Except for such interludes of pranking, doubtless Aunt Levicy and old Randall's wife, Sarah McCoy, could never have survived the ordeal of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

The women of both households lived days of torture, ever watchful of the approaching enemy. They spent sleepless nights of anguish, knowing too well the sound of gunshot, the cry of terror that meant another outbreak of the clans. And when the cross grew too heavy even for their stoic shoulders to bear they ventured unbeknownst to their menfolks to the Good Shepherd of the Hills to beg his intercession, his prayers for peace.

PEACEMAKER

Autumn had painted the wooded hillside bright scarlet, golden brown, vivid orange, and yellow that shone in the late September sunlight like a giant canvas beyond the rambling farmhouse at the head of Garrett's Fork of Big Creek where dwelt the Good Shepherd of the Hills, William Dyke Garrett and his gentle wife. Here in Logan County in the heart of the rugged West Virginia country, Uncle Dyke and Aunt Sallie lived in the selfsame place for all of seventy years. Sallie Smith, she was, of Crawley's Creek, a few miles away, before she wed the young rebel of the Logan Wildcats. That was away back in 1867, February 19th, to be exact.

He was twenty, she in her teens. He had been born and grew to young manhood in a cabin only a stone's throw from where he and Miss Sallie, as he always called her, went to housekeeping. As for their neighbors, there wasn't a person in the whole countryside that didn't love Sallie Garrett, nor one that didn't revere the kindly Apostle of the Book. So long had Dyke Garrett traveled up and down the valley comforting the sick, praying with the dying, funeralizing the dead.

I had heard him preach in various places through the West Virginia hills.

"Hello, Uncle Dyke!" I called from the roadside one autumn day in 1936.

"Howdy! and welcome!" he replied cheerily, rising at once from his straight chair and taking his place in the door. His wife stepped nimbly to his side, for all her ninety-odd years, and echoed the husband's greeting.

It is the way of the mountains.

I lifted the wood latch on the gate and went up the white-pebbled path.

Flower-bordered it was, with brilliant scarlet sage, purple bachelor buttons, golden glow. There was pretty-by-night, too, though their snow-white blossoms were closed tight in the bud for it was not yet sundown; only in the twilight and by night did the buds bloom out.

"That's why they wear the name Pretty-by-Night," mountain folk will tell you. There were clusters of varicolored seven sisters lifting up their bright petals. Moss, some call it in the mountains. There were bright cockscomb and in a swamp corner of the foreyard a great bunch of cat-o'-nine tails straight as corn stalks.

Tall, erect stood the Good Shepherd of the Hills, fully six feet three in his boots, his white patriarchal beard pillowed on his breast. The blue-veined hands rested upon the back of his chair as he gazed at me from friendly eyes. Aunt Sallie, a slight bird-like little creature, reached scarcely to his shoulder. Her black sateen dress with fitted basque and full skirt was set off with a white apron edged with crocheted lace. The small knot of silver hair atop her head was held in place with an old-fashioned tucking comb. About her stooped shoulders was a knitted cape of black yarn.

"Take a chair," invited Uncle Dyke when I reached the porch, waving me to a low stool. "Miss Sallie al'lus favors the rocker yonder on account the high back eases her shoulders. She's not quite as peert as she was back in 1867."

"It took a bit of strength to tame Dyke and I had it to do." She addressed me rather than her husband. "He was give up to be the wildest young man in the country when he came back from the Home War."

The Civil War having been ended for some two years and the young private of the Logan Wildcats having been tamed, he became converted to religion. Thereupon he began to preach the Gospel.

But never in all the years of his ministry from 1867 to 1938, when failing health took him from the pulpit, did Uncle Dyke Garrett receive a penny for preaching. He never had a salary. William Dyke Garrett got his living from the rugged little hillside farm that he tended with his own hands.

"Before I was converted to religion," he said, straightening in his chair, "I played the fiddle and many a time went to square dances. But once I got the Spirit in here,"--placing a wrinkled hand upon his breast--"I gave up frolic tunes and played only religious music. There are other ways for folks to get together and enjoy themselves without dancing. Now there's the Big Meeting! Every year on the first Sunday of September folks come from far and near here to Big Creek and bring their basket dinner."

"Dyke started it many a year ago," Aunt Sallie interposed with prideful glance at her mate.

Again he took up the story. "After we've spread our basket dinner out on the grass all under the trees we have hymn-singing and--"

"Dyke reads from the Scripture and preaches a spell." Aunt Sallie meant that nothing should be left out. Nor did the old man chide her.

"Many a one has been converted at the Big Meeting"--his eyes glowed--"and nothing will stop it but the end of time. They'll have the Big Meeting every year long after I'm gone. I'm certain of that."

Presently his thoughts looped back to his wedding to Sallie Smith. "Our infare-wedding lasted three days. The first day at Sallie's, the second day at Pa's house, and the third right here in our own home. That was the way in those times. And I got so gleeful I fiddled and danced at the same time! That'll be seventy-one year come February of the year nineteen thirty-seven." Slowly he rolled his thumbs one around the other, then he stroked his long beard, eyes turned inward upon his thoughts. "Well, sir, if I should get married one hundred times I'd marry Miss Sallie Smith every time. We've traveled a long way together and we've had but few harsh words."

His mate lifted faded eyes to his. "Dyke, it was generally my fault,"

she said contritely, "but I was bound to scold when you'd get careless about your own self. I vow," the little old lady turned to me, "he took no thought of his health nor his life nor limb. There was nothing he feared--man nor beast nor weather. In the early days there were no roads in this country and he rode horseback from one church to another through the wilderness. In the dead of night I've known him to get up out of bed and go with a troubled neighbor who had come for him to pray with the dying."

Uncle Dyke chuckled softly. "Sometimes they were not as near death as I thought. Once I remember John Lawton came from way over in Hart County.

His wife was at the point of death, he said. She had lived a mighty sorry life had Dessie Lawton."

"Parted John and his wife!" piped Aunt Sallie, "and that poor girl went to her grave worshiping the ground John Lawton walked on; hoping he'd come back to her. Dyke claims there's ever hope for them that repent, so when John brought word that Dessie wanted to make her peace with the Lord before she died, Dyke said nothin' could stay him. So off he rode behind John to pray over that trollop!" Aunt Sallie's eyes blazed. "They forded the creek no tellin' how many times. They got chilled to the bone. When they got there Dyke stumbled into the house as fast as his cold, stiff legs could pack him, fell on his knees 'longside Dessie's bed and begun to pray with all his might. Then he tried to sing a hymn, but still never a word nor a moan out of Dessie, covered over from head to foot in the bed. Directly John reached over to lay a hand on her shoulder. 'Dessie, honey,' he coaxed, 'Brother Dyke Garrett's come to pray with you!' He shook the heap of covers. And bless you, what they thought was Dessie turned out to be a feather bolster. John snatched back the covers. The bed was empty except for that long feather bolster that strumpet had covered over lengthwise of the bed. Come to find out Dessie had sent John snipe huntin', so to speak, and she skipped out with a timber cruiser. Dyke was laid up for all of a week; took a deep cold on his chest from riding home in his wet clothes."

The old preacher smiled at the memory. "Could have been worse, like John Lawton said that night. 'Dessie's got principle!' said he. 'She could a-took my poke of seed corn, but there it is a-hangin' from the rafters.

And she could a-took my savin's.' With that John Lawton pried a stone out of the hearth with the toe of his boot. Underneath it lay a little heap of silver coins. John blinked at it a moment. 'There it is.

Dessie's shorely got principle. No two ways about it.' He shifted the stone back to place, tilted back in his chair, and patting his foot began to whistle a rakish tune. He was still whistling as I rode off into the bitter night."

There was another time Dyke recalled when old Granny Partlow sent word that she couldn't hold out against the Lord no longer. Granny was nearing eighty and for thirty of her years she had sat a helpless cripple in a chair. At the birth of her seventeenth child, paralysis had overtaken Deborah, wife of Obadiah Partlow, rendering her useless to her spouse and their numerous offspring. She had protested bitterly, saying right out that it wasn't fair and that so long as the affliction was upon her she meant to ask no favor of the Lord. Deborah Partlow was through with prayer and Scripture and Meeting, though in health never had been there a more pious creature than Obadiah Partlow's wife.

Neighbor folk saw her wither and pine through the years. A grim figure, she sat day in and day out in her chair wherever it was placed. Lifeless from the waist down, using her hands a little to peel potatoes or string beans, though so slow and laborious were the movements of the stiff fingers her children and Obadiah said they'd rather do any task themselves than to give it to her. At last she had become an old woman, shriveled, grim, still bitter about her fate.

No one was more surprised than Uncle Dyke Garrett when she sent for him.

"Granny Partlow craved baptism," Uncle Dyke remembered the story as clearly as though it had happened but yesterday. "The ice was all of a foot thick in the creek but men cut it with ax and maddock, spade and saw. It had to be a big opening to make room for Deborah Partlow and her chair. Though her children and grandchildren and old Obadiah protested--'It'll kill you!' 'You'll be stone dead before night!'--Granny had her way. Nor would she put on her bonnet or shawl.

Resolute, she sat straight in her chair as neighbor men packed her through the snow to the creek. The women standing on the bank wept and wailed till they couldn't sing a hymn. 'It'll kill Granny Partlow!' they cried."

Uncle Dyke was silent a long moment. "No one could ever rightly say how it come about. But the minute my two helpers brought the old woman up out of the icy waters she leaped out of her chair and took off up the bank for home, fleet as a partridge, through snow up to her knees, holding up her petticoats with both hands as she flew along. Lived to be a hundred and three. Hoed corn the day she died of sunstroke." The Good Shepherd of the Hills sighed contentedly. "Deborah Partlow bein'

baptized under ice brought a heap of converts to religion."

"But that baptizin' caused me no end of anxiety," Aunt Sallie took up the story. "That day when Dyke went out to saddle old Beck the snow was plum up to his boot tops. The mountains were white all around and the creek froze in a sheet of ice. But go Dyke would. I wropt his muffler twice around his neck, got his yarn mittens and pulse warmers too and throwed a sheep hide over the top of his wood saddle and one under it--to ease the nag's back. He had wooden stirrups too. Made the whole thing himself. I dreaded to see Dyke ride off that winter's day for there was a sharp wind that come down out of the hollow and froze even the breath of him on his long black beard till it looked white--white as it is today. I watched him ride off. Heard the nag's feet crunching in the snow. All of three full days and nights he was gone, for at best the road to Hart County was rough and hard to travel. In the meantime come a blizzard. Not a soul passed this way, so I got no word of Dyke. I conjured a thousand thoughts in my mind. Maybe he'd met the same fate of old man Frasher who fell over a cliff in a blinding snowstorm. Maybe the nag had stumbled and sent Dyke headlong over some steep ridge. The children, we had several then, could see I was troubled, though I tried to hide it. Finally on the third night I had put our babes to bed and was sitting by the fire too troubled to sleep. I had about give up hope of seeing Dyke alive again. It was in the dead of night I heard a voice.

It sounded strange and far off, calling 'Hallo! Hallo!', more like a pitiful moan it was. I lighted a pine stick at the hearth and hurried as best I could through the snow to where the voice was coming from. I stumbled once and fell over a stump and the pine torch fell from my hand. It sputtered in the snow and nearly went out before I could pull myself up to my feet. And all the time the voice seemed to be getting farther away. But it wasn't. It was just getting weaker. In a few more steps I come on the nag deep in a snowdrift up to its shanks and there slumped over in the saddle was Dyke. His feet were froze fast in the stirrups. He was numb and nigh speechless. I wropt my shawl around him and hurried, back to the house, heated the fire poker red hot and with it I thawed Dyke Garrett's boots loose from them wooden stirrups." Aunt Sallie sighed. "Of course no mortal can tell when salvation will take holt on their heart but after Granny Partlow's baptizing and Dyke having to be thawed out of his stirrups I was powerful thankful when the Spirit descended on a sinner in fair weather."

"It's not always womenfolks like Granny Partlow who are slow to open their heart to the Spirit. Now take Captain Anderson!

"In his home there never lived a more free-hearted man. Loved to have folks come and stay as long as they liked. Once I recall a man came to the county seat in court week. He was making tintypes and charged a few cents for them. Captain Anderson had his picture made and was so pleased with it he coaxed the fellow to go home with him so that he could get a tintype of Levicy and the children. He never stopped until he had ten dollars' worth of tintypes and then he didn't want the fellow to leave.

But he did. Finally settled over on Beaver. His name was Jerome Bailey and he died a rich man and always said he got his start with the ten dollars he earned making tintypes for Captain Anderson Hatfield."

Uncle Dyke reflected a long moment. "There's good in all of us no matter how wicked we may seem to others. And down deep in the heart of me I knew my Captain would one day open his heart to salvation."

Anyone could tell you how the Good Shepherd of the Hills through the long years had pleaded and prayed with Devil Anse to forsake the thorny path, even far back when they returned from the Home War. Already the Captain of the Wildcats had made a notch on his gunstock by killing Harmon McCoy in 1863. He was already the leader of his clan. And all the time Uncle Dyke kept pleading with his comrade to give up sin. But not until Uncle Dyke Garrett had preached and prayed for nearly fifty years and Devil Anse too had become an old man did he admit the error of his way. Not until then were the patience, faith, and hope of Uncle Dyke rewarded.

"It was one of the happiest days of my life," he told me, "when Captain Anderson took my hand. Sitting right here we were together. It was in the falling weather. These hills all around about were a blaze of glory, like they are today. And here sat Captain Anderson, in this very rocking chair where Miss Sallie is sitting now. We were alone. Miss Sallie was busy with her posies down yonder near the gate. 'Dyke,' says the Captain of the Logan Wildcats, in a voice so soft I could scarce hear, 'I've come into the light! I crave to own my God and Redeemer. I long to go down into the waters of baptism and be washed spotless of my transgressions.' I could not move hand or foot. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. Captain Anderson gripped the arms of the rocker there as if to steady himself. A man who had tracked mountain lion and bear, panther and catamount. I could see the face of him, that old daredeviltry vanish away and on his countenance a childlike look of repentance. It took a heap o' courage for Captain Anderson to admit his transgressions even to me, his lifelong friend. But I always knew that down deep in the heart of him there was good and that his hour would come when he'd fall upon his knees before the Master and say, 'Here I am, forgive me Lord, a poor sinner!' But when the words fell from his trembling lips I could not even cry out in rejoicing, 'Thank God!', like I always aimed to do when my comrade should come within the fold. I sat with my jaws locked, my tongue stilled. Captain Anderson spoke again.

'Dyke,' sez he, 'brother Dyke ...' I could feel my heart pounding like it would burst out of my breast. 'Brother Dyke,' he repeated the words slowly, pleadingly, 'ain't you aimin' to give me the hand of fellowship?' Then, still unable to utter a word, I reached out my hand and my comrade seized it, gripped it tight. There we sat looking at each other and so Miss Sallie found us as she came up the path there with her arms filled with posies, golden glow, and scarlet sage, and snow-white pretty-by-night just burst into bloom for it was sundown. 'Men!' said she, 'at last you're brothers in the faith! I know it. Ah! I'd know it from the look of peace on the faces of the two of you, even if I did not witness the sign of your hands clasped in fellowship!' The next Sabbath day, it fell like on the third Sunday of the month, we witnessed the baptism of a once proud and desperate rebel. A rebel against the Master!

The baptism of him and six of his sons as well who had not before received salvation."

Swiftly the word passed along the creeks and through the quiet hollows.

"Devil Anse has come through!" There was great rejoicing throughout the West Virginia hills, indeed throughout the southern mountains. Not only the leader of the Hatfields, but six of his sons, had "got religion" and "craved baptism." Hundreds flocked from out the hollows of West Virginia and Kentucky to witness the Hatfield baptizing.

That was another autumn day only a few years ago as time goes.

The sun was sinking behind the mountain, casting long shadows on the waters of Island Creek when the Good Shepherd of the Hills moved slowly down the bank to the water's edge. Behind him followed his old friend, no longer the emboldened Devil Anse with fire in his eagle eye, but a meek, a silent, penitent figure. The autumn breeze stirred his snow-white hair, his scant gray beard. Upon his breast the old clansman held respectfully his wide-brimmed felt as he walked with head uplifted in supplication. Behind him followed his six sons. Jonse came first, Jonse, who had loved pretty Rosanna McCoy, reckless Jonse, who like his father had slain he alone knew how many of the other side. Then came Cap, Elias, Joseph, Troy, Robert.

Slowly and with steady stride Uncle Dyke walked into the water. Up to the waist he stood holding the frayed Bible in his extended right hand.

"Except ye shall repent and go into the waters of baptism ye shall perish. But if ye repent and accept salvation, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be washed whiter than snow," the voice of the Good Shepherd of the Hills drifted down the valley.

"Amen!" intoned the trembling voice of Devil Anse.

"Amen!" echoed the six sons grouped about their aged sire.

Then Aunt Levicy, wife of the grim clansman, began singing in a quavering voice: