Part 34

The fawn darted away but the deer fell bleeding with a bullet in the leg.

"Let her bleed! Bleed till there's not a drop of blood left in her veins and my silver coin is washed back to my own hands!" That was the wish of Amos Tingley, the miser. He went back into the house and put his gun in the corner.

When darkness came little Tinie Billberry stood sobbing at Amos Tingley's door. "Please to come," she pleaded. "My mother says she'll die if you don't. She wants to make amends!"

"Amends?" gasped Amos Tingley. "Amends for what?"

But Tinie had dashed away in the darkness.

When Amos reached pretty Audrey Billberry's door, he found her pale in the candlelight, her ankle shattered and bleeding. The foot rested in a basin.

"See what you've done, Amos Tingley." The pretty widow lifted tear-dimmed eyes, while Tinie huddled shyly behind her. "A pitcher of water, quick, Tinie, to wash away the blood!"

As the child poured the water over the bleeding foot, Amos heard something fall into the basin. He caught the flash of silver. Amos stood speechless.

In the basin lay the silver ball the miser had made from a coin.

"Never tell!" cried pretty Audrey Billberry, her dark eyes starting from the bloodless face. "Never tell and I promise, I promise and so does Tinie--see we promise together."

The child had put down the pitcher and came shyly to rest her head upon her mother's shoulder, her small hand in Audrey's.

"We promise," they spoke together, "never, never again to bother your garden!"

They kept their word all three, Amos Tingley and pretty Audrey Billberry and little Tinie. But somebody told, for the tale still lives in Laurel Hollow of the miser and the deer woman and the little fawn.

GHOST OF DEVIL ANSE

Near the village of Omar, Logan County, in the hills of West Virginia there is a little burying ground that looks down on Main Island Creek. It is a family burying ground, you soon discover when you climb the narrow path leading to the sagging gate in the rickety fence that encloses it. There are a number of graves, some with head stones, some without. But one grave catches the eye, for above it towers a white marble statue. The statue of a mountain man, you know at once by the imposing height, the long beard, the sagging breeches stuffed into high-topped boots. Drawing nearer, you read the inscription upon the broad stone base upon which the statue rests:

CAPT. ANDERSON HATFIELD

and below the names of his thirteen children:

JOHNSON WM. A. ROBERT L. NANCY ELLIOTT R. MARY ELIZABETH ELIAS TROY JOSEPH D. ROSE WILLIS E. TENNIS

You lift your eyes again to the marble statue. If you knew him in life, you'll say, "This is a fine likeness--and a fine piece of marble."

"His children had it done in Italy," someone offers the information.

"So," you say to yourself, "this is the grave of Devil Anse Hatfield."

You've seen all there is to see. You're ready to go, if you are like hundreds of others who visit the last resting place of the leader of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. But, if you chance to tarry--say, in the fall when fogs are heavy there in the Guyan Valley, through which Main Island Creek flows--you may see and hear things strangely unaccountable.

Close beside the captain's grave is another. On the stone is carved the name--Levisa Chafin Hatfield. If you were among the many who attended her funeral you will remember how peaceful she looked in her black burying dress she'd kept so long for the occasion. Again you will see her as she lay in her coffin, hands primly folded on the black frock, the frill of lace on the black bonnet framing the careworn face. You look up suddenly to see a mountain woman in a somber calico frock and slat bonnet. She is putting new paper flowers, to take the place of the faded ones, in the glass-covered box between the grave of Devil Anse and the mother of his children.

"You best come home with me," she invites with true hospitality, after an exchange of greetings. You learn that Molly claims kin to both sides, being the widow of a Hatfield and married to a McCoy, and at once you are disarmed.

That night as you sit with Molly in the moonlight in the dooryard of her shack, a weather-beaten plank house with a clapboard roof and a crooked stone chimney, she talks of life in the West Virginia hills. "There's a heap o' things happens around this country that are mighty skeery." Suddenly in the gloaming a bat wings overhead, darts inside the shack. You can hear it blundering around among the rafters. An owl screeches off in the hollow somewhere. "Do you believe in ghosts and haynts?" There are apprehension and fear in Molly's voice.

Presently the owl screeches dolefully once more and the bat wheels low overhead. A soft breeze stirs the pawpaw bushes down by the fence row. "Did you hearn something mourn like, just then?" Molly, the widow of a Hatfield and wife of a McCoy, leans forward.

If you are prudent you make no answer to her questions.

"Nothing to be a-feared of, I reckon. The ghosts of them that has been baptized they won't harm nobody. I've heard Uncle Dyke Garrett say as much many's the time." The woman speaks with firm conviction.