uietly, spat out a quid
of tobacco as if it were all that interfered with his aim. He again
slowly raised his rifle and fired, despite continued efforts to
disconcert him.

He walked leisurely back to the crowd, rested his gun against a tree and
took his seat on the ground. His only comment was:

"I think I pestered him."

The judges found that Hatfield had laid "the seam of the ball on
center," and won.

In these contests a mountain marksman will shoot eight or ten times and
often so closely will each shot fall to the knife-blade cross that the
hole cut by all of them in the white paper-target would be no larger
than a man's thumb-nail. One of the favorite methods of "warming up"
used by John Sowders, the closest competitor that Alvin York had in
hundreds of matches, was to drive fifteen carpet-tacks halfway into a
board, then step off until the heads of the tacks could just be seen,
and with his rifle Sowders would finish driving twelve or thirteen out
of the fifteen.

It was not astuteness on the part of the German major, as he lay flat
upon the ground in that Argonne Forest under the swaying radius of Alvin
York's rifle, that caused the major to propose, when he found his men
were given no time to get a clear shot at the American sergeant, that if
Alvin York would stop killing them he would make the Germans surrender.
In the shooting-matches back in the mountains of Tennessee that American
soldier had been trained to the minute for the mission then before him.
But there were more powerful influences than his marksmanship that gave
to Sergeant York the steadiness of nerve, the coolness of brain and the
courage to fight to victory against such overwhelming odds.

Back in the mountains in the days of William York, there were other
forms of amusement than the shooting-matches. The "log-rollings," the
"house-raisings," which always ended in a feast or barbecue, continued
popular with the people. And they had "corn-huskings," to which all the
neighbors came.

The "corn-husking" was a winter sport. These, at times, were held at
night under the light of hand-lanterns the mountaineers used to guide
themselves with over the rough roads and along mountain-paths. But day
or night, the husking ended with a feast. The ears to be husked were
piled in a cone on the corn-crib floor, and usually at the bottom and in
the very center of the cone a jug of whisky, plugged with a corn-cob
stopper, was hidden. With songs and jokes