Chapter 5

That the proceedings should appear legal, the foreclosures were by due process of law. But if quietly circulated warnings against a general bidding for property when offered at court sale were not effective, some well-known desperate character would appear at the sale and threaten anyone who dared bid against him.

The bitterness of the feeling of the two sides subsided slowly, but there was ever present the realization that old alinements could be quickly and bloodily revived. Champ Ferguson, sought by the Federal authorities, appeared suddenly upon the streets of Jamestown. That day his old rival, "Tinker," was there. It was a personal battle the two leaders fought, while Jamestown looked on silently, fearful of the outcome. Beaty received three wounds, but escaped on horseback.

A short time afterward Ferguson was hanged at Nashville by order of court martial. The charge against him was that he had entered the hospital at Emery and Henry College and shot to death a wounded Federal lieutenant. Ferguson claimed justification as the Federal lieutenant, under orders to escort a war-prisoner--a Confederate officer and personal friend of Ferguson's--to headquarters, had, instead, stood his prisoner against a tree by a roadside and ordered a firing-squad to kill him. And the court-martial indictment of Ferguson read--"and for other crimes."

One of "Tinker" Beaty's men was Pres Huff, who lived in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf." It was generally believed that he was the leader of the band who had ridden out of the woods and killed Jeff Pile, as he traveled unarmed along the Byrdstown road.

Huff's father had been shot. The scene of his death was where the branch from the York Spring crosses the public road at the Pile home. The deed was done by a band of Confederates who had taken the elder Huff prisoner, and neither Jeff Pile, nor his brothers, were to be connected with it, except in the quickly prejudiced mind of the victim's son.

The desperate character of Pres Huff is evidenced by the records of the United States Circuit Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in the suit of the McGinnis heirs for land in Fentress county. Their bill recites:

"Armed men who were led and controlled by one Preston Huff, who was a brigand of the most desperate character, forced complainants' father and themselves to leave the county to secure their lives and kept them from the county by threats of most brutal violence. The history of these men and the times prove clearly that these threats were not idle, nor those who opposed them survived their vengeance."

At the foreclosure on the McGinnis property, Pres Huff rode his horse between the court officers and those attending the sale, and pistol in hand declared the land his by right of possession. The bill continues as follows:

"Preston Huff, who was the desperado heretofore referred to, publicly proclaimed that he had fought for the land, had run the McGinnises from the county, and if anyone bid for the land against him he would kill him on sight. Even his co-conspirators would not brook his displeasure. The land was sold on his bid, no one dared oppose him. The history of his career shows it was wisdom to shun him. Many have been killed by him in the most cold and brutal manner."

There came to Pall Mall, when General Burnside was moving his Federal forces southward, a young man by the name of William Brooks. He had joined the Union Army at his home in Michigan. He was a daring horseman, handsome, fair and his hair was red-a rich copperesque red. The army moved on, but young Brooks remained in the valley. He claimed that as a private soldier he had done more than his share in the conquest of the South--and that the conquest that should ever go to his credit was the conquest of Nancy Pile.

When they were married, his father-in-law, Elijah Pile, gave him a farm and he tilled it, and he smiled his way into the favor of the community.

He lived in the valley about two years, and a baby had been born to them. The feeling between the children of Elijah Pile and Pres Huff was silent but tense; over it there fell constantly the shadow of the murder of Jeff Pile.

Meeting down at the old mill one day, Pres Huff and "Willie" Brooks engaged in an excited argument. Between the dark-browed, sullen mountaineer and the slender, gay young man a contest seemed uneven, and was prevented. Huff told Brooks that the next time they met he would kill him.

They met next day, on the mountainside, on the road that leads by the Brooks home, on across the spring-branch, up beside the York home and then up the mountain. Huff's riderless horse galloped on and stopped in front of a mountain cabin; his body lay dead in the road.

There was a hurried consultation at the home of Elijah Pile. Huff's friends, it was realized, would not be long in coming. Young Brooks went out of the house, down by the spring, and up the mountain back of it. He was never seen in the valley again.

Huff's friends waited.

Weeks afterward, Nancy Brooks, carrying her baby, went to visit a friend. She evaded the watchfulness of her husband's enemies, succeeded in crossing the Kentucky line and disappeared in the mountains to the north of it.

The friends of Pres Huff knew she would write home. Months elapsed, but finally a letter came, and was intercepted. She and her husband were at a logging-camp in the northern woods of Michigan.

Secretly, extradition papers for Brooks were secured, and Huff's former partner in a mercantile business, fully equipped with warrant appeared with a sheriff before the door of the cabin in the Michigan woods, Brooks was brought back to Jamestown, and put into the log-ribbed jail that John M. Clemens, "Mark Twain's" father, had built.

But there was no trial by law. The next night, through the moonlight and the pines, a little body of men rode. Up the valley, across the plateau, they went, and Jamestown was sleeping.

Taking Brooks from the jail they carried him three miles down the road toward Pall Mall. Here they bound a rope around his feet, unbridled a horse and tied the other end of the rope to the horse's tail. They taunted Brooks. But they could not make him break his silence, until he asked to be allowed to see his wife and baby. Rough men laughed, and there was the report of a gun. The horse, frightened, galloped down the road, and bullets were fired into the squirming body as it was dragged over the rocks.

The war had steeled men for the coming of death and crime, but at the manner of the death of "Willie" Brooks a shudder passed over the mountainsides. To Nancy Brooks was born a son a short time afterward, and he was named after his father.

A silent, broken-hearted woman, Nancy Brooks took up again her life at her father's home. To the little girl she had carried on her flight to Michigan and to the boy whose hair had the copper-red of the father, she devoted herself. The girl had been named Mary, and she inherited the piquancy and wit that had made her mother the belle of the valley, and as she grew to womanhood the mountaineers saw again the Nancy Brooks they had loved before war had come with its cold blighting fingers of death.

At the age of fifteen Mary Brooks met William York, the son of Uriah York, and they were married. A home was built for them, beyond the branch, beside the spring. And Alvin York was their third son.

IV The Molding of a Man

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.