
a somersault. Another rider was unhorsed against a
tree. How the girls came through with their skirts
was a mystery; but there they were, eager and smiling,
when we halted on the edge of a cleared field. The
hounds were circling far to the left. The General
pointed to a smouldering fire which the local sportsmen
had used through the night.

" It's an old trail," he said, and we waited there, as
we waited anywhere, with an unwearying patience
that would have thrown an Eastern hunter into
hysteria.

" "Noj sir," said the General, courteously, in answer
to a question; " I never sell a fox-dog; I consider him

139

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

a member of my household. It would be a sacrilege
to sell him." Then he continued learnedly and
calmly:

" As is the fox, so in time is the dog; that is the
theory. The old English dog was big-boned, coarse,
and heavy, and he had to have greyhound blood
before he could catch the English red fox. The Eng-
lish dog has always been, and is now, inadequate for
the American red fox. By selection, by breeding
winner with winner, we have got a satisfactory dog,
and the more satisfactory he is, the more is he like the
fox, having become smaller in size, finer in bone,
and more compact in shape. The hunted moulds the
hunter: the American red fox is undoubtedly superior
to the English red fox in speed, endurance, and
stratagem, and he has made the American dog
superior. The principle was illustrated when old
Lead came over to Cumberland; for he was rather
small and compact, his hair was long and his brush
heavy, though his coat was coal-black except for a
little tan about the face and eyes. The Virginia red
fox had already fashioned Lead."

The hounds were coming back now; they were near
when the music ceased. The great yellow figure of a
Walker was loping toward them through the frost-
tipped sedge, with his hat in his hand and his thick
140

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

gray hair catching the first sunlight. The General
was right; the trail was old, and it was lost. As we
rode across the field, however, an old hound gave
tongue. Sharp, quick music began, and ceased just
as another Walker was reaching down into his trousers'
pocket for his plug of tobacco.

" I believe that was a rabbit," he said. " I'm going
over there and knock old Kock in the head." With-
out taking his hand from his pocket, he touched his
horse, and the animal rose in his tracks, poised, and
leaped, landing on a slippery bank. The plug of
tobacco was in one corner of the rider's mouth when
both struck the road. He had moved in his saddle
no more than if his horse had stepped over a log.
Nothing theatrical was intended. The utter non-
chalance of the performance was paralyzing. He did
not reach old Kock. Over to the right, another hound
raised so significant a cry that Rock, with an answer-
ing bay, went for him. In a moment they were
sweeping around a knoll to the right, and the third
Walker turned his horse through the sedge, loping
easily, his hat still in his hand, a mighty picture on
horseback; and as I started after him, I saw the
fourth brother scramble up a perpendicular bank
twice the length of his horse — each man gone accord-
ing to his own judgment. I followed the swinging

141

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

black hat, and caught up, and we halted in the woods
to listen, both jerking the reins to keep the horses from
champing their bits. One peculiar, deep, musical
tongue rose above the pack's cry. The big Walker
stood in his stirrup, with his face uplifted, and I saw
in it what fox-hunting means to the Kentuckian.
Had he been looking into heaven, his face could not
have been more rapt.

" That's Rock ! " he said, breathlessly, and then
he started through the woods. He weighed over
200, and was six feet four. A hole through the
woods that was big enough for him, was, I thought,
big enough for me, and I had made up my mind to
follow him half an hour, anyhow. My memory of
that ride is a trifle confused. I saw the big yellow
oilskin and the thick gray hair ahead of me, whisking
around trees and stumps, and over rocks and roots. I
heard a great crashing of branches and a clatter of
stones. Every jump something rapped me across the
breast or over the head; my knees grazed trees on each
side; a thorn dug into my face not far from one eye;
and then I lay down on my horse's neck and thought
of my sins. I did not know what it was all about,
but I learned when I dared to lift my head. We
had been running for a little hollow between the hills
to see the fox pass, but we were too quick. Several
142

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

hunters had crossed the trail before the hounds, and
fox and scent were lost.

" You've bu'sted up the chase," said a hunter, with
deep disgust.

" Who— we? " said the Walker. " Why, we have
just been riding quietly up the ridge, haven't we?"
Quietly — that was his idea of riding quietly!

I told the General about that ride, and the General
laughed. " That's ^im," he said, with ungram-
matical emphasis. " He's fifty-three now, but he's
the hardest hunter in this State to follow."

We had to end the chase that day, and we went
back to the hotel, early in the afternoon, so disheart-
ened that the General threw his pride and his hunting
traditions to the wind, and swore with a beautiful oath
that the ladies should have a chase. He got a moun-
taineer to climb a mule and drag a coonskin around
the little valley. The natives brought in their dogs,
and entered them for a quart of whiskey. The music
started, and Logan was allowed to let out his noble
length for exercise, and Patsy Powell slipped her leash
and got away, while her master swore persistently that
she was running because the others were — that she
scorned the scent of a drag, and would hardly run a
gray fox, let alone the skin of a coon. Logan came in
ahead: but a native got the whiskey, and in half an

143

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

hour every one of his friends owned the best dog in the
county.

That last night, after a game of blind-man's-buff, we
had intersectional toasts and congratulations, and wel-
comes to come again. The conditions had all been
antagonistic. It was too early; it was too dry; and
there were many other reasons.

The man from the Brunswick Fur Club explained
that in his country the sportsmen shot the foxes be-
cause the hounds could not catch them fast enough.
The foxes were so thick up there that the people could
hardly raise a Thanksgiving turkey. So they shot
them to appease the farmers, whom they had to fight
annually in the Legislature to prevent them from hav-
ing the fox exterminated by law as a pest. The
Southern sportsmen were glad to hear that, and drank
to his health, and argued that the solution of the diffi-
culty was to try more dogs like Logan. Then every-
body discussed phases and problems of the chase that
emphasized the peculiarities of hunting in the South
— ^how the hounds, like the race-horse, have grown
lighter, more rangy in form, smaller, solider in bone;
and how, in spite of the increase in speed, they yet
win by bottom, rather than by speed; that it was,
after all, a question of the condition of the fox,
whether he was gorged or not; that rough ground
144

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

being favorable to the fox, more kills were made south
of Virginia, because the ground is favorable to" the
hound ; how, since the war, the breeding has been tow-
ard better feet, rougher hair, better brush, gameness,
nose, and speed. Yet the Walkers say that hounds
are not as good as they were twenty years ago; that
the English dogs are tougher and have more bottom
and less nose and speed; that the half thorough-bred
makes the best hunter, the thorough-bred being too
high-strung, too fretful; that the right proportion of
English blood in the hound is one-fourth. And
everybody wondered why some Kentucky horseman
has never bred hunters for the Eastern market, argu-
ing that the Kentucky hunter should excel, as the
race-horse and the trotter have excelled.

One and another told how a fox will avoid a corn-
field, because a muddy tail impedes him; how he will
swim a creek simply to wash it out; and how, in
Florida, he will swim a river to escape the dogs,
knowing that they will not follow him through fear of
the alligators. How he will turn up-stream when he
is not hard pressed, and down-stream when he is.
Does the red fox actually kill out the gray? One man
had come on the fresh-bitten carcass of a gray in the
snow, and, about it, there was not another sign than the
track of a red fox. Or, does the gray disappear be-

M5

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

cause he is more easily caught, or does an instinctive
terror of the red drive the gray off to other hunting-
grounds? A hunter declared that a full-grown gray
would show mortal terror of a red cub. Is the red
fox a coward, or is he the only sporting member of the
animal kingdom? Does he really enjoy the chase?
Many had seen him climb a stump, or fence, to look
back and listen to the music. One man claimed that
he often doubled out of curiosity to see where the dogs
were, though another had seen a fox go through the
window of a deserted house, through the floor, and out
under it; and in doubling, go through it just the other
way. He always did that, and that did not look like
curiosity. Several had known a fox, after the hounds
had given up the chase and turned homeward, to turn,
too, and run past the dogs with a plain challenge to try
it again. Another said he had known a fox to run
till tired, and then let a fresh fox take up the trail,
and lead the hounds on while he rested in a thicket
twenty yards away. All except one hunter had
known foxes to run past their holes several times dur-
ing the chase, and often to be caught within one or
two hundred yards of a den. One opinion was that a
fox would not go into his hole because he was too hot
and would smother; another said he was game. But
the doubting hunter, an old gentleman who was nearly

146

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky

seventy, and who had kept close behind the hounds on
a big sorrel, with an arm that had been thrown out of
place at the shoulder only the night before, declared
that most fox-stories were moonshine, that the fox was
a sneaking little coward, and would make for a hole
as soon as he heard a dog bark. There was one man
who knew another man who had seen a strange thing.
All the others had heard of it, and many believed it.
A fox, hard pressed, had turned, and, with every
bristle thrown forward, had run back, squealing
piteously, into the jaws of the pack.

" That's a bluff game," said the old hunter.

" !N'o," said another; " he knew that his end had
come, and he went to meet it with his colors flying, like
the dead-game little sport that he is."

147

To the Breaks of Sandy

To the Breaks of Sandy

DOWN in the southwestern comer of Virginia,
and just over the Kentucky line, are the Gap
and " The Gap " — the one made by nature
and the other by man. One is a ragged gash down
through the Cumberland Mountains, from peak to
water level; and the other is a new little, queer little
town, on a pretty plateau which is girdled by two run-
ning streams that loop and come together like the
framework of an ancient lute. Northeast the range
runs, unbroken by nature and undisturbed by man,
until it crumbles at the Breaks of Sandy, seventy
miles away. There the bass leaps from rushing
waters, and there, as nowhere else this side of the
Rockies, is the face of nature wild and shy.

It was midsummer, the hour was noon, and we were
bound for the Breaks of Sandy, seventy miles away.

'No similar aggregate of man, trap, and beast had
ever before penetrated those mountain wilds. The
wagon was high-seated and the team was spiked, with
Rock and Ilidgling as wheel horses, Diavolo as

151

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

leader, and Dolly, a half -thorough-bred, galloping be-
hind under Sam, the black cook, and a wild Western
saddle, with high pommels, heavily hooded stirrups,
hand-worked leather, and multitudinous straps and
shaking rawhide strings; and running alongside,
Tiger, bull-terrier. Any man who was at Andover,
Cornell, or Harvard during certain years will, if he
sees these lines, remember Tiger.

As for the men — there was Josh, ex-captain of a
Kentucky Horse Guard, ex-captain of the volunteer
police force back at " The Gap," and, like Henry
Clay, always captain whenever and wherever there
was anything to be done and more than one man was
needed to do it; now, one of the later-day pioneers
who went back over the Cumberland, not many years
ago, to reclaim a certain wild little corner of old Vir-
ginia, and then, as now, the first man and the leading
lawyer of the same. There was another Kentuckian,
fresh from the Blue-grass — Little Willie, as he was
styled on this trip — being six feet three in his
bare feet, carrying 190 pounds of bone and muscle;
champion heavy-weight with his fists in college
(he could never get anybody to fight with him),
centre-rush in foot-ball, with this grewsome record
of broken bones: collar-bone, one leg, one knee
three times, and three teeth smashed — smashed by

152

To the Breaks of Sandy

biting through his nose guard against each other
when he set his jaws to break through a hostile line.
Also, Willie was ex-bugler of a military school, singer
of coon songs unrivalled, and with other accomplish-
ments for which there is no space here to record.
There was Dan, boy-manager of a mighty coal com-
pany, good fellow, and of importance to the dog-lover
as the master of Tiger. I include Tiger here, be-
cause he was so little less than human. There are no
words to describe Tiger. He was prepared for Yale
at Andover, went to Cornell in a pet, took a post-grad-
uate course at Harvard, and, getting indifference and
world-weariness there, followed his master to pioneer
in the Cumberland. Tiger has a white collar, white-
tipped tail, white feet; his body is short, strong, close-
knit, tawny, ringed; and his peculiar distinctions are
intelligence, character, magnetism. All through the
mountains Tiger has run his fifty miles a day behind
Dolly, the thorough-bred ; so that, in a radius of a hun-
dred miles, there is nobody who does not know that
dog. Still, he never walks unless it is necessary, and
his particular oscillation is between the mines and
" The Gap," ten miles apart. Being a coal magnate,
he has an annual pass and he always takes the train —
alone, if he pleases — changing cars three times and
paying no attention, until his stations are called.

153

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Sometimes he is too weary to go to a station, so he sits
down on the track and waits for the train. I have
known the engineer of a heavily laden freight train to
slacken up when he saw Tiger trotting ahead between
the rails, and stop to take him aboard, did Tiger but
nod on him. I have never seen man, woman, or child,
of respectable antecedents, whom that dog didn't love,
and nobody, regardless of antecedents, who didn't
love that dog.

Such, we rattled out of " The Gap " that mid-
summer noon. I^orthward, through the Gap, a cloud
of dun smoke hung over the Hades of coke ovens that
Dan had planted in the hills. On the right was the
Ridge, heavy with beds of ore. Straight ahead was a
furnace, from which the coke rose as pale-blue smoke
and the ore gave out a stream of molten iron. Farther
on, mountains to the right and mountains to the left
came together at a little gap, and toward that point we
rattled up Powell's Valley — smiling back at the sun;
furnace, ore-mine, coke-cloud, and other ugly signs of
civilization dropping behind us fast, and our eyes set
toward one green lovely spot that was a shrine of
things primeval.

In the wagon we had a tent, and things to eat, and
a wooden box that looked like a typewriter case,
under lock and key, and eloquently inscribed:
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To the Breaks of Sandy

" Glass, 2 gal." It is a great way to carry the
indispensable — in a wagon — and I recommend it to
fishermen.

At the foot of the first mountain was a spring and
we stopped to water the horses and unlock that case.
Twenty yards above, and to one side of the road, a
mountaineer was hanging over the fence, looking
down at us.

" Have a drink? " said Josh.

" Yes," he drawled, " if ye'll fetch it up."

" Come an' get it," said Josh, shortly.

" Are you sick? " I asked.

" Sort o' puny."

We drank.

" Have a drink? " said Josh once more.

" If ye'll fetch it up."

Josh drove the cork home with the muscular base
of his thumb.

" I'm damned if I do."

Dan whistled to Diavolo, and we speculated. It
was queer conduct in the mountaineer — why didn't
he come down?

" I don't know," said Dan.

" He really came down for a drink," I said, know-
ing the mountaineer's independence, ^' and he wanted
to prove to himself and to us that he didn't."

155

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

" A smart Alec," said Little Willie.

" A plain damn fool," said Josh.

Half an hour later we were on top of the moun-
tain, in the little gap where the mountains came
together. Below us the valley started on its long, rich
sweep southward, and beyond were the grim shoulders
of Black Mountains, which we were to brush now and
then on our way to the " Breaks."

There Dan put Tiger out of the wagon and made
him walk. After three plaintive whines to his mas-
ter to show cause for such an outrage. Tiger dropped
nose and eyes to the ground and jogged along with
such human sullenness that Willie was led to speak to
him. Tiger paid no attention. I called him and
Dan called him. Tiger never so much as lifted eye
or ear, and Willie watched him, wondering.

" Why, that dog's got a grouch," he said at last,
delightedly. " I tell you he's got a grouch." It was
Willie's first observation of Tiger. Of course he had
a " grouch " as distinctly as a child who is old enough
to show petulance with dignity. And having made
us feel sufficiently mean. Tiger dropped quite behind,
as though to say : " I'm gettin' kind o' tired o' this.
Now ^ It's come here. Tiger,' and ^ Stick in the mud,
Tiger,' and straightway again, ' Tiger, come here.' I
don't like it. I'd go home if it weren't for Dolly and

156

To the Breaks of Sandy

this nigger here, whom I reckon I've got to watch.
But I'll stick in the mud." And he did.

At dusk we passed through Norton, where Talt
Hall, desperado, killed his thirteenth and last man,
and on along a rocky, muddy, Stygian-black road
to Wise Court-house, where our police guard from
" The Gap," with Josh as captain, guarded Talt for
one month to keep his Kentucky clan from rescuing
him. And there we told Dan and the big Ken-
tuckian how banker, broker, lawyer, and doctor left
his business and his home, cut port-holes in the court-
house, put the town under martial law, and, with
twenty men with Winchesters in the rude box that
enclosed the scaffold, and a cordon of a hundred more
in a circle outside, to keep back a thousand mountain-
eers, thus made possible the first hanging that the
county had ever known. And how, later, in the same
way we hung old Doc Taylor, Hall's enemy — Sweden-
borgian preacher, herb doctor, revenue officer, and des-
perado— the " Ked Fox of the Mountains."

The two listeners were much interested, for, in truth,
that police guard of gentlemen who hewed strictly to
the line of the law, who patrolled the streets of " The
Gap " with billy, whistle, and pistol, knocking down
toughs, lugging them to the calaboose, appearing in
court against them next morning, and maintaining a

157

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

fund for the prosecution of them in the higher courts,
was as unique and successful an experiment in civiliza-
tion as any borderland has ever known.

'Next day we ran the crests of long ridges and
struck good roads, and it was then that we spiked
Eock and Ridgling, with Diavolo as leader.

"Tool 'em!" shouted Willie, and we "tooled"
joyously. A coach-horn was all that we lacked, and
we did not lack that long. Willie evolved one from
his unaided throat, in some mysterious way that he
could not explain, but he did the tooting about as well
as it is ever done with a horn. It was hot, and the
natives stared. They took us for the advance-guard
of a circus.

" Where are you goin' to show? " they shouted.
We crossed ridges, too, tooling recklessly about the
edges of precipices and along roads scarcely wide
enough for one wagon — Dan swinging to the brake
with one hand and holding Josh in the driver's seat
with the other — Willie and I speculating, meanwhile,
how much higher the hind wheel could go from the
ground before the wagon would overturn. It was
great fun, and dangerous.

" Hank Monks is not in it," said Willie.

The brake required both of Dan's hands just
then and Josh flew out into space and landed on
IS8

They took us for the advance-guard of a circus.

To the Breaks of Sandy

his shoulder, some ten feet down the mountain, un-
hurt.

Eock, though it was his first work under harness,
was steady as a plough-horse. Ridgling now and then
would snort and plunge and paw, getting one foot over
the wagon tongue. Diavolo, like his master, was a
born leader, or we should have had trouble indeed.

That night we struck another county-seat, where
the court-house had been a brick bone of contention
for many, many years — two localities claiming the
elsewhere undisputed honor, for the reason that they
alone had the only two level acres in the county on
which a court-house could stand. A bitter fight it
was, and they do say that not many years ago, in a
similar conflict, the opposing factions met to de-
cide the question with fist and skull — 150 picked
men on each side — a direct and curious survival of
the ancient wager of battle. The women prevented
the fight. Over in Kentucky there would have been
a bloody feud. At that town we had but fitful sleep.
Certain little demons of the dark, which shall be
nameless, marked us, as they always mark fresh vic-
tims, for their own.

" I'll bet the}^ look over the register every night,"
said Willie — baring a red-splotched brawny arm next
morning.

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Blue-grass and Rhododendron

" Wingless victory ! " he said, further.

And then on. Wilder and ever wilder, next day,
grew the hills and woods and the slitting chasms be-
tween them. First one hind wheel dished — we braced
it with hickory saplings. Then the other — ^we braced
that. The harness broke — Dan mended that. A
horse cast a shoe — Josh shod him then and there.
These two were always tinkering, and were happy.
Inefficiency made Willie and me miserable — it was
plain that we were to be hewers of wood and drawers
of water on that trip, and we were.

And still wilder and ever wilder was the face of
!N"ature, which turned primeval — turned Greek.
Willie swore he could see the fleeting shapes of
nymphs in the dancing sunlight and shadows under
the beeches. Where the cane-rushes shivered and
shook along the bank of a creek, it was a satyr chasing
a dryad through them; and once — it may have been
the tinkle of water — but I was sure I heard her laugh
float from a dark little ravine high above, where she
had fled to hide. No wonder! We were approach-
ing the most isolated spot, perhaps, this side of the
Rockies. If this be hard to believe, listen. Once we
stopped at a cabin, and Sam, the black cook, went in
for a drink of water. A little girl saw him and was
thrown almost into convulsions of terror. She had
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To the Breaks of Sandy

never seen a negro before. Her mother had told her,
doubtless, that the bad man would get her some day
and she thought Sam was the devil and that he had
come for her. And this in Virginia. I knew there
were many white people in Virginia, and all through-
out the Cumberland, who had never seen a black man,
and why they hate him as they do has always been a
mystery, especially as they often grant him social
equality, even to the point of eating at the same table
with him, though the mountaineer who establishes
certain relations with the race that is still tolerated
in the South, brings himself into lasting disgrace.
Perhaps the hostility reaches back to the time when
the poor white saw him a fatal enemy, as a slave, to the
white man who must work with his hands. And yet,
to say that this competition with the black man, along
with a hatred of his aristocratic master, was the reason
for the universal Union sentiment of the Southern
mountaineer during the war is absurd. Competition
ceased nearly a century ago. Negro and aristocrat
were forgotten — were long unknown. 'No historian
seems to have guessed that the mountaineer was loyal
because of 1776. The fight for the old flag in 1812
and the Mexican War helped, but 1776 was enough to
keep him loyal to this day; for to-day, in life, charac-
ter, customs, speech, and conviction, he is practically

i6i

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

what he was then. But a change is coming now, and
down in a little hollow we saw, suddenly, a startling
sign — a frame house with an upper balcony, and,
moving along that balcony, a tall figure in a pink un-
girded Mother Hubbard. And, mother of all that is
modem, we saw against the doorway below her — a
bicycle. We took dinner there and the girl gave me
her card. It read:

AMAISTDA TOLLIYER,

EXECUTEIX TO JOSIAH TOLLIVER.

Only that was not her name. She owned coal lands,
was a woman of judgment and business, and realizing
that she could not develop them alone, had advertised
for a partner in coal, and, I was told, in love as well.
Anyhow there were numerous pictures of young men
around, and I have a faint suspicion that as we swung
over the brow of the hill, we might have been taken
for suitors four. She had been to school at the
county-seat where we spent the first night, and had
thus swung into the stream of Progress. She had live
gold fish in a glass tank and jugs with plants growing
out of the mouth and out of holes in the sides. And
she had a carpet in the parlor and fire-screens of red
calico and red plush albums, a birthday book, and, of

162

o

To the Breaks of Sandy

course, a cottage organ. It was all prophetic, I sup-
pose, and the inevitable American way toward higher
things; and it was at once sad and hopeful.

Just over the hill, humanity disappeared again and
l^ature turned primeval — turned Greek again. And
again nymphs and river gods began their play.
Pretty soon a dryad took human shape in some black-
berry bushes, and Little Willie proceeded to take
mythological shape as a faun. We modems jollied
him on the metamorphosis.

The Breaks were just ahead. Somewhere through
the green thickness of poplar, oak, and maple, the
river lashed and boiled between gray bowlders, eddied
and danced and laughed through deep pools, or leaped
in waves over long riffles, and we turned toward the
low, far sound of its waters. A slip of a bare-footed
girl stepped from the bushes and ran down the wood-
path, and Willie checked her to engage in unnecessary
small talk and to ask questions whereof he knew the
answers as well as she — all leading to the final one.

" What's your name? " Unlike her hill-sisters, the
girl was not shy.

Shades of Hymettus, but it was fitting. There
were blackberry stains about her red lips. Her eyes
had the gloom of deep woods and shone from the dark-

163

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

ness of her tumbled hair — tumbled it was, like an oat-
field I had seen that morning after a wind and rain
storm that swept it all night long.

"Melissa!" Willie said softly, once, twice, three
times; and his throat gurgled with poetic delight in
the maid and the name. I think he would have said
" Prithee " and addressed her some more, but just
then a homespun mother veered about the corner of a
log cabin, and Melissa fled. Willie thought he had
scared her.

" On the way to the Breaks," he said — " my first."
We hurried the stricken youth on and pitched camp
below the cabin, and on a minnow branch that slipped
past low willows and under rhododendrons and
dropped in happy water-falls into the Breaks, where
began a vertical turreted ledge, hundreds of feet high,
that ran majestically on — miles on.

There Willie at once developed unwonted vim.
We needed milk and butter and eggs, so he left me to
hew wood and draw water while he strode back to the
cabin, and Melissa after them; and he made contracts
for the same daily — he would go for them himself —
and hired all Melissa's little brothers and sisters to pick
blackberries for us.

Then came the first supper in the woods and
draughts from the typewriter case, the label of which
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To the Breaks of Sandy

Willie proceeded to alter, because the level of the
fluid was sinking, and as a tribute to Melissa.

" Glass— 1 gal."

It takes little to make humor in the woods. Fol-
lowed sweet pipes under the stars, thickening multi-
tudinously straight overhead, where alone we could
see them.

Something was troubling Josh that night and I
could see that he hesitated about delivering himself —
but he did.

" Have you fellows — er — ever noticed — er — that
when men get out in the woods they — er — at once
begin to swear? " Each one of us had noticed that
fact. Josh looked severely at me and severely at Dan
and at Willie — not observing that we were looking
severely at him.

" Well," he said, with characteristic decision, " I
think you ought to stop it."

There was a triangular howl of derision.

"We? "I said.

"We!" said Dan.

"Tfe/" yelled Willie.

Josh laughed — he had not heard the rattling
fire of picturesque expletives that he had been turn-
ing loose on Kock and Eidgling since we left the
Gap.

165

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

However, we each agreed to be watchful — of the
others.

By the by, Willie knocked the ashes from his pipe
and picked up a pail — the mother's pail in which he
had brought the milk down to camp.

" I reckon they'll need this," he said, thoughtfully.
" Don't you think they'll need this? " I was sure
they would, and as Willie's colossal shoulders disap-
peared through the bushes we chuckled, and at the fire
Sam, the black cook, snickered respectfully. Willie
did not know the lark habits of the mountaineer. We
could have told him that Melissa was in bed, but we
wickedly didn't. He was soon back, and looking
glum. We chuckled some more.

That night a snake ran across my breast — ^I sup-
pose it was a snake — a toad beat a tattoo on Willie's
broad chest, a horse got tangled in the guy-ropes. Josh
and Dan swore sleepily, and long before the sun
flashed down into our eyes, a mountaineer, Melissa's
black-headed sire, brought us minnows which he had
insisted on catching without help. Willie wondered
at his anxious spirit of lonely accommodation, but it
was no secret to the rest of us. The chances were
that he was a moonshiner, and that he had a " still "
within a mile of our camp — perhaps within a hundred
yards; for moonshine stills are always located on little
i66

To the Breaks of Sandy

running streams like the one into which we dipped our
heads that morning.

After breakfast, we went down that shaded little
stream into the Breaks, where, seons ago, the majestic
Cumberland met its volcanic conqueror, and, after a
heaving conflict, was tumbled head and shoulders to
the lower earth, to let the pent-up waters rush through
its shattered ribs, and where the Big Sandy grinds
through them to-day, with a roar of freedom that once
must have shaken the stars. It was ideal — sun, wind,
rock, and stream. The water was a bit milky; there
were eddies and pools, in sunlight and in shadow, and
our bait, for a wonder, was perfect — chubs, active
cold-water chubs and military minnows — sucker-
shaped little fellows, with one brilliant crimson streak
from gill to base of tail. And we did steady, faithful
work — all of us — including Tiger, who, as Willie said,
was a " fisher-dog to beat the band." But is there
any older and sadder tale for the sportsman than to
learn, when he has reached one happy hunting-ground,
that the game is on another, miles away? Thus the
Indian^s idea of heaven sprang! For years and years
Josh and I had been planning to get to the Breaks.
For years we had fished the three forks of the Cum-
berland, over in Kentucky, with brilliant success, and
the man who had been to the Breaks always smiled

167

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

indulgently when we told our tales, and told, in an-
swer, the marvellous things possible in the wonderful
Breaks. Now we were at the Breaks, and no sooner
there than we were ready, in great disgust, to get
away. We investigated. There had been a drought,
two years before, and the mountaineers had sledged
the bass under the rocks and had slaughtered them.
There had been saw-mills up the river and up its tribu-
taries, and there had been dynamiting. We found
catfish a-plenty, but we were not after catfish. We
wanted that king of mountain waters, the black bass,
and we wanted him to run from one pound to five
pounds in weight and to fight, like the devil that he
is, in the clear cold waters of the Cumberland.
ISTobody showed disappointment more bitter than
Tiger. To say that Tiger was eager and expectant is
to underrate that game little sport's intelligence and
his power to catch moods from his master. At first
he sat on the rocks, with every shining tooth in his
head a finished cameo of expectant delight, and he
watched the lines shaking in the eddies as he would
watch a hole for a rat, or another dog for a fight.
When the line started cutting through the water and
the musical hum of the reel rose. Tiger knew as well as
his master just what was happening.

" Let him run, Dan," he would gurgle, delightedly.
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At the Breaks.

To the Breaks of Sandy

We all knew plainly that that was what he said.
" Give him plenty of line. Don't strike yet — not yet.
Don't you know that he's just running for a rock?
Now he's swallowing the minnow — head first. Off
he goes again — now's your time, man, now — ^wowl "

When the strike came and the line got taut and the
rod bent, Tiger would begin to leap and bark at the
water's edge. As Dan reeled in and the fish would
flash into the air, Tiger would get frantic. When his
master played a bass and the fish cut darting circles
forward and back, with the tip of the rod as a centre
for geometrical evolutions. Tiger would have sprung
into the water, if he had not known better. And
when the bass was on the rocks. Tiger sprang for him
and brought him to his master, avoiding the hook as
a wary lad will look out for the sharp horns of a mud-
cat. But the bass were all little fellows, and Tiger
gurgled his disgust most plainly.

That night, Josh and I comforted ourselves, and
made Dan and Willie unhappy, with tales of what we
had done in the waters of the Cumberland — sixty bass
in one day — four four-pounders in two hours, not to
mention one little whale that drew the scales down to
the five-pound notch three hours after I had him from
the water. We recalled — he and I — how we had
paddled, dragged, and lifted a clumsy canoe, for four

169

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

days, down the wild and beautiful CKnch (sometimes
we had to go ahead and build canals through the rip-
ples), shooting happy, blood-stirring rapids, but catch-
ing no fish, and how, down that river, we had foolishly
done it again. This was the third time we had been
enticed away from the Cumberland, and then and
there we resolved to run after the gods of strange
streams no more. Fish stories followed. Dan re-
called how Cecil Rhodes got his start in South Africa,
illustrating thereby the speed of the shark. Rhodes
was poor, but he brought to a speculator news of the
Franco-Prussian War in a London newspaper of a date
five days later than the speculator's mail. The two
got a corner on some commodity and made large
money. Rhodes had got his paper from the belly of
a shore-cast shark that had beaten the mail steamer
by five round days. That was good, and Willie
thereupon told a tale that he knew to be true.

" You know how rapidly a bass grows? "

We did not know.

^' You know how a bass will use in the same hole
year after year? "

That we did know.

" Well, I caught a yearling once, and I bet a man
that he would grow six inches in a year. To test it, I
tied a little tin whistle to his tail. A year later we

170

To the Breaks of Sandy

went and fished for him. The second day I caught
him." Willie knocked the top-ashes from his pipe
and puffed silently.

"Well?'' we said.

Willie edged away out of reach, speaking softly.

" That tin whistle had grown to a fog-horn." We
spared him, and he quickly turned to a poetico-scien-
tific dissertation on birds and flowers in the Blue-grass
and in the mountains, surprising us. He knew, posi-
tively, what even the great Mr. Burroughs did not
seem to know a few years ago, that the shrike — the
butcher-bird — impales mice as well as his feathered
fellows on thorns, having found a nest in a thorn-tree
up in the Blue-grass which was a ghastly, aerial,
Indian-like burying-place for two mice and twenty
song-sparrows. So, next day, Willie and I turned
unavailingly to Melissa, whom we saw but once speed-
ing through the weeds along the creek bank for home
and, with success, to I^ature; while the indefatigable
Josh and Dan and Tiger whipped the all but response-
less waters once more.

We reached camp at sunset — dispirited all. Tiger
refused to be comforted until we turned loose two big
catfish in a pool of the minnow branch and gave him
permission to bring them out. With a happy wow
Tiger sprang for the outsticking point of a horn and

171

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

with a mad yelp sprang clear of the water. With one
rub of his pricked nose against the bank, he jumped
again. Wherever the surface of the water rippled, he
made a dash, nosing under the grassy clumps where
the fish tried to hide. Twice he got one clear of the
water, but it was hard to hold to the slippery, leathery
skins. In ten minutes he laid both, gasping, on the
bank.

Next morning we struck camp. Willie said he
would go on ahead and let down the fence — which
was near Melissa's cabin. He was sitting on the
fence, with a disconsolate pipe between his teeth, when
we rattled and shook over the stony way up the creek
— sitting alone. Yet he confessed. He had had a
brief farewell with Melissa. What did she say?

" She said she was sorry we were going," said
modest Willie, but he did not say what he said; and
he lifted the lid of the typewriter case, the label of
which was slowly emptying to a sad and empty lie.

" Thus pass the flowers," he said, with a last back-
ward look to the log-cabin and the black-haired,
blackberry-stained figure watching at the corner.
" Such is life — a lick and a promise, and then no
more." The wagon passed under the hill, and
Melissa, the maid of the Breaks, had come and Melissa
had gone forever.

172

To the Breaks of Sandy

Only next day, however — for such, too, is life — the
aching void in Willie's imagination, and what he was
pleased to call his heart, was nicely filled again.

That night we struck the confluence of RusselPs
Fork and the Pound, where, under wide sycamores,
the meeting of swift waters had lifted from the river-
beds a high breach of white sand and had considerately
overspread it with piles of dry drift-wood. The place
was ideal — why not try it there? The freedom of
gypsies was ours, and we did. There was no rain in
the sky, so we pitched no tent, but slept on the sand,
under the leaves of the sycamore, and, by the light of
the fire, we solaced ourselves with the cheery game of
" draw." It was a happy night, in spite of Willie's
disappointment with the game. He played with
sorrow, and to his cost. He was accustomed to table
stakes; he did not know how to act on a modest fifty-
cent limit, being denied the noble privilege of " bluff.''

" I was playing once with a fellow I knew slightly,"
he said, reminiscently and as though for self-comfort,
" and with two others whom I didn't know at all.
The money got down between me and one of the
strangers, and when the other stranger dealt the last
hand my suspicions were aroused. I picked up my
hand. He had dealt me a full house — three aces and
a pair. I made up my mind that he had dealt his con-

173

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

federate four of a kind, and do you know what I did?
I discarded the pair and actually caught the remain-
ing ace. When it came to a show-down he had four
deuces. I scooped in all the gold, pushed over to my
acquaintance what he had lost — in their presence —
and left the table." Perhaps it was just as well that
we denied Willie his own game, and thus kept him
shorn of his strength.

^N'ext day was hard, faithful, fruitless — Josh and I
fishing up-stream and Dan and Willie wading down
the " Pound " — and we came in at dark, each pair
with a few three-quarter pound bass, only Willie hav-
ing had a bigger catch. They had struck a mill, Dan
said, which Willie entered — reappearing at once and
silently setting his rod, and going back again, to re-
appear no more. Dan found him in there with his
catch — a mountain maid, fairer even than Melissa,
and she was running the mill.

Dan had hard work to get him away, but Willie
came with a silent purpose that he unveiled at the
camp-fire — when he put his rod together. He was
done fishing for fish; the proper study of mankind
being man, his proper study, next day, would be the
maid of the mill, and he had forged his plan. He
would hire a mule, put on jean trousers, a slouch hat,
and a homespun shirt, buy a bag of com, and go to the

174

To the Breaks of Sandy

mill. When that bag was ground, he would go out
and buy another. All his life he had wanted to learn
the milling business, and, while we fished, he would
learn. But we had had enough, and were stem.
We would move on from those hard-fished, fishless
waters next day. In silent acquiescence Willie made
for the wooden box and its fluid consolation, and when
he was through with label and jug, the tale of the
altered title was doubly true.

" IsTo gal."

It takes very little to make humor in the woods.

We did move on, but so strong is hope and so pow-
erful the ancient hunting instinct in us all, that we
stopped again and fished again, with the same result,
in the Pound. Something was wrong. Human
effort could do no more. So, after sleep on a high
hill, through a windstorm, it was home with us, and
with unalterable decision this time we started, climb-
ing hills, sliding down them, tooling around the edge
of steep cliffs — sun-baked, bewhiskered, and happy, in
spite of the days of hard, hard luck.

Tiger rode on the camp-chest just in front of me.
Going up a hill the^wagon jolted, and the dog slipped
and fell between the wheels. The hind wheel, I saw,
would pass over the dog^s body, and if Tiger had been
a child, I couldn't have been more numb with horror.

175

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

The wheel ran squarely over him, crushing him into
the sand. The little fellow gave one short, brave, sur-
prised yelp. Then he sprang up and trotted after
us — unhurt. It was a miracle, easier to believe for
the reason that that particular hind wheel was a wheel
of kindly magic. Only an hour before it had run
squarely over a little haversack in which were a bottle,
a pipe, and other fragile things, and not a thing was
broken. I do not believe it would have been possible
so to arrange the contents and let the wheel run over
it as harmlessly again.

Another night, another hot day, and another, and
we were tooling down into the beautiful little valley,
toward the sunset and " The Gap " — toward razor,
bathtub, dinner, Willie's guitar and darky songs, and
a sound, sweet sleep in each man's own bed — ^through
dreams of green hills, gray walls, sharp peaks, and
clear, swift waters, from which no fish flashed to se-
ductive fly or crimson-streaked minnow. But with
all the memories, no more of the Breaks for Josh or
Dan or for me; and no more, doubtless, for Willie,
though Melissa be there waiting for him, and though
the other maid, with the light of mountain waters in
her eyes, be dreaming of him at her mill.

After the gods of strange streams we would run no
more.

176

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

Br*er Coon in Ole Kentucky

De ole man coon am a sly ole cuss :

Git erlong, coon-dog, now I
An' de lady coon am a leetle bit wuss ;

Git erlong, coon-dog, now I

We hunts 'em when de nights gits deirk ;

Git erlong, coon-dog, now I
Dey runs when dey hears de big dogs bark ;

Git erlong, coon-dog, now I

But 'deed, Mister Coon, hit's no use to try;

Git erlong, coon-dog, now !
Fer when we comes you's boun' to die ;

Git erlong, coon-dog, now I

THE day was late in autumn. The sun was low,
and the haze of Indian summer hung like mist
on the horizon. Crows were rising from fat
pickings in the blue-grass fields, and stretching away
in long lines through a yellow. band of western light,
and toward the cliffs of the Kentucky Kiver, where
they roost in safety the winter long. An hour later
darkness fell, and we rode forth the same way, some
fifty strong.

179

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

There were " young cap'n," as " young marster "
is now called, and his sister Miriam; Northcott, who
was from the North, and was my friend; young
farmers from the neighborhood, with their sisters and
sweethearts; a party from the county town not far
away; a contingent from the Iroquois Hunt Club, of
Lexington; old Tray, a tobacco tenant from the Cum-
berland foot-hills; and old Ash, a darky coon-hunter
who is known throughout the State.

There were White Child and Black Babe, two
young coon-dogs which Ash claimed as his own;
Bulger, a cur that belonged to Tray; young captain's
favorites, June Bug and Star; several dogs from the
neighborhood; and two little fox-terriers, trotting to
heel, which the Major, a veteran, had brought along
to teach the country folks a new wrinkle in an old
sport.

Ash was a ragged, old-time darky with a scraggly
beard and a caressing voice. He rode a mule with a
blind bridle and no saddle. In his belt, and hanging
behind, was an ax-head fixed to a handle of hatchet
length; the purpose of this was to cut a limb from
under Br'er Coon when he could not be shaken off, or
to cut a low entrance into his hole, so that he could
be prodded out at the top with a sharp stick. In his
pockets were matches to build a fire, that the fight

i8o

Brer Coon in Ole Kentucky

could be seen; at his side hung a lantern with which
" to shine his eye " when the coon was treed; and
under him was a meal-sack for Br'er Possum.

Tobacco had brought Tray from the foot-hills to the
Blue-grass. His horse was as sorry as Ash's mule,
and he wore a rusty gray overcoat and a rusty slouch-
hat. The forefinger of his bridle-hand was off at the
second joint — a coon's teeth had nipped it as clean
as the stroke of a surgeon's knife, one night, when he
ran into a fight to pull off a young dog. Tray and
Ash betrayed a racial inheritance of mutual contempt
that was intensified by the rivalry of their dogs.
From these two, the humanity ran up, in the matter
of dress, through the young farmers and country girls,
and through the hunt club, to Northcott, who waa
conventional perfection, and young captain's pict-
uresque sister, who wore the white slouch-hat of some
young cavalryman, — the brim pinned up at the side
with the white wing of a pigeon that she had shot with
her own hand.

The cavalcade moved over the turf of the front
woods, out the pike gate, and clattered at a gallop for
two miles down the limestone road. Here old Ash
called a halt; and he and Tray, and young captain
and Blackburn, who was tall, swarthy, and typical,
rode on ahead. I was allowed to follow in order to

i8i

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

see the dogs work. So was ^N'orthcott; but lie pre-
ferred to stay behind for a while.

" Keep back thar now," shouted Ash to the crowd,
" an' keep still ! " So they waited behind while we
went on. The old darky threw the dogs off in a wood-
land to the left, and there was dead silence for a while,
and the mystery of darkness. By and by came a
short, eager yelp.

n

Only two days before, N'orthcott and I were down
in the Kentucky mountains fishing for bass in the
Cumberland, and a gaunt mountaineer was helping
us catch minnows.

" Coons is a-gittin' fat," he remarked sententiously
to another mountaineer, who was lazily following us
up the branch ; " an' they's a-gittin' fat on my corn."

" You like coons? " I asked.

" Well, jes gimme all the coon I can eat in three
days — ^in three days, mind ye — an' then lay me up in
bed ag'in a jug o' moonshine — " Words failed him
there, and he waved his hand. " Them coons kin
have all o' my corn they kin hold. I'd jes as lieve
have my com in coons as in a crib. I keeps my dawgs
tied up so the coons kin take their time; but" — he

182

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

turned solemnly to his companion again — " coons
is a-gittin' fat, an' I'm goin' to turn them dawgs
loose/'

White moonshine, coons, and sweet potatoes for the
Kentucky mountaineer; and on through the Blue-
grass and the Purchase to the Ohio, and no farther —
red whiskey, coons, and sweet potatoes for the night-
roving children of Ham. It is a very old sport in the
State. As far back as 1785, one shouting Methodist
preacher is known to have trailed a virgin forest for
old Br'er Coon. He was called Kaccoon John Smith,
and he is doubtless the father of the hunt in Ken-
tucky. Traced back through Virginia, the history of
the chase would most likely strike root in the home-
sickness of certain English colonists for trailing
badgers of nights in the old country, and sending
terriers into the ground for them. One night, doubt-
less, some man of these discovered what a plucky fight
a certain ring-tailed, black-muzzled, bear-like little
beast would put up at the least banter; and thereafter,
doubtless, every man who loved to hunt the badger
was ready to hunt the coon. That is the theory of a
distinguished Maryland lawyer and coon-hunter, at
least, and it is worthy of record. The sport is common
in Pennsylvania, and also in Connecticut, where the
hunters finish the coon with a shot-gun; and in New

183

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

England, I am told, " drawing " the coon is yet done.
Br'er Coon is placed in a long, square box or trough,
and the point is to get a fox-terrier that is game enough
to go in " and bring him out." That, too, is an in-
heritance from the English way of badger-fighting,
which was tried on our American badgers without
success, as it was usually found necessary, after a short
fight, to draw out the terrier — dead. Coon-hunting
is, however, distinctly a Southern sport, although the
coon is found all over the United States, and as far
north as Alaska. It is the darky who has made the
sport Southern. With him it has always been, is now,
and always will be, a passion. Inseparable are the
darky and his coon-dog. And nowhere in the South
is the sport more popular than in Kentucky — ^with
mountaineers, negroes, and people of the Blue-grass.
It is the more remarkable, then, that of all the beasts
that walk the blue-grass fields, the coon-dog is the
only one for which the Kentuckian does not claim
superiority. The Kentucky coon-dog — let his master
get full credit for the generous concession — is no
better than the coon-dog of any other State. Perhaps
this surprising apathy is due to the fact that the coon-
dog has no family position. A prize was offered in
1891 by the Blue-grass Kennel Club at Lexington,
and was won, of course, by a Kentucky dog; but the

184

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

American Kennel Club objected, and the prize has
never been offered again. So the coon-dog has no rec-
ognized breed. He is not even called a hound. He is
a dog — ^just a " dawg." He may be cur, fox-terrier,
fox-hound, or he may have all kinds of grand-parents.
On one occasion that is worth interjecting he was even
a mastiff. An Irishman in Louisville owned what he
called the " brag coon-dog " of the State. There are
big woods near Louisville, and a good deal of hunting
for the coon is done in them. A German who lived
in the same street had a mastiff with the playful habit
of tossing every cat that came into his yard over the
fence — dead. The Irishman conceived the idea that
the mastiff would make the finest coon-dog on earth —
not excepting his own. He persuaded the German to
go out in the woods with him one night, and he took
his own dog along to teach the mastiff how to fight.
The coon was shaken out of the tree. The coon-dog
made for the coon, and the mastiff made for the coon-
dog, and reached him before he reached the coon. In
a minute the coon-dog was dead, the coon was making
off through the rustling maize, and Celt and Teuton
were clinched under the spreading oak. Originally,
the coon-dog was an uncompromising cur, or a worth-
less fox-hound that had dropped out of his pack; and
most likely darkies and boys had a monopoly of the

185

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

sport in the good old days when the hunting was
purely for the fun of the fight, and when trees were
cut down, and nobody took the trouble to climb.
When the red fox drove out the gray, the newer and
swifter hounds — old Lead^s descendants — took away
the occupation of the old fox-hound, and he, in turn,
took the place of the cur; so that the Kentucky coon-
dog of to-day is usually the old-fashioned hound that
was used to hunt the gray fox, the " pot-licker " — the
black-and-tan, long-eared, rat-tailed, flat-bellied, splay-
footed " pot-licker." Such a hound is a good trailer;
he makes a good fight, and there is no need in the hunt
for special speed. Recently the terrier has been in-
troduced to do the fighting when the coon has been
trailed and treed, because he is a more even match,
and as game as any dog; and, thanks to Mr. Belmont's
" !N'ursery " in the Blue-grass, the best terriers are
accessible to the Kentucky hunters who want that
kind of fight.

But it is the hunt with an old darky, and old coon-
dogs, and a still, damp, dark night, that is dear to the
Southern hunter's heart. It is the music of the dogs,
the rivalry between them, the subtleties of the trail,
and the quick, fierce fight, that give the joy then.
Only recently have the ladies begun to take part in the
sport, and, naturally, it is growing in favor. Coons

i86

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

are plentiful in the Blue-grass, even around the towns,
where truck-patches are convenient, and young
turkeys and chickens unwary. For a coon, unless
hard-pressed, will never go up any tree but his
own; and up his own tree he is usually safe, for
trees are now too valuable to be cut down for
coons.

It is the ride of only a few hours from the moun-
tains to the lowland Blue-grass, and down there, too,
coons were getting fat; so on the morning of the
second day Northcott and I woke up in the ell of an
old-fashioned Blue-grass homestead — an ell that was
known as the " office " in slavery days — and old Ash'a
gray head was thrust through the open door.

"Breakfast 'mos' ready. Young cap'n say you
mus' git up now."

Crackling flames were leaping up the big chimney
from the ash kindling-wood and hickory logs piled in
the enormous fireplace, and Northcott, from his bed
in the comer, chuckled with delight.

That morning the Northerner rode through peace-
ful fields and woodlands, and looked at short-horn
cattle and Southdown sheep and thorough-bred horses,
and saw the havoc that tobacco was bringing to the
lovely land. When he came back dinner was ready —
his first Southern dinner.

187

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

After dinner, Miriam took him to feed young cap-
tain's pet coon, the Governor, and Black Eye, a fox-
terrier that was the Governor's best friend — both in
the same plate. The Governor was chained to an old
apple-tree, and slept in a hole which he had enlarged
for himself about six feet from the ground. Let a
strange dog appear, and the Governor would retreat,
and Black Eye attack; and after the fight the Gov-
ernor would descend, and plainly manifest his grati-
tude with slaps and scratches and bites of tenderness.
The Governor never looked for anything that was
tossed him, but would feel for it with his paws, never
lowering his blinking eyes at all. Moreover, he was
a dainty beast, for he washed everything in a basin of
water before he ate it.

"Dey eats everything, boss," said old Ash's soft
voice; "but dey likes crawfish best. I reckon coon
'11 eat dawg, jes as dawg eats coon. But dawg won't
eat 'possum. Gib a dawg a piece o' 'possum meat,
and he spit it out, and look at you mean and reproach-
ful. Knowin' 'possum lack I do, dat sut'nly do look
strange. Hit do, mon, shore.

" An' as fer fightin' — well, I ain't never seed a coon

dat wouldn't fight, an' I ain't never seed nuttin' dat a

coon wouldn't tackle. Most folks believes dat a

'possum canH fight. Well, you jes tie a 'possum an'

i88

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

coon together by de tails, an' swing 'em over a clothes-
line, an' when you come back you gwine find de coon
daid. 'Possum jes take hole in de throat, an' go to
sleep — ^jes like a bull-pup."

A gaunt figure in a slouch-hat and ragged overcoat
had slouched in at tlie yard gate. His eye was blue
and mild, and his face was thin and melancholy. Old
Ash spoke to him familiarly, and young captain called
him Tray. He had come for no reason other than
that he was mildly curious and friendly; and he
stopped shyly behind young captain, fumbling with
the stump of one finger at a little sliver of wood that
served as the one button to his overcoat, silent, listless,
gentle, grave. And there the three stood, the pillars
of the old social structure that the war brought down
— the slave, the poor white, the master of one and
the lord of both. Between one and the other the
chasm was still deep, but they would stand shoulder to
shoulder in the hunt that night.

^' Dat wind from de souf," said old Ash, as we
turned back to the house. " Git cloudy bime-by.
We gwine to git Mister Coon dis night, shore."

A horn sounded from the quarters soon after
supper, and the baying of dogs began. Several
halloos came through the front woods, and soon there
was the stamping of horses' feet about the yard fence,

189

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and much jolly laughter. Girths were tightened, and
a little later the loud slam of the pike gate announced
that the hunt was begun.

in

Br'er Coon he has a bushy tail ;

Br'er Possum's tail am bar' ;
Br'er Rabbit's got no tail at all —

Jes a leetle bunch o' ha'r.

When the yelp came, Tray^s lips opened tri-
umphantly:

"Bulger!"

" Rabbit," said old Ash, contemptuously.

Bulger was a young dog, and only half broken ; but
every hunter knew that each old dog had stopped in
his tracks and was listening. There was another yelp
and another; and the old dogs harked to him. But
the hunters sat still to give the dogs time to trail, as
hunters always do. Sometimes they will not move
for half an hour, unless the dogs are going out of hear-
ing. Old Ash was humming calmly:

Coony in de tree ;

'Possum in de holler ;
Purty gal at my house,

Fat as she kin waller.
190

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

It was Tray's dog, and old Ash could afford to be
calm and scornful, for he was without faith. So over
and over he sang it softly, while Tray's mouth waa
open, and his ear was eagerly cocked to every note of
the trail. The air was very chilly and damp. The
moon was no more than a silver blotch in a leaden sky,
and barely visible here and there was a dim star. On
every side, the fields and dark patches of woodland
rolled alike to the horizon, except straight ahead,
where one black line traced the looping course of
the river. That way the dogs were running, and the
music was growing furious. It was too much for
Tray, who suddenly let out the most remarkable yell
I have ever heard from human lips. That was a
signal to the crowd behind. A rumbling started; the
crowd was striking the hard turnpike at a swift gallop,
coming on. It was quick work for Bulger, and the
melancholy of Tray's face passed from under the eager
light in his eyes, and as suddenly came back like a
shadow. The music had stopped short, and old Ash
pulled in with a grunt of disgust.

" Rabbit, I tol' ye," he said again, contemptuously;
and Tray looked grieved. A dog with a strange
mouth gave tongue across the dim fields.

" House cat," said young captain. " That was a
farm dog. The young dogs ran the cat home." This

191

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

was true, for just then two of the old dogs leaped the
fence and crossed the road.

" They won't hark to him next time," said young
captain; "Bulger's a liar." A coon-dog is never
worthless, " no 'count; " he is simply a " liar." Mne
out of ten young dogs will run a rabbit or a house cat.
The old dogs will trust a young one once or twice;
but if he proves unworthy of confidence, they will not
go to him sometimes when he is really on a coon trail,
and will have to be called by their masters after the
coon is treed. As Bulger sprang into the road, old
Ash objurgated him:

" Whut you mean, dawg? — you black liah, you! "
The pain in Tray's face was pathetic.

" Bulger hain't no liar," he said sturdily.
" Bulger's jes young."

Then we swept down the road another mile to an-
other woodland, and this time I stayed with the crowd
behind. Young captain had given !N'orthcott his
favorite saddle-horse and a fat saddle that belonged to
his father; and Northcott, though a cross-country rider
at home, was not happy. He was being gently rocked
sidewise in a maddening little pace that made him look
as ridiculous as he felt.

" You haven't ridden a Southern saddle-horse
before, have you? " said Miriam.

192

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

" Ko; I never have."

" Then you won't mind a few instructions? "

" No, indeed," he said meekly.

" Well, press your hand at the base of his neck-
so — and tighten your reins just a little — now."

The horse broke step into a " running walk," which
was a new sensation to Northcott. We started up the
pace a little.

" Now press behind your saddle on the right side,
and tighten your rein a little more, and hold it steady
— so — and he'll rack." The saddler struck a swift
gait that was a revelation to the Northerner.

" Now, if you want him to trot, catch him by the
mane or by the right ear."

The horse broke his step instantly.

" Beautiful! " said Northcott. " This is my gait."

" Now wave your hand — so." The animal struck
an easy lope.

"Lovely!"

We swept on. A young countryman who was
called Tom watched the instruction with provincial
amusement.

I was riding young captain's buggy mare, and, try-
ing her over a log, I learned that she could jump. So,
later in the night, I changed horses with Northcott —
for a purpose.

193

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

We could hear the dogs trailing around to the right
now, and the still figures of Ash and Tray halted us
in the road. Presently the yelps fused into a musical
chorus, and then a long, penetrating howl came
through the woods that was eloquent to the knowing.

" Dar's old Star," said Ash, kicking his mule in the
side; ^^ an' dar's a coon! "

We had a dash through the woods at a gallop then,
and there was much dodging of low branches, and
whisking around tree-trunks, and a great snapping of
brush on the ground; and we swept out of the shadows
of the woodland to a white patch of moonlight, in the
centre of which was a little walnut-tree. About this
the dogs were sitting on their haunches, baying up at
its leafless branches; and there, on the first low limb,
scarcely ten feet from the ground and two feet from
the trunk, sat, not ring-tailed Br'er Coon, but a fat,
round, gray 'possum, paying no attention at all to the
hunters gathering under him, but keeping each of his
beady black e^^es moving with nervous quickness from
one dog to another. Old Ash was laughing triumph-
antly in the rear. " Black Babe foun' dat 'possum.
Dis nigger's got dawgs! " IsTorthcott was called up,
that he might see; and young captain rode under the
little fellow, and, reaching up, caught him by the tail,
the 'possum making no effort at all to escape, so en-

194

Br*er Coon in Ole Kentucky

grossed was he with the dogs. Old Ash, with a wide
smile, dropped him into the mouth of his meal-sack.

" Won't he smother in there," asked Northcott,
" or eat his way out? "

Old Ash grinned. " He'll be dar when we git
home." Then he turned to Tray. " I gwine to let
you have dis 'possum in de morning, to train dat liah
Bulger."

There is no better way to train a young dog than to
let him worry a 'possum after he has found it ; and this
is not as cruel as it seems. Br'er 'Possum knows how
to roll up in a ball and protect his vitals; and when
you think he is about dead, he will unroll, but little
hurt.

The clouds were breaking now; the moon showed
full, the air had grown crisp, and the stars were thick
and brilliant. For half an hour we sat on a hill-side
waiting, and, for some occult reason, the Major was
becoming voluble.

" ]S''ow, old Tray there thinks he's hunting the coon.
So does old Ash. I reckon that we are all laboring
under that painful delusion. Whereas the truth is
that the object of this hunt is attained. I refer, sir,
to that 'possum." He turned to Northcott. " You
have never eaten 'possum? Well, sir, it is a very easy
and dangerous habit to contract if the 'possum is

195

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

properly prepared. I venture to say, sir, that nawth
of Mason and Dixon's line the gastronomical possibili-
ties of the 'possum are utterly unknown. How do I
prepare him? "Well, sir ''

The Major was interrupted by a mighty yell from
old Ash; and again there was a great rush through the
low undergrowth, over the rocky hill-side, and down a
long, wooded hollow. This time the old negro's
favorites, White Child and Black Babe, were in the
lead; and old Ash flapped along like a windmill, with
every tooth in sight.

"Go it. Black Babe! Go it, my White Chile!
Gord ! but dis nigger's got dawgs I "

Everybody caught his enthusiasm, and we could
hear the crowd thundering behind us. I was next
Ash, and all of a sudden the old darky came to a quick
stop, and caught at his nose with one hand. A pow-
erful odor ran like an electric shock through the air,
and a long howl from each dog told that each had
started from some central point on his own responsi-
bility. The Major raised his voice. "Stop!" he
shouted. " Keep the ladies back — ^keep 'em 'way
back!"

" Gord! " said old Ash once more; and Tray lay
down on his horse's neck, helpless with laughter.

The Major was too disgusted for words. When
196

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

we crossed the road, and paused again, he called in a
loud voice for me to advance and see the dogs work.
Then he directed me to call IN'orthcott forward for the
same purpose. Blackburn came, too. A moment
later I heard young captain shouting to the crowd,
" Keep back, keep back! '^ and he, too, spurred around
the bushes.

"Where are those dogs?" he asked with mock
anxiety.

The neck of the Major's horse was lengthened
peacefully through the rails of a ten-foot fence, and
at the question the veteran whisked a bottle of old
Jordan from his hip.

" Here they are.''

Then followed an eloquent silence that turned the
cold October air into the night-breath of June, that
made the mists warm, the stars rock, and the moon
smile. Once more we waited.

" How do I prepare him, sir? " said the Major.
" You skin the coon ; but you singe off the hair of the
'possum in hot wood-ashes, because the skin is a deli-
cacy, and must not be scalded. Then parbile him.
This takes a certain strength away, and makes him
more tender. Then put him in a pan, with a good
deal of butter, pepper, and salt, and a little brown
flour, leaving the head and tail on. Then cut little

197

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

slips along the ribs and haunches, and fill them with
red-pepper pods. Baste him with gravy while brown-
ing " — the Major's eyes brightened, and once at least
his lips smacked distinctly — " cook sweet potatoes
around him, and then serve him smoking hot —
though some, to be sure, prefer him cold, like roast
pork. You must have dodgers, very brown and very
crisp; and, of course, raw persimmons (persimmons are
ripe in 'possum-time, and 'possums like persimmons —
the two are inseparable); pickles, chow-chow, and
tomato ketchup ; and, lastly, pumpkin-pie and a second
cup of coffee. Then, with a darky and a banjo, a
mint-julep and a pipe, you may have a reasonable ex-
pectation of being, for a little while, happy. And
speaking of julep "

Just then two dim forms were moving out of sight
behind some bushes below us, and the Major shouted:

"Tawm!"

The two horsemen turned reluctantly, and when
Tom was near enough the Major asked a whispered
question, and got an affirmative response.

" All right," added the Major, with satisfaction.
" Shake hands with Mr. ITorthcott. I hereby pro-
mote you, sir, to the privilege of staying in front and
watching the dogs work."

Northcott's face was distinctly flushed after this
198

Br er Coon in Ole Kentucky

promotion, and he confessed afterward to an insane
desire to imitate the Major's speech and Blackburn's
stately manner. When we started off again, he posted
along with careless content, and many sympathized
with him.

" Oh, this is just what I like," he said. " Every-
body posts up Korth — even the ladies."

" Dear me! " said several.

" I reckon that kind of a horse is rather better for
an inexperienced rider," said Tom, friendly, and
I^orthcott smiled. Somebody tried a horse over a log
a few minutes later, and the horse swerved to one side.
Northcott wheeled, and started for a bigger log at a
gallop; and the little mare rose, as if on wings, two
feet higher than was necessary, while Northcott sat
as if bound to his saddle.

Then he leaped recklessly into another field, and
back again. Tom was speechless.

It was after midnight now, and the moon and stars
were passing swiftly overhead; but the crowd started
with undiminished enthusiasm when a long howl an-
nounced that some dog had treed. This time it was
no mistake. At the edge of the woodland sat the old
darky at the foot of the tree to keep the coon from
coming down, while the young dogs were bouncing
madly about him, and baying up into the tree. It was

199

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

curious to watch old Star when he arrived. He would
take no pup^s word for the truth, but circled the tree
to find out whether the coon had simply " marked "
it; and, satisfied on that point, he settled down on his
haunches, and, with uplifted muzzle, bayed with the
rest.

" I knowed dis was coon," said Ash, rising.
" 'Possum circles; coon runs straight."

Then the horses were tied, and everybody gathered
twigs and branches and dead woo4 for a fire, which
was built half-way between the trunk and the tips of
the overhanging branches; and old Ash took off his
shoes, his coat, and his " vest," for no matter how cold
the night, the darky will climb in shirt, socks, and
trousers. If he can reach around the tree, he will go
up like a monkey; if he can't, he will go to the outer
edge, and pull a bough down. In this case he could
do neither, so young captain stood with his hands
braced against the tree, while the old darky climbed
up his back, and stamped in sock feet over his head
and shoulders. Tray held the fence-rail alongside,
and, with the aid of this, the two boosted Ash to the
first limb. Then the men formed a circle around the
tree at equal distances, each man squatting on the
ground, and with a dog between his knees. The
Major held his terriers; and as everybody had seen the

200

Br er Coon in Ole Kentucky

usual coon-fight, it was agreed that the terriers should
have the first chance. Another darky took a lantern,
and walked around the tree with the lantern held just
behind one ear, " to shine the coon^s eye." As the
lantern is moved around, the coon's eye follows, and its
greenish-yellow glow betrays his whereabouts.

" Dar he is! " shouted the negro with the lantern;
" 'way up higher." And there he was, on the ex-
tremity of a long limb. Old Ash climbed slowly until
he could stand on the branch below and seize with both
hands the limb that the coon lay on.

" Look out dar, now; hyeh he comes! " Below,
everybody kept perfectly quiet, so that the dogs could
hear the coon strike the ground if he should sail over
their heads and light in the darkness outside the circle
of fire. Ash shook, the coon dropped straight, and the
game little terriers leaped for him. Br'er Coon
turned on his back, and it was slap, bite, scratch, and
tear. One little terrier was caught in the nose and
spun around like a top, howling; but he went at it
again. For a few minutes there was an inextricable
confusion of a brown body, snapping white teeth, and
outshooting claws, with snarling, leaping little black-
and-tan terriers, and much low, fierce snarling. The
coon's wheezing snarl was curious: it had rage, whin-
ing terror, and perfect courage, all in one. Then

20 1

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

came one scream, penetrating and piteous, and the
fight was done.

" Git him ? " yelled Ash from up in the tree.

" Yep."

" "Well, dar's anudder one up hyeh. Watch out,
now! "

The branches rattled, but no coon dropped, and we
could hear Ash muttering high in the air, " I bet ef I
had a black-snake whip Vd lif you."

Then came a pistol-shot. Ash had fired close to
him to make him jump; but Br'er Coon lay close to
the limb, motionless.

" I got to cut him off, I reckon," Ash called; and
whack! whack! went the blows of his little ax.
"Whoop!"

The branch crackled; a dark body, flattened, and
with four feet outstretched, came sailing down, and
struck the earth — thud! Every dog leaped for him,
growling; every man yelled, and pressed close about
the heap of writhing bodies; and there was pande-
monium. A coon can fight eight dogs better than he
can fight three, for the eight get in one another's way.
Foot by foot the game little beast fought his way to
the edge of the cliff, and the whole struggling, snarl-
ing, snapping mass rolled, with dislodged dirt and
clattering stones, down to the edge of the river, with

202

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

the yelling hunters slipping and sliding after them.
A great splash followed, and then a sudden stillness.
One dog followed the coon into the water, and after a
sharp struggle, and a howl of pain, turned and made
for the bank. It was Bulger — the last to give up the
fight. Br'er Coon had escaped, and there was hardly
a man who was not glad.

" Beckon Bulger can fight, ef he is a liar," said
Tray—" which he ain't."

The stars were sinking fast, and we had been five
hours in the saddle. Everybody was tired. Down in
a ravine young captain called a halt when the dogs
failed to strike another trail. The horses were tied,
and an enormous fire was built, and everybody gath-
ered in a great circle around it. Somebody started a
song, and there was a jolly chorus. A little picca-
ninny was pushed into the light, bashful and
hesitating.

" Shake yo' foot, boy," said old Ash, sternly; and
the nimble feet were shaken to " Juba " and " My
Baby Loves Shortenin'-bread." It was a scene worth
remembering — the upshooting flames, the giant shad-
ows leaping into the dark woods about, the circle of
young girls with flushed faces and loosened hair, and
strapping young fellows cracking jokes, singing songs,
and telling stories.

203

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

It was all simple and genuine, and it pleased ITortli-
cott, who was one of the many !N"orthemers to whom
everything Southern appeals strongly — who had come
South prepared to like everything Southern: darkies,
darky. songs; Southern girls. Southern songs, old-fash-
ioned in tune and sentiment; Southern voices. South-
ern accent, Southern ways; the romance of the life and
the people; the pathos of the war and its ruins; the
simple, kindly hospitality of the Southern home.

Nobody noticed that Tray was gone, and nobody
but Tray had noticed that Bulger was the only one of
the dogs that had not gathered in to the winding of old
Ash's horn. A long howl high on the cliff made
known the absence of both. It was Bulger; and again
came Tray's remarkable yell. Not an old dog moved.
Again came the howl, and again the yell; and then
Tray was silent, though the howls went on. Another
song was started, and stopped by old Ash, who sprang
to his feet. A terrific fight was going on up on the
cliff. We could hear Bulger's growl, the unmistak-
able snarl of a coon, a series of cheering yells, and the
cracking of branches, as though Tray were tumbling
out of a tree. Every dog leaped from the fire, and all
the darkies but old Ash leaped after them. There
was a scramble up the cliff; and ten minutes later Tray
came into the firelight with a coon in one hand, and
204

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky

poor Bulger limping after him, bleeding at the throat,
and with a long, bloody scratch down his belly.

" Bulger treed him, an' I seed the coon Hwixt me
an' the moon. I hollered fer you, an' you wouldn't
come, so I climbed up an' shuk him out. When I got
down the coon was dead. Bulger don't run polecats,"
he said with mild scorn, and turned on Ash: "I
reckon you'd better not call Bulger a liar no more."
And the blood of the Anglo-Saxon told, for Ash made
no answer.

It was toward morning now. Only one white star
was hanging where the rest had gone down. There
was a last chorus — " My Old Kentucky Home ":

We'll hunt no more for the 'possum an' the coon.

And then, at a swift gallop, we thundered ten miles
along the turnpike — home. The crowd fell away,
and day broke as we neared young captain's roof.
The crows were flying back from the cliffs to the blue-
grass fields, and the first red light of the sun was
shooting up the horizon. IN'orthcott was lifting
Miriam from her saddle as I rode into the woods; and
when I reached the yard fence they were seated on the
porch, as though they meant to wait for the sunrise.
At the foot of the apple-tree were the Governor and
Black Eye, playing together like kittens.
205

Civilizing the Cumberland

Civilizing the Cumberland

HALF a century ago the Southern mountaineer
was what he is now, in the main — truthful,
honest, courageous, hospitable — and more:
he was peaceable and a man of law. During the last
fifteen years, fact and fiction have made his lawless-
ness broadly known ; and yet, in spite of his moonshin-
ing, his land-thieving, and his feuds, I venture the
paradox that he still has at heart a vast respect for the
law; and that, but for the war that put weapons in his
Anglo-Saxon fists, murder in his heart, and left him
in his old isolation ; but for the curse of the revenue
service that criminalizes the innocent, and the system
of land laws that sometimes makes it necessary for
the mountaineer of Kentucky and Virginia, at least,
to practically steal his own home — ^he would be a law-
abiding citizen to-day. But he is not law-abiding,
and, therefore, the caption above these words.

Of course, the railroad comes first as an element of
civilization; but unless the church and the school, in

209

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

the ratio of several schools to each church, quickly
follow, the railroad does the mountaineer little else
than great harm. Even with the aid of these three,
the standards of conduct of the outer world are reared
slowly. A painful process of evolution has been the
history of every little mountain-town that survived
the remarkable mushroom growth which, within the
year of 1889-90, ran from Pennsylvania to Alabama
along both bases of the Cumberland. With one vivid
exception: in one of these towns, civilization forged
ahead of church, school, and railroad. The sternest
ideals of good order and law were set up at once and
maintained with Winchester, pistol, policeman's billy,
and whistle. It was a unique experiment in civiliza-
tion, and may prove of value to the lawful among the
lawless elsewhere; and the means to the end were
unique.

In this town, certain young men — chiefly Virgin-
ians and blue-grass Kentuckians — simply formed a
volunteer police-guard. They enrolled themselves as
county policemen, and each man armed himself —
usually with a Winchester, a revolver, a billy, a belt,
a badge, and a whistle — a most important detail of
the accoutrement, since it was used to call for help.
They were lawyers, bankers, real-estate brokers, news-
paper men, civil and mining engineers, geologists,

2IO

Civilizing the Cumberland

speculators, and several men of leisure. Nearly all
were in active business — as long as there was business
— and most of them were college graduates, represent-
ing Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Vir-
ginia, and other Southern colleges. Two were great-
grandsons of Henry Clay, several bore a like relation
to Kentucky governors, and, with few exceptions, the
guard represented the best people of the blue-grass of
one State and the tide-water country of the other.
All served without pay, of course, and, in other words,
it was practically a police-force of gentlemen who did
the rough, every-day work of policemen, without swerv-
ing a hair's-breadth from the plain line of the law.
These young fellows guarded the streets, day and
night, when there was need; they made arrests, chased
and searched for criminals, guarded jails against mobs,
cracked toughs over the head with billies, lugged them
to the " calaboose," and appeared as witnesses against
them in court next morning. They drilled faithfully,
and such was the discipline that a whistle blown at
any hour of day or night would bring a dozen armed
men to the spot in half as many minutes. In time, a
drunken man was a rare sight on the streets; the quiet
was rarely disturbed by a disorderly yell or a pistol-
shot, and I have seen a crowd of mountaineers, wildly
hilarious and flourishing bottles and pistols as they

211

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

came in from the hills, take on the meekness of lambs
when they crossed the limits of that little mountain-
town. I do not believe better order was kept anywhere
in the land. It was, perhaps, the only mountain-town
along the border where a feud, or a street fight of
more than ten minutes' duration, was impossible. Be-
ing county policemen, the guards extended their
operations to the limits of the county, thirty miles
away, and in time created a public sentiment fearless
enough to convict a certain desperado of murder; then
each man left his business and, in a body, the force
went to the county-seat, twenty miles away, and stayed
there for a month to guard the condemned man and
prevent his clan from rescuing him — thus making pos-
sible the first hanging that ever took place in that
region. Later, they maintained a fund for the proper
prosecution of criminals, and I believe that any man
in the county, if guilty of manslaughter, would have
selected any spot south of Mason and Dixon's line
other than his own county-seat for his trial. Indeed,
the enthusiasm for the law was curiously contagious.
Wild fellows, who would have been desperadoes them-
selves but for the vent that enforcing the law gave
to their energies, became the most enthusiastic mem-
bers of the guard. In other parts of the county, natives
formed similar bands and searched for outlaws. Sim-

212

Civilizing the Cumberland

ilar organizations were formed in other " boom " towns
round about; so that over in the Kentucky mountains,
a hundred miles away, there is to-day another volunteer
police-guard at the seat of what was perhaps the most
lawless county in the State, and once the seat of a des-
perate feud. This was formed at the suggestion of one
of our own men, a young and well-known geologist.
So that, at that time, it looked as though the force that
might one day put down lawlessness in the Southern
mountains was getting its impulse from the nerve, good
sense, and public spirit of two or three young blue-
grass Kentuckians who had gone over into the moun-
tains of Virginia to make their fortunes from iron,
coal, and law.

For all this happened at " the Gap," which is down
in the southwestern comer of old Virginia, and about
eight miles from the Kentucky line. There Powell's
Mountain runs its mighty ribs into the Cumberland
range with such humiliating violence that the Cumber-
land, turned feet over head by the shock, has meekly
given up its proud title and suffered somebody to dub
it plain Stone Mountain; and plain Stone Mountain it
is to-day — down sixty miles to Cumberland Gap. At
the point of contact and from the bases of both ranges,
PowelFs Valley starts on its rolling way southward.
Ten miles below. Roaring Fork has worn down to
213

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

water-level a wild cleft through Stone Mountain and
into the valley; and the torrent is still lashing the
yielding feet of great cliffs and tumbling past ravines
that are dark in winter with the evergreen of laurel
and rhododendron, and lighted in summer with the
bloom.

On the other side, South Fork drops seven hundred
feet of waterfalls from Thunderstruck Knob, and the
two streams sweep toward each other like the neck
of a lute and, like a lute, curve away again, to come
together at last and bear the noble melody of PowelFs
River down the valley. The neck is not over two hun-
dred yards wide, and, in the heartlike peninsula and
from ten to twenty feet above the running streams, is
the town — all straightaway, but for the beautiful rise
of Poplar Hill, which sinks slowly to a level again.

All this — cleft, river, and little town — ^is known far
and wide as " the Gap." Through the Gap and on the
north side of Stone Mountain, are rich veins of pure
coking coal and not an ounce of iron ore ; to the south
is plenty of good ore and not an ounce of coal; the cliffs
between are limestone ; and water — the third essential
to the making of iron — runs like a mill-race between.
This juxtaposition of such raw materials brought in
the outside world. Nearly twenty years ago, a wise
old Pennsylvanian bought an empire of coal and tim-
214

Civilizing the Cumberland

ber-land through the Gap. Ten years ago the shadow
of the " boom " started southward — for the boom is a
shadow, and whatever of light there be in it is as a
flash of lightning, and with a wake hardly less destruc-
tive. The Gap was strategic, and there was no such
site for a town in a radius of a hundred miles. Twelve
railroads were surveyed to the point, and in poured
the outside world to make the town — civil and mining
engineers, surveyors, coal operators, shrewd investors,
reckless speculators, land-sharks; lawyers, doctors,
store-keepers, real-estate agents; curb-stone brokers,
saloon-keepers, gamblers, card-sharps, railroad hands —
all the flotsam and jetsam of the terrible boom.

The Kentuckians came first, and two young lawyers
— Logan and Macfarlan I shall call them — blazed the
way; one, for the same reason, perhaps, that led his
forefather, Henry Clay, to Kentucky; the other, who
was of a race of pioneers, Indian-fighters, lawyers, and
statesmen, because he was, in a measure, a reversal to
the first ancestor who penetrated the "Western wilder-
ness. Indeed they and the young Kentuckians, who
came after them, took the same trail that their fathers
had taken from Virginia — going to make their for-
tunes from lands that the pioneers had passed over as
worthless. It was these two young men who took the
helm of affairs and ran the town — as a steersman

215

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

runs a ship — into tlie calm waters of good order and
law.

It was quiet enough in the beginning, for, besides
the cottage set in rhododendron-bushes along the deep
bank of South Fork — and turned into a lawyer's office
— there was only a blacksmith's shop, one store, one
farm-house, and a little frame hotel — " The Grand
Central Hotel." But, for half a century, the Gap had
been the chief voting-place in the district. Here were
the muster-days of war-times, and at the mouth of the
Gap camped Captain Mayhall Wells and his famous
Army of the Callahan. Here was the only store, the
only grist-mill, the only woollen-mill, in the region.
The Gap was, in consequence, the chief gathering-
place of people for miles around. Here in the old days
met the bullies of neighboring counties, and here was
fought a famous battle between a famous bully of Wise
and a famous bully of Lee. Only, in those days, the
men fought with nature's weapons — with all of them
— and, after the fight, got up and shook hands.
Here, too, was engendered the hostility between the
hill-dwellers of Wise and the valley men of Lee; so
that the Gap had ever been characterized by a fine
spirit of personal liberty, and any wild oats that were
not sown elsewhere in that region, usually sprouted at
the Gap. So, too, when the boom started, the new-

216

Civilizing the Cumberland

comers, disliked on their own account as interlop-
ers, shared this local hostility, which got expression
usually on Saturday afternoons in the exhilaration of
moonshine, much yelling and shooting and banter-
ing, an occasional fist-fight, and, sometimes, in a
usually harmless interchange of shots. But it was
the mountain-brother who gave the Kentuckians most
trouble at first. Sometimes the Kentucky feudsmen
would chase each other over Black Mountain and into
the Gap. Sometimes a band of them on horseback —
" wild jayhawkers from old Kanetuck," they used to
be called — would be passing through to " Commence-
ment " at a mountain-college down the valley, and
there would be high jinks indeed. They would halt
at the Gap and " load up," as the phrase was — with
moonshine; usually it was a process of reloading.
Then they would race their horses up and down the
street.

Sometimes they would quite take the town, and the
store-keepers would close up and go to the woods to
wait for the festivities to come to a natural end. This
was endured because it was only periodical, and be-
cause, apparently, it couldn't be cured.

Later on, after the speculators had pooled their lands
and laid out the coming town, and the human stream
began to trickle in from the outer world, an enterpris-
217

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

ing Hoosier came in and established a brick-plant. He
employed a crowd of Tennessee mountaineers, who
worked with their pistols buckled around them. By
and by came a strike, and, that night, the hands shot
out the lights and punctured the chromos in the board-
ing-house. Then they got sticks, clubs, knives, and
pistols, and marched up through town, intimidating
and threatening.

Verbal, the town constable, tackled one of them
valiantly, shouting at the same time for help. For ten
minutes he shouted and fought, and then, once again,
his voice rose : " IVe fit an^ Vve hollered f er help," he
cried, " an' I've hollered fer help an' I've fit — an' I've
fit agin. Now this town can go to h — 1." And he
tore off his badge and threw it on the ground, and went
off, weeping.

ISText morning, which was Sunday, the brick-yard
gang took another triumphant march through town,
and when they went back, Logan and Macfarlan, his
partner, called for volunteers to go down and put the
whole crowd under arrest. To Logan's disgust, only a
few seemed willing to go, but when the few, who
would go, started, Logan, leading them, looked back
from the top of Poplar Hill, and the whole town
seemed to be strung out behind him. Below the hill,
he saw the toughs drawn up in two bodies for battle,
218

Civilizing the Cumberland

and, as lie led the young fellows toward them, the
Hoosier rode out at a gallop, waving his hands and
beside himself with anxiety and terror.

"Don't! don't! " he shouted. " Somebody'll get
killed. Wait — they'll give up! " So Logan halted
and the Hoosier rode back. After a short parley, he
came up to say that the strikers would give up, and
when Logan started again, one party dropped their
clubs, put up their weapons, and sullenly waited, but
the rest broke and ran. Logan ordered a pursuit, but
only three or four were captured. That night the
Hoosier was delirious over his troubles, and, next day,
he left orders with his foreman to close down the plant,
and rode off to await the passing of the storm. But
the incident started the idea of a volunteer police-guard
in Logan's head. A few days later it took definite
shape. Constable Verbal had resigned; he had been
tired for some time, and wholly inefficient, for when
he arrested an outsider, the prisoner's companions
would calmly rescue him and take him home; so that
the calaboose — as we called the log-cabin jail, weakly
stockaded and with a thin-walled guard-room adjoin-
ing— was steadily as empty as a gourd.

A few nights later, trouble came up in the chief
store of the town. Two knives and two pistols were
whipped out, and the proprietor blew out the light and

219

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

astutely got under the counter. When the combatants
scrambled outside, he locked the door and crawled out
the back window. The next morning a courageous,
powerful fellow named Youell took up Verbal's badge
and his office, and that afternoon he had some pro-
fessional service to perform in the same store. A local
tough was disorderly, and Youell warned him.

" You can't arrest me," said the fellow, with an
oath, but before his lips closed, Youell had him by the
collar. His friends drew up in a line and threatened
to kill the constable if he went through. Youell had
not spoken a word and, without a word now, he pushed
through, hauling his man after him.

The friends followed close with knives and pistols
drawn, cursing and swearing that the man should not
be jailed. The constable was white, silent, and firm,
but he had to stop in front of the little law office where
Logan happened to be looking out of the window.
Logan went to the door.

" Look here, boys," he said, quietly, and with the
tone of the peacemaker, " let's not have any row.
Let him go on to the Mayor's office. If he isn't guilty,
the Mayor will let him go; and if he is, the Mayor will
let him give bond. There's no use having a row. Let
him go on."

I^ow Logan, to the casual eye, appeared no more

220

Civilizing the Cumberland

than the ordinary man, and even a close observer would
have seen no more than that his face was thoughtful,
that his eye was blue and singularly clear and fearless,
and that he was calm with a calmness that might come
from anything else than stolidity of temperament — and
that, by the way, is the self-control which counts most
against the unruly passions of other men — but any-
body near Logan, at a time when excitement was high
and a crisis was imminent, would have felt the result-
ant of forces emanating from the man, that were be-
yond analysis.

I have known one other man — his partner, Macf ar-
lan — to possess an even finer quality of courage, since
it sprang wholly from absolute fearlessness and a Puri-
tanical sense of duty, and was not aided by Logan's
pure love of conflict, but I have never seen another
man in whom this curious power over rough men was
so marked.

" Go on, Youell," said Logan, more quietly than
ever; and Youell went on with his prisoner — his
friends following, still swearing, and with their weap-
ons still in their hands. When the constable and the
prisoner stepped into the Mayor's office, Logan stepped
quickly after them and turned on the threshold, with
his arm across the door. " Hold on, boys," he said,
still good-naturedly; " the Mayor can attend to this.

221

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

If you boys want to fight anybody, fight me. I'm un-
armed and you can whip me easily enough/' he added,
with a laugh, for he knew that passion can sometimes
be turned with a jest, and that sometimes rowdies are
glad to turn matters into a jest when they are getting
too serious. " But you mustn't come in here," he said,
as though the thing were settled beyond further dis-
cussion. For one instant — the crucial one, of course
— the men hesitated, for the reason that so often makes
superior numbers of no avail among the lawless — the
lack of a leader of nerve — and Logan held the door
without another word. But the Mayor, inside, being
badly frightened, let the prisoner out at once on bond,
and Logan went on the bond. Greatly disgusted, the
Kentuckian went back to his office, and then and there
he and his partner formed the nucleus of an organiza-
tion that, so far as I know, has never had its parallel.
There have been gentlemen regulators a-plenty; vigil-
ance committees of gentlemen ; the Ku-Klux Klan was
originally composed of gentlemen; but I have never
heard of another police-guard of gentlemen who did
the every-day work of the policeman, and hewed with
precision to the line of town ordinance and common
law. The organization was military in character. The
men began drilling and target-shooting at once. Of
course, Logan was captain; his partner, Macfarlan,

222

Civilizing the Cumberland

was first lieutenant; a Virginian who had lost an arm
in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg was second lieuten-
ant, and a brother of mine was third.

From the beginning, times were lively, and the wise
captain straightway laid down two inflexible rules for
the guards. One was never to draw a pistol at all, un-
less necessary; never pretend to draw one as a threat
or to intimidate, and never to draw unless one meant
to shoot, if need be; the other was always to go in force
to make an arrest. This was not only proper discretion
as far as the safety of the guard was concerned, though
that consideration was little thought of at the time,
but it showed a knowledge of mountain-character and
was extraordinarily good sense. It saved the wounded
pride of the mountaineer — which is morbid. It would
hurt him unspeakably to have to go home and confess
that one man had put him in the calaboose, but he
would not mind telling at all how he was set upon
and overpowered by several. It was a tribute to his
prowess, too, that so many were thought necessary.
Again, he would usually give in to several without re-
sistance; whereas he would look upon the approach of
one man as a personal issue and to be met as such.
This precaution saved much bloodshed, and no mem-
ber of the guard failed to have opportunities a-plenty
to show what he could do alone.
223

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

The first problem was moonshine and its faithful
ally— "the blind tiger." The "tiger" is a little
shanty with an ever-open mouth — a hole in the door
like a post-office window. You place your money on
the sill, and at the ring of the coin a mysterious arm
emerges from the hole, sweeps the money away, and
leaves a bottle of white whiskey. Thus you see no-
body's face; and thus the owner of the beast is safe,
and so are you — which you might not be if you saw
and told. In every little hollow about the Gap a tiger
had his lair, and these were all bearded at once by a
petition to the county judge for high-license saloons,
which was granted. This measure drove the tigers out
of business and concentrated moonshine in the heart of
the town, where its devotees were under easy guard.

Then town ordinances were passed. The wild cen-
taurs were not allowed to ride up and down the plank
walks with their reins in their teeth and firing a pistol
into the ground with either hand; they could punctu-
ate the hotel-sign no more; they could not ride at a
fast gallop through the streets of the town, and — Lost
Spirit of American Liberty — they could not even yell !
Kow when the mountaineer cannot banter with a pis-
tol-shot and a yell, he feels hardly used indeed. The
limit of indignity was reached when nobody but a
policeman was allowed to blow a whistle within the
224

Civilizing the Cumberland

limits of the town, for the very good reason that it
might be mistaken for a policeman's call and cause
unnecessary excitement and exertion ; or it might not
be known for a policeman's call when he was really in
need of help. This ordinance was suggested by Mac-
farlan, who blew his whistle one night, and without
waiting for anybody to answer it, put two drunken
Swedes under arrest. The call was not answered at
once, and Macfarlan had no time or opportunity to
blow again — he was too busy reducing the Swedes to
subjection with his fists. Assistance came just in time
to prevent them from reducing him.

These ordinances arrayed the town people against
the country folks, who thought the town was doing
what it pleased to prevent the country from doing any-
thing that it pleased; they stirred up the latent spirit
of the county feud, and they crystallized the most
stubborn antagonism with which the guard had to deal
— hostility in the adjoining county of Lee.

It was curious to note that with each element of
disorder there was a climax of incident that established
the recognized authority of the guard.

After the shutting down of the brick-yard, its mis-
chief was merely merged into the general deviltry of
the town, which was naturally concentrated in the
high-license saloons^ under the leadership of one Jack

225

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Woods, whose local power for evil and cackling laugh
seemed to mean nothing else than close personal com-
munion with Old Mck himself. It was " nuts '' to
Jack to have some drunken customer blow a whistle
and then stand in his door and laugh at the policemen
running in from all directions. One day Jack tried it
himself and Logan ran down.

" Who did that? " he asked. Jack felt bold that
morning. " I blowed it.'' Logan thought for a mo-
ment. The ordinance against blowing a whistle had
not been passed, but he made up his mind that, under
the circumstances. Jack's blowing was a breach of the
peace, since the guard had adopted that signal. So
he said, " You mustn't do that again."

Jack had doubtless been going through precisely
the same mental process, and, on the nice legal point
involved, he seemed to differ.

" I'll blow it when I damn please," he said.

" Blow it again and I'll arrest you," said Logan.
Jack blew. He had his right shoulder against the cor-
ner of his door at the time, and, when he raised the
whistle to his lips, Logan drew and covered him before
he could make another move. Woods backed slowly
into his saloon to get behind his counter. Logan saw
his purpose, and he closed in, taking great risk, as he
always did, to avoid bloodshed, and there was a strug-
226

Civilizing the Cumberland

gle. Jack managed to get his pistol out, but Logan
caught him by the wrist and held the weapon away
so that it was harmless as far as he was concerned ; but
a crowd was gathering at the door toward which the
saloon-keeper's pistol was pointed, and he feared that
somebody out there might be shot; so he called out:

"Drop that pistol!"

The order was not obeyed, and Logan raised his
right hand high above Jack's head and dropped the
butt of his weapon on Jack's skull — hard. Jack's
head dropped back between his shoulders, his eyes
closed, and his pistol clicked on the floor. A blow is
a pretty serious thing in that part of the world, and
it created great excitement. Logan himself was un-
easy at Jack's trial, for fear that the saloon-keeper's
friends would take the matter up; but they didn't,
and, to the surprise of everybody, Jack quietly paid
his fine, and, thereafter, the guard had little active
trouble with Jack, though he remained always one
of its bitterest enemies. This incident made the guard
master of the Gap, and another extended its reputa-
tion outside.

The Howard-Turner feud was mildly active at that
time over in the Kentucky Mountains not far away,
and in the county of Harlan. One morning, a How-
ard who had killed a Turner fled from the mountains
227

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and reached the Gap, where he was wrongly suspected,
arrested as a horse-thief, and put in the calaboose. A
band of Turners followed him and demanded that he
should be given up to them. Knowing that the man
would be killed, Logan refused, and deputed a brother
of mine — the third lieutenant — to take the Howard
for safekeeping to the county jail, twenty miles dis-
tant. As the Turners were armed only with pistols, the
third lieutenant armed his men with shot-guns, heavily
loaded with buckshot, for he knew that mountaineers
have no love for shot-guns. When the guards ap-
proached the calaboose, the Turners were waiting with
their big pistols drawn and ready to start the fight when
the Howard should be taken out. But when George
Turner, the leader — a tall, good-looking, and rather
chivalrous young fellow, whose death soon afterward
ended the feud for a while — saw the shot-guns, he
called a halt.

" Men," he said, quietly, but so that any could hear
who wished, " you know that I never back down, and
if you say so we'll have him or die, but we are not in
our own State now; they've got the law and the shot-
guns on us, and we'd better go slow." The rest readily
agreed to go slow; so they put up their pistols and
watched the Howard and his guards ride away. I^ext
day some of the guard and two or three Turners inter-
228

Civilizing the Cumberland

changed courtesies at pool-table and bar. It was the
first time, perhaps, up to that time, that the law had
ever proved a serious obstacle to either faction in the
gratification of personal revenge, and it seemed to
make an impression, judging from the threats of ven-
geance that the third lieutenant got later from Harlan,
and the fact that there was no more trouble from the
" wild jayhawkers of old Kanetuck."

But the chief trouble was with bad men far down
the valley. It looked to these as though the guard was
making up trifling excuses to get them in the calaboose,
and when they discovered that they would always be ar-
rested and fined if caught riding across the side board-
walks, or blowing whistles, or shooting off their pistols,
or racing their horses through the streets, they got to
waiting until they were mounted and ready to go home
before they started their mischief. Then they would
ride at full tilt, doing everything they could that was
forbidden. Logan broke up this cunning game by
keeping horses saddled and ready for pursuit, and there
were many and exciting chases down the valley. After
several prominent mischief-makers were jailed, to their
great mortification (for your bad man usually weeps
copiously when he is captured — from rage as well as
shame), this, too, was stopped. But great bitterness
was the result, and some individual hostility was de-

229

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

veloped that resulted in several so-called " marked
men " ; that is, certain prominent members of the
guard were picked out by the bad men for especial at-
tention if a general fight should come up, and I believe
that with several of these marked men, human nature
so far got the better of an abstract motive for order
and law that the compliment was heartily returned.
Some of the best and some of the worst were those
to be in most danger. Even a day was fixed for the
evening up of old scores — a political gathering on the
day that Senator Mahone was the speaker, and on that
day the clash came, the story of which cannot be told
here. After this clash came the boom swiftly, and
the guard increased in numbers and prestige. It not
only unified the best element of the town, but it had
a strong influence for good on the members themselves
who were young and hot-blooded. N'aturally a mem-
ber of the guard was morally bound not to do anything
for which he would arrest another man. If a guard
was unwisely indulgent he was taken to his room and
kept there — a privilege that was allowed the friends
of any drunken man, if he was taken out of town be-
fore he got into mischief. Many fights, and even sev-
eral duels, were avoided by the new sense of personal
consistency developed by the duties of the guard.
Once, for instance, when the boom was at its height,
230

Civilizing the Cumberland

Logan determined to break up tlie gambling-houses
of the town. Many of the guard were inveterate poker-
players; so Logan merely took around an agreement to
cease poker — signed by himself, and pointing out the
inconsistency otherwise involved in the proposed raid.
Every man signed it, stopped playing, and gambling
for the time was broken up in town. By and by, some
of the men down the valley began to see that the guard
had no personal hostihty to gratify, and that, if they
came to town and behaved themselves, they would
never be bothered. And they saw that the guard was as
quick to arrest one of its own men as an outsider, and
that it was strictly impartial in the discharge of its
duties. This became evident when the j oiliest and
most popular man in town was put in the calaboose by
his friends (he has never touched a drop of liquor
since) ; when a guard drew his Winchester on his blood
cousin and made him behave; and when another put
his own brother under arrest. So local hostility died
down slowly, and the guard even became popular.
Membership was eagerly sought and often denied, and
the force numbered a hundred men.

At last, it began to extend its operations and make

expeditions out into the mountains to break up gangs

of desperadoes. Once it fortified itself in the county

court-house, cut port-holes through the walls, put the

231

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

town under martial law, and guarded tlie jail night
and day to prevent a Kentucky mountain-clan from
rescuing a murderer who had been convicted and sen-
tenced to death; and they stayed there a month till
the law was executed, and the first man ever hung in
the region met death on the gallows.

After this, its work was about done, but incidents
like the following continued for a year or two to be
common :

One night, I saw, or rather heard, one of the guard,
who is now the youngest of the nine Board of Visitors
of the University of Virginia, go over a cliff thirty
feet high and down into Roaring Fork with the leader
of the brick-yard gang locked in his arms. The water
was rather shallow, and luckily the policeman fell on
top. Three of the tough's ribs were broken, and we
had to carry him to the calaboose, whence he escaped,
with the aid of his sweetheart, who handed him in a
saw and a file ; so that we had another chase after him,
later, and again he ran into the river, and again, by
the aid of his sweetheart, he made his final escape.

While the church-bells were ringing one morning,
a drunken fellow came into town, picked up a stone
from the street, and deliberately beat out a pane of
glass in the door of the hardware-store so that he would
not cut himself when he crawled in. Macfarlan ran
232

Civilizing the Cumberland

up in answer to the cry of a small boj, looked in, and,
being without any weapon, got a poker from the club,
next door. The tough had two butcher-knives out on
the show-case, one revolver lying near them, and he
was trying to load still another. He threw a butcher-
knife at Macf arlan as the latter crawled in through the
broken pane. Then, either he could not use his pistol
at all, or he was dazed by the exhibition of such nerve,
for Macfarlan, who was a lacrosse-player at Yale, and
whose movements are lightning-like, downed him with
the poker, and he and his brother, who was only a mo-
ment behind through the hole in the door, carried him
out, unconscious.

A whistle blew one night, when a storm was going
on. It came from a swamp that used to run through
a part of the town. Before I could get fifty yards
toward it, there were three flashes of lightning and two
pistol-shots, followed by screams of terror and pain; and
in a few minutes I came upon a tough writhing at the
foot of a tree, and Logan bending over him. By the
first flash, the captain had seen the fellow behind a
tree, and he called to him to come out; by the second,
he saw him levelling his pistol; and by the third flash,
both fired. Logan thought at first that the man was
mortally wounded, but he got well. One bitter cold
night a negro shot a white man and escaped. The en-

233

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

tire guard watched pass and gap and railroad track
for him all the awful night long. The fifteen-year-old
infant of the guard — since known at Harvard as " the
Colonel '' — was on guard at one point alone, with
orders to hold every negro who came along. When re-
lieved, the doughty little Colonel had about twenty
shivering blacks huddled and held together at the point
of his pistol. Among them was the negro wanted, and
that night the guard took him to the woods and spent
another bitter night, guarding him from a mob.

Twice again it saved a negro from certain death.
Once the crime charged was that for which the law
can fix no penalty, since there is none; in Virginia
it is death — death by law, as well. Some of the guard
believed him guilty, and with some there was doubt;
but, irrespective of belief, they answered Logan's call
to guard the jail. The mob gathered, led by personal
friends of the men who were on guard. As they ad-
vanced, Logan drew his pistol; he would kill the first
man who advanced beyond a certain point, he said, and
they knew that he meant it. After a short parley, the
mob agreed not to make any attempt to take the negro
out that night — their plan being to wait until he was
taken to the county jail next day — and they told
Logan.

" Will you give me your word that you won't? " he
234

The Infant of the Guard.

Civilizing the Cumberland

asked. They did, and he put up his pistol, and left
the jail without a guard — it needed none. Now the
curious part of this story is that several of the men
who were there and ready to shoot their own friends
and give up their own lives to protect the negro, had
already agreed — believing in his guilt — to help take
him out of the county jail, if the leaders would wait
until he was without the special jurisdiction of the
guard, and where the hanging would not reflect on the
reputation of the Gap. Indefensible sophistry if you
will, but a tribute to the influence of the captain of the
guard, to the passionate esprit du corps that prevailed,
and to the inviolability of a particular oath.

But all that is over — for the work is done. Out-
siders gave the plan, the organization, the leadership,
the example — the natives have done the rest. A sim-
ilar awakening is all that is necessary in other moun-
tain-communities of the South.

And such was the guard. As I was not a member
until its authority was established and the danger was
considerably reduced, I can pay my tribute freely.
Very quickly I was led to believe that nothing was
more common than courage; nothing so exceptionable
as cowardice; and with that guard, nothing was. I
can recall no instance in which every man was not an
eager volunteer when any risk was to be run; or was

235

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

not eager to shirk when the duty was to keep him
out of the trouble at hand, except once. One man
was willing, one night, when an attack was to be made
at daybreak on a cabin full of outlaws, to stay behind
and hold the horses; and this man was newly married,
and was, besides, quite ill. The organization still ex-
ists to-day, and the moral ejffect of its existence is so
strong that on the last Fourth of July, when there were
several thousand people in town, not a single arrest was
made. There was no need for an arrest. Four years
ago the floor of the calaboose would have been many
deep. And the weak old calaboose stands now, as it
stood in the beginning, but, now, strong enough.

236

The Hanging of Talton Hall

The Hanging of Talton Hall

THROUGH mountain and valley, humanity had
talked of nothing else for weeks, and before
dawn of the fatal day, humanity started in con-
verging lines from all other counties for the county-
seat of Wise — from Scott and from Lee; from wild
Dickinson and Buchanan, where one may find white
men who have never looked upon a black man's face ;
from the " Pound," which harbors the desperadoes
of two sister States whose skirts are there stitched
together with pine and pin-oak along the crest of the
Cumberland; and, farther on, even from the far away
Kentucky hills, mountain-humanity had started at
dawn of the day before. A stranger would have
thought that a county-fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus
was the goal. Men and women, boys and girls, chil-
dren and babes in arms; each in his Sunday best — the
men in jeans, slouch hats, and high boots; the women
in gay ribbons and brilliant homespun; in wagons and
239

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

on foot, on horses and mules, carrying man and man,
man and boy, lover and sweetheart, or husband and
wife and child — all moved through the crisp Septem-
ber air, past woods of russet and crimson and along
brown dirt roads to a little straggling mountain-town
where midway of the one long street and shut in by
a tall board-fence was a court-house, with the front
door closed and barred, and port-holes cut through its
brick walls and looking to the rear; and in the rear
a jail; and to one side of the jail, a tall wooden box
with a projecting cross-beam in plain sight, from the
centre of which a rope swung to and fro, when the
wind moved.

Never had' a criminal met death at the hands of the
law in that region, and it was not sure that the law
was going to take its course now; for the condemned
man was a Kentucky f eudsman, and his clan was there
to rescue him from the gallows, and some of his ene-
mies were on hand to see that he died a just death by
a bullet, if he should manage to escape the noose. And
the guard, whose grim dream of law and order seemed
to be coming true, was there from the Gap, twenty
miles away, to see that the noose did its ordained work.
On the outskirts of the town, and along every road,
boyish policemen were halting and disarming every
man who carried a weapon in sight. At the back win-

240

The Hanging of Talton Hall

dows of the court-house and at the threatening little
port-holes were more youngsters, manning Winchesters
and needle-guns; at the windows of the jailer's house,
which was of frame and which joined and fronted the
jail, were more still on guard, and around the jail was
a line of them, heavily armed to keep the crowd back
on the outer side of the jail-yard fence.

The crowd had been waiting for hours. The neigh-
boring hills were black with people, waiting; the
house-tops were black with men and boys, waiting;
the trees in the streets were bending under the weight
of human bodies, and the jail-yard fence was full three
deep with people hanging to the fence and hanging to
one another's necks, waiting. Now the fatal noon was
hardly an hour away, and a big man with a red face
appeared at one of the jailer's windows; and then the
sheriff, who began to take out the sash. At once a
hush came over the crowd and then a rustling and a
murmur. It was the prisoner's lawyer, and something
was going to happen. Faces and gun-muzzles thick-
ened at the port-holes and the court-house windows;
the line of guards in the jail-yard wheeled and stood
with their faces upturned to the window; the crowd on
the fence scuffled for better positions, and the people in
the locust-trees craned their necks from the branches,
or climbed higher, and there was a great scraping on
241

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

all the roofs; even the black crowd out on the hills
seemed to catch the excitement and to sway, while
spots of intense blue and vivid crimson came out here
and there from the blackness when the women rose
from their seats on the ground. Then — sharply —
there was silence. The big man disappeared, and in
his place and shut in by the sashless window, as
by a picture-frame, and blinking in the strong light,
stood a man with black hair, cropped close, beard gone,
face pale and worn, and hands that looked thin — stood
Talton Hall.

He was going to confess — that was the rumor. His
lawyers wanted him to confess; the preacher who had
been singing hymns with him all morning wanted him
to confess; the man himself wanted to confess; and
now he was going to confess. What deadly mysteries
he might clear up if he would ! 'No wonder the crowd
was still eager, for there was hardly a soul but knew
his record — and what a record! His best friends put
the list of his victims no lower than thirteen — his ene-
mies no lower than thirty. And there, looking up at
him, were three women whom he had widowed or
orphaned, and at one comer of the jail-yard still an-
other, a little woman in black — the widow of the con-
stable whom Hall had shot to death only a year before.

Now Hall's lips opened and closed ; and opened and
242

The Hanging of Talton Hall

closed again. Then he took hold of the side of the
window and looked behind him. The sheriff brought
him a chair and he sat down. Apparently he was weak
and he was going to wait awhile; and so he sat, in
full view, still blinking in the strong light, but nodding
with a faint smile to some friend whom he could make
out on the fence, or in a tree, or on a house-top, and
waiting for strength to lay bare his wretched soul to
man as he claimed to have laid it bare to God.

One year before, at Norton, six miles away, when
the constable turned on his heel. Hall, without warn-
ing, and with the malice of Satan, shot him, and he
fell on the railroad track — dead. Norton is on the
Virginia side of Black Mountain, and at once Hall
struck off into the woods and climbed the rocky breast
of the Cumberland, to make for his native Kentucky
hills.

" Somehow," he said to me, when he was in jail a
year after, " I knowed right then that my name was
Dennis " — a phrase of evil prophecy that he had
picked up outside the mountains. He swore to me
that, the night of the murder, when he lay down to
sleep, high on the mountain-side and under some

243

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

rhododendron-bushes, a flock of little birds flew in on
him like a gust of rain and perched over and around
him, twittering at him all night long. At daybreak
they were gone, but now and then throughout the day,
as he sat in the sun planning his escape, the birds would
sweep chattering over his head, he said, and would
sweep chattering back again. He swore to me further,
on the day he was to go to the scaffold (I happened to
be on the death-watch that morning), that at daybreak
those birds had come again to his prison-window and
had chirped at him through the bars. All this struck
me as strange, for Hall's brain was, on all other points,
as clear as rain, and, unlike " The Eed Fox of the
Mountains," who occupied the other cell of his cage,
was not mystical, and never claimed to have visions.
Hall was a Kentucky feudsman — one of the mountain-
border ruffians who do their deeds of deviltry on one
side of the State-line that runs the crest of Black
Mountain, and then step over to the other side to
escape the lax arm of mountain-justice. He was little
sorry for what he had done, except, doubtless, for the
reason that the deed would hamper his freedom. He
must move elsewhere, when a pair of hot black eyes
were at that moment luring him back to Norton.
Still, he could have the woman follow him, and his
temporary denial bothered him but little. In reality,
244

The Hanging of Talton Hall

he had not been much afraid of arrest and trial, in spite
of the birds and his premonition. He had come clear
of the charge of murder many times before, but he
claimed afterward that he was more uneasy than he
had ever been; and with what good reason he little
knew. Only a few miles below where he sat, and be-
yond the yawning mouth that spat the little branch
trickling past his feet as a torrent through the Gap
and into Powell's Valley, was come a new power to
take his fate in hand. Down there — the Gap itself was
a hell-hole then — a little band of " furriners " had
come in from blue-grass Kentucky and tide-water Vir-
ginia to make their homes; young fellows in whom
pioneering was a birthright; who had taken matters
into their own hands, had formed a volunteer police-
guard, and were ready, if need be, to match Win-
chester with Winchester, pistol with pistol, but always
for and in the name of the law. Talt had one
enemy, too, to whom he gave little thought. This
was old '^ Doc " Taylor — a queer old fellow, who
w^as preacher, mountain-doctor, revenue-officer; who
preached Swedenborgianism — Heaven knows where he
got it in those wilds — doctored with herbs night and
day for charity, and chased criminals from vanity, or
personal enmity, or for fun. He knew every by-path
through the mountains, and he moved so swiftly that

245

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

the superstitious credited him with superhuman powers
of locomotion. Nobody was surprised, walking some
lonely path, to have old Doc step from the bushes
at his side and as mysteriously slip away. He had a
spy-glass fully five feet long with which to watch his
quarry from the mountain-tops, and he wore mocca-
sins with the heels forward so that nobody could tell
which way he had gone. In time his cunning gave
him the title of " The Ked Fox of the Mountains."
It was the Red Fox who hated Hall and was to catch
him; the " furriners from the Gap " were to guard
him, see that he was tried by a fearless jury, and, if
pronounced guilty, hanged. Hall knew Taylor's
hatred, of course, but scorned him, and he had heard
vaguely of the Gap. In prison, he alternately cursed
his cell-mate, who, by a curious turn of fate, was none
other than the Red Fox caught, at last, in his own
toils, and wondered deeply, and with hearty oaths,
" what in the hell " people at the Gap had against him
that they should leave their business and risk their
lives to see that he did not escape a death that was
unmerited. The mountaineer finds abstract devotion
to law and order a hard thing to understand. The
Red Fox more than hated Hall — he feared him; and
how Hall, after capture, hated him! No sooner was
the feudsman's face turned southward than the Red
246

The Hanging of Talton Hall

Fox kept cunning guard over the black-eyed woman
at Norton and, through her, learned where his enemy-
was. More — he furnished money for two detectives
to go after Hall and arrest him on a charge of which
he was not guilty, and thus decoy him, without re-
sistance, to jail, where they told him the real reason
of the arrest. Hall fell to the floor in a cursing fit
of rage. Then the Bed Fox himself went south to
help guard Hall back to the mountains. A mob of the
dead constable's friends were waiting for him at Nor-
ton— for the murder was vicious and unprovoked —
and old Doc stood by Hall's side, facing the infuriated
crowd with a huge drawn pistol in each hand and a
peculiar smile on his washed-out face. Old Squire
Salyers, father-in-law to the constable, made a vicious
cut at the prisoner with a clasp knife as he stepped
from the train, but he was caught and held, and with
the help of the volunteer guard from the Gap, Hall
was got safely to jail at Gladeville, the county-seat of
Wise.

It was to protect Hall from his enemies that con-
cerned Hall's Kentucky mountain-clan at first, for
while trial for murder was not rare and conviction was
quite possible, such a thing as a hanging had never
been heard of in that part of the world. Why, then,
the Red Fox was so eager to protect Hall for the law

247

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

was a mystery to many, but the truth probably was
that he had mischief of his own to conceal; and, more-
over, he knew about that guard at the Gap. So, during
the trial, the old man headed the local guard that led
Hall to and from jail to court-house, and stood by
him in the court-room with one of the big pistols ever
drawn and that uncanny smile on his uncanny face.
For the Red Fox had a strange face. One side was
calm, kindly, benevolent; on the other side a curious
twitch of the muscles would now and then lift the cor-
ner of his mouth into a wolfish snarl. So that Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in old Doc were separated only
by the high bridge of his nose. Throughout the long
trial, old Doc was at his post. Only one night was
he gone, and the next morning an old moonshiner and
four of his family were shot from ambush in the
" Pound." As Doc was back at his post that after-
noon, nobody thought of connecting the murder with
him. Besides, everybody was concerned with the
safety of Hall — his enemies and his friends: his
friends for one reason, that eight of the jury were
fearless citizens of the " Gap " who would give a ver-
dict in accordance with the law and the evidence, in
spite of the intimidation that, hitherto, had never
failed to bring a desperado clear; and for another,
that the coils were surely tightening; his enemies, for

248

The Hanging of Talton Hall

fear that Hall's friends would cheat the gallows by
rescuing him from jail. Rumors of rescue thickened
every day — Hall's Kentucky clan was coming over
Black Mountain to take the prisoner from jail. More-
over, Hall's best friend — John Rawn — was the most
influential man in the county — a shrewd, daring fellow
who kept a band of armed retainers within call of his
yard-fence. He, too, it was said, was going to help
Hall to freedom. Accordingly the day before the ver-
dict was brought in, twenty of the volunteer guard
came up from the Gap, twenty miles away, to keep
Hall's friends from saving him from the gallows, and
his enemies from rescuing him for death by a Win-
chester; and to do this they gave it out that they
would put him aboard at Norton; but, instead, they
spirited him away across the hills to another railroad.

A few months later Hall was brought back for
execution. He was placed in a cage that had two
cells, and, as he passed the first cell an old freckled
hand was thrust between the bars to greet him and a
voice called him by name. Hall stopped in amaze-
ment; then he burst out laughing; then he struck at
the pallid face through the bars with his manacles and
cursed him bitterly; then he laughed again, horribly.
It was the Red Fox behind the bars on charge of shoot-
ing the moonshiner's family from ambush — the Red
249

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Fox caught in his own toils; and there the two stayed
in adjoining cells of the same cage. The Red Fox
sang hymns by day, and had visions by night, which
he told to the death-watch every morning. In one
dream that he told me he said he was crossing a river
in a boat. The wind rose, a storm came, and he barely
got to land. Wind and wave were his enemies, he
said; the storm was his trial, and getting to shore
meant that he was coming out all right.

The Red Fox's terror of Hall was pathetic. Once
he wrote to my brother, who was first in command in
the absence of the captain of the guard: ^' This man
iS a Devil and i am a fraid of him he is trying to burn
the gail down and i wiSh you would take him away."
But the two stayed together — the one waiting for trial,
the other for his scaffold, which was building. The
sound of saw and hammer could be plainly heard
throughout the jail, but Hall said never a word
about it.

He thought he was going to be pardoned, and if not
pardoned — rescued, surely. He did get a stay of exe-
cution for a month, and then the rumors of rescue flew
about in earnest, and the guard came up from the Gap
in full force and cut port-holes in the court-house walls,
and drilled twice a day and put out sentinels at night.
The town was practically under military law, and the
250

The Hanging of Talton Hall

times were tender. By day we would see suspicious
characters watching us from the spurs round about,
and hear very queer noises at nigKt. The senses of
the young guards got so acute because of the strain,
that one swore that he heard a cat walking over the
sand a hundred yards away. Another was backed into
town one dark night by an old cow that refused to
halt, when challenged. Another picket let off his gun
by accident just before day, and the men sprang from
their blankets on the court-house floor and were at the
windows and port-holes like lightning. Two who
waited to dress, were discharged next morning. One
night there was a lively discussion when the captain
gave strict orders that the pickets must fire as soon
as they saw the mob, in order to alarm the guard in
town, and not wait until they were personally safe.
This meant the sacrifice of that particular picket, and
there was serious question as to the right of the captain
to give orders like that. And that night as I passed
through the room where the infant of the guard was
waiting to go on picket duty on a lonely road at mid-
night, I heard him threshing around in his bed, and
he called to me in the manner of a farewell :

" I — I — IVe made up my mind to shoot," he said;
and so had everybody else. Whether a thing happens
or not makes little difference as far as the interest of

^51

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

it is concerned, when one is convinced that it is going
to happen and looking for it to take place any minute ;
at least, waiting out on a lonely road under the stars,
alone, for a band of " wild jay hawkers from old Kane-
tuck '' to come sweeping down on the town was quite
enough to keep the pickets awake and alert. One
night we thought trouble was sure, and, indeed, serious
trouble almost came, but not the trouble we were ex-
pecting. A lawyer brought the news that two bands
of Kentuckians had crossed Black Mountain that morn-
ing to fire the town at both ends and dynamite the
court-house and the jail. As there were only fifteen
of us on hand, we telegraphed speedily to the Gap for
the rest of the guard, and an engine and a caboose
were sent down for them from Norton, six miles away.
The engineer was angry at having extra work to do, and
when he started from the Gap with the guard, he
pulled his throttle wide open. The road was new and
rough, and the caboose ran off the track while going
through a tunnel; ran along the ties for several hun-
dred yards and ran across sixty feet of trestle, striking
a girder of the bridge and splitting it for two yards
or more. A guard managed to struggle out of the
door and fire off his Winchester just there, and the
engineer, hearing it, pulled up within ten yards of a
sharp curve. The delay of ten seconds in the report
252

The Hanging of Talton Hall

of the gun, and the caboose, with the thirty-five oc-
cupants, would have been hurled down an embank-
ment and into the river. The Kentuckians did not
come in that night, and thereafter the guard stayed at
the county-seat in full force until the day set for the
execution.

Apparently the purpose of a rescue was given up,
but we could not tell, and one morning there was con-
siderable excitement when John Rawn, the strong
friend of the condemned man, rode into town and up
to the jail, and boldly asked permission to see Hall.
Rawn was the man to whom Hall was looking for
rescue. He was a tall, straight fellow with blond hair
and keen blue eyes. The two had been comrades in
the war, and Hall had been Rawn's faithful ally in his
many private troubles. Two of us were detailed to be
on hand at the meeting, and I was one of the two.
Hall came to the cell-door, and the men grasped hands
and looked at each other for a full minute without
saying a word. The eyes of both filled.

" Of course, Talt," he said, finally, " I want the law
to take its course. I don't want to do anything against
the law and I know you don't want me to." I looked
for a sly quiver of an eyelid after this speech, but
Rawn seemed sincere, and Hall, I thought, dropped,
as though some prop had suddenly been knocked

253

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

from under him. He looked down quickly, but he
mumbled :

" Yes, of course, that's right, I reckon. We don't
want to do nothing agin the law."

Still, he never believed he was going to hang, nor
did he give up hope even on the morning of his execu-
tion when the last refusal to interfere came in from the
Governor — the chance of rescue still was left. The
preachers had been coming in to sing and pray with
him, and a priest finally arrived; for, strange to say,
Hall was a Catholic — the only one I ever saw in the
mountains. Occasionally, too, there had come his
sister, a tall, spare woman dressed in black; and she
could hardly look at a member of the guard except with
the bitterest open hatred. All these besought Hall to
repent, and, in time, he did; but his sincerity was
doubtful. Once, for instance, in a lull between the
hymns, and after Hall had forgiven his enemies,
the infant, who was on the death-watch, passed near
the prisoner's cell-door, and Hall's hand shot through
the bars and the tips of his fingers brushed the butt
of the boy's pistol, which protruded from a holster on
his hip.

" Not this time, Talt," he said, springing away.

" I was only foolin', " Talt said, but his eyes
gleamed.

254

The Hanging of Talton Hall

Again, the night before, being on guard down be-
hind the jail, I heard Hall cursing because the guards
would give him no whiskey. This was cruel, for the
reason that they had been allowing him liquor until
that night, when he was most in need of it. As soon
as I was relieved, I got a bottle of whiskey and told
the watch to let him have it. Hall was grateful, and
next morning he called me by my first name.

" I love you," he said, '^ but I've got you spotted."
He had repeatedly sworn that he would have many
of us ambushed, after his death, and his sister was sup-
posed to have our names and descriptions of us, and an
old Kentucky mountaineer told me that he would
rather have the ten worst men in the mountains his
deadly enemies than that One woman. Hall meant
that he had me on his list. As ambush would be very
easy on our trips to and from the county-seat, through
thick laurel and rhododendron, I told the priest of
HalFs threat and suggested that he might save us
trouble by getting Hall to announce in his confession
that he wanted nothing else done. The priest said he
would try. But for a little while on the morning of
the execution. Hall, for the first time, gave up and
got very humble ; and there was one pathetic incident.
The sister was crouched at the cell-door, and Hall, too,
^as crouched on the floor, talking to her through the

255

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

bars. They spoke in a low tone, but were not permitted
to whisper. At last Hall asked that he might give his
sister a secret message. It had nothing to do with the
guard, or the law, or his escape, but he did not want it
heard. The " Judge," who was on guard, was tender-
hearted, but a martinet withal, and he felt obliged to
deny the request. And then Hall haltingly asked
aloud that his sister should bring a silk handkerchief
and tie it around his throat — afterward — to hide the
red mark of the rope. Tears sprang to the " Judge's "
eyes, and he coughed quickly and pulled out his own
handkerchief to blow his nose. It happened to be of
silk, and, a moment later, I saw him pressing the hand-
kerchief into the woman's hands. An hour later Hall
said that he was ready to confess.

in

No wonder the crowd was eager. Would he tell all?
How, when he was only fourteen years old, he had shot
Harry Maggard, his uncle, during the war — Hall de-
nied this; how he had killed his two brothers-in-law
— one was alive. Hall said, and he had been tried for
killing the other and had come clear; how he had killed
Henry Monk in the presence of Monk's wife at a wild-

256

The Hanging of Talton Hall

bee tree — he claimed to have been cleared for that;
how he had killed a Kentucky sheriff by dropping to
the ground when the sheriff fired, in this way dodging
the bullet and then shooting the officer from where he
lay, supposedly dead — that. Hall said, was a lie; how
he had taken Mack Hall's life in the Wright-Jones
feud — Mack, he said, had waylaid and wounded him
first ; how he had thrown John Adams out of the court-
house window at Prestonburg, over in Kentucky, and
broken his neck — Adams was drunk. Hall said, and
fell out; why he had killed Abe Little — because, said
Hall, he resisted arrest; how and where he killed Red-
necked Johnson, who was found out in the woods one
morning a week after he had disappeared; whether
he had killed Frank Salyers, whose wife he afterward
married; and the many other mysteries that he might
clear up if he would speak. Would he tell all? !N'o
wonder the crowd was still.

Hall stood motionless, and his eyes slowly wandered
around at the waiting people — in the trees, on the roofs,
and on the fence — and he sank slowly back to his
chair again. Again a murmur rose. Maybe he was
too weak to stand and talk — perhaps he was going to
talk from his chair; yes, he was leaning forward now
and his lips were opening. He was looking downward
into the uplooking face of a big, red-cheeked fellow,

257

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and lie was surely going to speak. The crowd became
still again. And he did speak.

" What's yo' name? " he asked. The fellow told
him — ^he had been an unimportant witness in the trial
— neither for nor against Hall.

" I thought so," said Hall, and of his own accord he
turned away from the window and that was all that
the man with the charge of two-score murders on his
soul had to say to the world before he left it to be
judged for them, as he firmly believed, by a living
God. A little later the line of guards wheeled again
to face the crowded fence, and Hall started for the
scaffold. He kissed my brother's hand in the jail, and
when old Doc came to his cell-door to tell him good-by,
Hall put his face to the window and kissed his bitterest
enemy — the man who had brought him to his death.
Then he went out with a firm step; but his face was
dispirited and hopeless at last; it looked the face of a
man who has just been relieved from some long-en-
dured physical pain that has left him weak in body and
spirit. Twenty of us had been assigned by lot to duty
as a special guard inside the box, and all of us, at his
request, shook one of his helpless hands, which were
tied behind his back. When he had mounted the scaf-
fold, he called for his sister, and the tall, thin, black
spectre came in and mounted the scaffold, too, stopping
258

\

Hall stood as motionless as the trunk of an oak.

The Hanging of Talton Hall

on the step below him. Hall did not call her by name
— he hardly looked at her, nor did he tell her good-by
again.

*'Been enough killin' on my account," he said,
abruptly; " I don't want nothin' more done about this.
I don't want no more lives lost on account o' me. I
want things to stop right here."

The woman waved a threatening hand over us, and
her voice rose in a wail. " Oh, Talt, I can't let this
rest here. You'd just as well take up one o' these men
right here and hang 'em. I ain't goin' to let it stop
here — no — no ! " And she began to cry and ran down
the steps and out of the box.

Hall stood as motionless as the trunk of an oak. A
man will show nervousness with a twitch of the lips,
a roll of the eyes, or, if in no other way, with his hands;
but I was just behind him, and not a finger of his
bound hands moved. The sheriff was a very tender-
hearted man and a very nervous one ; and the arrange-
ments for the execution were awkward. Two upright
beams had to be knocked from under the trap-door,
so that it would rest on the short rope-noose that had
to be cut before the door would fall. As each of these
was knocked out, the door sank an inch, and the sus-
pense was horrible. The poor wretch must have
thought that each stroke was the one that was to send

259

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

him to eternity, but not a muscle moved. All was
ready, at last, and the sheriff cried, in a loud voice ;

" May God have mercy on this poor man's soul ! "
and struck the rope with a common hatchet. The
black-capped apparition shot down, and the sheriff ran,
weeping, out of the door of the box.

So far no revenge has been taken for the hanging
of Talton Hall. The mountaineer never forgets, and
he hates as long as he remembers, but it is probable
that no trouble will ever come of it unless some promi-
nent member of that guard should chance, some day,
to wander carelessly into the little creek to which the
rough two-horse wagon followed by relatives and
friends, moimted and on foot, bore the remains of the
first victim of law and order in the extreme southwest
comer of the commonwealth of Virginia.

260

The Red Fox of the Mountains

The Red Fox of the Mountains

THE Red Fox of the Mountains was going to be
hanged. Being a preacher, as well as herb-
doctor, revenue-officer, detective, crank, and
assassin, he was going to preach his own funeral ser-
mon on the Sunday before the day set for his passing.
He was going to wear a suit of white and a death-cap
of white, both made of damask tablecloth by his little
old wife, and both emblems of the purple and fine linen
that he was to put on above. Moreover, he would
have his body kept unburied for three days — saying
that, on the third day, he would arise and go about
preaching. How he reconciled such a dual life at one
and the same time, over and under the stars, was
known only to his twisted brain, and is no concern of
mine — I state the facts. But had such a life been
possible, it would have been quite consistent with the
Red Fox's strange dual way on earth. For, on Sun-
days he preached the Word; other days, he was a walk-
ing arsenal, with a huge 50 x 75 Winchester over one

263

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

shoulder, two belts of gleaming cartridges about bis
waist, and a great pistol swung to either hip. In the
woods, be would wear moccasins with the beels for-
ward, so tbat no man could tell wbicb way be bad
gone. You migbt be walking along a lonely patb in
tbe mountains and tbe Ked Fox — or " old Doc " — as
he was usually called, would step mysteriously from
the bushes at your side, ask a few questions and, a few
hundred yards farther, would disappear again — to be
beard of again — a few hours later — at some incredible
distance away. Credited thus with superhuman pow-
ers of locomotion and wearing those mysterious moc-
casins— and, as a tribute to his infernal shrewdness —
be came to be known, by and by, as " The Red Fox
of the Mountains." Sometimes he would even carry
a huge spy-glass, five feet long, with which he watched
his enemies from the mountain-tops. When he had
" located " them, he would slip down and take a pot
shot at them. And yet, day or night, he would, as
" yarb-doctor," walk a dozen miles to see a sick friend,
and charge not a cent for his services. And day and
night he would dream dreams and have visions and
talk his faith by the hour. One other dark deed had
been laid to his door — unproven — but now, caught in
his own toils, at last, the Red Fox was going to be
hanged.

264

The Red Fox of the Mountains

The scene of that death-sentence was a strange one.
The town was a little mountain-village — a county-seat
— down in the southwestern corner of Virginia, and
not far from the Kentucky line. The court-house was
of brick, but rudely built.

The court-room was crowded and still, and the
Judge shifted uneasily in his chair — for it was his first
death-sentence — and leaned forward on his elbows —
speaking slowly:

" Have you anything to say whereby sentence of
death should not be pronounced on you? "

The Ked Fox rose calmly, shifted his white tie,
cleared his throat, and stood a moment, steady and
silent, with his strange dual character showing in his
face — kindness and benevolence on one side, a wolfish
snarl on the other, and both plain to any eye that
looked.

" !N"o," he said, clearly, " but I have one friend here
who I would like to speak for me."

Again the Judge shifted in his chair. He looked
at the little old woman who sat near, in black — wife
to the Eed Fox and mother of his children.

" Why," he said, " why — yes — but who is your
friend? "

" Jesus Christ! " said the Red Fox, sharply. The
whole house shivered, and the Judge reverently bowed
his head.

265

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

Only a few months before, I had seen the Red Eox
in that same court-room. But, then, he had a huge pis-
tol in each hand and bore himself like a conqueror, as
he guarded his old enemy, Talton Hall, to and fro
from court-house to jail, and stood over him in the
court-room while that old enemy was on trial for his
life. To be sure, that flying wedge of civilization —
the volunteer police-guard down at the " Gap," twenty
miles away, was on hand, too, barricading the court-
house, through the brick walls of which they had cut
port-holes, keeping the town under military law, and
on guard, night and day, to prevent Hall's Kentucky
clansmen from rescuing him; but it was the Red
Fox who furnished money and brains to run his enemy
down — who guarded him to jail and who stood at the
railway station, with his big pistols and his strange
smile, keeping at bay the mob who hungered for HalFs
life without the trial by his peers. And now, where
Hall had stood then, — the Red Fox was standing now,
with the cross-beam of the gallows from which Hall
had dangled, and from which the Fox was to dangle
now, — plain to his eyes through the open window. It
was a curious transformation in so short a time from
the hunter-of-men to the hunted-of-men, and it was
still more curious that, just while the Red Fox was
hounding Hall to his grave, he should have done the

266

The Red Fox of the Mountains

deed that, straightway and soon, was to lead him
there.

For the Ked Fox had one other bitter enemy whom
he feared even more than he hated — an old moon-
shiner from the Pound — who came to the little
county-seat every court-day. Indeed, a certain two-
horse wagon, driven by a thin, little, old woman and
a big-eared, sallow-faced boy, used to be a queer sight
on the dirty streets of the town ; for the reason that the
woman and boy rarely left the wagon, and both were
always keenly watchful and rather fearful of some-
thing that lay on straw behind the seat. This some-
thing, you soon discovered, was the out-stretched body
of a huge, gaunt, raw-boned mountaineer, so badly
paralyzed that he could use nothing but his head and
his deep-sunken, keen, dark eyes. The old man had
a powerful face, and his eyes were fierce and wilful.
He was well known to the revenue service of ITorth
Carolina, and in a fight with the officers of that State,
a few years previous, he had got the wounds that had
put him on his back, unable to move hand or foot.

He was carried thence to the Pound in Kentucky,
where he lived and ran his " wild-cat " stills, unde-
terred by the law or the devil. Ira Mullins — old Ira
Mullins — was his name, and once when the Red Fox
was in the revenue service, the two came into con-

267

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

flict. Ira was bringing some " moonsliine " back from
Korth Carolina in a wagon, and the Red Fox waited
for him at the county-seat with a posse, and opened
fire on Mullins and two companions from behind fence
and house corner. (There are some who say that the
Fox fired from a very safe position indeed.) Only one
was killed; the horses ran away and carried off the body
and left the other two on foot. A little later, old Ira
walked leisurely up the street and on out of town, un-
molested and unfoUowed. This was supposed to be
the origin of the trouble between Mullins, moon-
shiners, and the Red Fox of the Mountains.

One day, while Talton Hall was on trial and the
Red Fox was guarding him, old Ira came to town.
Two days later the Red Fox disappeared over night,
and the next morning, just while old Ira, his wife, his
big-eared son of fourteen years, a farm-hand, old Ira's
brother, and that brother's wife were turning a corner
of the road through Pound Gap, and, just under some
great rocks on a little spur above them, sheets of fire
blazed in the sunlight and the roar of Winchesters rose.
Only two got away : the boy, whose suspenders were cut
in two, as he ran up the road, and the brother's wife,
who was allowed to escape back into Virginia and who
gave the alarm. Behind the rocks were found some
bits of a green veil, a heap of cartridge shells, and an
268

The Red Fox of the Mountains

old army haversack. There were large twigs which
had been thrust into crevices between the rocks about
waist high. These were withered, showing that some
of the assassins had been waiting for the victims for
days. Who had done the murder was a mystery. The
old woman, who had escaped, said there were three
men, and so there turned out to be; that they had the
upper part of their faces covered with green veils ; and
that she thought two of the men were Cal and Heenan
Fleming of the Pound and that the third was the Red
Fox of the Mountains. Some of the empty shells that
were found behind the " blind " fitted a 50 x 76 Win-
chester, and only three of such guns were known in the
mountains. It was learned later that the Red Fox had
one of these three. The shells found were rim-fire,
instead of centre-fire, as the Fox on his trial tried to
prove that his shells were. An examination of the
gun proved that some friend had tried to alter it; but
the job was so bungling that it was plain that tinker-
ing had been done. So that the Winchester and the
effort of this unskilful friend and the old man's ab-
sence from his post of duty on the night preceding the
murder, made it plain that the Red Fox had had a
hand in the murder; so that when Hall — who, after
his sentence, had been taken away for safe-keeping,
was brought back to the county-seat for execution —

269

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

there was the Red Fox in the adjoining cell of the same
cage whose door was to close on Hall. And as Hall
passed, the Red Fox thrust out a freckled paw to
shake hands, but Hall struck at him with his manacles
and cursed him bitterly. And in those cells the two
enemies waited — the one for the scaffold that both
could hear building outside, and the other for the trial
that was to put his feet on the same trap-door. The
Red Fox swung in a hammock, reading his Bible by
day and having visions at night, which he would inter-
pret to me, when I was on Hall's death-watch, as signs
of his own innocence and his final freedom among the
hills. Nothing delighted Hall more, meanwhile, at
that time, than to torture his old enemy.

" I know I'm purty bad," he would say — " but
thar's lots wuss men than me in the world — old Doc
in thar, for instance." For " old Doc " by virtue of
his herb practice was his name as well as the Red Fox
of the Mountains. And the old Fox would go on read-
ing his Bible.

Then Hall would say:

" Oh, thar ain't nothin' twixt ole Doc and me —
'cept this iron wall," and he would kick the thin wall
so savagely that the Red Fox would pray unavailingly
to be removed to another part of the jail.

And when the day of Hall's execution came, he got
270

The Red Fox of the Mountains

humble and kissed the first lieutenant's hand — and he
forgave the Red Fox and asked to kiss him. And the
Red Fox gave him the Judas-kiss through the grating
of his cell-door and, when Hall marched out, took out
his watch and stood by the cell-door listening eagerly.
Presently the fall of the trap-door echoed through the
jail— "Th-o-o-m-p!" The Red Fox glued his eyes
to the watch in his hand. The second hand went twice
around its circuit and he snapped the lid and gave a
deep sigh of relief:

" Well, he's gone now," said the Red Fox, and he
went back in peace to his hammock and his Bible.

The Red Fox was no seer in truth, and his inter-
pretations of his own visions proved him no prophet.

And so, finally, where Hall had stood, the Red
Fox of the Mountains was standing now, and where, in
answer to the last question of the Judge, Hall had sat
in sullen silence, the Red Fox rose to ask that a friend
might speak for him — startling the court-room:

" Jesus Christ."

Thereupon, of course, the Red Fox lifted a Bible
from the desk before him and for one half hour read
verses that bore on his own innocence and burned with
fire and damnation for his enemies. The plea was
useless. Useless was the silent, eloquent, piteous plea

271

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

of the little old woman in black who sat near him.
The Eed Fox was doomed.

The guard down at " the Gap " had done its duty
with Talton Hall, but it was the policy of the guard
to let the natives uphold the law whenever they would
and could; and so the guard went home to the Gap
while the natives policed the jail and kept old Doc
safe. To be sure, little care was necessary, for the
Red Fox did not have the friends who would have
flocked to the rescue of Talton Hall.

That funeral sermon was preached on the Sunday
before the day, and a curious crowd gathered to hear
him. The Red Fox was led from the jail; he stood
on the porch of the jailer's house with a little table in
front of him; on it lay a Bible; on the other side of
the table sat a little, pale-faced, old woman in black,
with a black sunbonnet drawn close to her face. By
the side of the Bible lay a few pieces of bread. It
was the Red Fox's last communion on earth — a com-
munion which he administered to himself and in which
there was no other soul on earth to join, except the
little old woman in black.

It was pathetic beyond words, when the old fellow
lifted the bread and asked the crowd to come forward
to partake with him in the last sacrament. 'Not a
soul moved. Only the little old woman who had
been ill-treated, deserted by the old fellow for many
272

The Red Fox of the Mountains

years; only she of all the crowd gave any answer, and
she turned her face for one instant timidly toward
him. With a churlish gesture the old man pushed the
bread over toward her, and with hesitating, trem-
bling fingers she reached for it.

The sermon that followed was rambling, denuncia-
tory, and unforgiving. I^ever did he admit guilt.

On the last day, the Red Fox appeared in his white
suit of tablecloth. The little old woman in black
had even made the cap which was to be drawn over
his face at the last moment — and she had made that,
too, of white. He walked firmly to the scaffold-steps
and stood there for one moment blinking in the sun-
light, his head just visible over the rude box, some
twenty feet square, that surrounded him — a rude con-
trivance to shield the scene of his death. For one
moment he looked at the sky and the trees with a
face that was white and absolutely expressionless;
then he sang one hymn of two verses. The white cap
was drawn, and the strange old man was launched on
the way to that world in which he believed so firmly,
and toward which he had trod so strange a way on
earth.

The little old woman in black, as he wished, had
the body kept for three days, unburied. His ghost,
the mountaineers say, walks lonely paths of the Cum-
berland to this day, but — the Red Fox never rose.

273

Man-Hunting in the Pound

Man-Hunting in the Pound

THE pale lad from the Pound was telling news
to an eager circle of men just outside the open
window of the little mountain-hotel, and, in-
side, I dropped knife and fork to listen. The wily old
"Daddy" of the Fleming boys had been captured;
the sons were being hemmed in that very day, and a
fight between sheriff's posse and outlaws was likely
any hour.

Ten minutes later I was astride a gray mule, and
with an absurd little .32 Smith & Wesson popgun on
my hip — the only weapon I could find in town — was
on my way to the Pound.

Our volunteer police-guard down at " The Gap,"
twenty miles away, was very anxious to capture those
Fleming boys. Talton Hall, feud-leader and des-
perado, had already been hanged, and so had his bitter
enemy, the Red Fox of the Mountains. With the
Fleming outlaws brought to justice, the fight of the
guard for law and order was about won. And so, as
277

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

I was a member of that guard, it behooved me to
hurry — ^which I did.

The Gap is in the southwestern corner of old Vir-
ginia, and is a ragged gash down through the Cumber-
land Moimtains to the water level of a swift stream
that there runs through a mountain of limestone and
between beds of iron ore and beds of coking coal.
That is why some threescore young fellows gathered
there from Blue-grass Kentucky and Tide-water Vir-
ginia not many years ago, to dig their fortunes out of
the earth. Nearly all were college graduates, and all
were high-spirited, adventurous and well-born. They
proposed to build a town and, incidentally, to make
cheaper and better iron there than was made anywhere
else on the discovered earth.

A " boom " came. The labor and capital question
was solved instantly, for every man in town was
straightway a capitalist. You couldn't get a door
hung — every carpenter was a meteoric Napoleon of
finance. Every young blood in town rode Blue-grass
saddle-horses and ate eight-o'clock dinners — making
many dollars each day and having high jinks o' nights
at the club, which, if you please, entertained, besides
others of distinction, a duke and duchess who had
wearily eluded the hospitality of New York. The

278

Man-Hunting in the Pound

woods were full of aristocrats and plutocrats — Ameri-
can and English. The world itself seemed to be mov-
ing that way, and the Gap stretched its jaws wide with
a grin of welcome. Later, you could get a door hung,
but here I draw the veil. It was magnificent, but it
was not business.

At the high tide, even, the Gap was, however, some-
thing of a hell-hole for several reasons; and the clash
of contrasts was striking. The Kentucky feudsmen
would chase each other there, now and then, from over
Black Mountain; and the toughs on the Virginia side
would meet there on Saturdays to settle little differ-
ences of opinion and sentiment. They would quite
take the town sometimes — riding through the streets,
yelling and punctuating the sign of our one hotel with
pistol-bullet periods to this refrain:

G.r.a.n.d C.e.n.t.r.a.l H.o.t.e.l

Hell! Hell! Hell!

— ^keeping time, meanwhile, like darkies in a hoe-
down. Or, a single horseman might gallop down one
of our wooden sidewalks, with his reins between his
teeth, and firing into the ground with a revolver in
each hand. All that, too, was magnificent, but it was
not business. The people who kept store would have
to close up and take to the woods.

279

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

And thus arose a unique organization — a volunteer
police-guard of gentlemen, who carried pistol, billy,
and whistle, and did a policeman's work — ^hewing
always strictly to the line of the law.

The result was rather extraordinary. The Gap
soon became the only place south of Mason and
Dixon's line, perhaps, where a street fight of five
minutes' duration, or a lynching, was impossible. A
yell, a pistol-shot, or the sight of a drunken man, be-
came a rare occurrence. Local lawlessness thus sub-
dued, the guard extended its benign influence — creat-
ing in time a public sentiment fearless enough to
convict a desperado, named Talt Hall; and, guarding
him from rescue by his Kentucky clansmen for one
month at the county-seat, thus made possible the first
hanging that mountain-region had ever known.

After that the natives, the easy-going, tolerant
good people, caught the fever for law and order, for,
like lawlessness, law, too, is contagious. It was they
who guarded the Eed Fox, Hall's enemy, to the
scaffold, and it was they who had now taken up our
hunt for the Red Fox's accomplices — the Fleming
outlaws of the Pound.

We were anxious to get those boys — they had
evaded and mocked us so long. Usually they lived in
a cave, but lately they had grown quite " tame."
280

Man-Hunting in the Pound

From working in the fields, dressed in women's clothes,
they got to staying openly at home and lounging
around a cross-roads store at the Pound. They even
had the impudence to vote for a sheriff and a county
judge. They levied on their neighbors for food and
clothes, and so bullied and terrorized the Pound that
nobody dared to deny them whatever they asked, or
dared to attempt an arrest. At last, they got three or
four recruits, and tying red strips of flannel to their
shoulders and Winchesters, drilled in the county road,
mocking our drill at the county-seat when we were
guarding Talton Hall.

This taunt was a little too much, and so we climbed
on horseback late one afternoon, wrapped our guns in
overcoats, and started out for an all-night ride, only to
be turned back again at the foot of Black Mountain
by our captain and first lieutenant, who had gone over
ahead of us as spies. The outlaws were fighting
among themselves; one man was killed, and we must
wait until they got " tame " again.

A few weeks later the guard rode over again,
dashed into the Fleming cabin at daybreak and capt-
ured a houseful of screaming women and children
— to the great disgust of the guard and to the great
humor of the mountaineers, who had heard of our
coming and gone off, dancing, down the road only an
281

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

hour before. It was then that the natives, emulating
our example, took up the search. They were doing
the work now, and it was my great luck to be the
only member of the guard who knew what was
going on.

The day was hot, the road dusty, and the gray mule
was slow. Within two hours I was at the head of the
Pound — a wild, beautiful, lawless region that har-
bored the desperadoes of Virginia and Kentucky, who
could do mischief in either State and step to refuge
across the line. Far ahead, I could see a green dip in
the mountains where the Red Fox and the Fleming
boys had shot the Mullins family of moonshiners to
death from ambush one sunny morning in May.

Below, sparkled Pound River roaring over a mill-
day, and by the roadside, as I went down, I found the
old miller alone. The posse of natives had run upon
the Flemings that morning, he said, and the outlaws,
after a sharp fight, had escaped — ^wounded. The
sheriff was in charge of the searching party, and he
believed that the Flemings would be caught now, for
sure.

"Which way? "I asked.

The old fellow pointed down a twisting, sunlit
ravine, dense with woods, and I rode down the dim

282

Man-Hunting in the Pound

creek that twisted through it. Half an hour later I
struck a double log-cabin with quilts hanging in its
windows — ^which was unusual. An old woman ap-
peared in the doorway — a tall, majestic old tigress,
with head thrown back and a throat so big that it
looked as though she had a goitre.

"Who lives here?"

" The Flemingses lives hyeh," she said, quietly.

I was startled. I had struck the outlaws* cabin by
chance, and so, to see what I might learn, I swung
from the gray mule and asked for a glass of butter-
milk. A handsome girl of twenty, a Fleming sister,
with her dress open at the throat, stepped from the
door and started to the spring-house. Through the
door I could see another woman — wife of one of the
outlaws — ill. A " base-bom " child toddled toward
me, and a ten-year-old boy — a Fleming brother — with
keen eyes and a sullen face, lay down near me —
watching me, like a snake in the grass.

The old woman brought out a chair and lighted a
pipe.

" Whar air ye from, and what mought yo' name
be?"

I evaded half the inquiry.

" I come from the Blue-grass, but I'm living at the
Gap just now." She looked at me keenly, as did the

2^Z

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

snake in the grass, and I turned my chair so that I
could watch that boy.

" Was you over hyeh that night when them fellows
from the Gap run in on us? "

" 'No.''

The old woman's big throat shook with quiet
laughter. The girl laughed and the woman through
the door laughed in her apron, but the boy's face
moved not a muscle. It was plain that we had no
monopoly of the humor of that daybreak dash into a
house full of women and children.

" One fool feller stuck his head up into the loft and
lit a match to see if my boys was up thar. Lit a
match! He wouldn't 'a' had no head ef they had
been." She laughed again, and drew on her pipe.

" I give 'em coffee," she went on, " while they
waited for my boys to come back, an' all I axed 'em
was not to hurt 'em if they could help it." Then she
broached the point at issue herself.

" I s'pose you've heerd about the fight this
mornin' ? "

" Yes."

" I reckon you know my boys is hurt — ^mebbe
they're dead in the woods somewhar now." She
spoke with little sadness and with no animus what-
ever. There was no use trying to conceal my purpose
284

Man-Hunting in the Pound

down there — I saw that at once — and I got up to
leave. She would not let me pay for the butter-
milk.

"Ef you git hold of 'em — I wish you wouldn't
harm 'em," she said, as I climbed on the gray mule,
and I promised her that if they were caught un-
harmed, no further harm should come to them; and I
rode away, the group sitting motionless and watching
me.

For two hours I ambled along the top of a spur, on
a pretty shaded road with precipitous woods on each
side, and now and then an occasional cabin, but not a
human being was in sight — not for long. Sometimes
I would see a figure flitting around a comer of a cabin ;
sometimes a door would open a few inches and close
quickly; and I knew the whole region was terrorized.
For two hours I rode on through the sunlight and
beauty of those lonely hills, and then I came on a
crowd of mountaineers all armed with Winchesters,
and just emerging from a cabin by the roadside. It
was one division of the searching party, and I joined
them. They were much amused when they saw the
Christmas toy with which I was armed.

" S'pose one o' the Flemings had stepped out'n the
bushes an' axed ye what ye was doin' down hyeh —
what would ye 'a' said? "

285

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

That might have been embarrassing, and I had to
laugh. I really had not thought of that.

One man showed me the Winchester they had capt-
ured— Heenan's gun. Tied to the meat-house and
leaping against a rope-tether was a dog — which, too,
they had captured — Heenan's dog. As we started out
the yard " Gooseneck " John Branham, with a look
of disgust at my pistol, whipped out one of his own —
some two feet long — for me to swing on my other hip.
Another fellow critically took in my broad-brim straw
hat.

" Hell ! " he said. " That won't do. They can see
that a mile through the woods. I'll get ye a hat."
And he went back into the cabin and brought out a
faded slouch-hat.

" That's Heenan's! " he said. That, too, they had
captured.

And so I wore Heenan's hat — ^looking for Heenan.

Half a mile down the road we stepped aside
twenty yards into the bushes. There was the cave in
which the outlaws had lived. There were in it several
blankets, a little bag of meal, and some bits of ham.
Right by the side of the road was a huge pile of shav-
ings, where the two outlaws had whittled away many
a sunny hour. Half an hour on, down a deep ravine
286

Man-Hunting in the Pound

and up a long slope, and we were on a woody knoll
where the fight had taken place that morning. The
little trees looked as though a Gatling gun had been
turned loose on them.

The posse had found out where the Flemings were,
the night before, by capturing the old Fleming mother
while she was carrying them a bag of provisions. As
they lay in the brush, she had come along, tossing
stones into the bushes to attract the attention of her
sons. One of the men had clicked the slide of his
Winchester, and the poor old woman, thinking that
was the signal from one of her boys, walked toward
them, and they caught her and kept her prisoner all
night in the woods. Under her apron, they found the
little fellow who had lain like a snake in the grass
beside me back at the cabin, and, during the night, he
had slipped away and escaped and gone back to the
county-seat, twenty miles away, on foot, to tell his
father, who was a prisoner there, what was taking
place at home.

At daybreak, when the posse was closing in on the
Flemings, the old woman sprang suddenly to her feet
and shouted shrilly: " Eun down the holler, boys;
run down the holler! "

The ways of rude men, naturally, are not gentle,
and the sheriff sprang out and caught the old woman
2.Zy

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

by the throat and choked her cries; and they led her
to the rear — weeping and wringing her hands.

A few minutes later, as the men slipped forward
through the woods and mist, they came upon the
Flemings crouched in the bushes, and each creeping
for a tree. " Gooseneck " John Branham — so called
because of the length of his neck — ^Doc Swindall and
Ed Hall opened fire. For twenty minutes those two
Fleming boys fought twenty-two men fiercely.

" Just looked like one steady flame was a-comin' out
o' each man's Winchester all the time," said Branham
pointing to two bullet-pecked trees behind which the
outlaws had stood. " I was behind this birch," laying
his hand on a tree as big as his thigh, and pointing out
where the Flemings had drilled three bullet-holes in it
between his neck and his waistband.

" I seed Jim Hale pokin' his gun around this hyeh
tree and pumpin' it off inter the ground," said Hall,
" an' I couldn't shoot for laughin'."

" Well," said Swindall, " I was tryin' to git in a
shot from the oak there, and something struck me and
knocked me out in the bushes. I looked around, and
damn me if there wasn't seven full-grown men behind
my tree."

It had evidently been quite warm for a while, until
Branham caught Heenan in the shoulder with a load
288

Man-Hunting in the Pound

of buckshot. Heenan's hat went off, his gun dropped
to his feet; he cried simply:

" Oh you! " Then he ran.

Cal Fleming, too, ran then, and the posse fired after
them. The dog, curiously enough, lay where he had
lain during the fight, at the base of Heenan's tree —
and so hat, dog, and gun were captured. I had won-
dered why the posse had not pursued the Flemings
after wounding them, and I began to understand.
They were so elated at having been in a fight and come
out safe, that they stopped to cook breakfast, gather
mementoes, and talk it all over.

Ten minutes later we were at the cabin, where the
fugitives had stopped to get some coffee.

" They was pretty badly hurt, I reckon," said the
woman who had given them something to eat.
" Heenan's shoulder was all shot up, an' I reckon I
could git my hand into a hole in CaPs back. Cal was
groanin' a good deal, an' had to lay down every ten
yards."

"We went on hurriedly, and in an hour we struck the
main body of the searching party, and as soon as the
sheriff saw me, he came running forward. Now, the
guard at the Gap had such a reputation that any mem-
ber of it was supposed to be past-master in the conduct
of such matters as were now pending. He immedi-

289

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

ately called me " Captain," and asked me to take
charge of the party. I looked round at them, and I
politely veered from the honor. Such a tough-looking
gang it has rarely been my good luck to see, and I
had little doubt that many of them were worse than
the Fleming boys. One tall fellow particularly at-
tracted my attention; he was fully six and one-half
feet high; he was very slender, and his legs and arms
were the longest I have ever seen swung to a human
frame. He had sandy hair, red eyes, high cheek-
bones, and on each cheek was a diminutive boil.
About his waist was strapped a huge revolver, and to
the butt of this pistol was tied a big black bow-ribbon
— tied there, no doubt, by his sweetheart, as a badge
of death or destruction to his enemies. He looked me
over calmly.

" Hev you ever searched for a dead man? " he asked
deeply.

It was humiliating to have to confess it in that
crowd, but I had not — not then.

" Well, I hev," he said, significantly.

I had little doubt, and for one, perhaps, of his own
killing.

In the hollow just below us was the cabin of Par-
son Swindall — a friend of the Flemings. The parson
thought the outlaws dying or dead, and he knew the
290

r^^^Vvi^^

Hev you ever searched for a dead man?

Man-Hunting in the Pound

cave to which they must have dragged themselves to
die. If I got permission from the old Fleming
mother, he would guide me, he said, to the spot. I
sent back a messenger, promising that the bodies of her
sons should not be touched, if they were dead, nor
should they be further harmed if they were still alive.
The fierce old woman's answer came back in an hour.
" She'd ruther they rotted out in the woods."

Next morning I stretched the men out in a long
line, thirty feet apart, and we started on the search. I
had taken one man and spent the night in the parson's
cabin hoping that, if only wounded, the Flemings
might slip in for something to eat; but I had a sleep-
less, useless night. Indeed, the search had only a
mild interest and no excitement. We climbed
densely thicketed hills, searched ravines, rocks, caves,
swam the river backward and forward, tracking sus-
picious footsteps in the mud and through the woods.
I had often read of pioneer woodcraft, and I learned,
during these three days, that the marvellous skill of it
still survives in the Southern mountains.

It was dangerous work; dangerous for the man who
should run upon the outlaws, since these would be
lying still to hear anyone approach them, and would
thus " have the drop " from ambush. Once, to be

291

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

sure, we came near a tragedy. At one parting of two
roads several of us stopped to decide whicli road we
should take. At that moment the Fleming boys were
lying in the bushes twenty yards away, with their
Winchesters cocked and levelled at us over a log, and
only waiting for us to turn up that path to open fire.
As I was told afterward, Heenan, very naturally, had
his Winchester pointed on his hat, which, at that
moment, was on my head. By a lucky chance I
decided to take the other path. Otherwise, I should
hardly be writing these lines to-day.

For three days we searched, only to learn, or rather
to be told, which was not the truth, that, in women's
dress, the Flemings had escaped over into Kentucky.
As a matter of fact, they lay two weeks in a cave, Cal
flat on his back and letting the water from the roof of
the cave drip, hour by hour, on a frightful wound in
his breast.

For several months they went uncaptured, until
finally three of the men who were with me, " Goose-
neck '^ John Branham, Ed Hall, and Doc Swindall,
located them over the border in AVest Virginia. Of
course a big reward was offered for each, or they were
" rewarded," as the mountaineers say. The three
men closed in on them in a little store one morning.
292

Man-Hunting in the Pound

Cal Fleming was reading a letter when the three
surged in at the door, and Hall, catching Cal by tlie
lapel of his coat, said quietly:

•^ YovL are my prisoner."

Cal sprang back to break the hold, and Hall shot
him through the breast, killing him outright.
Heenan, who was not thought to be dangerous, sprang
at the same instant ten feet away, and his first shot
caught Hall in the back of the head, dropping the
officer to his knees. Thinking he had done for Hall,
Heenan turned on Branham and Swindall, and shot
Branham through both lungs and Swindall through
the neck — dropping both to the floor. This left the
duel between Hall on his knees and Heenan. At last
a lucky shot from Hall's pistol struck Hecnan's pistol
hand, lacerating the fingers and making him drop his
weapon. Heenan ran into the back room then, and,
finding no egress, reappeared in the doorway, with his
bloody hands above his head.

" Well, Ed," he said, simply, " I can't do no more."

Six months later Heenan Fleming was brought
back to the county-seat to be tried for his life, and I
felt sure that he would meet his end on the scaffold
where Talton Hall and Eed Fox had suffered death.

As he sat there in the prisoner's box, his face pale
293

Blue-grass and Rhododendron

and flecked witli powder, I could see a sunken spot in
his jaw, through which one of Hall's bullets had gone,
and his bright, black eyes gleamed fire. I stepped up
to him. I thought there was no chance of his escap-
ing the gallows; but, if he did escape, I wanted to be
as friendly with him as possible.

" Heenan," I said, " did you ever get your hat
back? "

" :^o," he said.

" Well, if you come clear, go up to the store and get
the best hat in the house, and have it charged to me."

Heenan smiled.

N'ow, by a curious chance, the woman on whose tes-
timony the Red Fox had been hanged, had died mean-
while. Some people said she had been purposely put
out of the way to avoid further testimony. At any
rate, through her death, Heenan did come clear, and
the last time I saw him, he was riding out of the town
on a mule, with his baby in front of him and on his
head a brand-new derby hat — mine.

294

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