“What’s all the boys doin’—togged up thataway?” he demanded of the North America’s proprietor. “Waitin’ for the band?”
“Waiting to be shipped to Camp Lee,” answered the local merchant prince; adding, as Cash’s burnt-leather face grew blanker: “Camp Lee, down in V’ginia, you know. Training camp for the war.”
“War?” queried Cash, preparing to grin, at prospect of a joke. “What war?”
“What war?” echoed the dumfounded storekeeper.
“Why, _the_ war, of course! Where in blazes have you been keeping yourself?”
“I been up home, where I b’long,” said Cash sulkily. “What with the hawgs, an’ crops an’ skins an’ sich, a busy man’s got no time traipsin’ off to the city every minute. Twice a year does me pretty nice. An’ now s’pose you tell me what war you’re blattin’ about.”
The storekeeper told him. He told him in the simplest possible language. Yet half—and more than half—of the explanation went miles above the listening mountaineer’s head. Cash gathered, however, that the United States was fighting Germany.
Germany he knew by repute for a country or a town on the far side of the world. Some of its citizens had even invaded his West Virginia mountains, where their odd diction and porcelain pipes roused much derision among the cultured hillfolk.
“Germany?” mused Cash when the narrative was ended. “We’re to war with Germany, hey? Sakes, but I wisht I’d knowed that yesterday! A couple of Germans went right past my shack. I could ’a’ shot ’em as easy as toad pie.”
The North America’s proprietor valued Cash Wyble’s sparse trade, as he valued that of other mountaineers who made Clayburg their semiannual port of call. If on Cash’s report these rustics should begin a guerilla warfare upon their German neighbors, more of them would presently be lodged in jail than the North America could well afford to spare from its meager customer list.
Wherefore the proprietor did some more explaining. Knowing the mountaineer brain, he made no effort to point out the difference between armed Germans and noncombatants. He merely said that the Government had threatened to lock up any West Virginian who should kill a German—this side of Europe. It was a new law, he continued, and one that the revenue officers were bent on enforcing.