THE OLD MAN’S STORY
The old man’s statement seemed so ridiculous that Scott hesitated to
believe it. He thought that the man must be making fun of him, but he
recalled the station agent’s warning. There must be something in it. The
whole community could not be conspiring just to play a joke on him.
Before the old man reached the door he called him back.
“Just a minute, please. You are the second man to warn me not to buy
anything at that store. Why shouldn’t I? What has buying at the store
got to do with running a national forest? I can’t see the connection.”
The old man looked at him and smiled sarcastically. “Neither could the
other two men who came here before you, and they both had to leave.”
Scott’s curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, and he determined to pump
an explanation out of this man. He smiled winningly. “Then tell me the
secret so that I shall not have to follow them.”
At his change of tone the old man’s sarcasm disappeared immediately.
“Well, if that’s the way you look at it,” he said with all his old
friendliness, “why, maybe I’ll try to tell you. You couldn’t tell those
other fellows anything.”
“I would certainly appreciate it,” Scott said, as he settled himself
down on the fence to listen. “I have come here to run this forest, and
if that store down there has anything to do with it, I want to know
about it.”
“Come in, come in,” the old man repeated hospitably. “It’s a long story,
and you might as well sit down to listen to it.”
Scott gladly stepped inside the fence, and took a seat opposite his host
on the porch. “By the way,” he said, “I thought I saw two stores down
there in the village. Which one do you mean?”
“That’s just the point. If there was only one store there you could buy
all you pleased, but if you buy anything from one of those stores now,
the fellow who owns the other one would sure get you.”
“But can’t a man buy where he pleases in this country?” Scott asked
indignantly. His spirit rebelled at any one dictating to him the way he
should run what he considered to be his own business.
“Not and live in peace,” the old man answered sadly. “I’ll tell you the
story, and then you can do as you please.
“You see the people here in the mountains don’t move around much. When a
man gets used to these mountains he never wants to live anywhere else.
The children don’t marry, and go off somewhere else to live; they just
put up another shanty, and live close to home. The families stick close
together, and form a kind of settlement. Most everybody in the
settlement is kin to somebody else.
“The Morgans live in the settlement up on this side of the valley, and
the Waits over there on the other side. They were good friends and
getting along fine till the railroad come down the valley. They called
old Zeb Morgan and old Foster Wait together to decide where the station
ought to be. They got into a row over it somehow, and before anybody
could interfere Foster had pulled a gun and shot Zeb through the heart.
That was forty years ago. Well, it was a murder all right, and no excuse
for it except Foster’s notorious temper. The sheriff took Foster off to
jail, and that ought to have ended it. Would have ended it, too, if it
had not been for Zeb’s half-witted brother Jim. Everybody knew Jim
wasn’t exactly right in his head, but he worshiped Zeb, and when Zeb was
shot he went plumb crazy, disappeared and nobody saw or heard of him for
a week. Next thing anybody knew Jim had turned up in the middle of the
Wait settlement and shot two of Foster’s brothers.
“Well, they should not have held the Morgans responsible for the actions
of a crazy man, but they did, and the fight was on. The dead line was
drawn down the middle of the village street, and every time a Wait
stepped over that dead line, he had to duck Morgan lead, and the Waits
were just as quick on the trigger on the other side. Every once in a
while some one on one side or the other would get drunk and shoot across
the line.
“It got pretty bad. All the kin folks got mixed up in it, and there was
a funeral every two or three months. There has not been much shooting
for the past five years. The Morgans got the worst of the scrap in the
early days, and there’s only old Jarred and his two sons left of the
direct descendants of Zeb. Unless you count his little granddaughter
Vic. She’s the fightenest little wildcat in the whole bunch. Of course
there are lots of relatives, but they had cooled off pretty much till
this national forest business came along to stir them up again.
“But I most forgot the store. You see old Tom Wait had a store in the
village before the trouble began, and it was all that was needed, maybe
a little more, but of course after the trouble no Morgan would deal
there. Been shot if he’d tried it. So Jarred’s boys had to start a store
on the other side. That’s where the two stores come from. Buy anything
from one of them, and you have all the other side of the mountain down
on you. Now maybe you can see why I warned you.”
Scott sat in silence for a moment while the old man watched him
curiously. He was dazed by what seemed to him an impossible situation.
How could such a horrible state of affairs exist in the heart of a
civilized country?
“Isn’t there any way of bringing the two families together and stopping
this senseless fight?” Scott asked earnestly. “Surely they must see how
it is hurting them both. Has any one ever tried to stop it?”
The old man shook his head sadly. “The Morgan boys might quit if they
could find any way to do it. They know it is only a question of time
till they will be killed. Three Morgans can’t hold out forever against a
dozen Waits, and that is what it means because their kin folk are not
going to stick by them much longer.”
“It would not be possible to persuade this man Jarred to give up the
feud?” Scott asked.
The old man smiled sadly. “It’s clear you ain’t seen him, stranger. Old
Jarred would give away anything he’s got except his pride, but it takes
only one look at him to see that he’d never give up to an enemy.”
Scott sat for some minutes pondering this extraordinary situation, and
the old man continued to watch him rather wistfully. Would he try to
make peace between these warring factions, or would he ignore them, and
be run out of the country as the other two had been?
When Scott looked up he smiled at the old man gratefully. “I don’t know
what I can do to stop this thing. It is pitiful to think of that old man
eaten up by his hatred, and holding out in his pride against the world.
Maybe I cannot do anything to stop it, but I certainly do not want to do
anything to stir it up. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you
have told me. To whom am I indebted for this information and advice?”
“My name is Sanders. ‘Old man’ Sanders they call me.”
“And I take it that you are not mixed up in this feud on either side.
Who else is not in it?”
“The station agent. He has to be neutral.”
“And how did you happen to keep out of it?” Scott asked.
“Because I am a Quaker,” the old man answered proudly, “and do not
believe in fighting. And now,” he added with the same sad smile Scott
had noticed several times before, “one of my daughters has married a
Wait and the other a Morgan.”
Scott rose to go. “Well, Mr. Sanders,” he said earnestly, “I have almost
as good a reason as you have for keeping neutral. I am certainly obliged
to you for your advice, and I may need your help again. In the meanwhile
I shall keep away from those stores, and try not to stir anything up.”
Scott walked slowly on up the mountain road with bent head, and when the
old man had watched him out of sight he continued to gaze dreamily at
the turn of the road where the young man had disappeared.
“He’s not a fool like the others, anyway,” he said aloud, “and I think
he’ll stay here.”
Scott wandered on. He wanted to find a place where he could be alone and
think.