Part II

(Harpers Monthly - ca. 1910)

By Laura Spencer Portor

Breathitt County is, of course, fairly well known by repute outside of Kentucky, but "Breathitt"-tout court- to those who had been brought up in the state was very well known indeed in those days and stood unmistakably for on thing, lawlessness. A Bluegrass raiser of horses, when I one day asked him about it, summed it up:

"Breathitt? Dange'ous as a meat ax!"

Now, young people reared as I had been reared, are not expected to betake themselves offhand on chance vacations or pleasure trips to counties "dange'ous as a meat ax!" I saw little chance of carrying out the ambition that I had formed while I was staying with the Normans in Estill"; yet I clung to it, and by and by, chance brought me my opportunity.

I went forth this time recommended by a charming young woman popularly known as "Miss Betty," who had worked for a while in one of the first summer educational camps in the Kentucky mountains and who, to my real delight knew "Breathitt." She took my great desire to know Breathitt as a matter of course. Did I want local color? Well, that was the place to go for it. I could perfectly well stay in Jackson, the county seat of Breathitt, with friends of hers, the Tambys, Douglas Tamby and his wife.

Miss Betty knew Jackson well, and the conductor on the train that would take me there was a particular devotee of hers. I had only to say her name to him and he would make a particularity of my comfort. Perhaps, too, I might even get a sight of Hargis!

Oh, if only I would! For Hargis was in those days the best-known character of those parts, a kind of mountain loupgarou, a terrifying enough man, who had his henchmen and his followers, like any old Border chief; who ran affairs without scruple and quite as it pleased him to run them. He had posses of men to carry out his every individual wish, made his own laws, and enforced them. A man to make himself (according to one's sympathies) blackly or shiningly remembered.

A short while before the train was due to arrive at Jackson, we stopped at a little "Junction," though it joined with nothing that I could see, only shaggy mountains on all sides. There were only a few passengers left now. All but what I took to be a drummer, a few mountaineer types and myself, having alighted at earlier way-stations. No one got off the train at the Junction, but four men boarded it.

They were of the roughest, most characteristic mountain type and they all carried Winchesters to which I was soon to grow accustomed. I thought of Ples and the gunrack over there at the Normans, that first night, and his casual, "I thought I heard somebody."

These men came through the coach looking slowly at everybody, almost nonchalantly, yet I thought taking careful account of them. I watched them stop and ask questions of the drummer. He sat forward on the edge of the seat and answered them, I thought, rather earnestly, and, as though to prove something, opened his satchel. They had every air of looking for someone, searching for something

Midway of the coach, the conductor, Miss Betty's devotee and therefore mine, met them. I noticed that they did not offer him any tickets, nor did he ask for them. They listened to what he had to say, which I soon believed in some wise concerned me. He did not glance at me, but they did.

But, rather to my disappointment, they came no farther. Presently they turned and went, the four of them, and stood on the forward platform of the train. The door was open. I could just catch a glimpse from time to time of a swaying shoulder, or a rough hand on the barrel of a Winchester, as they balanced themselves this way or that when the train lurched.

Meantime the conductor came in my direction with a kind of leisurely indifference, laying a hand alternately on the backs of the seats as he approached. He came to a standstill beside me.

"Those are Hargis's men," he offered.

"They are? What did they want?"

"Oh, some of 'em always gets on each day, down here at the junction, to see what passengers we've got."

"What for?"

"Well," he laughed, "to see if they like 'em. If they don't, they don't let 'em get off; they send 'em right back on this same train."

I pondered this, and he continued:

"I told 'em you were goin' to visit the Tambys, so you're all right."

So I was all right. That much was to be thankful for. They held a new meaning for me now, those shoulders and gun barrels, swaying with the swaying of the train, on the front platform. We were being escorted, so to speak, by Hargis's men.

When we arrived the conductor had me benevolently in charge, and carried my satchel. As he gave it to me at last, he lifted his cap and took the liberty of extending his hand:

"Good-by," he said. "And when you see Miss Betty, please tell her howdy for me."

The Tambys were of a wholly different type from the Normans. Oh quite! More sophisticated, of a wider experience. Not only did they live in the county seat of the bloodiest county in the state, but they ran the little hotel which at that time served as the sole resort for infrequent drummers, or other belated souls who might from time to time be stranded in those unlikely parts.

Douglas Tamby was tall, land, silent, but of an unmistakable kindliness. His wife, frail as she was, seemed to me the better man of the two. She was always tired looking, rather dowdy, yet conveyed the strong impression of a devoted laboriousness; a woman of innumerable eternal tasks.

She was still young in year, yet already old, as is true of so many of the mountain women. Thin, worn, very angular, yet with quite wonderful eyes, as though beauty had retreated there as to a stronghold, as fort after fort through the difficult besieging years had capitulated to the enemy.

They were expecting me. Miss Betty had written them of my coming, I was conducted to a small bare room, opening out onto a narrow upper verandah. Mrs. Tamby stepped out on this to show me the surroundings.

"Yan's the river, down that-a-way. Up thar is the town an' the Cou'thouse. The town, runs along the backbone of the mounting thar. Them houses stand that on it, like fleas on a dog's back."

So they did. The use of rather vivid simile, reminding me as it did, of old Mrs. Norman, made me feel more at home than any words of welcome. Here, too, was a picturesque people.

Yet I was vaguely disappointed, and a little homesick for the other more intimate atmosphere. Here, I was not to be one of a family, in the intimate life of a home cabin in the remote hills, as with the Normans. I was to be a sojourner like any other at a little uncomfortable hotel, where the other guests, if any, would, after the fashion of such places, eye me with curiosity.