Part 16

But never in the experiences that have been crowded into the past two years of his life has he met a situation he could not command, or one that broke his calmness and reserve.

Clearly and quickly he thinks, but those thoughts flow slowly into words. He is keenly appreciative of his own limitations and quietly he observes everything around him. From early childhood he had been taught to be swift and keen in observation--the rustling of a leaf might be related to a squirrel's presence, and behind each moving shadow there is a cause and a meaning.

When he came to Prauthoy, France, the soldiers sought to honor him by having him carry the Division flag in the horse show. All was new to him and he was told but little of the routine expected of him. He had become the man whom all the American soldiers wished to see, and his presence was the feature of the occasion. The officers of his own regiment watched him closely, and not a mistake did he make in all the day's maneuvers. A comment of one of the officers was; "He seems always instinctively to know the right thing to do."

He came from a cabin in the backwoods of Tennessee but he was raised under influences that make real men. A boy's ideal, in his early life, is the father who guides him, and Sergeant York had before him a character that was picturesque in its rugged manhood and honesty, and inspiring in its devotion to right and justice. 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.

There was nothing pretentious about the home in which he was raised. It was but a cabin, yet the chairs, the tables were of seasoned oak, hand-made, solid. The puncheon floor was worn smooth with use and over it was a polished glow from the care of cleanliness, showing purity was there. The walls were papered with newspapers. That was to keep out the winter's wind, but over the windows were curtains of white muslin, and a scarf of it ran the length of the simple board mantel-shelf, and in season the blossom of some flower swayed there. Within the home, no angry words were heard, but often there was laughter and song, and when the formulas for conduct were not followed, even the words of correction were affectionately spoken.

As the boy's first steps were guided by tender hands, so the proper way to walk through life was pointed out with gentle words and simple truths. The mother's teachings were the products of an untrained mind, but her philosophies came from a brain that has the power to think clearly and quickly and is never influenced by either anger or excitement--qualities transmitted eminently to her son. This little mother in the mountains, unread and untutored, with only the dictates of her own heart to guide her, had early adopted as her guiding philosophy the belief that the greatest thing in life is love.

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."

It was the love for his mother, his love of his homelife in Pall Mall--and the sweetheart who was waiting for him there--that called him back to the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" after he had gone out into the world and won fame among men.

The very sunlight falls gently on the verdant beauty of that valley, and the seven mountains rise around it as tho they would shield it from the contending currents of the world.

Over the valley there comes a long gray dawn, for the sun is high in the heavens when its slanting rays first fall on the silver waters of the Wolf. 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. 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. The lamps in the cabins on the mountainsides gleam but a brief time and go out. The descending of the shade of night is the universal bedtime of the mountain people.

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.

But the mountain curfew is the bark of a dog. Somewhere up on the range a hound will call to another that all is well with him in his watch of the night, and the family he guards are all abed. The aroused neighbor calls to the dog at the cabin next to him, and the message that "all's well" sweeps on the voices of the hounds on down the valley until it ends in an echo in the crags.

V The People of Pall Mall

They are a tranquil people who pass their days as do those who now live in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf." They are free from invidious jealousies and the blight of avarice toward each other, free from doubt of the rectitude of their daughters and relieved from solicitude that the future of their sons, if they remain in the valley, will be influenced by dissipation or dishonesty--a people who find in the changes of the weather and its effect upon crops their chief cause for worry.

Through the gray dawn the farmer looks up to the skies for his weather report for the day. As he works he watches the clouds scurrying across the mountaintops, and when he notes they are banking against the unseen summit of the Blue Mountains that rises to the east, he knows that rain is soon to come. Some local unknown bard, watching those banking clouds, has left a lyric to his people, and I heard a gray-bearded mountaineer singing it as he predicted the break of a summer drought:

"The sun rose bright But hid its head soon, 'Twill rain a-fore night Ef hit don't rain a-fore noon."

With their homes back in the mountains nearly fifty miles from the railway, with a journey before them over rocky roads and up mountainsides to the other communities of Fentress county, the people of Pall Mall live in the communion and democracy of one great family. Children call old men by their Christian names. In it is not the slightest element of disrespect, and it is instead an appreciated propriety which the old men recall as the custom of their boyhood. Rev. R. C. Pile, pastor of the Church of Christ in Christian Union, the church of the valley, is "Rosier" to everyone. All worship together in the same church; all toil alike in the fields. In the predial, peaceful routine of their days there is a positive similarity. 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.

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 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. They are waiting to hear if anything new has happened, for all the news of the neighborhood comes to the store. The storekeeper is sure to know whether the stranger seen passing along the road in the morning stopped at the York's, or went on to Possum Trot or to Byrdstown.

The very commodities upon the shelves and counters of that store are in friendly confusion. Canned meats, pepper, candy, soap and chewing-tobacco may be found in one partition; while next to them, groceries, shotgun-shells, powder and chinaware are in a position of prominence according to the needs of the past purchaser. In the rear, piled high, are overalls and "store clothes," hats and shoes.

But the counter, facing the shelves of dress-goods for the women, is free of obstructions, and its surface is worn smooth and polished by the years of unrolling of bolts of cloth, while at every quarter-yard along the counter's rear edge is a shining brass tack-head--the yardstick of the department. A pair of large shears swing prominently from an upright partition. The department is orderly and neat, a mute tribute to those who patronize it.

Into the show-cases has crept every article of small dimension that had no habitat or kind upon the shelves around--from laces to lead pencils. Upon nails in the rafters of the ceiling swing buckets and dippers and lamps, currycombs and brushes.

Off in an L that runs at a right angle from the main store are bacon and tires for wagon wheels, country-cured hams and brooms, flour, kerosene and plows.

Under the counter by the door is an open wooden box of crackers, and its exact location and the volume of the supply are known to every child in the mountains around. Out of it comes their lagnappe for making a journey to the store.