CHAPTER 15

BY THE END of the first day’s hiring, Call had collected four boys, none of them yet eighteen. Young Bill Spettle, the one

they called Swift Bill, was no older than Newt, and his brother Pete only a year older than Bill. So desperate were their

family circumstances that Call was almost hesitant to take them.

The widow Spettle had a brood of eight children, Bill and Pete being the oldest. Ned Spettle, the father of them all, had

died of drink two years before. It looked to Call as if the family was about to starve out. They had a little creek-bottom

farm not far north of Pickles Gap, but the soil was poor and the family had little to eat but sowbelly and beans. The widow

Spettle, however, was eager for him to take the boys, and would hear no protest from Call. She was a thin woman with

bitter eyes. Call had heard from someone that she had been raised rich, in the East, with servants to comb her hair and

help