“I have the utmost confidence in you,” said Judge Mayer after the old man finished, “and I shall release your son in your custody, confident that you will see to it that he obeys the law and registers.”
“He’ll register all right, Judge,” replied the old man, “and I tell you that if he don’t, something will happen in the public square back home, and all the folks will have a chance to see with their own eyes that the Allens don’t stand for no quitters at a time when the country needs all the men it can get.”
In the meantime Marshal McCarthy had sent to the Tombs for young Allen, and the young man was waiting in the Marshal’s office when his father arrived. They are self-contained people down in the Kentucky mountains. Their feelings are deep, but well controlled, so that when father and son met there was no show of emotion on the part of either. But the sight of his son softened the father’s anger. He placed his hand gently on the younger man’s shoulder, and this is the way The Times describes the scene that followed:
“Son,” said the father, “don’t you know what it means to do what you tried to do? Don’t you know that you don’t come from no such stock as these slackers and quitters, or whatever else you call such cattle? Don’t you know that, boy? Well, if you don’t, it’s time you started learnin’. Now you ain’t crazy, for our folks don’t go crazy, and you are goin’ to register, and you are goin’ to fight, and fight your darnedest, too, if your country calls you. Now just put that in your head and let it stay there. I don’t want to hurt you, and I ain’t if you do right; but I just want to say that if you don’t do right, when I get you back home I will take you into the public square and shoot you myself in the presence of all the folks.”
The boy, with tears in his eyes, said he would register just as quickly as he could.
“And I’ll fight, too, if they want me,” the boy added.
“Of course you will, for if you didn’t you wouldn’t be my son,” the old man replied.
And that was the end of the Allen incident.
“That old fellow is one of the kind that makes the country great. He is a real American,” said Judge Mayer afterward.