An Excerpt from the Script of Red Fox/Second Hangin’

© 1976, Don Baker & Dudley Cocke

Stage: Upstage a 9' x 12' screen for projected images. A straight-back chair, wooden stool, small table or box for water pitcher and three glasses.

Cast: Three storytellers. Each is physically and temperamentally different. All three are natives of the Cumberland Plateau and fluent in the local dialect.

Place and Time: Here and now.

SLIDE: BIG STONE GAP SLICKERS DRESSED IN REGALIA

Gary Dale
You see now about that time, there's an awful lot of rich city folks figured that there was alot of money to be made in these mountains,

Hoyt
and they just figured

D. H. & Gary Dale (AS RICH CITY FOLKS)
they'd be the very ones to make it.

Gary Dale
They knowed for a long time that there was ore and timber and coal back in here, but they hadn't been able to figure out how to get it out.

Hoyt
By 1885, they'd about got all the bugs worked outa that little problem

D. H. & Gary Dale (AS RICH CITY FOLKS)
and was ready to start a-makin’ their money.

Hoyt
Everybody was expectin’ to make them a king's ransom. Hit was just like the California gold rush.

D. H.
Now, they's a little town 20 miles from the Mud Hole called Big Stone Gap

Hoyt
and they's people pourin’ into little bitty Big Stone Gap

D. H. & Hoyt
from all over this world.

D. H. (AS A DUKE)
There's even a duke

Gary Dale (AS A DUCHESS)
and duchess

D. H. & Gary Dale
from London, England.

Hoyt
Them fellers set about to make little bitty Big Stone Gap

TOGETHER
into the Pittsburgh of the South!

D. H.
They's runnin’ full page advertisements in the New York Times

Gary Dale (READING FROM PAPER) proclaiming as how, "This country has everything to offer to make you a fortune. They have timber, coal, and iron ore, all in one spot. The natives have no idea of the money they're sittin’ on, and there are men who know how to talk to these natives"

D. H. & Hoyt
like Devil John Wright

Gary Dale
"and not pay anything for it, either."

D. H.
Well, I'll be!

Gary Dale
Upon my honor!

D. H.
Well now, them companies set in to build big factories to work in

Hoyt
and the owners big palaces to live in

TOGETHER
right there in little bitty Big Stone Gap.

Hoyt
Oh! They did some fancy livin'

D. H.
had more money than they know'd what to do with.

Gary Dale
They'd have these little pink tea parties

D. H.
and send engraved invitations around on little silver trays,

Hoyt
carried from palace to palace . . . (AS HE PORTRAYS BOY CARRYING TRAY) by some little Negro boy that they'd dress up like some Arab sheik

D. H. & Gary Dale
with a turban on his head.

Gary Dale
Now the only problem was, these fellers was scared to death to set foot out of Big Stone Gap.

Hoyt
Half the time they didn't feel safe outside their own front doors.

Gary Dale
Seems like the natives,

D. H.
as they called 'em,

Gary Dale
thought hit was a bushel of fun to come ridin’ into town (HOYT PORTRAYS NATIVE, D. H. PORTRAYS RICH CITY FOLK) down them wood plank sidewalks, reins in their teeth, shootin’ their pistols off in the air an’ a hollerin’ and a-carryin’ on!

SLIDE: TWO MUD HOLE OUTLAWS SHOOTING, BRANDISHING PISTOLS IN THE AIR.

HOUND WITH HEAD THROWN BACK, HOWLING

D. H. (AS RICH CITY FOLK)
This uncivilized behavior didn't set too well with polite society.

Gary Dale
That polite society figured that "the natives" needed to have the fear of God,

D. H.
or rather the fear of law and order,

Gary Dale
struck in to 'em, or their businesses at the Gap would never amount to a hill of beans.

Hoyt (WITH GARY DALE AS GUARD, MARCHING)
So they got em up a little army to protect theirselves, and they called it the Home Guard.

Gary Dale
Hut, two, three, four.

SLIDE: THE HOME GUARD AT ATTENTION

D. H.
There had never been a hangin’ in Wise County. Never! But this here Home Guard decided that now, by George, was as good a time as any to have one.

Gary Dale
It was a better time than most, seeing as they had the most famous bad man of the mountains layin’ in the jail

D. H. & Gary Dale
Ole Bad Talt Hall!

D. H.
What with all them rumors about Devil John Wright and his gang a-bustin’ Talt out of jail, that Guard picked up, transported theirselves the 12 miles to the Wise Courthouse, rigged ‘em up a fort around the courthouse and jail, and took up a 24 hour watch.

Gary Dale
They kept so many chains on poor ole Talt,

D. H.
around his feet,

Hoyt
on his arms an hands,

Gary Dale
around his neck

D. H.
said it would have took a mule to have moved him.

Hoyt (AS TALT)
A big mule at that.

D. H.
An’, of course, they got him tried

Hoyt
an’, of course, they got him convicted

Gary Dale
and that new judge done something that no local judge had ever done before. He sentenced Talt to hang.

D. H.
Right after the sentencing, the Guard put Talt on a train an shipped him half way across the state of Virginia to Lynchburg, for safe keeping ‘til the day come for him to hang.

Gary Dale
Doc, he never took too kindly to all them goings on down at Big Stone Gap. Didn't care for the idea of having no Pittsburgh at his back door.

D. H.
Doc had a lot more sense than them fancy city fellers give him credit for.

Hoyt
He could see this here boom business wouldn't mean nothin’ no more than the end of a natural way of life.

Gary Dale
Doc give up his marshaling job, 'cause he could see that this here law an' order thing, the way these fellers had it figured, weren't going to do no more than exchange one bunch of rogues for another.

D. H.
You'd have the Big Stone Gap bunch

Hoyt
in place of the Mud Hole bunch

D. H.
and on top of that, on top of all that, he thought they's goin’ to destroy the mountains.

Gary Dale
He'd seed it all in visions and

D. H. & Hoyt
warned agin it.

SLIDES: SERIES OF 4 SLIDES SHOWING THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MOUNTAINS