Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1909-02-20
CHAPTER
THE AFFAIR AT TREssLER's

When the great architect had fin
| ished building the earth, he dumped
the chips and debris into the center OF
Pennsylvania, and men called the heaI
the Seven Mountains.
They are not mountains at all, but
long ridges like giant burrows plowed
deep into the very sandstone ana left
ragged and chaotic. Straight on they
go for leagues, making a right line OF
the horizon, the second and third
ridges following as IL drawn with a
pantograph Here and there Is wild
slash across the furrow, a rip into the
very foundations of the range, and
through the rock-snarl at the bottom
worms a scared little stream. 1t Is q
Rap-sO they call it--and IL one can
wriggle through the Jagged litter and
the rhododendron, spiked like wire
tangle, II will lead him into the next
valley, which IL often a narrow gut full
Of torn sandstone and matted scrub,
where only the rattlesnake may freely
go. Often there Is bend in the fur
rows, mad swirl as IL the primal
dough had been stirred with giant
mixer. Then the burrows run straight
again.
Thus the Seven Mountains, a ragged
hole In the heart of the east, where
the wild turkey still wakes the morn
ing, where the bear and the deer still
flourish, and where the eagle and the
buzzard wing undisturbed. The ridge
sides, rising sheer. and as steep as rock
debris will lie, are like the tailings OF
mighty stone quarries. A few dead
scrags OF trees break the sky line; here
and there In the rock chaos are scrub
oak thickets blasted by fire, and In the
angle of the v always n little brook
filtering through the rhododendron tan
gle. Then comes ridges and mighty
breaks and Jagged cliffs and right
the ruthless tracks OF lumbermen-val-
leys choked up with hemlock tops
snarled into the rhododendron, RAM
shackle sawmills long since deserted,
winding "dinky" roads rusted out long
ago and half buried I'm the fire growth,
and the effect OF 1t all Is indescribably
lonely and wild.
But the valleys are not all of them
V-shaped and Uttered. There are places
where the riders leap far asunder leav-
ing a ribbon of bottom land, the seat
of prosperous farms. Sometimes there
are small, shut-in valleys, like pockets
in the range, the homes of secluded
cozy bunch of farms
strung on a winding road and bounded
sharply by two gaps and the stone line
at the foot of the ridges. And Of these
might be counted the alluvial banks
OF Heller's Run, better known on the
local maps as He'll Bottom.
So much for geography.
II was December the fifth, Dan
Tressers butchering day, as anyone in
the valley could have told as early as
the preceding June. The sign was
right and the moon was "in the up"
Squire Hartswick. lord of the Bottom,
had butchered on Thanksgiving day;
Jake Kisterbock had duly followed, and
now by every valley right II was Dan
Tressler's day. Things are not done
by chance among the thrifty Dutch"
Baers almanac and the tradition OF the
fathers rule central Pennsylvania with
iespotic sway.
There was no lack of help. A meet
in" on Sunday at the Bottom church
brings out a goodly number. II the
weather be fine; a funeral gathers the
Did people; "schnittin'" In the fall, |
he young; but a "butcherin' calls
'or everybody not "bed-fast," be the |
weather what II may. Not that all the
phn hitapfa hif pr TniQR nre called