. He lived
his days in peace within sight of the county seat of Rowan tending his
farm and looking after his household. If his kinfolk had heeded him
there never would have been a Rowan County war which put a blot upon the
community that took years to erase.

FAMILY HONOR

Looking down on a clear day from a bald on Dug Down Mountain you can see
the valley far below. The bald is sometimes called the sods--where the
trees can't grow because of high winds. This particular spot is called
Foley Sods after the Foleys who have lived here in the Dug Down
Mountains for generations. Looking closer from the high, green bald you
can see far below in the edge of a dilapidated orchard a lorn grave.
Overrun with ivy and thorns it is enclosed with a wire fence, sagging
and rusty and held together here and there with crooked sticks and
broken staves.

Ben Foley's grave it is, anyone whom you happen to meet along the way
will tell you, but your informant will say no more. If you have the time
and inclination to follow the footpath on around toward a cliff to the
right you may come upon old Jorde Foley sitting near on a log as if
keeping watch over the place. The old fellow will appraise you from head
to foot and either he will be glum, like the person you have passed on
the way, or he will invite you to rest a while. Then presently he falls
into easy conversation and before you are aware you have learned much
about Ben and Jorde Foley too.

It wasn't that Jorde had any objection to what Ben, his son, was doing,
but it was the things that happened when Ben brought home his bride from
Cartersville that caused Jorde to speak his mind. This day he went back
to the beginning of things.

"I've been makin' all my life right here in these Dug Down Mountains
alongside this clift," he said. "It's my land, my crop. And I've a right
to do with my corn whatever I'm a mind to. And Cynthie, my wife, many's
the time she taken turns with me breakin' up the mash, packin' the wood
to keep the fire under the still. We've set by waitin' for the run off.
And Ben, our boy, he learnt from watchin' us how to make good whiskey,
from the time he was a little codger. Sometimes Cynthie would keep an
eye out for the law. But we hated that part of it worser'n pizen. We
were in our rights and had no call to be treated like thieves in the
night. Pa made whiskey right here in these Dug Down Mountains same as
his'n before him, out of c