href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@28439@[email protected]#CHAPTER_XIX_MISS_ANN_MOVES_ON" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">202

The Comings of Cousin Ann

Ryeville had rather prided itself on having the same population—about three thousand—for the last fifty years. That is the oldest inhabitants had, but the newer generation was for expansion in spite of tradition, and Ryeville awoke one morning, after the census taker had been busying himself, to find itself five thousand strong and still growing.

There was no especial reason for the growth of the little town, save that it lay in the heart of rolling blue-grass country and people have to live somewhere. And Ryeville, with its crooked streets and substantial homes, was as good a place as any. There were churches of all denominations, schools and shops, a skating rink, two motion picture houses and as many drug stores as there had been barrooms before prohibition made necessary a change of front. 10 There were two hotels—one where you “could” and one where you “couldn’t.” The former was frequented by the old men of the town and county. It stood next to the courthouse. Indeed its long, shady porch overlooked the courthouse green. There the old men would sit with chairs tilted against the wall and feet on railing and sadly watch the prohibition officers hauling bootleggers to court.

There were a great many old men in Ryeville and the country around—more old men than old women, in spite of the fact that that part of Kentucky had furnished its quota of recruits for both Union and Rebel armies.

In Kentucky, during the war between the states, brother had been pitted against brother—even father against son. The fact that the state did not secede from the Union had been a reason for the most intense bitterness and ill feeling among families and former friends. The bitterness was gone now and ill feeling forgotten. The veterans of the blue and the gray sat on the Rye House porch together, swapping tales and borrowing tobacco as amicably as though they had never done their best to exterminate one another.

“As for Abe Lincoln,” declared Major Fitch, an ancient confederate, “if it hadn’t been for 11 him Gawd knows what we’d ’a’ had to talk about in these dry days. I tell you, sah, we ought to be eternally grateful to Abe Lincoln. I for one am. I was a clerk in a country store when the war broke out and I’d ’a’ been there yet if it wasn’t for the war. I’m here to say it made me and made my fam’ly. We were bawn fighters—my fo’ brothers and I—and up to the sixties we were always in trouble for brawling. The war came along and made a virtue of our vices. My mother used to be mighty ’shamed when she heard we were called the ‘Fighting Fitches.’ That was befo’ the war, and one or the other of us boys was always up befo’ the co’t for wild carrying on. But, bless Bob, when we were called ‘Fighting Fitches’ for whipping the Yankees the old lady was as pleased as Punch.”

“What did they call ye fer not bein’ able to whup us?” asked a grinning old giant from the mountains.

“Nothin’—’cause we were able. All we needed was mo’ men and mo’ food and mo’ guns. We’d ’a’ licked the spots off of you Yanks if we had had a chance. You wouldn’t stand still long enough to get whipped.”

So the talk went on, day in and day out. Battles were fought over and over but never finished. They always ended with a draw and 12 could be resumed the next morning with added zest and new incidents. One old man, Pete Barnes, who had the distinction of being the only private who frequented the porch at Rye House, always claimed to have been present at every battle mentioned—even Bunker Hill and the battle of New Orleans.

“Yes sirree, I was there; nothin’ but a youngster, but I was there!” he would assert. “There wasn’t a single battle the Fo’th Kentucky Volunteers didn’t get in on an’ the Johnny Rebs would run like hell when they heard we were comin’. I tell you when we got them a goin’ was at Fredericksburg in ’62—must have been ’bout the middle of December. We beat ’em even worse than we did at Chickamauga the following year.”

“Aw dry up, Pete. You know perfectly well the Yanks got licked at both of those battles,” a jovial opponent would declare, but Pete Barnes was as sure his side had won as he was that he had been present at the surrender of Cornwallis and there was no use in trying to persuade him otherwise.

The Rye House faced on Main Street and nothing happened on that thoroughfare that escaped the oldsters on the porch. If anything was going on all they had to do was move their 13 chairs from the side porch to the front, whether it was a circus parade or a funeral, or just Miss Ann Peyton’s rickety coach bearing her to Buck Hill, which was the first large farm the other side of the creek, the dividing line between Ryeville and the country. There were several small places but Buck Hill the only one of importance.

On a morning in June the old men sat on the porch as usual, with feet on railing and chairs tilted to the right angle for aged backbones. Nothing much had happened all morning. The sun was about the only thing that was moving in Ryeville and that