Weeks afterward—for I had gone to live awhile among his people—the two of us were sitting upon the rugged rock, facing to the cliff above the York spring, talking about the fight in France.
He told of it hesitatingly, modestly. Some of the parts was simply the confirmation of assembled data; much of it, denial of published rumor and conjecture—before the story came out as a whole.
I asked the meaning of his statement that he would not "mind the publication if the story were done right."
"Well," he said with his mountain drawl, "I don't want you bearing down too much on that killing part. Tell it without so much of that!"
A rock was picked up and hurled down the mountain.
I then understood why the little mother was "jes' a-waiting till Alvin gits ready to talk." I understood why the son did not wish to be the one to bring into his mother's mind the picture of that hour in France when men were falling before his gun. I saw the reason he had for always courteously avoiding talking of the scene with anyone.
"But," and he turned with that smile that wins him friends, "I just can't help chuckling at that German major. I sure had him bluffed."
According to the code of mountain conversation there followed a silence. Another rock bounded off the sapling down the cliff.
"You should have seen the major," he resumed, "move on down that hill whenever I pulled down on him with that old Colt. 'Goose-step it', I think they call it. He was so little! His back so straight! And all huffed up over the way he had to mind me."
I had watched the rocks as they went down the cliff and it seemed nearly every one of them bounced off the same limb. I commented on the accuracy of his eye.