Sergeant York And His PeopleCowan, Sam K. (Sam Kinkade)
History
Sergeant York And His People
Cowan, Sam K. (Sam Kinkade)
Appalachians (People); Tennessee, East -- Social life and customs; York, Alvin Cullum, 1887-1964
Each contestant who claimed a chance to win brought his board to the
judges for award. For each one of them a bullet was cut in half, and the
half, with the flat side up, was forced into the bullet hole in the
target until level with the board's surface. With a compass the exact
center of the face of the half bullet was marked--a dent, as if made by
a pin-point. Then across the surface of the bright, newly-cut lead, the
knife-blade marks of the original bull's-eye, partly torn away by the
shot, were retraced. The distance between the pin-dent center and the
point where the knife-marks crossed could then be exactly measured.
When the cross passed directly over the dented center, the shot was
perfect and the mountaineers called it "laying the seam of the ball on
center."
In the beef-shoots it was a dollar a shot. Each man could purchase any
number of shots. When the pot contained the number of dollars asked for
the beef the contest began. The prize was divided into five parts. The
two best shots got, each, a hindquarter of the beef. The third and
fourth, the forequarters; the fifth of the winners, the hide and tallow.
The beef was slain at the scene of the shoot, each winner carrying home
his part.
William York has been known to carry the prize home on hoof--having made
the five best shots. But this was unusual, for all the mountaineers grew
up with a rifle in their hands and they knew how to use it.
At the shooting-matches it was again "Judge" York. He always handled the
compass in making the awards. To the shooting-matches, still held at
Pall Mall, Sam York, Alvin's brother, brings the compass and the rifle
which his father had used.
The contest for the sheep was under the same conditions that surrounded
the beef-matches; only the entrance fee was smaller. Usually it was six
shots for a dollar. This odd division of the dollar, made to fit their
term, "a shilling a shot," shows the people of the valley clinging to
their English customs and still influenced by the Colonial period in
America. In Colonial days in many parts of the country the shilling's
value was placed at sixteen and two-thirds cents.
Contests for the "pony purses" were consolation-shoots for those who had
made no winning, and to gratify that element who for the love of the
sport would keep the matches going until in the day's dimming light the
sights of the gun could not be used.
One day at one of these shooting-matches at Pall Mall I witnessed a
demonstration of the imperturbability of these mountain men. One of the
contestants had cut center and about a third of the ball lay across it,
when Ike Hatfield, a cousin of Alvin's, took "his place at the line."
He was young, over six feet in height, slender and erect as a reed, and
only his head drooped as his rifle came into position. Some one said to
the man whose shot, so far, was the winning one:
"Git his nerve; else he'll beat you!"'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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