and below the names of his thirteen children:
JOHNSON
WM. A.
ROBERT L.
NANCY
ELLIOTT R.
MARY
ELIZABETH
ELIAS
TROY
JOSEPH D.
ROSE
WILLIS E.
TENNIS
You lift your eyes again to the marble statue. If you knew him in life,
you'll say, "This is a fine likeness--and a fine piece of marble."
"His children had it done in Italy," someone offers the information.
"So," you say to yourself, "this is the grave of Devil Anse Hatfield."
You've seen all there is to see. You're ready to go, if you are like
hundreds of others who visit the last resting place of the leader of the
Hatfield-McCoy feud. But, if you chance to tarry--say, in the fall when
fogs are heavy there in the Guyan Valley, through which Main Island
Creek flows--you may see and hear things strangely unaccountable.
Close beside the captain's grave is another. On the stone is carved the
name--Levisa Chafin Hatfield. If you were among the many who attended
her funeral you will remember how peaceful she looked in her black
burying dress she'd kept so long for the occasion. Again you will see
her as she lay in her coffin, hands primly folded on the black frock,
the frill of lace on the black bonnet framing the careworn face. You
look up suddenly to see a mountain woman in a somber calico frock and
slat bonnet. She is putting new paper flowers, to take the place of the
faded ones, in the glass-covered box between the grave of Devil Anse and
the mother of his children.
"You best come home with me," she invites with true hospitality, after
an exchange of greetings. You learn that Molly claims kin to both sides,
being the widow of a Hatfield and married to a McCoy, and at once you
are disarmed.
That night as you sit with Molly in the moonlight in the dooryard of her
shack, a weather-beaten plank house with a clapboard roof and a crooked
stone chimney, she talks of life in the West Virginia hills. "There's a
heap o' things happens around this country that are mighty skeery."
Suddenly in the gloaming a bat wings overhead, darts inside the shack.
You can hear it blundering around among the rafters. An owl screeches
off in the hollow somewhere. "Do you believe in ghosts and haynts?"
There are apprehension and fear in Molly's voice.
Presently the owl screeches dolefully once more and the bat wheels low
overhead. A soft breeze stirs the pawpaw bushes down by the fence row.
"Did you hearn something mourn like, just then?" Molly, the widow of a
Hatfield and wife of a McCoy, leans forward.
If you are prudent you make no answer to her questions.
"Nothing to be a-feared of, I reckon. The ghosts of them that has been
baptized they won't harm nobody. I've heard Uncle Dyke Garrett say as
much many's the time." The woman speaks with firm conviction.
A moth brushes her cheek and she straightens suddenly.
The moon is partly hidden behind a cloud; even so by its faint light you
can see the clump of pawpaw bushes, and beyond--the outline of the
rugged hills. Farther off in the burying ground atop the ridge the
marble figure of the leader of the Hatfields rises against the
half-darkened sky.
At first you think it is the sound of the wind in the pines far off in
the hollow, then as it moves toward the burying ground it changes to
that of low moaning voices.
You feel Molly's arm trembling against your own.
"Listen!" she whispers fearfully, all her courage gone. "It's Devil Anse
and his boys. Look yonder!"--she tugs at your sleeve--"See for yourself
they're going down to the waters of baptism!"
Following the direction of the woman's quick trembling hand you strain
forward.
At first there seems to be a low mist rolling over the burying ground
and then suddenly, to your amazement, the mist or cloud dissolves itself
into shafts or pillars of the height of the white figure of Devil Anse
above the grave. They form in line and now one figure, the taller, moves
ahead of all the rest. Six there were following the leader. You see
distinctly as they move slowly through the crumbling tombstones, down
the mountain side toward the creek.
"Devil Anse and his boys," repeats the trembling Molly, "going down into
the waters of baptism. They ever do of a foggy night in the falling
weather. And look yonder! There's the ghost too of Uncle Dyke Garrett
a-waiting at the water's edge. He's got the Good Book opened wide in his
hand."
Whether it is the giant trunk of a tree with perhaps a leafless branch
extended, who can say? Or is nature playing a prank with your vision?
But, surely, in the eerie moonlight there seems to appear the figure of
a man with arm extended, book in hand, waiting to receive the seven
phantom penitents moving slowly toward the water's edge.
After that you don't lose much time in being on your way. And if anyone
should ask you what of interest is to be seen along Main Island Creek,
if you are prudent you'll answer, "The marble statue of Capt. Anderson
Hatfield." And if you knew him in life you'll add, "And a fine likeness
it is too."