6. SUPERSTITION

BIG SANDY RIVER

There once prevailed a superstition among timbermen in the Big Sandy country which dated back to the Indian.

The mountain men knew and loved their own Big Sandy River. They rode their rafts fearlessly, leaping daringly from log to log to make fast a dog chain, even jumping from one slippery, water-soaked raft to another to capture with spike pole or grappling hook a log that had broken loose. They had not the slightest fear when a raft buckled or broke away from the rest and was swept by swift current to midstream. There were quick and ready hands to the task. Loggers of the Big Sandy kept a cool head and worked with swift decisive movements. But, once their rafts reached the mouth of Big Sandy, there were some in the crew who could neither be persuaded nor bullied to ride the raft on through to the Ohio. Strong-muscled men have been known to quit their post, leap into the turbulent water before the raft swept forward into the forbidding Ohio. They remembered the warning of witch women, "Don't ride the raft into the Big Waters! Leap off!" So the superstitious often leaped, taking his life in his hands and often losing it.

WATER WITCH

If anyone wanted to dig a well in Pizen Gulch he wouldn't think of doing it without first sending for Noah Buckley, the water witch. He lived at the head of Tumbling Creek. Noah wore a belt of rattlesnake skin to keep off rheumatism. "That belt's got power," Noah boasted. And young boys in the neighborhood admitted it. More than one who had eaten too many green apples and lay groveling under the tree, drawn in a knot with pain, screamed in his misery for Noah. If Noah was within hearing he went on a run, fast as his long legs could carry him. And the young sufferer reaching out a hand touched the rattlesnake belt and quicker than you could bat an eye his griping pains left and the next thing he was up playing around.

However, it was his power to find water that was Noah Buckley's pride. He took a twig from a peach tree, held a prong in each hand, and with head bent low he stumbled about here and there mumbling:

Water, water, if you be there, Bend this twig and show me where.

If the twig bent low to the earth you could count on it that was the spot where the well should be dug. To mark the spot Noah stuck the twig at once into the earth. Mischievous boys sometimes slipped around, pulled up the peach branch and threw it away. Again there would be a doubting Thomas who sought to test the water witch's power by stealing away the peach branch and dropping in its place a pebble. But Noah was not to be defeated. He forthwith cut another branch, repeated the ceremony, and located the exact spot again. Whereupon neighbor menfolk pitched in and dug the well. Not all in one day, of course. It took several days but their labors were always rewarded with clear, cold water at last.

A well once dug where Noah directed never went dry. That was his boast as long as he lived.

However, it was not so much his power to find water that strengthened the faith of people in the water witch. It was what happened on Dog Slaughter Creek. The Mosleys, a poor family, had squatted on a miserable place there. One day the baby of the lot toddled off without being missed by the other nine children of the flock. When Jake Mosley and his wife Norie came in from the tobacco patch they began to search frantically for the babe, screaming and crying as they dashed this way and that. They looked under the house, in the well, in the barn. They even went to neighbors' pig lots; the Mosleys had none of their own. "I've heard of a sow or a boar pig too eating up the carcass of a child," a neighbor said. "Maybe the babe's roamed off into Burdick's pasture and the stallion has tromped her underfoot," Jake opined. With lighted pine sticks to guide their steps they searched the pasture. There was no trace even of a scrap of the child's dress anywhere to be seen on ground or fence.

At last someone said, "Could be a water witch might have knowing to find a lost child!" And the frantic parents moaned, "Could be. Send for the water witch."

It was after midnight that neighbors came bringing the water diviner.

"Give me a garmint of the lost child," Noah spoke with authority, "a garmint that the little one has wore that's not been washed."

The mother tearfully produced a bedraggled garment.

The water witch took it in his hand, sniffed it, turned it wrongside out, sniffed it again. "Now have you got a lock of the little one's hair?" He looked at Norie, moaning on the shuck tick bed, then at Jake. They stared at each other. At last Norie raised up on her elbow. They did have a lock of the babe's hair. "Mind the time she nigh strangled to death with croup"—the mother fixed weary eyes on the father of her ten children—"and we cut off a lock of her hair and put it in the clock?"

In one bound Jake Mosley crossed the floor and reached the clock on the mantel. Sure enough there was the little lock of hair wrapped around with a thread. Without a word Jake handed it to the water witch.

Noah eyed it in silence. "I'll see what can be done," he promised at last, "but, Jake, you and Norie and the children stay here. And you, neighbors, stay here too. I'll be bound to go alone."

With a flaming pine stick in one hand and the child's dress and lock of hair in the other, he set out.

Before morning broke, the water witch came carrying the lost child.

They hovered about him, the parents kissed and hugged their babe close and everyone was asking questions at the same time. "How did it happen?" "Where did you find the little one?"

"I come upon a rock ledge," said Noah with a great air of mystery, "and then I fell upon my knees. I'd cut me a peach branch down at the edge of the pasture. I gripped the lost child's garmint and the lock of her hair on one hand with a prong of the peach branch clutched tight in fists this way," he extended clenched hands to show the awed friends and neighbors. "I'd already put out the pine torch for daylight was coming. It took quite a time before I could feel the little garmint twitching in my hand. Then the peach branch begun to bear down to the ground. First thing I know something like a breath of wind pulled that little garmint toward the edge of the rock cliff. My friends, I knowed I was on the right track. I dropped flat on my belly and retched a hand under the cliff. I touched the little one's bare foot! Then with both hands I dragged her out. This child"—he lifted a pious countenance—"could a-been devoured by wild varmints—a catamount or wolf. There's plenty of such in these woods. But the water witch got there ahead of the varmints!"

The mother began to sob and wail, "Bless the good old water witch!" and the joyful father gave the diviner the only greenback he had and said he was only sorry he didn't have a hundred to give him.

After that more than one sought out the water witch. Even offered him silver to teach them his powers.

"It's not good to tell all you know, then others would know as much as you do," said Noah Buckley of Pizen Gulch, who knew that to keep his powers a water witch has to keep secrets too.

MARRYING ON HORSEBACK

Millie Eckers, with her arms around his waist, rode behind Robert Burns toward the county seat one spring morning to get married. But before they got there along came Joe Fultz, a justice of the peace, to whom they told their intent. Joe said the middle of the road on horseback was as good a place as any for a pair to be spliced, so then and there he had them join right hands. When they were pronounced man and wife Robert handed Joe a frayed greenback in exchange for the signed certificate of marriage. Joe Eckers always carried a supply of blank documents in his saddlebags to meet any emergency that might arise within his bailiwick. The justice of the peace pocketed his fee, wished Mister and Mistress Burns a long and happy married life, and rode away, and Robert turned his mare's nose back toward Little Goose Creek from whence they had come.

Some said, soon as they heard about Millie and Robert being married on horseback right in the middle of the road, that no good would come of it. As for the preacher he said right out that while the justice of the peace was within his rights, he had observed in his long ministry that couples so wed were sure to meet with misfortune—married on horseback and without the blessing of an Apostle of the Book.

Scarcely had Millie and Robert settled down to housekeeping than things began to go wrong.

One morning when the dew was still on the grass Millie went out to milk. "Bossy had roamed away off ferninst the thicket," she told Robert, "and ginst I got there to where she was usin' I scratched the calf of my leg on a briar."

Robert eyed her swollen limb. "Seein' your meat black like it is and the risin' in your calf so angry, I'm certain you've got dew pizen."

Sure enough she had. Millie lay for days and when the rising came to a head in a place or two, Robert lanced it with the sharp blade of his penknife.

Some weeks later old Doc Robbins who chanced by wondered how Millie had escaped death from blood poison from the knife blade, until the young husband told casually how when he was a little set along child he had seen an old doctor dip the blade of a penknife in a boiling kettle of water and lance a carbuncle on another's neck. He had done the same for Millie.

No sooner was she up and about than something else happened.

Millie and Robert had just the one cow but soon they had none. Even so Millie said things might have been worse. "It could have been Robert that was taken." And he said, bearing their loss stoically, "What is to be will be, if it comes in the night."

It was Millie who first noticed something was wrong with Bossy. It was right after she had found her grazing in the chestnut grove. All the young growth had been cut out and the branches of the trees formed a solid shade so that coming out of the sunlight into the grove Millie blinked and groped in the darkness with hands out before her, feeling her way and calling, "Sook, Bossy! Sook! Sook!" Millie all but stumbled over the cow down on her all fours. She coaxed and patted for a long time before Bossy finally got to her feet and waddled slowly out of the shaded grove into the sunlit meadow.

That evening Robert did the milking. But before he began he stroked Bossy's nose and bent close. "I've caught the stench of her breath!" he cried. "Sniff for yourself, Millie!"

Millie did. "Smells worser'n a dung pile," she gasped, hand to stomach.

Quick as a flash Robert put the tin pail under Bossy's bag and began to milk with both hands.

There was scarcely a pint in the bucket until Robert gaped at Millie. "Look! It don't foam!" His eyes widened with apprehension. He took a silver coin from his pocket, dropped it into the pail and waited. In a few moments he fished it out. "Black as coal!" gasped Robert. "Our cow's got milk sick!"

Bossy slumped to the ground. By sundown the cow was stark dead.

Before dark Robert himself grew deathly ill.

They remembered that at noon time he had spread a piece of cornbread with Bossy's butter. He had drunk a cup of her milk.

Millie lost no moment. She mixed mustard in a cup of hot water and Robert downed it almost at a gulp.

"He begun to puke and purge until I thought his gizzard would sure come up next," Millie told it afterward. "All that live-long night he puked and strained till he got so weakened his head hung over the side of the bed and hot water poured out of his mouth same as if he had water brash. Along toward morning Doc Robbins come riding by. He had a bottle of apple brandy and we mixed it with wild honey. It wasn't long till Robert got ease. Doc set a while and about the middle of the morning he give Robert two heaping spoonfuls of castor oil."

From then on no one could coax Robert Burns to touch a mouthful of butter nor drink a cup of sweet milk. Though he drank his fill of buttermilk with never a pain.

As for the shaded grove where the cow had grazed, every tree was cleared away—at Doc Robbins's orders. The sunlight poured into the place and soon there was a green meadow where once the shaded plot had been covered with a poisoned vegetation. Cows grazed at their will over the place with no ill effects.

Still Robert had no hankering for butter or sweet milk.

"You've no need to fear milk sick now," Doc Robbins tried to reassure Robert. "It's never found where there's sunlight." Though he could never figure out whether the deep shade produced a poisonous gas that settled on the vegetation, or whether it came from some mineral in the ground, he did know, and so did others, that whatever the cause it disappeared when sunlight took the place of dense shade.

The incident was scarcely forgotten when ill luck again befell Millie and Robert. Their barn burned to the ground, reducing their harvest and their only mule to ashes.

Tongues wagged. "Bad luck comes to the couple married on horseback."

Everyone the countryside over was convinced of the truth of the old superstition one fall when a tragedy unheard-of overtook Millie at sorghum-making.

No one ever knew how it happened. But some said that Brock Cyrus's half-witted boy was the cause of it. He shouted, "Look out thar!" and Millie, looking up from her task of feeding cane stalks into the mill, saw, or thought she saw, her babe, Little Robert, toddling toward the boiling pans. She screamed and lunged forward, and as she did so the mule started on a run. The beam to which it was hitched whirled about and struck Millie helpless. Before anyone could reach her side or stop the frightened mule, her right hand was drawn into the mill, then her left. With another revolution of the iron teeth of the cane mill both of her arms were chopped into shreds.

It was necessary for old Doc Robbins to amputate both at the shoulders. Everyone thought it would take Millie Burns out and they said as much. But she lived long, long years, even raised a family. All her days she sat in a strange chair that Robert made. A chair with a high shelf on which her babes, each in turn, lay to nurse at her breast.

And always the armless woman was pointed out as a warning to young courting couples, "Don't get married on horseback! It brings ill luck, no end of ill luck."

DEATH CROWN

Once you evidence even the slightest respect of a superstition in the Blue Ridge Country there is ever a firm believer eager to show proof of the like beyond all doubt. It was so with Widow Plater as we sat by the flickering light of the little oil lamp in her timeworn cabin that looked down on the Shenandoah Valley.

"I want to show you Josephus's crown," she said in a hushed voice. Going to the bureau she opened the top drawer, bringing out what appeared to be a plate wrapped in muslin. She placed it on the stand table beside the lamp and carefully laid back the covering, revealing a matted circle of feathers about the size of the human head. The circle was about two inches thick and a finger length in width. Strangely enough the feathers were all running the same way and were so closely matted together they did not pull apart even under pressure of the widow's firm hand, she showed with much satisfaction. "Can't no one pull asunder a body's death crown," she said with firm conviction.

Resuming her chair she went on with the story. "All of six months my husband, Josephus, poor soul, lay sick with his poor head resting on the same pillow day in and day out. I'd come to know he was on his death bed," she said resignedly, "for one day when I smoothed a hand over his pillow I felt there his crown a-forming inside the ticking. I'd felt the crown with my own hands and I knew death was hovering over my man. Though I didn't tell him so. I wanted he should not be troubled, that he should die a peaceable death and he did. When we laid him out we put the pillow under his head and when we laid him away I opened the pillow and took out his crown that I knew to be there all of six months before he breathed his last." She sighed deeply. "It's not everyone that has a crown"—there was wistful pride in her voice—"and them that has, they do say, is sure of another up yonder." The Widow Plater lifted tear-dimmed eyes heavenward. "And what's more, it is the bounden duty of them that's left to keep the crown of their dead to their own dying day. Josephus's death crown I'll pass on to my oldest daughter when my time comes."

Carefully she folded the matted circle of feathers in its muslin covering and reverently replaced it in the bureau drawer.

A WHITE FEATHER

Rhodie Polhemus who lived on Bear Fork of Puncheon Creek was one who believed in signs. It had started long years ago when Alamander, her husband, had met an untimely fate. That morning after he had gone out hunting Rhodie was sweeping the floor when she saw a white feather fluttering about the brush of her broom. It hovered strangely in midair, then sank slowly to the puncheon floor near the door. "The angel of death is nigh. There'll be a corpse under this roof this day." Rhodie trembled with fear. Sure enough Alamander was carried in stark dead before sundown. It came at a time when there wasn't a plank on the place. They had disposed of their timber, which was little enough, as fast as it was sawed. So that there was not a piece left with which to make Alamander's burying box. Nor was there a whipsaw in the whole country round with which to work, the itinerate sawyer having gone on with his property to another creek. But folks were neighborly and willing. They cut down a fine poplar tree, reduced a log of it to proper length and with ax and adze hewed out a coffin for Rhodie's husband, hollowing it out into a trough and shaping the ends to fit the corpse. The lid they made of clapboards. Placing a coverlid inside the trough they laid the body of Alamander upon it, made fast the lid, and bore him off to the burying ground.

"I knowed his time had come," Rhodie often repeated the story, "when I found the white feather—and when it hovered near the door where Alamander went out that morning."

There were other signs.

All of a week after Alamander was buried Rhodie claimed she had seen the mound above him rise and move in ripples the full length of the log coffin in which he lay buried. "Could be he's not resting easy," the old woman said to herself. "Could be the coverlid under his back is wrinkled." In response to her question the departed Alamander is said to have assured his widow that it was his sign of letting her know he was aware of her presence. However, when curious neighbors accompanied Rhodie to the burying ground, the mound remained still as a rock. Rhodie said it was the sign that he had rather she come to his grave alone.

Though there was never an eyewitness to the rippling earth on the grave save that of Rhodie, whenever anyone found a white feather about the house he remembered what the old woman on Bear Fork of Puncheon Creek had said, "It is a sign of death!"