There are some who say he was seen to go up a ravine with a mysterious
bundle and to return without it. The ravine is pointed out. It opens on
the roadway about halfway between the Rains' store and the old home of
Coonrod.
But there is no myth to the present-day side of the story. More than
squirrels and rabbits have been hunted up that ravine.
But the legend of the hidden keg of gold is popular in many of the
valleys of the Appalachians, and it will even be found to have leaped
the valley of the Mississippi and almost identical in form appear and
appeal to the impressionable imaginations of those who live in the Ozark
Mountains to the west of that river.
There was but one thing in which Old Coonrod stood really in fear,
something not made or controlled by man. It was lightning. Whenever a
heavy thunder-storm broke over the mountains Coonrod, even in the last
years of his life when he had grown so fat, ran with all the speed he
could command for the cave above the spring, Here he would stay,
muttering and unapproachable, until the storm abated. Then he would come
from the cave swearing in that deep voice that carried both power and
terror, and, as the story goes, "for hours 'niggers' would be hopping
all over the valley."
Coonrod had a genuine admiration for the man or beast willing to fight
for his rights.
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