enny Wren
through that scattermint of tinware.

"The peddler was still shiverin' on the tree limb overhead and his eyes
buggin' out worser'n Buck's had when he ketched first sight of the
feller's red shirt and the shiny tinware. 'Buck's gone,' I sez to him
coaxin' like. 'You don't need to be skeert of him no more!' 'T-t-tain't
B-b-buck!' the feller's teeth chattered. 'It's you, D-d-evil A-a-nse!'
With that he drapped off the limb down to the ground at my feet.
Swoonded dead away!"

Devil Anse Hatfield chuckled heartily. "'T-t-ain't Buck! B-b-uck,' sez
he when he ketched his wind and revived up. 'It's you--D-d-evil Anse!'"

The rest of the story Captain Anderson himself would never tell but Aunt
Levicy told me how he packed the tin peddler back up the hill to the
house on his shoulder and had her cook him a big dinner of fried chicken
and cornbread; how he gave the peddler a couple greenbacks that made him
plum paralyzed with pleasure and surprise; and how he had Jonse take the
peddler back to the county seat, the peddler riding behind Jonse on
Queen, where he bought a new supply of tinware and went on his way.

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 bor