Part 15

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.