“Amen!” intoned the trembling voice of Devil Anse.
“Amen!” echoed the six sons grouped about their aged sire.
Then Aunt Levicy, wife of the grim clansman, began singing in a quavering voice:
| Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see. |
The wives and daughters, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts of McCoys took up the doleful strain:
| ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed. |
“Hit’s our sign of peace!” shouted old Aunt Emmie McCoy clapping her palsied hands high above her head, “the sign of peace ’twixt us and t’other side!” Whereupon Young Emmie McCoy, still in her teens, who had loved Little Sid Hatfield since their first day at school on Mate Creek, threw her arms about his sister and cried, “Can’t no one keep me and Little Sid apart from this day on.”
“Amen!” the voice of Devil Anse led the solemn chant. “Amen! God be praised!”
Jonse, the first-born of the Hatfields, bowed his head and his deep-throated “Amen! God be praised!” echoed down the valley. Then Cap and Troy, Tennis, Elias, Joe, Willis, and the rest joined in. All eyes turned toward Jonse. He who had loved pretty Rosanna McCoy when he was a lad, she a shy little miss.
Many at the baptizing remembered the first meeting of the two star-crossed lovers one autumn day long ago on Blackberry Creek. The day when young Randall and Tolbert, her brothers, were there. Old folks remembered too the time when Devil Anse had slain Harmon McCoy. But that was long ago and forgiven. “Let bygones be bygones,” Levicy had pleaded with her mate, and Sarah, wife of Old Randall, did likewise with her spouse. But only Levicy, of the two sorely tried women, had survived to witness the answer to her prayers—peace between the households with the baptism of Devil Anse and his six sons.