Sam K. Cowan

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 muzzle-loading rifle—and it was the pioneer's gun—with its long barrel and its fine sights, gave confidence to the American soldier who carried it, for he trusted the weapon in his hands.
Progressive inventions finally displaced this rifle in military use, but for the accuracy of the shot it has never been surpassed, and it is to-day a loved relic and a valued hunting-piece. Men trained to shoot with it, used to the slender line of its silver foresight and to the delicate response of its hair-trigger, have made rare records in marksmanship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Old Coonrod Pile lived in the valley until his life spanned from the days when it was a hunting-ground of the Indians to the time when he can be remembered by some of the men and women now living in Pall Mall, who knew him as the most influential man of his time in the section, the owner of the river-bottom farm land, vast acres of hardwood timber, a general store and a flour mill worked by his slaves—a man grown to such enormous size and weight that in his last days he went about his farm and to oversee his workers in a two-wheeled cart pulled by oxen. ”

“ Their life was simple, and their sports quaint. They held shooting-matches on the mountainside, enjoyed "log-rollings" and "corn-huskings." Strong in their loves and in their hates, they feared God, but feared no man. The Civil War swept over the valley and left splotches of blood.
Friends of Sergeant York, knowing that the history of his people was rich in story, and that the public was waiting, wanting to know more of the man the German army could not run, nor make surrender—and instead had to come to him—urged that his story be told. ”

“ If there is an aura of caste, the distinctions must be created by those who have come as strangers into the mountains and not by the mountaineer.
They know they are not ignorant, except as everyone is ignorant who lacks contact with new customs and changes in world progress. They are fully cognizant of their lack of that knowledge which "comes only out of a book." But whatever their educational shortcomings, no one has ever laid at their door the charge of stupidity.
Raised in nature's school they are masters of its non-elective course. ”

“ Some of the Germans in the gun-pits, using rifles, shot at York. The bullets "burned his face as they passed." He cried a warning to his comrades which evidently was not heard, for when he began to shoot up the hill they called to him to stop as the Germans had surrendered. They saw—only the prisoners before them.
There was no time for parley. York's second cry, "Look out!" could carry no explanation of the danger to those whose view was blinded by the thicket. The Germans had their guns turned. Hell and death were being belched down the hillside upon the Americans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is an honor to command such soldiers as you. Your conduct reflects great credit not only upon the American army, but upon the American people. Your deeds will be recorded in the history of this great war and they will live as an inspiration not only to your comrades but to the generations that will come after us."
General John J. Pershing in pinning the Congressional Medal of Honor upon him—the highest award for valor the United States Government bestows—called York the greatest civilian soldier of the war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A rifleman would try for him where the machine guns failed.
In the mountains of Tennessee Alvin York had won fame as one of the best shots with both rifle and revolver that those mountains had ever held, and his imperturbability was as noted as the keenness of his sight.
In mountain shooting-matches at a range of forty yards—just the distance the row of German guns were from him—he would put ten rifle bullets into a space no larger than a man's thumb-nail. ”

“ But since the fist fights of boyhood Alvin York has never had a personal encounter. His intents and deeds do not lead him into difficulties, and in his eye there is a calm blue light that steadies the impulses of men given to explosions of passion and anger. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And both of them spent their lives developing these qualities of manhood in their boy. His father hiked him through the mountains on hunts that would have stoutened the heart of any man to have kept the pace. And he never tolerated the least evidence of fear of man or beast. He taught his boy to so live that he owed apology or explanation to no man.
While I was at Pall Mall, one of his neighbors, speaking of Alvin, said:
"Even as a boy he had his say and did his do, and never stopped to explain a statement or tell what prompted an act. Left those to stand for themselves." ”

“ As a stranger first sees Pall Mall it is but a half-mile of the mountain roadway that runs from Jamestown, the county seat of Fentress county, to Byrdstown, the county seat of Pickett.
The roadway comes down from the top of "The Knobs," a thousand feet above, and it comes over rocks of high and low degree, a jolting, impressive journey for its traveler. It reaches the foot of the mountain along one of the prongs of the Wolf, crosses them at the base of the eastern mountains and passes on to the northern side of the river. ”

“ Those of the Americans who were not killed or wounded in the first machine gun-fire had saved themselves as York had done. They had dived into the brush and lay flat upon the ground, behind trees, among the prisoners, protected by any obstruction they could find, and the stream of bullets passed over them.
York was at the left, beyond the edge of the thicket. The others were shut off by the underbrush from a view of the German machine guns that were firing on them. York had the open of the slope of the hill, and it fell to him to fight the fight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To-day a traveler distant on the mountainside can be recognized by the mountaineers while the man's features are still untraceable, by the droop of a hat or a peculiar walk, or amble of the mule he rides. In the case of any traveler along those remote roads the odds are long that the man, his father, his grandfather—as far back as anyone can remember—all were born and raised in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood is the valleys and the cleared spaces on the sides of all the mountains near around. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The road from Squire Williams' home to the church passes the York home; and, after the service, as far as his gate, Alvin would often walk with them. As Gracie was silent and timid when any stranger was near, so diffident that when on their way home from church she walked far away from Alvin, the neighbors for a long while had no explanation for Alvin's squirrel-hunts along the base of the mountain instead of up toward the top of it; and Mrs. Williams, at her home, heard so many gunshots off in the woods in the course of a day that she attached no significance to them. ”

“ When the war broke in Europe, those who lived in the valley gave little heed to it. When there was talk of the United States' entry, there was deep opposition. They were opposed to any war. The wounds of the Civil War had healed, but the scars it left were deep. The thought of another armed conflict meant more to the old people than it did to the younger generation.
"I did not know," Alvin said of himself, "why we were going to war. ”

“ Emigrants of those days settled as Coonrod Pile and his companions took up their "squatter's rights" in the Valley o' the Wolf. As canvas-covered mountain-schooners carrying families of the settlers moved westward they followed the trails of the hunters and stopped where it appealed to them. Wagon-tracks grew into roads as the travel increased. And the roads unvaryingly led to the passes and the gaps in the mountains that offered the least resistance to progress. ”