Days of Darkness (30 page)

Coldiron's version follows closely the account written by the Reverend Dickey: “The following morning James Howard, County Assessor, met George Baker on the road at Laurel Creek at Coldiron's store and killed him on sight. Baker lived about 24 hours. The doctors took his bowel out and sewn up the torn parts and put them back in but it was of no avail.” No mention was made of any wound other than the shot in the abdomen.

A question here: If Baldy George Baker had no part in the murder of the Howards and thus had no reason to feel guilty or apprehensive when he saw Jim Howard on the road, why did he grab his rifle and slide from his horse when he came upon Howard? Did he have cause to think Jim had incited the killers by firing at Bad Tom the day before? Or was there something to the legend that, on the day the Howards were killed, Baldy said to his son Wiley, “That's going to be a bad one over on Crane Creek, and I'd advise you to stay out of it.” If he did say that, was he referring to the conflict at the rafting site or the plan to ambush the Howards? If he was referring to the ambush, then he was, in effect, an accomplice to the murders and could have prevented them, and Jim would have been justified in assuming that Baldy had violated their agreement and might well be planning to kill him, too. After all Baldy was riding from the same region on Crane Creek where Jim had been shot at only minutes before.

And it must be emphasized that Coldiron did not mention that Jim fired more than one shot, though he apparently discussed details of the shooting and its aftermath. He would undoubtedly have mentioned such a bit of savagery had it occurred. So would the Reverend Dickey, who mentioned only the one wound. Where the legend of the twenty-five shots came from is anyone's guess, though it is worth noting that Bad Tom Baker, in a letter to Governor Bradley months later, accused Jim of shooting Baldy twenty-five times.

At any rate, Jim then abandoned plans for reaching home that day and rode up Collins Fork and down Ells Branch, past the spot where men were digging graves for Wilson and Burch, and surrendered to Deputy Sheriff Will White at his home near Burning Springs. White was a personal and political friend. They had supper and talked, and Jim spent the night with Will and his wife Kate. The next morning the two of them rode into Manchester, and White turned Jim over to Judge Brown, who released him on his own recognizance.

Jim promised to return when trial was set but asked the judge to put a guard around his father's house. Brown deputized forty men under Riley Sparks and sent them to the head of Crane Creek to protect the Howard home. (Dickey wrote that Bal Howard swore out warrants for John and Tom Baker and Charles Outen [Wooten] and asked for a guard to protect his life; it is surprising that Bal was physically able to do this at the time.) The wisdom of the guard soon became apparent, as gunmen began shooting into the Howard home from the surrounding woods. Bal remained at home until he was able to travel. Then Jim, accompanied by guards, took him to the Harlan County home of one of Bal's cousins, probably Berry Howard. (Bal's father, and most of the Howards, had come from Harlan.) Bal stayed there, recuperating, until time for the June term of court in Manchester.

Meanwhile, tension in Manchester made it dangerous to go out on the streets. The Garrards were demanding the immediate trial of Jim Howard for the murder of Baldy George; the Whites and Howards were demanding the trial of Tom Baker and his accomplices for the murder of the Howards. “Several times I was ambushed on my way between Manchester and father's,” Jim Howard told newsmen later. “Every time I made the trip bullets poured at me from the woods. Only once did I get sight of my assailants, and that was when John Baker fired at me from behind a log. I fell across the neck of my horse and the bullet burned a stripe across my back. As father hovered between life and death, the house was fairly besieged.”

That, at least, is the version carried in the New York papers. The language seems rather stilted for Jim Howard, though he was a liter
ate man. Like many news accounts of the time, it should be regarded with caution.

At any rate, the Howards were protected by a forty-man guard until Bal could make the trip to Harlan. Incidentally, the fact that Jim Howard felt it necessary to ask for a guard to protect his father indicates that he didn't regard himself as the greatest gunman in the hills. It also indicates that the Bakers were a more numerous clan than the Howards. After all, Baldy George had fifteen sons and Bad Tom had thirteen. Their families alone would have constituted a formidable force, though not all of the Bakers—or all of the Howards—were eager to take part in the war.

Trouble on the Burying Ground

At noon Judge Cook gaveled a recess, and Bad Tom, along with James, Wiley, and others who had ridden into town with him, filed out of the courtroom. Outside, Tom stood to one side, talking to General Garrard, while the others waited.

“Well,” said Garrard, “I guess I'd better be getting back to the house.”

Tom nodded. “Again, I've got to thank you,” he said.

“Not at all,” said the general. “I'd stay, but I think they have things pretty well in hand. This is just going to be drawn out. I doubt you will get through before tomorrow sometime, maybe late. But you'll get your change of venue. Don't worry about it. And don't let your boys get out of hand and start trouble. The sooner they get on back to Crane Creek, the better, I'd say.”

“Yeah,” said Tom, nodding. “Well, then, I'll see you tomorrow.” The two men shook hands, and T.T. went out to where two of his men were standing by his buggy. Tom turned to the men bunched around the courthouse steps.

“Let's go over and get some dinner,” he said, and a group of them crossed the street to the Potter House. Tom didn't feel much like eating. Leaving the table, he went out and sat for a while on the long bench on the porch, smoking. The events of the morning had left him feeling down. It seemed to him that he had spent half his time lately in courtrooms listening to some bastard talk. Too damn much talk. He wished he could just go home and sit a while and do nothing, not hear anybody.

And now here he sat, probably going to have to go down to London and sit in that damn jail, face another trial, maybe time in prison. He didn't know that he could stand much time in prison, but it wouldn't be easy finding somebody to believe he didn't kill that sonofabitch Will White. And Jim and Wiley; he'd gotten them into a fix,
all right. Maybe he'd made a mistake going after the Howards, but what else could he have done, sit there and wait for them?

And Pap. He'd probably still be alive instead of lying out there on Laurel Gap. Oughtn't have happened. Remembering the day Pap was buried, he wished now that he and the others had gone. Em had said they ought to, but he'd been all for rooting out the Howards and hadn't gone to the burying. Well, they could hold a real service later, and they'd all go. If he was free to go. He felt bad now, thinking about the burying. But then he straightened up, stood for a minute looking around, and walked back across the street to the courthouse.

He was right about the burial services for his father. He had handled it wrong. The whole thing had been bad—left a lot of hate in the air without doing any good.

A brief shower had added a slight chill to the morning of April 20, 1898, and low, wispy clouds hung over the hills above Laurel Gap as the Reverend Dickey began services for Baldy George Baker in the cemetery between Crane and Laurel Creeks. It was a strange and sad ceremony. Though Baldy George was a well known and well liked man, only twenty people attended his burial. This may have been due in part to mountain custom. Since there was no means of embalming, the bodies always had to be buried soon after death, giving distant relatives little time to travel, so funeral services were often delayed until the crops were laid by and it was convenient for relatives and friends to attend. For these reasons, a funeral, or memorial, service was of more importance than a burial.

In the case of Baldy George's burial, the sparse attendance may also have been due to fears of violence. The Howards were burying Wilson and Burch Stores the same day, and, in the prevailing atmosphere of bitterness and hatred, a clash between the families was not out of the question. Nevertheless, as Dickey noted, it was sad that none of Baldy's fifteen sons was present.

In all probability, their absence had nothing to do with the date or with the possible danger. The Reverend Dickey noted in his diary that while they were lowering Baldy George's body into the ground, the solemnity of the occasion was broken by the sound of gunfire from the adjacent hollow. Dickey thought it came from the home of Bal Howard, where men had been shooting into the yard. More likely it came from the Laurel Creek cemetery, where the Howards were attempting to bury Wilson and Burch. No sooner had the mourners arrived than a blast of gunfire erupted from the woods nearby, and bullets whizzed past the funeral party. The Howards and their friends had not expected
violence on such an occasion and were not armed. But with bullets ripping the damp air around them, there was nothing to do but take the coffin and retreat. They finally were obliged to settle on Maxline Baker cemetery, several miles away, near Oneida. Jim Howard stood with his mother, trembling with rage even as tears wet his cheeks. Then they turned and went to his home in Manchester rather than chance an encounter on Crane Creek. The two graves at Laurel Creek remained empty for years.

As the Howards assumed, it seems likely that the gunfire came from the Baker men, who preferred to shoot at Howards rather than attend the funeral of their father. This would indicate a fierceness of the part of the Bakers, just as the fact that the Howards were not armed and were forced to flee from the cemetery would indicate that Jim Howard was less concerned than the Bakers with vengeance.

But now the die was cast. There would be no more truces, for no one on either side showed any inclination toward peace. Relations were not improved when, the day after the burials, Will White, walking down the hallway of the courthouse, saw Baldy George's sign on the county attorney's office and said to the man with him, “Well, I guess old Baldy George is roasting in hell by now.” Unfortunately, his remark was overheard by Allen Baker, who was sitting in Baldy's old office going through some papers, and he reported it to other members of his family, Bad Tom among them.

On April 28, charges against Tom, John Baker, and Charlie Wooten for arson were dismissed in local court for lack of evidence. This was not as unexpected or as surprising as it may seem now. There was a great reluctance on the part of early juries to convict on circumstantial evidence. It was customary for a defendant to produce witnesses who would swear that he was miles away from the scene of the crime, and the jurymen, many of whom were probably related in some way to the witnesses, were not inclined to question their honesty.

A story persists, but seems unlikely, that on June 1, Tom and Dee Baker and Jesse Barrett were sitting in the home of Wiley and Lushaba Baker, drinking. They were still in a bitter mood; another of their number had been killed, Baldy George's grave was still raw, and the Howards were walking around armed. Tom was not made happier by the fact that Shabie, his brother's wife, was a Howard. She was a constant reminder of the hated enemy, and sometime during the afternoon Tom quietly slipped poison, probably cyanide, into her drink. Fortunately, at that time Jesse Barrett said he wanted some water to drink with the fiery moonshine, and started to the kitchen.

“I'll get it for you,” said Shabie, and she followed Jesse into the
kitchen. As she poured him a glass of water, he said in a low voice, “I wouldn't drink that,” then turned and went back to the front room. Shabie threw her drink out the back door, filled her glass with some honest whisky from a crock sitting under the table, and went back to join the others. Tom probably spent the afternoon wondering why she didn't fall over dead.

If the story is true, it may have marked a turning point in the career of Jesse Barrett, one of the more curious characters in the Clay War, and one who later appeared to regret his role in the violence. A short man of medium build, Barrett wore a dirty gray hat turned up all around, sported a bushy mustache, and squinted through wire-rimmed spectacles from which he got his nickname of “Spec.” They didn't seem to bother his aim much.

Three days later, Tom was more successful. Will White was out in the county trying to collect delinquent taxes when he ran into Tom and Dee Baker and James Helton near the mouth of Jim's Branch. Accounts of what happened differ but there is no dispute about the outcome. They killed Will, Tom supposedly firing the fatal shot. Everyone knew that he hated Will, who had tried to arrest him for burning George Hall's home and Frank Campbell's store and had sheltered Jim Howard after Jim killed Baldy George. Will had also been overheard speaking disparagingly of Baldy George in the courthouse after the Baker patriarch was killed. Tom later claimed that Will had tried to draw on him and that he was forced to kill him. A fair fight.

But the shooting took place in front of the home of George and Lucretia Goforth. The Goforths were another peaceful, church-going, respected family who wanted nothing to do with the feuds. The situation was difficult for them, however, for their daughter, Lizzie, had married Beverly Baker, a son of Wiley and Shabie Baker and thus a nephew of Bad Tom. The Goforths were sitting on their porch when they heard a sudden burst of gunfire, looked down toward the road, and saw a horse rear and its rider fall as several men rode away.

They hurried to the road, found Will White mortally wounded, and carried him to their home, where he died in the family rocking chair. Before he died, he grabbed Mrs. Goforth's hand, and said, “Promise me, Lucy, that you will testify in court that Tom and Dee Baker and Jim Helton killed me.” “I promise, Will,” she said, knowing the danger her promise held.

Now the Whites as well as the Howards were out for revenge. Will White had not been a popular man. He was known as a good businessman with a fine farm and a good family. He was also a man of violent temper and a hard drinker. But he was a White, feared as
well as respected. His kinsmen were not likely to take his murder lightly.