Blue Mountain Bill:

Chapter I How It Came to Be As I stepped off the train, I practically ran smack up against Corbin’s Park. For there at the station, a live wild boar in a crate was being transferred from a two-horse wagon into the express car of the train. Massachusetts had always been my home. In fact, this was my first trip into the North Country, and my first visit to New Hampshire. Although it was early September the air was charged with a snap and vigor that was refreshing. All the way up from Boston, I had been looking out the window of the train and seen the flat thickly populated country gradually change into a green hilly wooded paradise, dotted with lakes and ponds and flowing streams. “Newport! Newport!” the conductor had called out, but what a different place was this little hill country town than the Rhode Island city of the same name I had visited. Business had called me to New Hampshire and aside from the change and beauty and freshness of it all, the first thing that aroused my interest and curiosity was the wild hog. Where had it come from? What kind of a place was I getting into? Instead of a taxi, a man with a Ford touring car took me, with my luggage to the Newport House. On the way I questioned him about the hog and he said, “Oh, that’s from the Park. Some kind of Game preserve near here in the foothills of the Mountains, Corbin’s Park to be exact, but us folks, we just call it the Park”. I kept questioning him; and before he had left me at the hotel, in reply to my many questions, and perhaps to get rid of me, he said, “If you want some firsthand information, you better go up to the Croydon Flat, about five miles from here, and see Blue Mountain Bill, Old Uncle Bill Barton, Uncle Bill for short. He’s always worked there and can tell you anything you want to know about it. He lives in a little white house on Fletcher’s Hill just outside the park fence. If I were you I’d go up and see him”. The first frosts had turned the green of summer to the beautiful colors of autumn before I had things running smoothly, (as the preachers say) ‘in my new field’ and had any time to spare from my work. But I hadn’t forgotten to call on Uncle Bill Barton and I was constantly reminded of “The Park”. Now and then someone would mention it in a casual way as if it were a part of his everyday life, or perhaps someone in a jovial mood with a sly knowing look would speak of a deer that had been taken from there. So, to satisfy my curiosity, one night I went to Croydon Flat and found Uncle Bill Barton’s house on the hill. Uncle Bill greeted me at the door. He was a tall rugged man about fifty years old, slightly bald, and his ruddy face was a picture of wind and weather. “How are ye Boy” he said, “I don’t know who ye be but come right in and make yerself ter home.” I told him who I was as I stepped inside. The room was clean and homey and had a pleasing odor of drying socks and boots and food and food and tobacco, characteristic of a bachelor who lives alone. “It’s kind of you, Mr. Barton”, I said. “I’ve just been wondering about the park. I’ve heard a lot about it since I came to Newport. Folks tell me you know more about it than anyone around here, Mr. Barton.” “Ye want ter know ’bout the animals?” “Yes, and about the park too, whose idea was it anyway?” “Ye want ter know the whole thing right from the beginning, don’t ye? Well, I’m glad ye do, I was jest cleaning my gun an’ if ye don’t care, I’ll keep right on with it; but ’fore we go any further, I want ye ter call me Uncle Bill, an’ then I’ll know who yer talkin’ to. “Ter begin with I shell hev ter go back some quite few years. Well, one day ’fore I ever dreamed o’ any sech thing as the Park, an’ I wus farmin’ over thar under the mountin’ where Camp Two now is, Austin Corbin come drivin’ inter my door yard. He was then a rich feller thet lived in New York, but he was born an’ brought up down here ter Newport. When he was a boy he was setch a smart young feller, an’ took so ter his learnin’ thet his town couldn’t hold him, an’ he went off ter New York an’ gut rich in his law business. He told me what he come ter see me for wus thet he wanted ter buy me out. He said he wanted ter buy all the land thar wus ’round the Blue Mount’n Range an’ put a fence ’round it, an’ hev it fer a lot er wild animals thet he wus goin’ ter buy up an’ turn loose in it. He come ter me fust, ’cause he said he’s quired ’round and he’d bin tol thet I knowed everybody ’round thar, an’ he wanted me ter go with ’im an’ see all the folks, so he could git it bought up. Ye see how ’twas, Mister Corbin wanted ter make it a place ter come to when he wan’t workin’ on his law business, an’ bring up all his friends ter hunt an’ fish an’ rest. An’ ’nother thing, he allus liked animals awful well, an’ he wanted ’em ter hev lots ter eat in a place whar nothin’ would bother ’em, with ’bout twenty-six thousand acres o’ mountins an’ hills an’ valleys ter roam ’round in.” Uncle Bill went to a cupboard and brought out a small map he unfolded before me. “If ye’ll jest look at this map I tried ter draw, ye can see how it lays, an’ whar the fence is, an’ all the different gates thet goes inter the Park. An’ the mountins an’ ponds an’ brooks an’ camps an’ roads, an’ whar Central Station is. It’s quite a gitup I’ll tell ye. I don’t mean my map, ’cause I never could draw nothin’, but I mean the park an’ what tis. “Well, as I wus tellin’ ye, Mr. Corbin wanted ter buy me out. I didn’t think much o’ sellin’ out jest then, but I went ’round with ’im an’ helped ’im ’splain it out to the others on the mountin’. He wus goin’ ter pay us a little more than what we hed ter pay taxes on. It took some o’ the folks quite a while ter make their minds up to it, but ’fore long everybody ’greed, an’ ’twant more’n two three weeks ’fore Mr. Corbin owned the whole shebang, lock, stock an’ barrel. “I took some o’ the money I gut fer my place an’ bought this strip o’ land thet this house I built sets on. I hung ’round ’cause I wanted ter see jest what kind of a lay out ’twould be when ’twas done. Then Mr. Corbin, he ’tol me he wanted me ’ter be sort of a handy man fer ’im lookin’ after the animals an’ so on, an’ kinder look after the runnin of things.” “Uncle Bill, how long ago was it that Mr. Corbin bought the land, and wasn’t it quite an undertaking to build the fence? I should think it would have taken lots of help to build it, and it must be quite a job to look after it now. How far is it around the park?” “Well now, let’s see, this is 1912. We sold out an’ the fence wus built twenty-two years ago. Twenty-two years from 1912 would make it, let’s see, I gut ter do some figerin, 2 from 2 is nothin’ an’ 2 from 1 won’t go, borror 10 makes 11 an’ 2 from 11 makes 9…” “1890” I interrupted. “Thet’s right, 1890 wus when it gut goin’. Quite a spell ago wan’t it? ’Bout thet fence, ye see, it’s somethin’ ter talk ’bout, the way, an’ how quick they built it. We fellers hedn’t never seen nothin’ like it ’afore, an’ we didn’t know thar wus ser much barb wire an’ nettin’ wire in the country, but thar wus, an’ it come ter Newport on the cars, an’ all the hosses an’ oxen ’round here drawed it up here from the depot. Two bands o’ fellers, ’bout sixty in a bunch, put it up. Everybody hed his job ter do. Some o’ ’em cuts posts, some dug holes, some set posts, some strung out the wire, an’ some o’ ’em drove the staples in, an’ in ’bout 90 days, when they gut it done, thar it stood, bran new, ’bout eight foot high an’ thirty miles ’round it. Thar’s no sech fence any whar ’round an’ it sure is quite a job ter look after. Every so often, the posts git rotten, an’ new ones hev ter be put in. When a man goes up ter a post, takes hold o’ it, an’ shakes it, if it breaks off, a new one set, whar the rotten one wus.