While still too small for the rough run of the
mountains, he has stood, red-eyed, by the gate of his home and watched
his father and the hounds go off to the hunt. And as he grew, his hair
took on that color that trace of him while at play could be lost in the
red-brush that grew upon the mountainside.
There was one part of the routine of the week at Pall Mall that has
interested Alvin York from early boyhood. It was the shooting-matches,
held on Saturday, on the mountainside, above the spring, just where a
swell of the slope made a "table-land," and where a space had been
cleared for these tests of skill. The clearing was long and slender,
such a glade through the trees as the alley of the mountain bowlers
which Rip Van Winkle found in the Catskills--only the shooting-range was
longer. A hundred and fifty yards were needed for one of the contests.
This aisle had been cut through a forest of gray beech and brown oaks.
At the points where the targets were to be set the clearing widened so
that the sunlight, filtering through the leaves and flickering upon the
slender carpet of green, could fall full and clear.
Each Saturday the mountaineers were there--and William York and Alvin
were among the "regulars." Often there were fifty or more men, and they
came bringing their long rifles, horns of powder, pouches made of skin
in which were lead and bullet molds, cups of caps, cotton gun-wadding,
carrying turkeys, driving beeves and sheep, which were to be the prizes.
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