One afternoon one of these mountaineers who had withdrawn to the porch, unhitched, without being solicited, a drummer's horse, and he had trouble in pulling off a loose shoe and renailing it. The drummer wanted to pay for the work, but the mountaineer shook his head. The deed had been done for the horse. The visitor insisted, and finally the price was fixed:
"Bout a nickel!"
A mountaineer seldom asks questions. Instead he makes a statement of that which appears to him to be the fact, and if unchallenged or uncorrected, it is accepted as the proper deduction. Early in my visit to Pall Mall I learned my lesson.
"Have you lived all your life in the valley?" I asked an old mountaineer whom I met on the road as he was carrying on his shoulder a sack of corn to the mill.
Into his eye there came a light of playfulness, then pity, quickly to be followed by a twinkle of fun. He simply could not let the opening pass.
"Not yit," he said.
Later I saw a little fellow of six years of age chasing a chicken barren of feathers over a yard that was barren of grass. When I accused him of maliciously picking that chicken, his face was a spot of smiles as he vigorously denied it.
"Are you going to school?" I asked him.
The smile changed to a look of surprize at an inquiry so out of line with his immediate activities.
"When it starts," he called back as he and the chicken disappeared under the cabin.