The first year after the marriage of William York and Mary Brooks, they lived at the Old Coonrod Pile home, and William York worked as a "cropper." Securing the farm that had been given the bride, they modeled into a one-room home the corn-crib of Elijah Pile, that stood across the spring-branch and up the mountainside. It was a log crib, and they chinked it with clay, and using split logs from the walls of the old shed, a puncheon floor was made. The coming of spring brought the blossoms of flowers the girl-wife had planted.
Honeysuckle and roses have bloomed around that cabin each succeeding summer, and it proved the foundation of a home that was to withstand the troubles of poverty in many winters. It was a home so rare and real that it pulled back to the mountains a son who had gone out into the world and won fame and the offers of fortunes for the deeds he had done as a soldier.
William York, in his simple philosophy of life, disciplined himself, and later his boys, to the theory that contentment was to be found in the square deal and honest labor. He was so fair and just in all relations with his neighbors that the people of the valley called him "Judge" York; and his honesty was so rugged and impartial that not infrequently was he left as sole arbiter even when his own interests were involved. In talks by the roadside, at the gate of his humble home, seated on the rocks that surround the spring, many a neighborhood dispute has been settled that prejudice could have fanned into a lawsuit.
Yet William York never prospered, as prosperity is measured by the accumulation of property, and it has been said of him that he "just about succeeded in making a hard living."
He was farmer, blacksmith, hunter—a man of the mountains who found pleasure in his skill with his rifle. But the memories of him that linger in the valley, or those that are revived at the mention of his name, are of him in the role of husband, father and friend.
The Civil War had scattered much of the wealth that Old Coonrod Pile had accumulated and Elijah Pile had conserved. The number of heirs brought long division to the realty and most of those who had benefited by the inheritance were all left "land poor."
To Nancy Brooks, as her part, came the home the old "Long Hunter" had built with such thoroughness and care, together with seventy-five acres of land. This she left to her boy who had been named after his ill— fated father—and he lives there to-day. To Mrs. York had been given seventy-five acres, "part level and part hilly," that was the share of her aunt, Polly Pile.
In the cave above the spring, which was Coonrod Pile's first home, William York built a blacksmith's shop, where he mended log-wagons and did the work in wood and metal the neighborhood required. He farmed, and worked in the shop—but in his heart, always, was the call of the forests that surrounded him, and it was his one great weakness. A blast from his horn would bring his hounds yelping around him; and often, unexpectedly, he would go on a hunt that at times stretched into weeks of absence.
His hounds were the master pack of those hills. On his hunts when he built his campfire at night he gathered the dogs around him and singled out for especial favors those whose achievements had merited distinction during the day. Following a custom that in those days prevailed among owners of hunting-hounds, the dog that proved himself the leader of the pack while on a hunt was decorated with a ribbon or some emblem upon the collar. Small game was abundant in the mountains that made the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," but the deer and bear had withdrawn to the less frequented hills. The hunts were for sport; there was no real recompense in the value of the pelts.
Alvin was born in the one-room cabin on December 13, 1887. There were two older children—Henry and Joe. Alvin's early life was different in no way from that of other children of the mountains. He lived in touch with nature, and without ever knowing when or how the information came to him, he could call the birds by their names and knew the nests and eggs of each of them, knew the trees by their leaves and their bark, and was familiar with the haunts of the rabbit and the squirrel, the land- and the water-turtle. While still too small for the rough run of the mountains, he has stood, red-eyed, by the gate of his home and watched his father and the hounds go off to the hunt. And as he grew, his hair took on that color that trace of him while at play could be lost in the red-brush that grew upon the mountainside.
There was one part of the routine of the week at Pall Mall that has interested Alvin York from early boyhood. It was the shooting-matches, held on Saturday, on the mountainside, above the spring, just where a swell of the slope made a "table-land," and where a space had been cleared for these tests of skill. The clearing was long and slender, such a glade through the trees as the alley of the mountain bowlers which Rip Van Winkle found in the Catskills—only the shooting-range was longer. A hundred and fifty yards were needed for one of the contests.
This aisle had been cut through a forest of gray beech and brown oaks. At the points where the targets were to be set the clearing widened so that the sunlight, filtering through the leaves and flickering upon the slender carpet of green, could fall full and clear.
Each Saturday the mountaineers were there—and William York and Alvin were among the "regulars." Often there were fifty or more men, and they came bringing their long rifles, horns of powder, pouches made of skin in which were lead and bullet molds, cups of caps, cotton gun-wadding, carrying turkeys, driving beeves and sheep, which were to be the prizes. And when the prizes gave out, some of the men remained and shot for money—"pony purses," they were called.
The turkey-shoots were over two ranges—some forty yards and one a hundred and fifty yards. At the latter range the turkey was tied to a stake driven in the center of the opening at the further end of the glade. A cord, about two feet in length, was fastened to the stake and to one leg of the gobbling, moving target. It was ten cents a shot, tossed to the man who offered the prize.
Often the bird fell at the first trial, and a hit was any strike above the turkey's knee. But the long-distance turkey-shoots were the opening events, and the marksman had his gun to warm up, his eye to test and his shooting nerve to be brought to calmness. So frequently it would happen that the entrance money ran into a sum that gave a prize value to the turkey, as prices ran for turkeys in those days. There was the element of chance for the man offering the prize that was always alluring.
The second turkey-shoot was held at the forty-yard range. But the bird was now tethered behind a log, so that only his head and red wattles could appear. Here, too, the turkey was given freedom of motion and granted self-determination as to how he should turn his head in wonder at the assemblage of men before him; or, if he should elect, he could disappear entirely behind the log if he found something that interested him upon the ground nearby, and the marksman must wait for the untimed appearance of the bobbing head. It took prompt action and a quick bead to score a hit.
And it was years afterward, after Alvin York had become the most expert rifle-shot that those mountains had ever held, that he sat in the brush on the slope of a hill in the Forest of Argonne and watched for German helmets and German heads to bob above their pits and around trees—just forty yards away.
The event in which centered the interest of all gathered at those Saturday matches, was the shooting for the beef.
Each man prepared his own target—a small board, which was charred over a fire built of twigs and leaves. On this black surface was tacked a piece of white paper, about two by three inches in size, and in the center of the bottom margin of the white paper was cut a notch-an inverted "V," not over a half-inch in height. This permitted the marksman to raise the silver foresight of his rifle over a black, charred surface until the hairline of the sight fit into the tip of the triangle cut into white paper. It was a pinpoint target that left to the ability of the marksman the exactness of his bead.
The tip of the triangle in the paper was not the bull's-eye. It was simply the most delicate point that could be devised upon which to draw a bead.
The bull's-eye was a point at which two knife-blade marks crossed. When the target was in position this delicately marked bull's-eye could not be seen by the shooter.
With practice shots they established how the gun was carrying and the direction in which the nerves of the marksman's eye were at the time deflecting the ball. Finally the marksman drew his bead on the tip of the triangle and where the shot punctured the white paper the bull's-eye would be located.
This was done by moving the white paper until the knife-blade cross showed through the center of the hole the bullet had made in it. The paper in this position was retacked upon the board, and underneath was slipped a second piece of paper making the paper target appear as if no hole had been torn through it. The bull's-eye so located was usually within a half-inch radius of the triangle tip.
So exact was the marksmanship of these men that they recognized that neither gun nor man shot the same, day after day. They knew a man's physical condition changed as these contests progressed, and that the gun varied in its register when it was hot and when cool.
The range for the beef-shoot was forty yards "ef ye shot from a chunk." Twenty-seven yards, or about two-thirds the distance, if the shot was offhand. "A chunk" was any rest for the rifle—a bowed limb cut from a tree, the fork of a limb driven firmly into the ground, a part of a log—anything that was the height to give the needed low level to the rifle-barrel when the shooter lay sprawled behind the gun. The permission to shoot from the rest was a concession to poorer marksmanship. Shooting offhand required nerve, and steadiness of nerve, to "put it there, and hold it."
The science of marksmanship they learned through experience. The rifle-ball, forced down through the muzzle, was firmly packed and the cap carefully primed to prevent a "long fire." In taking aim in the offhand shots the gun's barrel was brought upward so the target was always in full view, and as the bead was drawn the body was tilted backward until an easy balance for the long barrel was found. The elbow of the arm against which the butt of the rifle rested was lifted high, awkwardly high, but this position prevented any nervous backward jerk or muscular movement of the arm that might sway the barrel. Only the weight of the forefinger was needed to spring the hair-trigger. When the gun-sights were nearing the tip of the black triangle, the marksman ceased breathing until the shot was fired.
So accurate were they, that when the bullet tore out the point where the two knife-blade marks crossed, it was simply considered a good shot. It was called "cutting center." But to decide the winning shot from among those who cut center it was necessary to ascertain how much of the ball lay across center.
Each contestant who claimed a chance to win brought his board to the judges for award. For each one of them a bullet was cut in half, and the half, with the flat side up, was forced into the bullet hole in the target until level with the board's surface. With a compass the exact center of the face of the half bullet was marked—a dent, as if made by a pin-point. Then across the surface of the bright, newly-cut lead, the knife-blade marks of the original bull's-eye, partly torn away by the shot, were retraced. The distance between the pin-dent center and the point where the knife-marks crossed could then be exactly measured.
When the cross passed directly over the dented center, the shot was perfect and the mountaineers called it "laying the seam of the ball on center."
In the beef-shoots it was a dollar a shot. Each man could purchase any number of shots. When the pot contained the number of dollars asked for the beef the contest began. The prize was divided into five parts. The two best shots got, each, a hindquarter of the beef. The third and fourth, the forequarters; the fifth of the winners, the hide and tallow. The beef was slain at the scene of the shoot, each winner carrying home his part.
William York has been known to carry the prize home on hoof—having made the five best shots. But this was unusual, for all the mountaineers grew up with a rifle in their hands and they knew how to use it.
At the shooting-matches it was again "Judge" York. He always handled the compass in making the awards. To the shooting-matches, still held at Pall Mall, Sam York, Alvin's brother, brings the compass and the rifle which his father had used.
The contest for the sheep was under the same conditions that surrounded the beef-matches; only the entrance fee was smaller. Usually it was six shots for a dollar. This odd division of the dollar, made to fit their term, "a shilling a shot," shows the people of the valley clinging to their English customs and still influenced by the Colonial period in America. In Colonial days in many parts of the country the shilling's value was placed at sixteen and two-thirds cents.
Contests for the "pony purses" were consolation-shoots for those who had made no winning, and to gratify that element who for the love of the sport would keep the matches going until in the day's dimming light the sights of the gun could not be used.
One day at one of these shooting-matches at Pall Mall I witnessed a demonstration of the imperturbability of these mountain men. One of the contestants had cut center and about a third of the ball lay across it, when Ike Hatfield, a cousin of Alvin's, took "his place at the line."
He was young, over six feet in height, slender and erect as a reed, and only his head drooped as his rifle came into position. Some one said to the man whose shot, so far, was the winning one:
"Git his nerve; else he'll beat you!"'
There are no restrictive rules on the comments or actions of contestants or spectators—there is usually a steady flow of raillery toward the one at the shooting-post. To get Hatfield's nerve, the man ran forward waving his hat, offering his services to get a fly off Hatfield's gun. The rifle-barrel continued slowly to rise. There was no recognition of the incident, no movement seen in the tall figure. Then his opponent talked and sang; and as this produced no noticeable effect, he danced, and stooping, began "to cut the pigeonwing" directly under the rifle-barrel.
At this a soundless chuckle swept over Hatfield's shoulders. With a face motionless he drew backward his gun and turning quietly, spat out a quid of tobacco as if it were all that interfered with his aim. He again slowly raised his rifle and fired, despite continued efforts to disconcert him.
He walked leisurely back to the crowd, rested his gun against a tree and took his seat on the ground. His only comment was:
"I think I pestered him."
The judges found that Hatfield had laid "the seam of the ball on center," and won.
In these contests a mountain marksman will shoot eight or ten times and often so closely will each shot fall to the knife-blade cross that the hole cut by all of them in the white paper-target would be no larger than a man's thumb-nail. One of the favorite methods of "warming up" used by John Sowders, the closest competitor that Alvin York had in hundreds of matches, was to drive fifteen carpet-tacks halfway into a board, then step off until the heads of the tacks could just be seen, and with his rifle Sowders would finish driving twelve or thirteen out of the fifteen.
It was not astuteness on the part of the German major, as he lay flat upon the ground in that Argonne Forest under the swaying radius of Alvin York's rifle, that caused the major to propose, when he found his men were given no time to get a clear shot at the American sergeant, that if Alvin York would stop killing them he would make the Germans surrender. In the shooting-matches back in the mountains of Tennessee that American soldier had been trained to the minute for the mission then before him. But there were more powerful influences than his marksmanship that gave to Sergeant York the steadiness of nerve, the coolness of brain and the courage to fight to victory against such overwhelming odds.
Back in the mountains in the days of William York, there were other forms of amusement than the shooting-matches. The "log-rollings," the "house-raisings," which always ended in a feast or barbecue, continued popular with the people. And they had "corn-huskings," to which all the neighbors came.
The "corn-husking" was a winter sport. These, at times, were held at night under the light of hand-lanterns the mountaineers used to guide themselves with over the rough roads and along mountain-paths. But day or night, the husking ended with a feast. The ears to be husked were piled in a cone on the corn-crib floor, and usually at the bottom and in the very center of the cone a jug of whisky, plugged with a corn-cob stopper, was hidden. With songs and jokes they made sport of the work, each trying to be first to reach the jug. Once the jug was secured, the huskings ceased, and it was a fair contest between the corn's owner and his guests to see how much or how little could be done before the jug-shaped goal was reached.
Seated on the floor around the pile each of the huskers sought to make a narrow cut in the corn before him to reach the prize more quickly. It was the farmer's part to have the corn piled in such a toppling cone that the ears above would roll down as fast as the inroads could be made, and often the sliding ears entirely buried a husker. He must then draw back to the edge of the pile and start again. The shout of victory that went up when the prize was pulled forth warned the women folk at the house that they must make ready for the coming of hungry men with appetites well whetted on a product of corn. The next day, the farmer-host, without help, shucked the ears that were left upon his corn-crib floor.
Alvin with the mountainsides as his playground grew sturdy and resolute. He had been put to work by his father when first old enough to hold a hoe, to help about the house, pack water and bring in wood. The sparks that bounced from the anvil in the shadow of the cave fascinated him and he hung around the blacksmith's shop and learned to blow the bellows for his father and keep the fire hot. He soon grew large enough to swing the sledge, and he turned the shoes and made them ready. All of this wrapped hard muscles over a body that was unusually large for his age. His companions began to call him "The Big-un" and the by-name still clings to him. This, together with a calmness and an unmatched reserve, gave him the prestige of leader among his boy associates. At the age of fifteen he swung the sledge with either hand and was a man's match in wrestling bouts. One of his neighbors gave this view of him:
"Alvin wuz a quiet, straight-going boy. When he started to shoe a mule he always did hit no matter how troublesome the mule. He wuz so quiet about what he wuz doing that we never noticed much o' that side of his character before he went away. But now we see hit."
In a season of prosperity William York moved from the cave and built a blacksmith's shop beside the road where it forks, where one of the forks turns down the middle of the spring-branch bed, on its way to the mill and to Byrdstown.
And he and Mary remodeled their home, making a two-room cabin of it. Eleven children were born to them—eight boys and three girls.
Most of the winters of the thirty years of married life pressed privations upon them. Much of the seventy-five acres was poor soil, and the earnings from the shop were small. The charge of William York for blacksmith's work was always made in full realization that it was something done for a friend and neighbor. Seldom was a job done for cash. Instead, at some time that was convenient to the customer, he would call and ask the amount he owed, and usually from William York's book of memory the account was made out. And not in thirty years was it disputed, or held to be exorbitant.
There have been winters of privation in the valley for all of those dependent upon small acreage and uncertain crops, but there was no real want or suffering from the lack of the necessaries of life. Then, as it is today, the community spirit in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" stood guard at the mountain passes and no real poverty could enter. The farmers' bins were open to any neighbor in need. The storekeeper willingly waited until some livestock were sold, or even until the next crop came in. For the wants of his family there was credit for the man who lived in the valley and worked. He could not speculate on the wealth of his neighbor, but there was never the need of a real need. Old Coonrod Pile's theory of the distinctive difference in the location of trouser patches is still regarded as a sound basis for business transactions. Those who have tried to live there upon as little work as they could do have sooner or later followed the path of the setting sun, and from the valley that indents the western slope of the great mountain range, that path leads downward.
A visitor from the city once asked Mrs. York if she did her own work:
"Sure enough," the little lady said, "and part of other people's. We had to. To raise so many children and keep them right is a great big job."
A number of years went by in the period of Alvin's boyhood when no school was held that he could attend. The school term was only for three months, beginning early in July. It was found impractical to hold sessions in the winter, for many of the children lived long distances away and the branches from the mountain springs that crossed the roadways and fed the River Wolf, would go on rampages that could hold the pupils water-bound over night. The schools in the mountains received no aid from the state and in the remote districts it was difficult to secure teachers except in the pleasant summer months. The school term could not begin earlier than July, for it must wait until crops were laid by, for the students ranged in ages from six to twenty years, and the larger boys were needed on the farms. Then it was the time for the potatoes to be gathered, and tomatoes hung red upon the vine and were ready for pulling. The fall period of the farm was on.
The progress which Sergeant York was able to make in all the years of his school life would be about equal to the completion of the third grade of a public school. He was not sufficiently advanced to become interested in reading and self-instruction before he was called to the army. He had been but a few miles away from the valley, where the men, as do other men of the mountains, live in the open of the farm and forest and think in terms of their environments. The need of an education had not come home to him.
It was thus equipped that Sergeant York came into the presence of the generals of the Allied armies and sat at banquet boards with the leading men of this country in politics and business.
But never in the experiences that have been crowded into the past two years of his life has he met a situation he could not command, or one that broke his calmness and reserve.
Clearly and quickly he thinks, but those thoughts flow slowly into words. He is keenly appreciative of his own limitations and quietly he observes everything around him. From early childhood he had been taught to be swift and keen in observation—the rustling of a leaf might be related to a squirrel's presence, and behind each moving shadow there is a cause and a meaning.
When he came to Prauthoy, France, the soldiers sought to honor him by having him carry the Division flag in the horse show. All was new to him and he was told but little of the routine expected of him. He had become the man whom all the American soldiers wished to see, and his presence was the feature of the occasion. The officers of his own regiment watched him closely, and not a mistake did he make in all the day's maneuvers. A comment of one of the officers was; "He seems always instinctively to know the right thing to do."
He came from a cabin in the backwoods of Tennessee but he was raised under influences that make real men. A boy's ideal, in his early life, is the father who guides him, and Sergeant York had before him a character that was picturesque in its rugged manhood and honesty, and inspiring in its devotion to right and justice. The very privations he endured and that he saw influencing his home throughout his childhood were due to principle, for William York would owe no man beyond the period of his promise to pay. In the light of the sparks from the anvil in the shop in the cave, sparks that burned brighter even than the light of day, a comradeship between father and son was formed, and they were companions until the boy reached manhood when the death of the father separated them.
There was nothing pretentious about the home in which he was raised. It was but a cabin, yet the chairs, the tables were of seasoned oak, hand-made, solid. The puncheon floor was worn smooth with use and over it was a polished glow from the care of cleanliness, showing purity was there. The walls were papered with newspapers. That was to keep out the winter's wind, but over the windows were curtains of white muslin, and a scarf of it ran the length of the simple board mantel-shelf, and in season the blossom of some flower swayed there. Within the home, no angry words were heard, but often there was laughter and song, and when the formulas for conduct were not followed, even the words of correction were affectionately spoken.
As the boy's first steps were guided by tender hands, so the proper way to walk through life was pointed out with gentle words and simple truths. The mother's teachings were the products of an untrained mind, but her philosophies came from a brain that has the power to think clearly and quickly and is never influenced by either anger or excitement—qualities transmitted eminently to her son. This little mother in the mountains, unread and untutored, with only the dictates of her own heart to guide her, had early adopted as her guiding philosophy the belief that the greatest thing in life is love.
So the impressionable, observant boy realized that life in the rugged mountains around him called for strength and endurance, but in his home, or wherever his mother was concerned there must be gentleness and love.
And she has been the greatest influence in his life. He has always listened to her counsels, except in a brief period of wildness in young manhood. As his standard of life was formed under her teachings, it may be again said of him—but this time from the moral standpoint: "He seems always instinctively to know the right thing to do."
It was the love for his mother, his love of his homelife in Pall Mall—and the sweetheart who was waiting for him there—that called him back to the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" after he had gone out into the world and won fame among men.
The very sunlight falls gently on the verdant beauty of that valley, and the seven mountains rise around it as tho they would shield it from the contending currents of the world.
Over the valley there comes a long gray dawn, for the sun is high in the heavens when its slanting rays first fall on the silver waters of the Wolf. And through this dawn the men are moving, feeding stock, harnessing their teams, and many of them sing as they ride to their work in the fields, for they are content. The tinkling of the bells on the cows grow fainter as the cows browse along the paths that lead to their mountain pastures. Up and down the road in companionable groups the pigs are moving, audibly condoling with each other over the lack of business methods that caused the loss of the location of the entrance to the field of corn. A crow flaps lazily across the valley, and over the crest of the mountain the sun comes up.
And the summer twilight there is long, and as it dips into night a drowsiness rises fog-like over the valley. When a half-moon hangs between the mountains its light is that of drooping drowsy lids. The lamps in the cabins on the mountainsides gleam but a brief time and go out. The descending of the shade of night is the universal bedtime of the mountain people.
An occasional swinging light may still be seen, but it is the mountaineer giving attention to some trouble among his stock. Then, there is silence over the valley, except for the chorus of katydids and the whistle of the gray owl to his mate in the woods. Now and then there comes the soft, faint clank of a cow-bell, different from its sound as the cows run the road or feed in the pasture. It is a slow and sleepy tang that soothes the ear.
But the mountain curfew is the bark of a dog. Somewhere up on the range a hound will call to another that all is well with him in his watch of the night, and the family he guards are all abed. The aroused neighbor calls to the dog at the cabin next to him, and the message that "all's well" sweeps on the voices of the hounds on down the valley until it ends in an echo in the crags.
They are a tranquil people who pass their days as do those who now live in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf." They are free from invidious jealousies and the blight of avarice toward each other, free from doubt of the rectitude of their daughters and relieved from solicitude that the future of their sons, if they remain in the valley, will be influenced by dissipation or dishonesty—a people who find in the changes of the weather and its effect upon crops their chief cause for worry.
Through the gray dawn the farmer looks up to the skies for his weather report for the day. As he works he watches the clouds scurrying across the mountaintops, and when he notes they are banking against the unseen summit of the Blue Mountains that rises to the east, he knows that rain is soon to come. Some local unknown bard, watching those banking clouds, has left a lyric to his people, and I heard a gray-bearded mountaineer singing it as he predicted the break of a summer drought:
With their homes back in the mountains nearly fifty miles from the railway, with a journey before them over rocky roads and up mountainsides to the other communities of Fentress county, the people of Pall Mall live in the communion and democracy of one great family. Children call old men by their Christian names. In it is not the slightest element of disrespect, and it is instead an appreciated propriety which the old men recall as the custom of their boyhood. Rev. R. C. Pile, pastor of the Church of Christ in Christian Union, the church of the valley, is "Rosier" to everyone. All worship together in the same church; all toil alike in the fields. In the predial, peaceful routine of their days there is a positive similarity. A farmer will ride direct to the cornfield or the meadow of a neighbor, knowing the neighbor will be found at work there. And, as through the gray dawn of the day they look up to the skies, the wish of one for rain will be found to be the community desire.
The social meeting-point of the people of the valley is the general store of John Marion Rains. The storehouse sits by the roadside at the foot of a mountain in the western end of the valley, just where the road tumbles down to the solid log cabin old Coonrod Pile had built, to the spring and the York home.
One end of the long porch of the store-house, as it runs with the road, is but a step from the ground, and the mountain falls away until the floor is conveniently up to the height of a wagon's bed; then the road dips again until the porch is on a level with the saddle-stirrups and the women dismount with ease from their high-backed, tasseled side-saddles as they come in sunbonnets and ginghams.
The men of the mountains seldom hurry on any mission. Their walk is a slow and foot-sure tread. When they come to the store, if only for a plug of tobacco, they remain with John Marion for a social hour or more. Their purchase is an incident, the last act before they depart.
It is rare during the daylight hours that someone is not sitting on the porch, or in one of the chairs of the row that skirts the show-cased counter just within the door, or somewhere upon the open horseshoe kegs that border the floor of the counter opposite. They are waiting to hear if anything new has happened, for all the news of the neighborhood comes to the store. The storekeeper is sure to know whether the stranger seen passing along the road in the morning stopped at the York's, or went on to Possum Trot or to Byrdstown.
The very commodities upon the shelves and counters of that store are in friendly confusion. Canned meats, pepper, candy, soap and chewing-tobacco may be found in one partition; while next to them, groceries, shotgun-shells, powder and chinaware are in a position of prominence according to the needs of the past purchaser. In the rear, piled high, are overalls and "store clothes," hats and shoes.
But the counter, facing the shelves of dress-goods for the women, is free of obstructions, and its surface is worn smooth and polished by the years of unrolling of bolts of cloth, while at every quarter-yard along the counter's rear edge is a shining brass tack-head—the yardstick of the department. A pair of large shears swing prominently from an upright partition. The department is orderly and neat, a mute tribute to those who patronize it.
Into the show-cases has crept every article of small dimension that had no habitat or kind upon the shelves around—from laces to lead pencils. Upon nails in the rafters of the ceiling swing buckets and dippers and lamps, currycombs and brushes.
Off in an L that runs at a right angle from the main store are bacon and tires for wagon wheels, country-cured hams and brooms, flour, kerosene and plows.
Under the counter by the door is an open wooden box of crackers, and its exact location and the volume of the supply are known to every child in the mountains around. Out of it comes their lagnappe for making a journey to the store.
Beside the door upon a shelf sits the water-bucket, kept cool by frequent replenishing from the York spring. Here every man who enters stops; and, after he has shifted his quid of tobacco, looked around, and made his cheerful greeting a hearty one with, "Howdy people!" he lifts the dipper filled with its pleasing refreshment—and the surplus goes accurately, in a crystal curve, to the back of some venturesome chicken that has come upon the store porch.
Above the door as you enter hangs a stenciled, uneven, unpunctuated sign, "NO CREDIT CASH OR BARTER." But that sign has lost its potency. It is yellow with age and no longer is there anyone who believes in it. It was hung when John Marion first opened his store, and before he knew his people and wanted cash or barter for his wares.
There is trading every day that is barter. But it is the women bringing chickens under their arms, or it basket of eggs. The eggs are deposited in a box, the storekeeper counting them aloud as he packs them for shipment; or one of the eleven Rains' "kids" is bestirred to the barn with the chickens, where they remain in semi-captivity until the egg and poultry man, in an old canvas covered schooner, comes on his weekly rounds. And the cash value to the barter is traded to a cent. A "poke" of flour or of sugar or a cut of tobacco usually evens the transaction.
It is many a journey around the store that John Marion makes in a day. The decision to purchase each article is announced slowly and as tho it were the only thing desired. The plump and genial storekeeper goes leisurely for it, and with a smile of satisfaction places it before the customer. There is a moment of silence, then a journey for the next need, and it is only in balancing the barter that the merchant makes a suggestion.
In a small glass show-case is refuting testimony that the sign over the door of NO CREDIT had been discredited long ago. The charge account is open to everyone. A memorandum of the purchase is made upon a strip torn from a writing-tablet or upon a piece of wrapping-paper and tossed into the show-case, among many others of its kind, until the customer "comes around to settle up." Then, with an unerring instinct, John Marion can pull from the tumbled pile of memoranda the records of the charges he seeks. If the charge account is to remain open until the next crop comes in, on some rainy day he will transcribe the charge to his day-book.
The clocks of the valley are not controlled by the government's or the railroads' standard of time. They go by "sun time" and are regulated by the hour the almanacs say the sun should rise. John Marion winds the store clock after it has run down and he sets it by no consultation with anything but his feeling as to what hour of the day it should be.
At least once a week every man who lives in the valley is at the store, but Saturday is the popular meeting-time. When the chairs and the row of horseshoe kegs are occupied, the men rest their hands behind them on the counter and swing to a place of comfort upon it, or they sit upon the window-sills, keeping well within the range of raillery that welcomes the coming and speeds the parting guest. It is a good-natured humor that these mountaineers love, quick as the crack of a rifle and as direct as its speeding ball. There is never an effort to wound. But always there is the open challenge to measure resource and wit.
Many a trade in mules that owners have ridden to the store has resulted from the defense against the mule-wise critics who several times outnumber the man who rode the mule. If the mount is a newly acquired one, especial pleasure is found in a seemingly serious pointing out why any sort of trade was a bad one for that particular animal.
A mule trade is a measure of business capability. No lie is ever told in answer to a direct question, but no information is relinquished unless a question is asked. If no hand is passed over the mule's eyes, and there is no specific inquiry about the eyes before the trade is consummated, and the animal proves blind in one of them, the fault lies in the mule-swapping ability of the new owner. Over no question could two men be seemingly so widely apart as the two when both are anxious to trade. They are jockeying for that "something to boot" which always makes at least one participant satisfied in a mountain mule trade.
There are pitfalls for the unwary in the conversations that pass across the store aisle. Bill Sharpe, who has spent eighty-two summers in the valley—and the winters, as well—with seeming innocence started a discussion as to how far a cow-bell could be heard. He sat quietly as several compared their experiences while hunting cattle in the mountains. Finally the old man said his hearing was not so good as it used to be, but he remembered once "hearing a cow-bell all the way from Overton county." Down the line a rural statistician figured it must be seventy miles from Pall Mall to the nearest point in Overton county, and the jests began to explode in the old man's vicinity. He conceded many changes since he was young, but so far as he could see there was evidently no improvement in man's hearing powers. When all his efforts to secure a side bet that he could prove his assertion were futile, he explained:
"Wall, boys, ye got away. En once I won two gallons o' whisky on hit. I was in Overton county. I bought a cow. As she had a bell on her, and I drove her home, I heard that cow-bell all the way from Overton county."
On Saturday afternoon, or a rainy afternoon, when Alvin York and the "Wright boys," and one of them, "Will" Wright, is president of the bank at Jamestown; Ab Williams, gray of hair and bent, but vigorous of tongue; his son, Sam Williams, tall and straight as an Indian and equally upstanding for his opinions; John Evans, a local justice of the peace; Bill Sharpe, who lives in the shadow of "Old Crow"; T. C. Frogge, of Frogge's Chapel, who farms, preaches or teaches school as the demand arises; "Paster" Pile and his brother, Virgil Pile, who has been County Trustee; when any of these are among those gathered at the store, there is a tournament of wit, with a constant change of program.
Many a time John Marion is compelled to retreat behind a grin when in a lull "a shot" is taken at him, and his smile is his acknowledgment that he cannot be expected to add up a charge-slip and at the same time defend himself against a care-free man upon a keg of horseshoes.
But the storekeeper is never taken by surprize at the badinage of his patrons. One afternoon after a long wait and another day in the valley seemed sure to pass with no unusual incident, an old fellow arose from one of the chairs, stretched himself, and said:
"John Marion, I want a shift o' shirts. Else, I got to go to bed to git this-un washed."
The storekeeper laid out several of dark color:
"Here's some you can wear without change till the shirt falls off."
"That's right, John; gimme one thet won't advertise thet the ole woman's neglectin' me."
Another was uncertain about the size of a pair of overalls for his boy:
"Dunknow, John Marion! One tight enough to keep the bees out—a kid shore wastes energy when a bee gits in 'em."
When it is "good dusk" the storekeeper closes the wooden shutters and fastens them by looping a small cotton string over a nail. All the mountaineers are on their way home, but they had not parted without an interchange of invitation:
"Home with me, boys; home! Ef I can't feed ye well, I'll be friendly."
Or, maybe, the invitation is not so sweeping, and holds a reservation:
"Spend the night with me! I'll not stop you; I'll let you leave afore breakfast."
Over any gathering at the store a pall of silence descends when a stranger rides up. If the newcomer is a new drummer unfamiliar with the ways of the mountains, if he comes imbued with the belief that the voice with the smile wins, and talkatively radiates his individual idea of fellowship and democracy, one by one his auditors silently drop away. To them, an insincere, a false note of democracy has been struck. Perhaps around the door there will linger some of the mountain boys waiting to satisfy their curiosity over the contents of the drummer's cases.
John Marion Rains always listens to the story of prices, but his shelves are really replenished by the drummers who drive to the barn instead of the store, who unhitch their own horses and feed them from the storekeeper's supply of corn, who come into the center of the crowd only after they have unobtrusively lingered awhile in the fringe of it.
One afternoon one of these mountaineers who had withdrawn to the porch, unhitched, without being solicited, a drummer's horse, and he had trouble in pulling off a loose shoe and renailing it. The drummer wanted to pay for the work, but the mountaineer shook his head. The deed had been done for the horse. The visitor insisted, and finally the price was fixed:
"Bout a nickel!"
A mountaineer seldom asks questions. Instead he makes a statement of that which appears to him to be the fact, and if unchallenged or uncorrected, it is accepted as the proper deduction. Early in my visit to Pall Mall I learned my lesson.
"Have you lived all your life in the valley?" I asked an old mountaineer whom I met on the road as he was carrying on his shoulder a sack of corn to the mill.
Into his eye there came a light of playfulness, then pity, quickly to be followed by a twinkle of fun. He simply could not let the opening pass.
"Not yit," he said.
Later I saw a little fellow of six years of age chasing a chicken barren of feathers over a yard that was barren of grass. When I accused him of maliciously picking that chicken, his face was a spot of smiles as he vigorously denied it.
"Are you going to school?" I asked him.
The smile changed to a look of surprize at an inquiry so out of line with his immediate activities.
"When it starts," he called back as he and the chicken disappeared under the cabin.
I dropped questions and adopted the direct statement as a method of procedure in which there was less personal liability.
Alvin Terry, dressed in a patched corduroy with a hunting-pouch made of the skin of a gray fox and with his long rifle in his hand, stopped at the store and told how he "got a bear." There was a hunter's pride in the achievement with apparently little value given to the bravery of the personal role he had played.
He had been on a hunt back in the hills. His dogs had gone ahead of him and he "knowed they had somethin'." When he came in sight of them they rushed into a cave and some came out yelping and bloody. When they wouldn't go back, then it was he "sized hit wur a bear." He looked at the mountains around him, but there was not a cabin in sight where he could get help.
"Ez the dogs couldn't git out whatever wuz in there, and wuz only keepin' hit in, I sat down to think hit over. I lowed I would tell some one en folks would say, 'that's the man who had a bear in a cave, and did not git him.' Ef I went in en come out alive with scratches on me, folks would say 'a bear done that, but he got the bear.'"
He cut a long pole, fastened a pine knot to the end of it and set it afire. Getting to the side of the mouth of the cave he began slowly to push in the burning knot, "leavin' the channel open ef anything wanted to come out."
But the bear didn't come out, and the hunter grew afraid that the smoke would not move his prey yet would prevent him seeing around in the cave if he had to go in. The cave's mouth was low, a rock hung over it and he could not crawl upon his hands and knees.
"I pushed the pine knot ez fur ez hit would go. I set my rifle, en pushed hit ahead of me. Got my knife where I could git hit. Went down flat en begun to pull myself on my elbows. When I could jes peep around a rock I seed the bear. He wuz settin' on his haunches, his head turned alookin' at the pine knot. I picked out a spot about three inches below his collar-bone, en never drew such a bead on anything. Then I tetched her oft. Ye should have seed me come backward out o' there."
He waited and there was no sound in the cave. He sent the dogs in and they would not come out at his call. He reloaded his rifle and began to crawl in again.
"As soon as I seed him I knowed he wuz dead. I got both hands on his paw and began to pull. He wuz heavier than I wuz, so I slid to him. I tried ketchin' my toes in the rocks, but I couldn't hold, en I never moved him."
He went ten miles over the mountains to get help to pull his bear out of the cave.
The language of the people of the Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge mountains is filled with a quaintness of expression. Many of their words and phrases that attract through their oddity were at one time in popular use and grammatically correct. These people are clinging to the dialect of their fathers who were Anglo-Saxons. The use of "hit" for "it" is not confined to the mountains, but the Old English grammars give "hit" as the neuter of the pronoun "he."
"Uns," too, had once a grammatical sanction, for "uon" or "un" was the Early English for "one," and "uns" was more than the one. In many parts of the South are found the expressions, "you-uns" and "we-uns." The mountaineer says "you-uns" when he is addressing more than one person. It is one of his plural forms for "you," and he is adopting an Early English ending. But the true mountaineer does not employ "we-uns" The "we" to him is plural, the suffix is superfluous. In the same way he says "ye" when speaking to more than one, but he uses "you" when addressing an individual. He seems, too, to make a distinction between "you-uns" and "ye." The former is usually the nominative and the latter the objective.
When he wishes to convey the idea of past tense, the ending "ed" is popularly employed, but when he may he drops the "e." While he will properly use the present tense of a verb he goes out of his way to add the "(e)d." So he says "know-d," "see-d." But he is not always consistent. He prefers "kilt," the old form, to "killed."
Generations passed in which they had little opportunity to attend school, and there are today a number of the older people of the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" who can not read nor write. Some of the younger generation have been away to college, but, as with Alvin York, most of them grew to manhood with only a month or a month and a half at school during a year, with many years no school in session.
The church is in the center of the valley at the edge of a grove of forest trees. It is a frame structure, built by the Methodists during the past century. The board walls of the interior are unplastered and unpainted, and the pews are movable benches. The pulpit is slightly elevated with a railing in front, ending in two pillars upon which rest the preacher's Bible, song books and lamps. Along the entire front of the pulpit runs the mourners' bench. In the rear of the church a ladder rests against the wall and down toward it swings a rope from the open belfry.
Everyone in the valley attends church and there are but few who do not go to every service without regard to the denomination conducting it. They come on horse- and mule-back, on foot, in wagons in the beds of which are chairs for the entire family. In summer many of the men wear their overalls, and all, excepting the young men acting as escorts, come in their shirt-sleeves. Some of the women are in silks, but more of them are in ginghams, and many sunbonnets are to be seen. At the door of the church the men and women part and they sit in separate pews.
I attended a service at the end of a revival that was being conducted by the Rev. Melvin Herbert Russell, of the Church of Christ in Christian Union, the frail and eager evangelist who three years before had brought Sergeant York to his knees before the altar of that church.
It was an August day and the sun's rays fell into the valley without a single cloud for a screen. The little church was filled with worshipers, while many sat in the shade of the trees that sheltered it, within the sound of the minister's voice. Down through the grove the hitched horses "stomped" and switched, but this was the only evidence of restlessness.
The minister conducted the services in his shirt-sleeves, without collar, and with the sleeves rolled up. There is no organ in the church and he played a guitar as he led the earnest singing.
The mountain evangelist had but few of the pulpit arts of the minister, but he had the soul of a great preacher. His life, to him, was a mission to the unconverted to point out the imminence of death and its meaning. His belief had carried him beyond and above the pleading of the uncertainty of death to arouse fear in the hearts of his congregation. Instead, to him, the great clock of time was actually ticking off an opportunity which the unconverted could not permit to pass. In his earnest pleading his voice would rise from a conversational tone until it rang penetratingly through the hall, and he would emphasize his words with a startling resound from his open palm upon the altar-rail.
The mountaineers had brought their entire families, and during the service the smaller children would fall asleep, to awaken with a cry at the changing vibrations. Up and down the sounding, carpetless aisles the parents would pass, carrying out some child to comfort it.
But the incidents were unnoticed by the minister, nor did they break the chant of amens or the growing number of repetitions of the minister's words by the devout worshipers. When the eyes of the auditors were turned from the evangelist they reverently sought the face of some expected convert. In the service, in the feelings of the people there was real religion.
Sundays pass when there is no preaching in the church. Pastor Pile, the local minister, has several charges and can conduct the services at Pall Mall but once a month. But each Sunday morning there is Sunday School, and in the afternoon a singing-class. Some one of the York boys leads the unaccompanied songs, and Alvin's leadership and interest in these services caused the catchy phrase, "a singing Elder," to be a part of nearly every newspaper story of him that went over the country.
The singing-class draws to the church on Sunday afternoon the younger element of the community. When the service is over, some go for a swim in the Wolf River which runs along the foot of the grove, or on a grassless space under a giant oak on the schoolhouse-yard there will be a game of marbles. It is the old-fashioned "ring men" that they play, where five large marbles are placed in a small square marked in the dust, one marble on each corner and one in the middle.
Over in France when the officers of Sergeant York's regiment were trying to obtain all the facts of his wonderful exploit, they asked him what he did with the German officers he had captured when he started to bring in his line of prisoners. His reply was a simile from his boyhood in the mountains:
"I jes made a middler out of myself."