JUST where young Stetson stood, the mountains racing along each bank of
the Cumberland had sent out against each other, by mutual impulse,
two great spurs. At the river's brink they stopped sheer, with crests
uplifted, as though some hand at the last moment had hurled them apart,
and had led the water through the breach to keep them at peace. To-day
the crags looked seamed by thwarted passion; and, sullen with firs, they
made fit symbols of the human hate about the base of each.
When the feud began, no one knew. Even the original cause was forgotten.
Both families had come as friends from Virginia long ago, and had lived
as enemies nearly half a century. There was hostility before the
war, but, until then, little bloodshed. Through the hatred of change,
characteristic of the mountaineer the world over, the Lewallens were for
the Union. The Stetsons owned a few slaves, and they fought for them.
Peace found both still neighbors and worse foes. The war armed them,
and brought back an ancestral contempt for human life; it left them a
heritage of lawlessness that for mutual protection made necessary the
very means used by their feudal forefathers; personal hatred supplanted
its dead issues, and with them the war went on. The Stetsons had a good
strain of Anglo-Saxon blood, and owned valley-lands; the Lewallens
kept store and made “moonshine”; so kindred and debtors and kindred and
tenants were arrayed with one or the other leader, and gradually the
retainers of both settled on one or the other side of the river. In time
of hostility the Cumberland came to be the boundary between life and
death for the dwellers on each shore. It was feudalism born again.
Above one of the spurs each family had its home; the Stetsons, under
the seared face of Thunderstruck Knob; the Lewallens, just beneath the
wooded rim of Wolf's Head. The eaves and chimney of each cabin were
faintly visible from the porch of the other. The first light touched the
house of the Stetsons; the last, the Lewallen cabin. So there were times
when the one could not turn to the sunrise nor the other to the sunset
but with a curse in his heart, for his eye must fall on the home of his
enemy.
For years there had been peace. The death of Rome Stetson's father from
ambush, and the fight in the court-house square, had forced it. After
that fight only four were left-old Jasper Lewallen and young Jasper, the
boy Rome and his uncle, Rufe Stetson. Then Rufe fled to the West, and
the Stetsons were helpless. For three years no word was heard of him,
but the hatred burned in the heart of Rome's mother, and was traced deep
in her grim old face while she patiently waited the day of retribution.
It smouldered, too, in the hearts of the women of both clans who had
lost husbands or sons or lovers; and the friends and kin of each had
little to do with one another, and met and passed with watchful eyes.
Indeed, it would take so little to turn peace to war that the wonder was
that peace had lived so long. Now trouble was at hand. Rufe Stetson had
come back at last, a few months since, and had quietly opened store at
the county-seat, Hazlan-a little town five miles up the river, where
Troubled Fork runs seething into the Cumberland-a point of neutrality
for the factions, and consequently a battle-ground. Old Jasper's store
was at the other end of the town, and the old man had never been known
to brook competition. He had driven three men from Hazlan during the
last term of peace for this offence, and everybody knew that the fourth
must leave or fight. Already Rufe Stetson had been warned not to appear
outside his door after dusk. Once or twice his wife had seen skulking
shadows under the trees across the road, and a tremor of anticipation
ran along both banks of the Cumberland.