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One of my good friends at Darrington was Fred Griffith, whom I had known when my folks lived at Lake Whatcom. His father and brothers had built our original log house in Geneva, near Bellingham, in 1905. That's where I got to know Fred. He played the fiddle and raised game chickens. In 1917 when I was stationed at the Blue Bird with Ranger Eilert Skaar, Fred was running a little six-stool lunch counter in Dar- rington, called the White Horse Cafe, for the mountain of the same name. The patronage was mainly loggers from Sauk Valley and camps along the Stillaguamish. Fred had an active sideline, however a surreptitious one, of fighting gamecocks. He owned some mighty fine birds, including Cu- ban Reds, Hatch Clarets, Blues, Grays, and English Games. He swore by his Cubans, especially, and claimed there was never a dunghill among them. Fred had collected quite a few good bets as evidence of his judgment of fighting quality. So that no one, particularly the law, would get the idea he was leading a double life, Fred kept his birds walked out on Old Uncle Aaron's ranch near Lyman. Uncle Aaron was an acknowledged dean of the Tarheel cock fighting fraternity. He and Fred did considerable dealing in hot-blooded birds. The two men had a profitable working arrangement involving their game chickens, and in the winter months, when the cocks were in full feather, they often attended secretly held mains together. Of course there were people in the valley who considered cock fighting wicked, and there had been raids by the sheriff at various times, most probably based on information supplied by local informants. I doubt that any of the squealers who stool pigeoned on the mains were Tarheels because the North Carolinians and their kin who made up the bulk of the population, were known to regard cock fighting as they did moonshining - a traditional inherited birthright which could readily be supported by any unbiased interpretations of the Bill of Rights. In a raid on a pit barn on the North Prairie one snowy night, the game cockers were jumped before they had a chance to start the main. The birds, including Fred's Cubans and Uncle Aaron's Clarets, were all in their tight little pens as the boys fled the barn. The men escaped by running down a shallow creek-bed, leaving no tracks for the sheriff to follow. There were no arrests but some brave and willing chickens were confiscated in their pens. From what I heard of it, the sheriff held the birds for about two weeks in the futile hope their owners would show up but none did. He was getting awful tired of feeding and watering his scrappy, crowing prisoners when Fred decided the time was right to approach the law with a proposition. Possibly because no actual crime had been committed when he made the raid, and the legality of the seizure of penned birds might reasonably be challenged, the sheriff appears to have been open to suggestions for a way out. "I could use them chickens for stews in my place in Darrington," says Fred, referring to the White Horse lunch counter. "But, of course, Sheriff, I couldn't afford to pay much for them. I only get two bits for a chicken stew." The sheriff sold the gamecocks to Fred for twenty-five cents apiece and the way Fred related it to me, seemed glad to get rid of them. I met Fred walking home one moonlight night. He had a beautiful Cuban Red snuggled under his coat. Its natural spurs had been filed short to receive the sharp pointed gaffs it would ultimately wear in battle, and the nubbins were carefully wrapped in chamois. We talked about the raid in North Prairie. I can still see Fred's white teeth grinning in the moonlight as he related how he and Uncle Aaron and several of their friends got all their birds back - at very nominal cost. Will D. Jenkins, "The Chicken Fighters," Last Frontier in the North Cascades. Mount Vernon: Skagit County Historical Society, 1984. p. 89-91.
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