Part 9

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I'm found, Was blind, but now I see.

The wives and daughters, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts of McCoys took up the doleful strain:

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed.

"Hit's our sign of peace!" shouted old Aunt Emmie McCoy clapping her palsied hands high above her head, "the sign of peace 'twixt us and t'other side!" Whereupon Young Emmie McCoy, still in her teens, who had loved Little Sid Hatfield since their first day at school on Mate Creek, threw her arms about his sister and cried, "Can't no one keep me and Little Sid apart from this day on."

"Amen!" the voice of Devil Anse led the solemn chant. "Amen! God be praised!"

Jonse, the first-born of the Hatfields, bowed his head and his deep-throated "Amen! God be praised!" echoed down the valley. Then Cap and Troy, Tennis, Elias, Joe, Willis, and the rest joined in. All eyes turned toward Jonse. He who had loved pretty Rosanna McCoy when he was a lad, she a shy little miss.

Many at the baptizing remembered the first meeting of the two star-crossed lovers one autumn day long ago on Blackberry Creek. The day when young Randall and Tolbert, her brothers, were there. Old folks remembered too the time when Devil Anse had slain Harmon McCoy. But that was long ago and forgiven. "Let bygones be bygones," Levicy had pleaded with her mate, and Sarah, wife of Old Randall, did likewise with her spouse. But only Levicy, of the two sorely tried women, had survived to witness the answer to her prayers--peace between the households with the baptism of Devil Anse and his six sons.

As one by one they went down into the waters of baptism, it was the voice of Levicy Chafin Hatfield that led in that best-loved hymn tune of the mountains:

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye Toward Canaan's fair and happy land where my possessions lie. I'm bound for the Promised Land, I'm bound for the Promised Land. Oh! who will come and go with me, I'm bound for the Promised Land.

The hills gave back the echo of their song.

It was a day of rejoicing.

As for Uncle Dyke Garrett he continued to journey up and down the broad valley and through the hills, preaching the Gospel of repentance, forgiveness, salvation. Above all he told of the baptism of Captain Anderson and his six boys.

From the very first Dyke Garrett was more than a preacher.

Along lonely creeks into quiet hollows he went to pray at the bedside of the dying, to comfort the bereft, to rejoice with the penitent. In the early days he was the only visitor beyond the family's own blood kin, so remote were the homes of the settlers one from the other. Like a breath from the outside world were Uncle Dyke's words of cheer, while to him they in the lonely cabins were indeed voices crying out in the wilderness. Nor did flood nor storm, his own discomfort and hardship deter him. Winter and summer, through storm and wind, he rode bearing the good tidings to the people of the West Virginia ruggeds.

And now here he sat this autumn day in 1937, alert and happy for all his ninety-six years. Bless you, he even talked of fighting!

"If anyone jumped on these United States without a good cause," he declared vehemently, "I'd fight for my country--" Uncle Dyke didn't quibble his words. "That is to say if Uncle Sam would take me. Me and my sword!" Again he faltered, adding reflectively, "But after all the Bible is the better weapon. With it I can conquer all things."

Slowly he arose from his chair and Aunt Sallie and I did likewise.

"Come," he invited, "I want you to see for yourself where I've baptized many a one that has come to me." He pointed to a pool in the creek beyond the house where he had made a small dam. As we stood together it was on the tip of my tongue to ask how many couples he had baptized, how many he had married. Abruptly with the uncanny sense of the mountaineer he lifted the questions out of my mind, though it could have been because so many others had asked the same things. "I've never kept count of the wedding ceremonies I have performed, nor of the baptisms," he said thoughtfully. "I have always felt that if it was the Lord's work I was doing, He would keep the count."

You didn't have to ask Uncle Dyke Garrett either which were the happiest days of his long life. You'd know from the look he bestowed upon his frail mate that his supreme happy hour was when he married Miss Sallie Smith. "My wedding day," he was saying as if the question had been asked, "that was the happiest day of my whole life. And next to that comes the day when the Lord chose me to administer baptism to Captain Anderson and his six boys. Such hours as these are a taste of heaven upon earth." His voice was hushed with solemnity. His brimming eyes were lifted to the hills. "Though it was a day of sorrow I am grateful that it also fell to my lot to preach the funeral of my lifelong friend Captain Anderson. Most of all though, my heart rejoiced because Captain Anderson had become like a little child, meek and penitent, worthy to enter the fold."

Uncle Dyke sat silent a long time. His wrinkled hands cupped bony knees. "It brought peace to Levicy's troubled heart." His eyes grew misty with unshed tears. "I see her now as she lay so peaceful in her shroud and on her bosom the gold breast pin she prized so much that Captain Anderson brought her the time he was stormbound, when he met that scalawag brother of Jesse James. She loved posies did Levicy and every springtime we take some to her grave, me and Miss Sallie."

At this, Miss Sallie, slipping her small hand through the bend of his arm, led the way down the flower-bordered path. "Posies are the brightness of a body's days," she said softly. "You can't just set them out and they'll bloom big. You have to work with them. Posies and human creatures are a heap alike. Sometimes they have to be pampered. Like Dyke here," she smiled up at her aged mate. "I had to understand his ways, else I'd never have tamed him," she persisted. "He's the last surviving one of his company--the Logan Wildcats." Aunt Sallie's blue eyes lighted with pride. "I like to think of him outlasting me too."

I'd remember them always as they stood there in the sunset with the golden glow and scarlet sage and the snow-white pretty-by-night all about them, the two smiling contentedly as I waved them good-by far down at the bend of the road.

It was the last time I ever saw Uncle Dyke alive. The next May--1938--he died. I was gratified that it fell to my lot to attend his funeral. And what a worthy eulogy the Reverend John McNeely, whom Uncle Dyke always referred to as "my son in the Gospel," preached, taking for his text "My servant, Moses, is dead," a text that the two had agreed upon long before the Good Shepherd of the Hills passed away.

That day when the sermon was ended the great throng that filled the valley and the hillsides, gathering about the baptismal pool he himself had fashioned, sang Uncle Dyke's favorite hymn. Their voices blending like the notes of a giant organ swelled and filled the deep valley:

Like a star in the morning in its beauty, Like the sun is the Bible to my soul, Shining clear on the way of life and beauty, As I hasten on my journey to the goal.

'Tis a lamp in the wilderness of sorrow, 'Tis a light on the weary pilgrim's way, It will guide to the bright eternal morrow, Shining more and more unto the Perfect Day.

'Tis the voice of a friend forever near me, In the toil and the battle here below, In the gloom of the valley, it shall cheer me, Till the glory of the kingdom I shall know.

I shall stand in its glory and its beauty, Till the earth and the heavens pass away, Ever telling the wondrous, blessed story Of the loving Lamb, the only living way.