BATTLE OF BURKE’S ORCHARD
Ed and I skinned our rabbits and sunk them in the creek and kept on over to Burke’s apple orchard, where we found two dozen boys belonging to all parts of town and representing all the gangs and tribes and feuds. Newspapers prate about Kentucky feuds, Italian vendettas, the Mafia and such petty things, as if they were in it alongside of the Fayetteville feuds. There were various and sundry deadly schisms existing among the several factions, with sub-feuds between the minor clans, under-feuds, super-feuds, and inter-feuds, until the feudal system ramified the whole body politic of Fayetteville boydom so thickly that you could roust one up and make grim visaged war wrinkle his front whenever two or three boys were gathered together, except at Sunday-school.
I have not a word in protest of the outrage perpetrated upon us by the Kentuckians and Italians, in imitating our feuds. Everybody knows it is a brazen infringement, but these people are outside the jurisdiction of our two judges.
The clans were dividing, and a brawl brewing when we got there, and it looked like there was going to be about a five-pronged battle, with perhaps a little side rock-polemics and personal gouging disputations. Ed and I did not know the merits of the question under debate, but in those days the code did not require you to know the mere vulgar details and causes. All you wanted to be certain of was that the other fellows were there. The world should rid itself of the delusion that it requires any especial aggravation to prompt a boy to hit at any head he sees poking up.
The first thing I saw, Sam Ramsey had climbed after a particularly red apple that Bob Neeld had claimed the week before, and when he shook it down John Formwalt picked it up and bit it. Fon Feeney, who belonged to a subsection of the Ramsey Rooters, saw the dirty deed, and he smashed John on the jaw with a rotten apple, and Bob grabbed the red apple. A boy does not mind being hit with a pile driver or a club, or being shoved off a house backwards, or shaken out of a tree, in a fair fight; but he despises to be hit with anything soft and rotten. When Fon hit John, Will McEwen made a dive at Fon, but Bob Wilson tripped him up and fell on top, and in rushed eight fellows, looking for an opening. John Formwalt, with rotten apple smeared over his jaw and running down under his shirt, was a terror to see, and here he came making for everybody in sight, but he ran jam against Charlie Fulton’s fist, and stopped to count the stars. Then Matt Neill came frisking up to close the debate, and Willis Bonner landed on Matt’s snoot, and he hunted grass. There was a mighty mixtry along about then of gouging boys, and Sam dropped out of the tree right on top of the Kilkenny bunch and went for every head in sight.
Spot Miller had been sparring for an opening for an under-hook, and was about to run his fist clean through John Perkins, when Big Yaller Marshall started for Spot and I punched Big Yaller in the paunch and doubled him up. It is swollen to this day. Fitzsimmons hit Corbett just a little above where I hit Big Yaller, but he wrote me afterwards that he aimed at the same place. Ed ran clean over Bob Bright to get at George Morgan, who had Bob Clark down rubbing dirt in his mouth. It was just getting where the fun was ripest when Bob Bright called a truce. Bill Allen’s nose was bleeding again, and the boys all wanted to see that, for Bill had the out-bleedingest nose ever stuck on mortal face. I have seen it myself, coupled with what other boys have seen and sworn to, bleed four barrels on a stretch, and a good deal on the ground, judging by the way he messed up his clothes and things around for ten feet, though of course he may not have bled more than half that much. Billy Hill ran over home to get a bunch of keys to hang down his back, and I rolled up a piece of paper and made him put it over his front gums and draw his lip tightly over it. Hal McKinney (his father was a doctor and Hal was then a candidate) pressed his fingers hard up and down by the side of Bill’s nose, and Ed made Bill spit on a chip and he went off and hid it under a rock. That last is considered about infallible, but it all failed on Bill’s nose, and then Big Yaller told him to scratch in the ground with his big toe, and bleed forty drops in it and cover it up with a leaf and say:
“Bloody nose, two big toes,
No more blood than this goes.”
Strange to say, that failed, too. When Bill’s nose started in to play ball it finished out nine innings. Bill is no more, and a royal good fellow he was, but I have seen him shed more blood than Bragg’s army, and I can prove it. Bob Bright started home with Bill, where they knew better how to humor his nose, and George Steel laughed at John Formwalt’s smeared face, and John doused him, and the war broke out with worse sanguinary symptoms than ever, the crowd gradually dividing into two parties and backing off and resorting to rocks. It looks dangerous and bloody on ordinary white paper like this to read about two dozen boys, all throwing rocks at short range, so thick and fast that you might hold up your hat and catch it full, and it looks like somebody ought to get hurt, but they don’t much. I never saw a boy knocked more than one somerset at a time, and besides that, a boy is as hard to hit as a kildee.
Stooping for a rock, I dropped my pistol and Spot Miller picked it up and the boys all saw it, and peace brooded instanter. Every fellow dropped his rocks and crowded in, and I had every marble in the crowd in half an hour. While these negotiations were proceeding Ed had climbed a tree and a limb broke and he fell out and broke his left arm. Ed always regretted it when he broke his arm, and I have seen the poor fellow almost cry over it. It disqualified a fellow for so many of the pursuits, forcing him to lie up for the bone to knit. Besides that, Bill Allen made arm-breaking so common that the boys got tired of it. Bill fell upon every rock he came across and broke his arm, and then he would rebreak it and break it over in another place. At first it was something to have your arm broken, and a fellow was envied and looked up to, but at that time a collar-bone fracture was considered more recherché and distingué. When I was a boy you had to break all of a boy’s legs and arms and things to disqualify him for the game. One little measly fracture was just fun, and kept a fellow out of the garden. The only difference that it made with Ed and me was that I had to dig all the worms for two weeks and sort o’ hold and piddle around and back him up.