That night as you sit with Molly in the moonlight in the dooryard of her shack, a weather-beaten plank house with a clapboard roof and a crooked stone chimney, she talks of life in the West Virginia hills. “There’s a heap o’ things happens around this country that are mighty skeery.” Suddenly in the gloaming a bat wings overhead, darts inside the shack. You can hear it blundering around among the rafters. An owl screeches off in the hollow somewhere. “Do you believe in ghosts and haynts?” There are apprehension and fear in Molly’s voice.
Presently the owl screeches dolefully once more and the bat wheels low overhead. A soft breeze stirs the pawpaw bushes down by the fence row. “Did you hearn something mourn like, just then?” Molly, the widow of a Hatfield and wife of a McCoy, leans forward.
If you are prudent you make no answer to her questions.
“Nothing to be a-feared of, I reckon. The ghosts of them that has been baptized they won’t harm nobody. I’ve heard Uncle Dyke Garrett say as much many’s the time.” The woman speaks with firm conviction.
A moth brushes her cheek and she straightens suddenly.
The moon is partly hidden behind a cloud; even so by its faint light you can see the clump of pawpaw bushes, and beyond—the outline of the rugged hills. Farther off in the burying ground atop the ridge the marble figure of the leader of the Hatfields rises against the half-darkened sky.
At first you think it is the sound of the wind in the pines far off in the hollow, then as it moves toward the burying ground it changes to that of low moaning voices.
You feel Molly’s arm trembling against your own.
“Listen!” she whispers fearfully, all her courage gone. “It’s Devil Anse and his boys. Look yonder!”—she tugs at your sleeve—“See for yourself they’re going down to the waters of baptism!”
Following the direction of the woman’s quick trembling hand you strain forward.