A Son of the Middle Border | Page 9

goods against the early
destruction of the world?" he argued.
He was bitterly opposed to secret societies, for some reason which I
never fully understood, and the only fury I ever knew him to express
was directed against these "dens of iniquity."
Nearly all his neighbors, like those in our coulee, were native American
as their names indicated. The Dudleys, Elwells, and Griswolds came
from Connecticut, the McEldowneys and McKinleys from New York
and Ohio, the Baileys and Garlands from Maine. Buoyant, vital,
confident, these sons of the border bent to the work of breaking sod and
building fence quite in the spirit of sportsmen.
They were always racing in those days, rejoicing in their abounding
vigor. With them reaping was a game, husking corn a test of endurance
and skill, threshing a "bee." It was a Dudley against a McClintock, a
Gilfillan against a Garland, and my father's laughing descriptions of the
barn-raisings, harvestings and rail-splittings of the valley filled my
mind with vivid pictures of manly deeds. Every phase of farm work
was carried on by hand. Strength and skill counted high and I had good
reason for my idolatry of David and William. With the hearts of
woodsmen and fists of sailors they were precisely the type to appeal to
the imagination of a boy. Hunters, athletes, skilled horsemen
everything they did was to me heroic.
Frank, smallest of all these sons of Hugh, was not what an observer
would call puny. He weighed nearly one hundred and eighty pounds
and never met his match except in his brothers. William could outlift
him, David could out-run him and outleap him, but he was more agile
than either was indeed a skilled acrobat.
His muscles were prodigious. The calves of his legs would not go into

his top boots, and I have heard my father say that once when the
"tumbling" in the little country "show" seemed not to his liking, Frank
sprang over the ropes into the arena and went around the ring in a series
of professional flip-flaps, to the unrestrained delight of the spectators. I
did not witness this per formance, I am sorry to say, but I have seen
him do somersaults and turn cart-wheels in the dooryard just from the
pure joy of living. He could have been a pro fessional acrobat and he
came near to being a pro fessional ball-player.
He was always smiling, but his temper was fickle. Anybody could get a
fight out of Frank McClintock at any time, simply by expressing a
desire for it. To call him a liar was equivalent to contracting a doctor's
bill. He loved hunting, as did all his brothers, but was too excitable to
be a highly successful shot whereas William and David were veritable
Leather-stockings in their mastery of the heavy, old-fashioned rifle.
David was especially dreaded at the turkey shoots of the county.
William was over six feet in height, weighed two hun dred and forty
pounds, and stood "straight as an Injun." He was one of the most
formidable men of the valley even at fifty as I first recollect him, he
walked with a quick lift of his foot like that of a young Chippewa. To
me he was a huge gentle black bear, but I firmly believed he could
whip any man in the world even Uncle David if he wanted to. I never
expected to see him fight, for I could not imagine anybody foolish
enough to invite his wrath.
Such a man did develop, but not until William was over sixty,
gray-haired and ill, and even then it took two strong men to engage him
fully, and when it was all over (the contest filled but a few seconds),
one assailant could not be found, and the other had to call in a doctor to
piece him together again.
William did not have a mark his troubles began when he went home to
his quaint little old wife. In some strange way she divined that he had
been fighting, and soon drew the story from him. "William
McClintock," said she severely, "hain't you old enough to keep your
temper and not go brawling around like that and at a school meeting
too!"

William hung his head. "Well, I dunno! I suppose my dyspepsy has
made me kind o irritable," he said by way of apology.
My father was the historian of most of these exploits on the part of his
brothers-in-law, for he loved to exalt their physical prowess at the same
time that he deplored their lack of enterprise and system. Certain of
their traits he understood well. Others he was never able to comprehend,
and I am not sure that they ever quite understood themselves.
A deep vein of poetry, of sub-conscious Celtic sadness^ ran