Among them I have never seen a stand-up and knock-down fight according to the rules of the ring. They have many rough-and-tumble brawls, in which they slug, wrestle, kick, bite, strangle, until one gets the other down, whereat the one on top continues to maul his victim until he cries “Enough!” Oftener a club or stone will be used in mad endeavor to knock the opponent senseless at a blow. There is no compunction about striking foul and very little about “double-teaming.” Let us pause long enough to admit that this was the British and American way of man-handling, universal among the common people, until well into the nineteenth century—and the mountaineers are still ignorant of any other, except fighting with weapons.
Many of the young men carry home-made billies or “brass knucks.” Every man and boy has at least a pocket-knife with serviceable blade. Fights with such crude weapons are frequent. There are few spectacles more sickening than two powerful but awkward men slashing each other with common jack-knives, though the fatalities are much less frequent than in gun-fighting. I have known two old mountain preachers to draw knives on each other at the close of a sermon.
The typical highland bravo always carries a revolver or an automatic pistol. This is likely to be a weapon of large bore and good stopping-power that is worn in a shoulder-holster concealed under the coat or vest or shirt. Most mountaineers are good shots with such arms, though not so deadly quick as the frontiersmen of our old-time West—in fact, they cannot be so quick without wearing the weapon exposed. When a highlander has time, he prefers to hold his pistol in both hands (left clasped over right) and aims it as he would a rifle. To a Westerner such gun practice looks absurd; but it is accurate, beyond question. Few mountain gun-fights fail to score at least one victim.
The average mountain woman is as combative in spirit as her menfolk. She would despise any man who took insult or injury without showing fight. In fact, the woman, in many cases, deliberately stirs up trouble out of vanity, or for the sheer excitement of it. Some of the older women display the ferocity of she-wolves. The mother of a large family said in my presence, with the calm earnestness of one fully experienced: “If a feller ’d treated me the way ——— did ——— I’d git me a forty-some-odd and shoot enough meat off o’ his bones to feed a hound-dog a week.” Three of this woman’s brothers had been shot dead in frays. One of them killed the first husband of her sister, who married again, and whose second husband was killed by a man with whom she then tried a third matrimonial venture. Such matters may not be interesting in themselves, but they give one pause when he learns, in addition, that these people are received as friends and on a footing of equality by everybody in their community.
That the mountaineers are fierce and relentless in their feuds is beyond denial. A warfare of bushwhacking and assassination knows no refinements. Quarter is neither given nor expected. Property, however, is not violated, and women are not often injured. There have been some atrocious exceptions. In the Hatfield-McCoy feud, Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace attacked the latter’s wife and her mother at night, dragged both women from bed, and Cap beat the old woman with a cow’s tail that he had clipped off “jes’ to see ’er jump.” He broke two of the woman’s ribs, leaving her injured for life, while Tom beat his wife. Later, on New Year’s night, 1888, a gang of the Hatfields surrounded the home of Randolph McCoy, killed the eldest daughter, Allaphare, broke her mother’s ribs and knocked her senseless with their guns, and killed a son, Calvin. In several instances women who fought in defense of their homes have been killed, as in the case of Mrs. Charles Daniels and her 16-year-old daughter, in Pike County, Kentucky, in November, 1909.
The mountain women do not shrink from feuds, but on the contrary excite and cheer their men to desperate deeds, and sometimes fight by their side. In the French-Eversole feud, a woman, learning that her unarmed husband was besieged by his foes, seized his rifle, filled her apron with cartridges, rushed past the firing-line, and stood by her “old man” until he beat his assailants off. When men are “hiding out” in the laurel, it is the women’s part, which they never shirk, to carry them food and information.
In every feud each clan has a leader, a man of prominence either on account of his wealth or his political influence or his shrewdness or his physical prowess. This leader’s orders are obeyed, while hostilities last, with the same unquestioning loyalty that the old Scotch retainer showed to his chieftain. Either the leader or someone acting for him supplies the men with food, with weapons if they need them, with ammunition, and with money. Sometimes mercenaries are hired. Mr. Fox says that “In one local war, I remember, four dollars per day were the wages of the fighting man, and the leader on one occasion, while besieging his enemies—in the county court-house—tried to purchase a cannon, and from no other place than the State arsenal, and from no other personage than the Governor himself.” In some of the feuds professional bravos have been employed who would assassinate, for a few dollars, anybody who was pointed out to them, provided he was alien to their own clans.
The character of the highland bravo is precisely that of the western “bad man” as pictured by Jed Parker in Stewart Edward White’s Arizona Nights:
“‘There’s a good deal of romance been written about the “bad man,” and there’s about the same amount of nonsense. The bad man is just a plain murderer, neither more nor less. He never does get into a real, good, plain, stand-up gun-fight if he can possibly help it. His killin’s are done from behind a door, or when he’s got his man dead to rights. There’s Sam Cook. You’ve all heard of him. He had nerve, of course, and when he was backed into a corner he made good; and he was sure sudden death with a gun. But when he went out for a man deliberate, he didn’t take no special chances....
“‘The point is that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable proposition, and plain, cold-blooded murderers, willin’ to wait for a sure thing, and without no compunctions whatever. The bad man takes you unawares, when you’re sleepin’, or talkin’, or drinkin’, or lookin’ to see what for a day it’s goin’ to be, anyway. He don’t give you no show, and sooner or later he’s goin’ to get you in the safest and easiest way for himself. There ain’t no romance about that.’”