Some of his youthful companions continued to poke fun but John Caldwell Calhoun Mayo turned them a deaf ear. On foot he trudged endless miles when he was a poor lad, or rode a scrubby nag along the Warrior's Path, always seeking coal deposits, pleading with landowners for leases and options on acreage he knew to be rich in minerals. He surmounted seemingly impossible barriers, even having legislation enacted to set aside Virginia land grants. He tapped hidden treasures, developed the wealth of the Big Sandy country that had been locked in mountain fastnesses for centuries. Through his vision, thriving cities blossom where once was wilderness. The United States Geological Survey shows one eighth of the total coal area of the nation to be in this region; it supplies nearly one quarter of all the country's bituminous coal. PUBLIC WORKS Only in recent years has the mountaineer begun to forsake his cove, however unproductive the earth may be, for the valley and public works. Indeed mountain folk long looked down on their own who sought employment at public works, mines, lumber camps, steel mills. They decried any employment away from the hillside farm, because it meant to them being an underling. No mountaineer ever wanted to be company-owned. Leastwise none of the Wellfords of Laurel Creek. But Clate, youngest of Mark Wellford's family, lured by the promise of big cash money, decided to quit the farm and take his wife and little family down to the foothills. "There's a good mine there, pays good money, and there's a good mine boss on the job," so Clate was told. Some two years later Clate, a weary figure, emerged one evening from the company commissary. His face was smudged with coal dust. A miner's lamp still flickered on his grimy cap. He carried a dinner bucket and the baby on one arm. Over his shoulder hung a gunnysack that bulged with canned goods and a poke of meal. At his heels followed his bedraggled, snaggle-toothed wife, a babe in her arms and another tugging at her skirts. Her faded calico dress that dragged in the back was tied in at the waist with a ragged apron. There was a look of sad resignation in her eyes. Now and then she brushed a hand up the back of her head to catch the drab stray locks. She might have been fifty, judging from the stooped shoulders and weary step. Yet the rounded arms--her sleeves were rolled to the elbow--looked youthful. Clate halted a few minutes to talk to another miner, a boy in his teens. "What'd you load today?" the younger asked after casual greetings. "'Tarnal buggy busted a dozen times, held me back," Clate complained, shifting the dinner pail and the baby. "Always something to hold a man back." "I'm figuring on going to Georgia," the young lad sounded hopeful. "Got a buddy down there in the steel mill. Beats the mines any day." He saw some young friends across the street and hurried to join them.