At the shooting-matches it was again "Judge" York. He always handled the
compass in making the awards. To the shooting-matches, still held at
Pall Mall, Sam York, Alvin's brother, brings the compass and the rifle
which his father had used.
The contest for the sheep was under the same conditions that surrounded
the beef-matches; only the entrance fee was smaller. Usually it was six
shots for a dollar. This odd division of the dollar, made to fit their
term, "a shilling a shot," shows the people of the valley clinging to
their English customs and still influenced by the Colonial period in
America. In Colonial days in many parts of the country the shilling's
value was placed at sixteen and two-thirds cents.
Contests for the "pony purses" were consolation-shoots for those who had
made no winning, and to gratify that element who for the love of the
sport would keep the matches going until in the day's dimming light the
sights of the gun could not be used.
One day at one of these shooting-matches at Pall Mall I witnessed a
demonstration of the imperturbability of these mountain men. One of the
contestants had cut center and about a third of the ball lay across it,
when Ike Hatfield, a cousin of Alvin's, took "his place at the line."
He was young, over six feet in height, slender and erect as a reed, and
only his head drooped as his rifle came into position.
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