These posters—except for their pretty pictures—meant nothing at all to Cash Wyble. For, as with his parents and grandparents, his knowledge of the written or printed word was purely a matter of hearsay.
Yet the sight of the eleven men in newfangled uniform—so like in color to his own butternut homespuns—interested Cash.
“What’s all the boys doin’—togged up thataway?” he demanded of the North America’s proprietor. “Waitin’ for the band?”
“Waiting to be shipped to Camp Lee,” answered the local merchant prince; adding, as Cash’s burnt-leather face grew blanker: “Camp Lee, down in V’ginia, you know. Training camp for the war.”
“War?” queried Cash, preparing to grin, at prospect of a joke. “What war?”
“What war?” echoed the dumfounded storekeeper.
“Why, the war, of course! Where in blazes have you been keeping yourself?”
“I been up home, where I b’long,” said Cash sulkily. “What with the hawgs, an’ crops an’ skins an’ sich, a busy man’s got no time traipsin’ off to the city every minute. Twice a year does me pretty nice. An’ now s’pose you tell me what war you’re blattin’ about.”
The storekeeper told him. He told him in the simplest possible language. Yet half—and more than half—of the explanation went miles above the listening mountaineer’s head. Cash gathered, however, that the United States was fighting Germany.
Germany he knew by repute for a country or a town on the far side of the world. Some of its citizens had even invaded his West Virginia mountains, where their odd diction and porcelain pipes roused much derision among the cultured hillfolk.