The Hatfields and the McCoys (5 page)

Clearly the Hatfields had the upper hand. Wall allegedly turned to Randolph McCoy, who had remained with his sons, and threatened that they would die if any attempt were made to bushwhack the Hatfields. Knowing that he could do nothing to aid his sons and having no confidence in Wall's assertion that all that the Hatfields wanted was that the civil law should take its course, Randolph mounted his horse and sped away for Pikeville for help. After the Hatfield party had ridden about a mile, Devil Anse told Jim McCoy, the older brother of the prisoners, to go back and, according to his own admission, considered forcing the Pike County officials to return also.

At the mouth of Blackberry Creek the Hatfields found a skiff. Devil Anse, Wall, Johnse, Carpenter, and Murphy forced the McCoys into it and crossed the Tug to the West Virginia shore. They led the McCoys upstream and, with dusk approaching and rain threatening, conducted them to an unused log schoolhouse on Mate Creek. About dark, in the midst of a drenching rain, a messenger arrived with a report that Ellison's condition had worsened. The Hatfields hung a lantern near the schoolhouse door, posted guards inside the building and in nearby areas, and waited for further developments.

Not long afterward, while Wall was on guard, Sarah McCoy and her daughter-in-law Mary Butcher, the wife of Tolbert, appeared. Recognizing the women, Wall stopped them at the steps of the building. Sarah began a tearful plea for permission to see her sons. Both Wall and Devil Anse had mixed feelings about granting her request, but Devil Anse finally gave the word to allow them to enter, and he and Wall permitted them to spend a considerable time with the prisoners. By ten o'clock Sarah, crying, praying, and pleading, was nearing hysteria. Charley Carpenter, one of the guards stationed among the trees surrounding the schoolhouse, commanded her to cease. About that time someone shouted that Randolph McCoy was across the Tug Fork, organizing a rescue party, a rumor without a shred of truth. The Hatfields thereupon ordered the sobbing women to leave. They disappeared into the darkness, to spend the night at the home of Dr. Jim Rutherford.

The next morning, while Mary still slept, Sarah returned to Mate Creek, but Wall warned her to leave and not come back. Periodic news concerning Ellison left no doubt that he lay near death, and several of the numerous Hatfield clan who visited the schoolhouse to see the prisoners freely predicted that the McCoy brothers themselves had but a short time to live. Ellison (“Cotton Top”) Mounts, reputedly the son of Ellison Hatfield, entered the building and made threats against the McCoys, but Wall ordered him out.

On Wednesday, August 9, 1882, Ellison died. Already, Devil Anse, who had visited his dying brother and heard from his own lips an account of the election-day fight which implicated all three of the McCoys, had decided upon a course of action. When news of Ellison's death reached the school-house, a band of Hatfield partisans helped the prisoners to their feet and marched them off to Kentucky. On the way they met Joe Davis, a witness to the death of Ellison, who confirmed that Randolph, Jr., the youngest of the three brothers, had assisted Tolbert and Pharmer in the stabbing of Ellison. At the mouth of Mate Creek they crossed the Tug Fork to the Kentucky side. There, in a small depression, not far from the riverbank, they stopped and bound the McCoys to some pawpaw bushes. Then, within the space of a few seconds, they fired some fifty shots into the brothers.

Jim McCoy, who had already heard of Ellison's death, was sitting on the porch of Asa McCoy's cabin, at the mouth of Sulphur Creek, during the firing. Hearing the fusillade, he moved to the edge of the porch and obtained a glimpse of the flashes of the last shots. Later that night, Jim, suspecting that the Hatfields had carried out a threat to put an end to his brothers, gathered some of the men of the neighborhood, including Anderson Ferrell and Sam Simpkins, and crossed over to the Kentucky side of the Tug River. With the aid of lanterns, they climbed to the scene of the shooting, near a sinkhole where men had earlier thrown the carcasses of sheep-killing dogs. Swinging from the bushes were the bullet-riddled bodies of Tolbert and Pharmer. Tolbert's hand was clasped over his head, as if to ward off the bullets, one of which had passed through his skull. Young Randolph remained in a kneeling position, with the entire top of his head blown off.
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Following the grisly events of August 9, funerals were held on both sides of the Tug Fork. On the afternoon of August 10 friends of the Hatfields carried the coffin of Ellison Hatfield from the home of his brother Elias to a grave prepared nearby. The following day a similar procession left the McCoy house bearing three hastily constructed coffins. It wound its way down the trail a short distance and then ascended a steep path to a burial ground on a cleared mountain shelf, where the bodies of Tolbert, Pharmer, and Randolph, Jr., were lowered into a single grave.
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One significant difference marked the two funerals. That of Ellison Hatfield represented a death avenged. The McCoys went to their graves without retribution by either law or family. Almost immediately after the discovery of their bodies, the coroner had held an inquest, but the jury had announced that they had been killed by persons unknown, a report technically true, since no witnesses testified against the Hatfields and their friends and all evidence of guilt was purely circumstantial.
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Although he knew that the alleged murderers resided in West Virginia and that there was almost no chance of extradition, Judge George N. Brown of the Pike County Circuit Court determined that the form if not the substance of justice must be satisfied. He charged a grand jury, without a Hatfield or a McCoy as a member, with naming the killers of the McCoys. After ten days of deliberation, the grand jury returned indictments against twenty men. They were Devil Anse Hatfield, his brothers Wall and Elias, his sons Cap and Johnse, Charley Carpenter, Joe Murphy, Dock, Plyant, and Sam Mahon, Selkirk McCoy and his sons Albert and L. D., Tom Chambers, Lark and Andrew Varney, Dan and John Whitt, Alex Messer, and Elijah Mounts.

Four days later, on September 18, 1882, Judge Brown issued bench warrants for Jacob Puckett, Matthew Hatfield, the Reverend Anderson Hatfield, Richard Hatfield, James McCoy, Tolbert McCoy, an uncle of the murder victims, James Francisco, Anderson Ferrell, John C. Francis, Samuel Simpkins, Uriah McCoy, George Sprouse, Floyd Hatfield, Harriet Simpkins, Mont Stafford, Scott Allen, and Sarah McCoy as witnesses for the state.
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When the next term of court convened in February 1883, the sheriff reported that he had been unable to arrest any of the twenty men named in the indictments. Beside each name in the court records he wrote, “Not found in this county February 19, 1883,” a phrase that meant nothing more than an admission of the unwillingness of the sheriff and his men to confront the Hatfields, who continued to cross the Tug Fork into Kentucky, but always in heavily armed bands. For over five years the Hatfields and their associates escaped arrest. Their open defiance of civil authority in Kentucky further weakened an enfeebled system of justice in Pike County and contributed to a prolongation of the feud.
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4

THE SMOLDERING FIRES

T
HE HATFIELDS and the McCoys showed little inclination to maintain the tempo of action that characterized the week following the election of 1882, which left Ellison Hatfield and Tolbert, Pharmer, and Randolph McCoy, Jr., dead. Some of them may have occasionally fired upon a member or a cabin of the opposing clan. Stories circulated of men who mysteriously disappeared and of hunters who came upon unidentified bones, which they assumed to be of human origin and about which they kept a discreet silence. Such reports, which may have contained an element of truth, must be accepted, however, with considerable reservation, since the disappearance of a protagonist on either side would not have gone unnoticed or, if need be, unavenged.

Although the feud entered one of its quieter periods, both the Hatfields and the McCoys felt the strain of the constant watchfulness. The Hatfields occasionally rode to Pikeville, but they traveled in companies adequate for their protection and were heavily armed. The McCoys also ventured into West Virginia, and they took the same precautions.

The participation of Devil Anse in the killings appears to have reached a climax with the slaying of the sons of Randolph McCoy. After that incident he became less active in confrontations between the two families, although many regarded him as still the archschemer behind most of the deaths that occurred in later years. The ostensible leader of the Hatfield clan from then on appeared more and more to be Cap, the second son of Devil Anse.

Ironically, as Devil Anse's passion for vengeance appeared to subside, that of Randolph McCoy seemed to increase. Yet even McCoy sought redress by legal means. He pinned his hopes on Perry Cline, a Pikeville attorney and the brother of Martha Cline McCoy, the widow of Randolph's brother Harmon. Described as “a tall, rather stoop-shouldered man, with a pale face and full, long, black beard that extends up to a Blaine nose,” Cline had an intelligent, gentlemanly bearing. He had grown up near the Tug Fork, but had moved to Pikeville, where he won election to public office on several occasions. In 1873 he was a successful candidate for the Kentucky House of Delegates, and he also served in the state's Democratic convention. In later years he supplemented his income by serving as deputy sheriff and jailer of Pike County.
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Through mountain gossip and their own intelligence, the Hatfields learned that Randolph McCoy was planning a trip to Pikeville, evidently to consult with Cline. Randolph combined a morose nature with a tendency to talk about his troubles with all who would listen. The Hatfields therefore gathered rather precise information about his purposes and plans for travel. Despite an apparent preference on the part of Devil Anse to allow feelings to cool, the Hatfields had no intention of permitting Randolph to array the legal authority of Pike County against them. On the day that he was to leave, members of the Hatfield clan took up positions along the trail that he would use. Their plan, however, miscarried. They shot at two men, whom they mistook for Randolph and his son Calvin, from ambush, wounding one and killing the horses of both. Their victims turned out to be nephews of Randolph, John and Henderson Scott, and the McCoys, who left home somewhat later than they had planned, escaped almost certain death.
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Although not connected directly with the feud, an incident in the spring of 1883 reinforced the belief that no Hatfield would willingly submit to confinement in a Kentucky jail. On March 5 a police guard removed Montaville Hatfield, who had been charged with murder, from a Wolfe County jail to the Montgomery County jail in Mount Sterling. Sentiment had run so high in Wolfe County that authorities feared that Montavilles friends might try to rescue him or that his enemies might remove him and kill him. Montaville was the son of Elexious Hatfield, a brother of the Reverend Anderson Hatfield, and a cousin of Devil Anse. At least one newspaper reporter, therefore, could not resist the urge to link him with the activities of the West Virginia clan and even with the murder of the three McCoys in 1882.

One morning the wife of the jailer at Mount Sterling observed a rope made of blankets suspended from an upper-story window of the jail, a clear indication of a jailbreak. An investigation disclosed that three of the prisoners, among them Montaville Hatfield, had escaped by tearing loose a cell door, breaking away a stone supporting the grating over the window, and making the rope of blankets. One newspaper speculated that the escapees had planned their strategy well in advance and had obtained assistance from someone on the outside. Another prisoner stated that the trio had told him of their plans and that they were headed for West Virginia to join their friends and to find safety from Kentucky authorities.
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Meanwhile, Johnse, the casanova of the Hatfields, began to have his own problems. Drawn to the McCoys as if by some fatal attraction, he had married Nancy, a cousin of Rose Anna, but neither the Hatfields nor the McCoys looked upon this alliance between their families with approval. Although Johnse had a reputation as a domineering man, Nancy soon established her authority over their household, and it became common knowledge that Johnse was henpecked. The McCoys may have gloated over a kind of victory over the Hatfields, but Devil Anse looked upon Johnse's meekness with disgust.

The Hatfields might have endured Nancy's domination of Johnse, but they could not tolerate her disloyalty to the clan. Not long after the marriage of Johnse and Nancy, they became convinced that someone was providing detailed information of their plans and actions to the McCoys. Nancy, they reasoned, must be the link with the enemy. From Nancy, the trail led to the residence of Bill Daniels, on the West Virginia side of the Tug Fork. Daniels was a peaceable man, who gave no offense to his neighbors, but his wife, Mary, was a sister of Nancy and in every way her equal in her ability to control her husband.

Nancy and Mary thrived on gossip, and the events of the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys fascinated them. They visited each other frequently and exchanged information freely. In time the Hatfields assured themselves that Nancy and Mary were supplying information to the McCoys. Knowing that neither of their husbands was master in his own house, they decided to take matters into their own hands.

One night Cap, acting for the family, and Tom Wallace burst into the Daniels cabin and held the family at gunpoint. One of them backed Daniels and his daughter against the wall and held them, while the other lashed Mary Daniels with a cow's tail. The intruders then changed places, and one held Mary Daniels and her husband at bay, while the other whipped their daughter, also much given to gossip, with the cow's tail. The two men had nothing against Daniels, but when they left they warned the two women to stay at home and mind their own affairs.