He was
riding across from the Bluegrass to meet this man at the railroad
in Virginia, nearly two hundred miles away; he had stopped to
examine some titles at the county seat and he meant to go on that
day by way of Lonesome Cove. Opposite was the brick Court House--
every window lacking at least one pane, the steps yellow with dirt
and tobacco juice, the doorway and the bricks about the upper
windows bullet-dented and eloquent with memories of the feud which
had long embroiled the whole county. Not that everybody took part
in it but, on the matter, everybody, as an old woman told him,
"had feelin's." It had begun, so he learned, just after the war.
Two boys were playing marbles in the road along the Cumberland
River, and one had a patch on the seat of his trousers. The other
boy made fun of it and the boy with the patch went home and told
his father. As a result there had already been thirty years of
local war. In the last race for legislature, political issues were
submerged and the feud was the sole issue. And a Tolliver had
carried that boy's trouser-patch like a flag to victory and was
sitting in the lower House at that time helping to make laws for
the rest of the State.
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