Clarksburg Telegram Exponent 3/01 Once, Long Ago by Gerald D. Swick Remember the Associated Press story from last November about a woman named Kimberly Ward from Hix, WV, who shot an eight-point buck from her kitchen window while her husband was freezing ni the woods, vainly hoping to bag a deer? Guys hate when that happens. A not-dissimiliar story comes to us from the pen of David Hunter Strother, an author illustrator who won fame writing for "Harper's New Monthly Magazine" under the name "Porte Crayon" back around the time of the Late Unpleasantness. A native of Martinsburg, many of his pieces were accounts of people he met in the Appalachian Mountains. This particular adventure was reprinted in "A History of Randolph County West Virginia From its Earliest Exploration and Settlement to the Present Time," by Dr. A.S. Bosworth (McClain Printing Co., Reprinted 1975). "Porte" and a traveling companion stopped for the night at a two-story, six room log cabin at Dry Fork on the road between Seneca and Beverly. It was the home of a fellow known as "Soldier" White--no one including White was quite certain how he had earned that nickname--and served as a sort of inn for cattle drovers and other travelers. Also residing in the house was White's lovely daughter, Martha. Porte described her as "rising of sixteen," so it is tempting to say she was in the flour of her youth, but we're not talking about that Martha White, okay? Bad puns aside, she apparently was a mountain flower, lovely as rhodedendron blossoms in a shaft of morning sunlight. Porte Crayone described her as "A sparkling brunette, lithe and graceful as a fawn, she is also, from the habit of meeting st rangers, more affable in her manners than most of her mountain cousins." Now there is just something about being in the moutains that sets a man's stomach a-hungrying for trout. Porte and his companion, the Major, asked if the lovely Martha understood cooking trout. "You'd better catch a mess first and try me," she responded, suggesting they might have good luck below the mill. Soon, the two men were happily drowing worms below the aforesaid mill. Martha was right about the fishing being good. Time and again, they cast their lines and pulled in small-or medium-sized fish. They were getting enough for a good fry, but that wasn't good enough. In the clear moutain stream, they saw titanic trout lying among the rocks, laughing at them. The fishermen offered a veritale smorgasboard of baits to these leviathans, only to watch in fristration as their quarry glided out from the boulders, rubbed a nose against the hook and returned to their resting spot with a look that distinctly said, you gotta be kidding. Pretty soon, Porte and the Major saw the lovely Martha wendering her way to the stream, holding a hickory wand with a horse-hair noose on its end. Smiling sweetly, she asked them to refrain from casting for awhile. Catlike, she crept over the rocks to where one of the finned monarchs of the river lay dreaming in the shadowns. She gradually slipped the noose into the water and slowly drew it toward the giant fish. The horse hair touched one of his fins, and he hesitately retreated half his length, apparently undecided about what had disturbed him. Moments later, Martha clarified the situation for him, looping her noose about him and yanking him from the stream. The men applauded, but she motioned them to be quiet. Three more times she noosed large fish that had avoided their hooks. One weighted in at two-and-a-half pounds. Martha attempted to show her guests how to use the horse hair noose, but they couldn't get the, ah, hang of it. To her credit, she not only refrained from chanting "Nanner-nanner boo-boo" at ther hapless attempts, she fried up the trout-brown as fritters-for their supper.