But this is only half an explanation. The statement that our highlanders are not hostile to law and order must be qualified to this extent: they have a profound distrust of the courts. The mountaineer is not only a born fighter but he is also litigious by nature and tradition. A stranger will be surprised to find how deeply the average backwoodsman is versed in the petty subtleties of legal practice. It comes from experience. “Court-week” draws bigger crowds than a circus. The mountaineer who has never served as juror, witness, or principal in a lawsuit is a curiosity. And this familiarity has bred secret contempt. I violate no confidence in saying that many a mountaineer would hold up one hand to testify his respect for the law while the other hand hovered over his pistol.
Why so?
Just because his experience has taught him (rightly or wrongly—but he firmly believes it) that courts are swayed by sinister influences when important matters are at stake. Those influences are clan money and clan votes. Hence, if he or a kinsman be involved in “lawin’” with a member of some rival tribe, he does not look for impartial treatment, but prepares to fight cunning with cunning, local influence with local influence. There are no moral obligations here. “All’s fair in love and war”—and this is one form of war.
If the reader will take down his David Balfour and read the intrigues, plots, and counterplots of David’s attorneys and those of the Crown, he will grasp our own highlanders’ viewpoint.
Photo by Arthur Keith
The road follows the Creek.—There may be a dozen fords in a mile.
That mountain courts are often impotent is due in part to the limitations under which their officers are obliged to serve. For example, in the judicial district where I reside, the solicitor (State’s attorney) receives nothing but fees, and then only in case of conviction. It might seem that this would stir him to extra zeal, and perhaps it does; but he has a large circuit, there are no local officials specially interested in securing evidence for him while the case is white-hot, everything spurs the defendant to get rid of dangerous witnesses before the solicitor can get at them, public opinion is extremely lenient toward homicides, and man-slayers so often get off scot-free after the most faithful and laborious efforts of the solicitor, that he becomes discouraged.
The sheriff, too, serves without salary, getting only fees and a percentage of tax collections. How this works, in securing witnesses, may be shown by an anecdote.—
I looked up from my work, one day, to see a neighbor striding swiftly along the trail that passed my cabin.