Life of a West Virginia Lumberman
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CREW OF A WEST VIRGINIA LOGGING CAMP.
FELLING AND SAWING INTO CAR LENQTHS.
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(Copyright 19:2, ty Biias Lisle.)
OWN the winding mountain path a
small boy of apparently 10 yeara
stepped with the briskness of
one about some important busi
ness. We were coins up to the
lumber camp whence the boy had come, the
writer and the superintendent of the camp,
one of the biggest camps in Clay county,
West Virginia, which is noted for its vast
t timber cutting.? and its murder record.
"Hellc, Billy Judd," the superintendent
hailed, In friendly greeting.
"Howdy, Mistah Blair," said the urchin,
in the soft mountain drawl.
"Where are you off to, Billy, this busy
time of day?"
"Jus" down the road a piece!"
"What's the matter with your head?"
A neat white bandage circled Billy's
cranium in the place where his hat should
have rested.
"Sib Turley," said Billy, laconically.
"You and Sib been fighting?"
"Wa'nt no flghtin to It, Mistah Blair.
Sib snook (past tense of sneak) up behin'
me an' beat me up right peart with a black
jack. Ben abed foh nigh onto a week."
"You're up now. Why aren't you at
work?"
"Jus heard that Sib was down to the
river," explained the boy. "I'm goin' to git
him if he is."
"What would your father say to your
knocking off work like this?"
"Paw? Oh, he give me his gun (here
Billy produced a revolver half as long as
his arm) an' he says: 'If you don't git
Sib Turley I'll bust the other side of you'
head in, he says."
Good Sample of the Ilk.
That boy was a legitimate product of the
West Virginia lumber camps. Along the
poplar-crested hills of the Alleghanles'
western slopes there lives and work a
barbarian race, to whom murder la an ordi
nary occurrence and vendetta the only law
worth considering. Men who have been in
all parts of the country, who know the
vicious slums of the great cities and the
wild frontier towns of "red-eye" liquor
fame, say that for sheer brutality and
ferocity the lumbermen of the little moun.
talnoug state are pre-eminent. It Is a fact
that Clay county, the great lumber center,
has a record of more brutal murders mile
for mile than any other locality in the
United States. It is also a fact that up to
the present winter no conviction for mur
der was ever obtained In that country.
The lumberman of that district Is unlike
his brother of the great northern woods.
He has no taste for the craft. He Is an
Indifferent workman and draws indifferent
wages. Generally his apprenticeship Is due
to one of two things: Either he Is a
fugitive from justice on account of some
killing in which he has participated in a
neighboring state or county or the lumber
camp has established itself so near to his
home that he has been drawn into it by a
natural tendency to do what everybody else
about him Is doing. His one Idea is to get
through the week with the minimum amount
of work and "blow In" his accumulated
wages on a grand spree. When he is drunk
he wants to kill somebody; mostly he suc
ceeds, sooner or later.
Nature Alone IteautWul.
In the summer the mountain lumber
camp Is beautiful because lavish nature
covers everything on those verdurous slopes
with its lovely fancies of climbing vine and
blowing flower. But intrinsically the camp
Is as hideous and hopeless and bare a epot
as imagination can picture, the true out
ward expression of its inhabitants. To see
it in its true aspect one must go there in
winter. Picture to yourself a narrow-gauge
railway, the private transportation plant of
the outfit, twisting and turning through a
hilltop clearing. At one point in Us course
there Is a little cluster of bare, one-story
buildings surrounding a larger shack. This
large building is the center of the town
the company'e store, the focal point In the
life of the place. From it, as far as the
eye can see along the track in either direc
tion, stretch the wretched little houses,
sometimes only a few rods apart, sometimes
divided by a quarter of a mile of vacant
space.
Enter one of them and you will find two
small rooms; In one a huddle of rags for a
bed, in the other a tumble-down stove, a
table and a few battered and greasy uten
sils. From the platform of the store you
would guesa the population of the settle
ment to be perhaps 120 or 125 souls; In
reality It Is from 800 to 1,200. Those
wooden hovels extend for five miles In both
directions and some of them harbor In
credible families. The writer has seen one
house of two rooms inhabited by father,
mother and eleven children of all sizes and
both sexes, not to mention several dogs.
Life Deadly Monotonous.
Their mode of life is absolutely without
amueement or change except on Sundays,
when they get together for a drunk or a
church service, the chances being In favor
of the former, as liquor seems to be always
attainable, though the country is no-11-cense,
whereas It is not once a month that
a wandering preacher comes within walking
distance of the camp. In all that settle
ment you will hardly find half a dozen per
sons who would not be considered bar
barlous by the dwellers in Cherry street's
toughest tenement. The half dozen would
be made up of the superintendent, the head
foreman, the lumber inspector and the store
men. These are always In peril of their
lives from the Jealous hatred of the lum
bermen, who recognize their superiority.
But they are a fearless lot no other need
apply and, on the whole, if trouble ensues
they are rather more likely to kill than to
be killed. Where the enmity is openly
avowed they can take care of themselves,
but the lumberman has a puerile habit of
fancying hlmEelf offended at some trivial
thing and of treacherously planning the
death of the offender. Two years ago a
mountain storekeeper told one of his cus
tomers that he was all out of a certain
brand of tobacco. Later in the evening he
found, on a back shelf, some of the brand
and sold it to another man. The flrBt cus
tomer, finding this out, conceived the
theory that he had been insulted and that
night when the storekeeper went out to put
up his dog he was fatally shot. This is a
typical case.
The owner of a large tract of timber
land in that region told the writer that
one of his minor settlements was entirely
made up of fugitives from Justice. The
storekeeper of that camp entertained the
writer one evening with a running com
mentary on the customers who came In.
It sounded like a string of fancies at the
time, but later enough was verified to con
vince the meet skeptical that it was all
true.
Personal Chnraeterlntlea.
"Here comes Turner and his three
boys," said the store man. "All Bober to
night. I'm always glad to have my gun
In reach when they come in. They're
from Kentucky way. Got into trouble with
some neighbors there and got chased out,
but not till they'd burned the other fel
low's house and the old woman In It.
(Evening, Sam. rainklller? There you are.
Can't drink it here, you know. One dol
lar. That's right.) Is he sick? No more
than you are. That's booze, that stuff;
only kind they can get here. Ever see a
painkiller Jag? Well, you don't want to
unless you're up a tree. There's a worse
kind, though. Cinnamon. They drink the
alcohol the cinnamon's kept in when they
can steal it. We lost six men
that way last year. All died
within twenty-four hours. Yes, I've
heard of cinnamon drunks getting
over It, but all I ever saw went crazy first
and then turned up their toes. See that
crosseyed kid near the door? Looks mild,
don't he? He's a mean one. Got a grudge
against a man named White, over the range
in the Big Sandy district. White was a
decent enough fellow. This cuss goes over
there one day, doesn't find White, but finds
his three kids keeping house. Oldest kid
not more than 10. He kills 'era all, but one
of 'em must have fought back some, Tor hs
comes back with a cut In his shoulder. Do
anything to him? No, not in this country.
White's been kind of looney ever since.
He'll likely get this kid some day. Now,
there's old Branch, with his feet against
the stove. Peddler came along a couple of
years ago and put up at his house. Nobody
ever saw the peddler again. Branch went
around wearing fake Jewelry for months.
The notion got around that he'd burled the
peddler under his floor, but when they
wanted to find out Branch got some of his
kin down there and they swore they'd kill
any party that came near the place. Of
course, that ended it. There's a lot of the
murderers that ain't around tonight. Old
Beebe that dynamited the boatmen's cabin;
Slason Morey that killed the miller down
at Elk for refusing him credit; the Perrln
boys that shot the two revenue officers; the
Vances that uncd to work in with the Hat
field gang; the Itcbards from Tazewell
county that poisoned that gypsy outfit there,
and a lot of others. Oh, there's a heap of
'em In this camp. You couldn't 'hardly
shoot a man here without making a killing
that the law had ought to have made long
ago."
NothliiK to Iterlnlm Thrni.
If the lumbermen are brutalized there Is
nothing In their lives to reclaim them from
still worse depths. Their life la a bitter
one, particularly in winter. They muht be
up at 5 o'clock to take tho train over the
mountain where the cutting Is In progress.
By 6 they are at work. With an hour at
noon for lunch excepted they cut and hew
all day and come home so wearied that
they can hardly crawl. Most of them are
too far from the store to come down except
on Saturday nights; they tumble into their
filthy bods and sleep until the early call.
The women are much of the same type;
frowsy, old before their time, rhewers of
snuff, drinkers of vile liquor when they can
get it, degraded in thought and speech.
The worst of it is that these creatures
are descendants of the beBt blood of the
Virginias. You will find the fine old Vir
ginia names there; the faces of the men are
often fine in profile, with high foreheads
and well-set eyes, but with the lower part
of the face hopelessly slack. You can read
there the degradation of the gradual
descent into barbarism, the degeneracy of
constant intermarriage among a few fami
lies. But to return to Billy Judd. We met him
some two weeks later. He wore a satisfied
smile. "Did you get Sib Turley?" asked
tho superintendent.
"Naw," responded the scion of the Judd
race. "I didn't git Sib, but I got his
brother. Old Turley shot Paw'B ear off last
night. Reckon wo're goln' to have a right
peart feud."
"The one redeeming feature about It,"
said the superintendent, "Is that the more
these people 'git' each other the better it
Is for the state of West Virginia and civili
zation in general." ELI AS LISLE.
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DINING ROOM READY TO SERVE A MEAL.
IN THE BUNKHOUSE JUST BEFORE BEDTIME.
