The Comings of Cousin Ann

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

The Veterans of Ryeville

Ryeville had rather prided itself on having the same population—about three thousand—for the last fifty years. That is the oldest inhabitants had, but the newer generation was for expansion in spite of tradition, and Ryeville awoke one morning, after the census taker had been busying himself, to find itself five thousand strong and still growing.

There was no especial reason for the growth of the little town, save that it lay in the heart of rolling blue-grass country and people have to live somewhere. And Ryeville, with its crooked streets and substantial homes, was as good a place as any. There were churches of all denominations, schools and shops, a skating rink, two motion picture houses and as many drug stores as there had been barrooms before prohibition made necessary a change of front. There were two hotels—one where you “could” and one where you “couldn’t.” The former was frequented by the old men of the town and county. It stood next to the courthouse. Indeed its long, shady porch overlooked the courthouse green. There the old men would sit with chairs tilted against the wall and feet on railing and sadly watch the prohibition officers hauling bootleggers to court.

There were a great many old men in Ryeville and the country around—more old men than old women, in spite of the fact that that part of Kentucky had furnished its quota of recruits for both Union and Rebel armies.

In Kentucky, during the war between the states, brother had been pitted against brother—even father against son. The fact that the state did not secede from the Union had been a reason for the most intense bitterness and ill feeling among families and former friends. The bitterness was gone now and ill feeling forgotten. The veterans of the blue and the gray sat on the Rye House porch together, swapping tales and borrowing tobacco as amicably as though they had never done their best to exterminate one another.

“As for Abe Lincoln,” declared Major Fitch, an ancient confederate, “if it hadn’t been for him Gawd knows what we’d ’a’ had to talk about in these dry days. I tell you, sah, we ought to be eternally grateful to Abe Lincoln. I for one am. I was a clerk in a country store when the war broke out and I’d ’a’ been there yet if it wasn’t for the war. I’m here to say it made me and made my fam’ly. We were bawn fighters—my fo’ brothers and I—and up to the sixties we were always in trouble for brawling. The war came along and made a virtue of our vices. My mother used to be mighty ’shamed when she heard we were called the ‘Fighting Fitches.’ That was befo’ the war, and one or the other of us boys was always up befo’ the co’t for wild carrying on. But, bless Bob, when we were called ‘Fighting Fitches’ for whipping the Yankees the old lady was as pleased as Punch.”

“What did they call ye fer not bein’ able to whup us?” asked a grinning old giant from the mountains.

“Nothin’—’cause we were able....