Bullies and Braggarts--Some Kentucky Illustrations--The Old Galt
House--The Throckmortons--A Famous Sugeon--"Old Hell's Delight"
I
I do not believe that the bully and braggart is more in evidence in
Kentucky and Texas than in other Commonwealths of the Union, except that
each is by the space writers made the favorite arena of his exploits
and adopted as the scene of the comic stories told at his expense. The
son-of-a-gun from Bitter Creek, like the "elegant gentleman" from the Dark
and Bloody Ground, represents a certain type to be found more or less
developed in each and every State of the Union. He is not always a coward.
Driven, as it were, to the wall, he will often make good.
He is as a rule in quest of adventures. He enters the village from the
countryside and approaches the mêlée. "Is it a free fight?" says he.
Assured that it is, "Count me in," says he. Ten minutes later, "Is it still
a free fight?" he says, and, again assured in the affirmative, says he,
"Count me out."
Once the greatest of bullies provoked old Aaron Pennington, "the strongest
man in the world," who struck out from the shoulder and landed his victim
in the middle of the street. Here he lay in a helpless heap until they
carted him off to the hospital, where for a day or two he flickered between
life and death. "Foh God," said Pennington, "I barely teched him."
This same bully threatened that when a certain mountain man came to town
he would "finish him." The mountain man came. He was enveloped in an
old-fashioned cloak, presumably concealing his armament, and walked about
ostentatiously in the proximity of his boastful foeman, who remained as
passive as a lamb. When, having failed to provoke a fight, he had taken
himself off, an onlooker said: "Bill, I thought you were going to do him
up?"
"But," says Bill, "did you see him?"
"Yes, I saw him. What of that?"
"Why," exclaimed the bully, "that man was a walking arsenal."
Aaron Pennington, the strong man just mentioned, was, in his younger
days, a river pilot. Billy Hite, a mite of a man, was clerk. They had a
disagreement, when Aaron told Billy that if he caught him on "the harrican
deck," he would pitch him overboard. The next day Billy appeared whilst
Aaron, off duty, was strolling up and down outside the pilot-house, and
strolled offensively in his wake. Never a hostile glance or a word from
Aaron. At last, tired of dumb show, Billy broke forth with a torrent of
imprecation closing with "When are you going to pitch me off the boat, you
blankety-blank son-of-a-gun and coward?"
Aaron Pennington was a brave man. He was both fearless and self-possessed.
He paused, gazed quizzically at his little tormentor, and says he: "Billy,
you got a pistol, and you want to get a pretext to shoot me, and I ain't
going to give it to you."