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Show If cS .WDLFPEW - Harlem Haicher. r-'v-; r''7V:ifv ' lUuirahon i O-Irin. Myers- p'y. :.')- ' ' J " i-'; X - v.j t-e r ' ft . U I) E yil:li HI) from (. i-y.i ir-im7i, ir-im7i, the jnfffffd tine of the Cum-bfrlitnd Cum-bfrlitnd nutittttntru is a prodigious row of black dontiiuH'X topdcd over on one another by the finger of Cod brush-injf brush-injf about in the blue. This great wall of purple and green is neither inviting nor forbidding ; it is just inescapably and beautifully there, removed from the urnbitions and worries of men. In the morning tfic notched shadows crawl obliquely up its northern slope; they linger at noon on the faulted uplifts; and then hurry obliquely down the darkening south slopes in the early evening. A hundred miles to the north lies the Ohio valley, flat and fertile between be-tween its borders of lower hills. The willow-f ringed river sweeps in a long leisurely curve around the southernmost southern-most tip of Ohio, receives the waters of the llig Sandy at the corner of West Virginia and Kentucky, and then bends languidly on toward the Mississippi. U is both inviting and forbidding; inescapably in-escapably and beautifully there in the midst of the ambitions and worries of men. 'I he spring rains swell it to the limits of its ample banks, and send it muddy and churning toward the west. 'The summer droughts relax it into a somnolent stream of limpid green tranquility. tran-quility. Hclween the river and the mountain range lies the Dig Sandy valley. Its hilts rise slowly from the squat bluffs vn the Ohio to the blue peaks of the Cumberland; its valleys widen progressively progres-sively from the precipitous canyons of the IS realm on the south to the siveep-ing siveep-ing fladunds on the Ohio to the north. And the Big Sandy river with its forks and Us tributary creeks veins the whole region like the ribs in a pawpaw leaf. Guarded on the south by the-Cum-bcrland ridge, protected on the north by the lure of the great river and its level bottoms, fenced in on the west 4tnd on the east by row upon row of rugged hills, the Big Sandy valley .ckvt preserved its isolation until the 2 'i r M$mJ. 'firm "What a Place for a Man to Live In!" encircling territory was conquered and cleared. Traveling westward through the Eighteenth century, the immigrants stared at the great barrier of the Cum-bsrlands, Cum-bsrlands, and continued th? easier road down the Clinch river into Tennessee, Ten-nessee, leaving the mysterious beyond lo the desperate Indians, struggling against dispossession. Saddling down the Ohio, the pioneers peered up the bright highway of the Big Sandy, bending bend-ing into the unknown, and continued down the easier road toward the rolling roll-ing blue-grjss country, leaving the legend-haunted pocket to the frightened fright-ened wild game fleeing extinction. But its protection was not permanent. perma-nent. The solid-looking wall of the Cumberlands proved not to be unbroken un-broken when assaulted by a fexv daring dar-ing men who were determined to explore ex-plore it. One by one they spied out ihe lour galciinyj to the north: the canyon-like water-gaps at the heads of the Tug river and Dry Fork: the thousand-foot gorge in the Breaks of Sandy; and the twenty-five-hundred-foot icind-gap icind-gap in I'inc mountain. Each gateway proved to be an Indian trail from north to south: a turn-pike creek which led. fork by fork, to the full stream of the Big Sandy at Louisa, and then like a broad highway into the Ohio. Fork by fork the Elkhorn lo the Bus-sell, Bus-sell, the Russell into the Levisa. then the l.evisa joins the Tug and becomes the Big Sandy. The mysterious pocket was open at both ends to those who would risk its perils. The perils were menacing. The Shaw-nccs Shaw-nccs held on to the Big Sandy valley after all other hunting ground were captured from them. It was both a lame preserve and a colossal fortifica lion, with a mo:it on the north over uhith they could strike at the whites on the Ohio and posterns on the south through which they could raid the rich settlements in Virginia. They held on until 1795, while the immigrants filled up the outside flats and encamped against the walls surrounding it. Then the Indians were trapped and defeated, and the valley was taken up. It filled up quickly with white settlers. set-tlers. RifJrafJ squatters washed in near the mouth of the river and occupied the lowlands; inhospitable, lazy people who allowed cockleburs to overrun the patches of corn and entangle and destroy de-stroy the fleece of their few sheep. But at the Cumberland end of the Big Sandy and its forks, hardy, industrious settlers from Virginia toiled through the gaps and took possession of the fertile bottoms. A few brave souls had already looked at the land and established claims. Said l'attcrn had explored the country in the late spring of 17RH, crossing the mountains from Tazewell county, Virginia, Vir-ginia, and following the Indian trail through the Breaks to the mouth of Cannon Fork, as it was afterward named. There he was halted by fresh signs of war and scalping parties littering lit-tering the trail. lie had to retreat, lie left the llig Sandy and returned southward south-ward by way of Cannon Fork which bends to the southeast, and then parallels paral-lels the Big Sandy. Thirty miles above its mouth, he saw a great bare pinnacle pin-nacle of yellow sandstone protruding from the trees above the creek, and overlooking the valley. He toiled up-ivard up-ivard through the underbrush, and there, standing on a jutting ledge, he had his first comprehensive view of the finest district in the entire country. Cannon creek, nearly as large as the Big Sandy river, came in sweeping curves through the rich valley which held the chain of hills from five hundred hun-dred feet to a fifth of a mile apart. It lay there virginal and undisturbed in its primeval quietude, surrounded by endless acres of forest. At the foot of the Pinnacle began ffolfpen Hollow, making with Gannon creek a Y in the hills. It was only a little more concentrated than the valley val-ley of the Cannon Fork. Rising in a rock spring near the hilltop a few miles up the hollow, the little stream, only ten feet wide in repose, fingered its channel toward the great Pinnacle and merged with the waters of Gannon. Gan-non. The two valleys made a wide flat place among the hills lor a man to rest on and take root. Saul Pattern was not given to emo. tion. But as he stood there on the rock looking up and down Cannon creek and at the fat bottoms up W oil-pen, oil-pen, he felt a glow of pride and an eagerness lo possess it. With some four thousand square miles of mountain moun-tain wilderness lo choose from, he selected se-lected these bottoms at the mouth of ffolfpen, crying aloud to the deer and the wild turkey "God Almighty, what a place for a man to LIVE in!" Five years later he came back with his fifteen-year-old son Barton and built a rude cabin up the hollow on the Wolf pen F ork of the Y. The country coun-try seemed quiet and ready for a pioneer. pio-neer. But cue evening toward the close of the summer of 17V0, just as the dark began to tumble into W olf-pen, olf-pen, Saul came back to the cabin with a turkey he had shot tehile out surveying survey-ing the land. The cabin was deserted, and Barlon was not in sight. Saul found him on the bank at the mouth of the creek where the Indians had left him for dead with his throat cut but his head unscalped. Saul pulled the wound together and bound it with guncotton. Barton lay in a delirious fever for long days in the cabin hovering hover-ing precariously between life and death. Then, miraculously, he began slowly to mend, and by the first snowfall he was able to travel back to Virginia. Saul Pattern bore with impatience the next five years while the Indians were being overmatched. At last in the spring of 1796 when life was reasonably reas-onably safe, he came back lo the chosen spot with his wife and children and Virginia patent for four thousand thou-sand acres of land us surveyed by himself him-self in 17'jO. This lime he did nut return, re-turn, lie plunitd the bottoms with corn and beans, fattened his slock on the Vt olfpen meaduws, built a great room in front of the old cabin uhich uas stilt standing, and became the first settler on Gannon creek. And all through the upper region of the Big Sandy valley through that year and those that followed, came strong men and fertile women to plant themselves on the flat pockets between the hills, and lo build cabins on the sheltered r.pots in the wide mouths of numberless number-less hollows. It was a moment unique in the history of man: a clean slate before them, a virgin district at their feet; what would they not make of this new land! "Great God, uliat a place for a man to live in!" CHAPTER I ON AN AFTEKNOON at the beginning be-ginning of the spring of ISSj, Cynthia Pattern sat on the Pinnacle Pinna-cle of sandstone, studded with strata stra-ta of white pennies, and looked down upon the fourth and fifth generations gen-erations of Pattern men still making mak-ing something of the new land. A century of life, of making things of these bottoms in the Kentucky mountains, separated Cynthia from her Creat-Great-Grandfatlier Saul who first strode through the wilderness wilder-ness on his long legs spying out the land. During that century, wave after wave of change and reform, sweeping over the Republic and hearing it on into the Westland, had broken against the mountain walls, leaving the valleys within almost untouched. The way of life which Cynthia Pattern from the brown Pinnacle saw tn the valley below her was the Indigenous fruit of an unbroken tradition of family life developed de-veloped without benefit of the world beyond the wide horizon of the Iiig Sandy hills. If there were surviving surviv-ing anywhere tn America in 1SS5 anything resembling a native culture, cul-ture, It was represented by the life of the Patterns now In their fifth generation on their six thousand acres of hills and valleys surrounding surround-ing Wolfpen Bottoms. But n new steam-mill would not "be Indigenous. Cynthia had slipped away from the weaving-room of the big farmhouse farm-house and gone around the palings of Julia's garden, and under the grape arbor, and through the peach orchard, across the creek and up the steep path which led her through the yellow girdle of the poplar forest, for-est, through the dark belt of pine-trees, pine-trees, into the clump of rhododendron rhododen-dron where the rock pushed out of the black leaf-mould to look at the valleys and the undulating expanse of untouched timber-land. Sitting at the loom she had thought: "Daddy and the boys have been down at the mill all morning and this evening they'll start the new engine. I'd like to see him start It but womenfolk can't hardly hard-ly ever go anywheres like that when all the menfolks on the creek gang about and Mother wouldn't even ev-en think about going down there. But if I was on the Pinnacle I could look right down on the mill and watch just like I was one of the buzzards or a hawk or a crow and see them without them taking any notice of me." Cynthia sat on the ledge watching watch-ing Sparrel Pattern while he converted con-verted to modern steam-power the old water-wheeled mill her grandfather grand-father had built. The mill gathered up for her the romance of a family fam-ily tradition and became the symbol sym-bol of progression for the generations genera-tions of her men. She had sat on the Pinnacle watching the arc 6f the great wheel loaded with water spin without effort In the sun, revolving re-volving to the muted rumble of the stones within the log mill. It turned her thoughts into the past where In imagination she recreated the lives of her grandfathers. They were not dead and forgotten; they had built themselves Into the place and looked out at her from the barn, the house, the bottoms, the old mill. The life span of one man does not permit the fashioning of a culture from a raw wilderness; his vision must be carried on by his sons and his grandsons. Grandfather Saul was sorely pressed during the first hard years In the mountains; he had to be content with the temporary makeshift make-shift of a hand-mill. The wooden bench on which it was mounted was decayed, but the two little stones no larger than a milk crock were preserved pre-served in one corner of the present mill. They seemed little beside the great stones grandfather Barton had fashioned fash-ioned for the borse-mill he had built on the level spot below the barn. The top framework of rough-hewn woud was g"ne. arid the skillfully cuned stunt-s were moved to tin water-mill; but the weathered cen tral axis, the two tliu-k wooden wheels which rolled on the ground, and the ckunnel worn by t lie mule as it tramped endlessly round and round were riyht where her great grandfather had put them In 1S10. The dimensions of tiie rude contraption contrap-tion made more real for Cynthia t lie legends of Grandfather Barton's giant gi-ant strength. He emerged from oblivion ob-livion a.id took form for Cynthia in all his two hundred and thirty pounds when she looked at ids millstones, mill-stones, and heard her father, Sparrel, Spar-rel, explain the mechanism of his horse-mill. That mill, which she was looking down upon from the rock, was built by her own Grandfather Tivls in IS-o. It seemed to Cynthia a natural nat-ural part of the landscape of the valley. Wolfpen Creek came down the hollow through the bottom to the foot of t lie Pinnacle, und then broke into a rapids as it fell over a smooth rock channel Into Gannon creek. At the head of the rapids, Tivis Pattern felled willows across the creek, piled stones against them and filled in with a layer of clay. Then be wove a mat of cane stalks on the upstream side, plastered It with clay, and formed the mill-pond; In fifty-five years the dam had not leaked or washed away in the spring floods. And still before Cynthia was born, her father Sparrel had Improved the -as'K-M- -4';.v -fi I Of Course the Old Mill of Stone and Wood Was Wearing Out. mill by widening the conduits from the dam and enlarging the size of the wheel to speed production. "Such a gang of menfolk," looking look-ing down at the crowd moving about on the creek bank and in the mill-yard, mill-yard, "as a body wouldn't see nearer near-er than the public square at Pike-ville Pike-ville on a court day. It's a wonder won-der they're not swapping mules, only on-ly they're so taken up by Daddy's boiler and saying it won't work." She could see where many of them came from merely by turning her head. The old families were branching branch-ing out, filling up the bottoms. A few new people were still coming com-ing in wherever they could find enough flat land to build a cabin on. She had beard her father talk about the growth of the mountains and wondering what would happen when there was no more land, wondering won-dering where it was all leading to. It seemed to him that it led first of all to a steam-mill that would run all the year round and grind their corn a little faster. "The way Dad's been the last year about a steam-engine Is the way I guess It was with Grandfather Barton Bar-ton making a horse-mill and Grandfather Grand-father Tivis making a water-mill. Only they made theirs and Daddy had to buy most of his. They never let well enough alone. Mother's loom and churns and cook-stove and things are Just like they always were, but the menfolk always keep changing from one thing to another." Of course the old mill of stone and wood was wearing out and needed repairs badly, and since people peo-ple came to It all the year round now but could not be served if the season was too dry, he ought to improve im-prove It. When the good day3 of February came round, he took the Finemare and rode down to Greenup Green-up to visit his sister and. to see a steam-driven mill actually at work. He was so taken with the mechanism mechan-ism and the quick trickle of yellow meal pouring into the sacks, that he decided forthwith to have one for himself. (TO BE CONTINUED) |