Chapter 6

And now here he sat this autumn day in 1937, alert and happy for all his ninety-six years. Bless you, he even talked of fighting!

"If anyone jumped on these United States without a good cause," he declared vehemently, "I'd fight for my country--" Uncle Dyke didn't quibble his words. "That is to say if Uncle Sam would take me. Me and my sword!" Again he faltered, adding reflectively, "But after all the Bible is the better weapon. With it I can conquer all things."

Slowly he arose from his chair and Aunt Sallie and I did likewise.

"Come," he invited, "I want you to see for yourself where I've baptized many a one that has come to me." He pointed to a pool in the creek beyond the house where he had made a small dam. As we stood together it was on the tip of my tongue to ask how many couples he had baptized, how many he had married. Abruptly with the uncanny sense of the mountaineer he lifted the questions out of my mind, though it could have been because so many others had asked the same things. "I've never kept count of the wedding ceremonies I have performed, nor of the baptisms," he said thoughtfully. "I have always felt that if it was the Lord's work I was doing, He would keep the count."

You didn't have to ask Uncle Dyke Garrett either which were the happiest days of his long life. You'd know from the look he bestowed upon his frail mate that his supreme happy hour was when he married Miss Sallie Smith. "My wedding day," he was saying as if the question had been asked, "that was the happiest day of my whole life. And next to that comes the day when the Lord chose me to administer baptism to Captain Anderson and his six boys. Such hours as these are a taste of heaven upon earth." His voice was hushed with solemnity. His brimming eyes were lifted to the hills. "Though it was a day of sorrow I am grateful that it also fell to my lot to preach the funeral of my lifelong friend Captain Anderson. Most of all though, my heart rejoiced because Captain Anderson had become like a little child, meek and penitent, worthy to enter the fold."

Uncle Dyke sat silent a long time. His wrinkled hands cupped bony knees. "It brought peace to Levicy's troubled heart." His eyes grew misty with unshed tears. "I see her now as she lay so peaceful in her shroud and on her bosom the gold breast pin she prized so much that Captain Anderson brought her the time he was stormbound, when he met that scalawag brother of Jesse James. She loved posies did Levicy and every springtime we take some to her grave, me and Miss Sallie."

At this, Miss Sallie, slipping her small hand through the bend of his arm, led the way down the flower-bordered path. "Posies are the brightness of a body's days," she said softly. "You can't just set them out and they'll bloom big. You have to work with them. Posies and human creatures are a heap alike. Sometimes they have to be pampered. Like Dyke here," she smiled up at her aged mate. "I had to understand his ways, else I'd never have tamed him," she persisted. "He's the last surviving one of his company--the Logan Wildcats." Aunt Sallie's blue eyes lighted with pride. "I like to think of him outlasting me too."

I'd remember them always as they stood there in the sunset with the golden glow and scarlet sage and the snow-white pretty-by-night all about them, the two smiling contentedly as I waved them good-by far down at the bend of the road.

It was the last time I ever saw Uncle Dyke alive. The next May--1938--he died. I was gratified that it fell to my lot to attend his funeral. And what a worthy eulogy the Reverend John McNeely, whom Uncle Dyke always referred to as "my son in the Gospel," preached, taking for his text "My servant, Moses, is dead," a text that the two had agreed upon long before the Good Shepherd of the Hills passed away.

That day when the sermon was ended the great throng that filled the valley and the hillsides, gathering about the baptismal pool he himself had fashioned, sang Uncle Dyke's favorite hymn. Their voices blending like the notes of a giant organ swelled and filled the deep valley:

Like a star in the morning in its beauty, Like the sun is the Bible to my soul, Shining clear on the way of life and beauty, As I hasten on my journey to the goal.

'Tis a lamp in the wilderness of sorrow, 'Tis a light on the weary pilgrim's way, It will guide to the bright eternal morrow, Shining more and more unto the Perfect Day.

'Tis the voice of a friend forever near me, In the toil and the battle here below, In the gloom of the valley, it shall cheer me, Till the glory of the kingdom I shall know.

I shall stand in its glory and its beauty, Till the earth and the heavens pass away, Ever telling the wondrous, blessed story Of the loving Lamb, the only living way.

Uncle Dyke chose also his own grave site in the family burying ground overlooking the house where he'd lived seventy-one years. Often he had visited the spot and picked out the place beside him where Miss Sallie should be laid to rest. His life had ended almost where it began. The house in which he was born stands only a few miles from that in which he died.

"He built this house his own self," Aunt Sallie quietly reiterated that evening as some of us lingered to comfort her. "We came here to Big Creek soon as we married. We've lived here seventy-one year." Through brimming eyes she gazed toward the new-made grave. "We traveled a long way together, me and Dyke--" a sob shook the frail little body--"and now, I'm goin' to be mighty lonesome."

Big Meeting is still carried on just as Uncle Dyke wished it.

In September, 1940, I went again to mingle with the hundreds who show their reverence for the Good Shepherd of the Hills by keeping fresh in memory his teaching through their prayers and hymns at the Big Meeting each autumn. And here again a worthy follower of Uncle Dyke Garrett eulogized his deeds and mourned his loss. And close by, for all her ninety-two years, his beloved Miss Sallie, with a trembling hand on the arm of a kinsman, listened intently while those who knew and loved him extolled her lost mate.

And now Miss Sallie is gone too. She died on July 28, 1941, at the age of ninety-three and loving hands place mountain flowers on her grave and that of Levicy Hatfield far across the mountain.

TAKING SIDES

Some took sides in the feuds that have been carried on throughout the Blue Ridge Country and thereby got themselves enthralled, while others, more tactful, managed to keep aloof and remain friends with the belligerents.

There's Uncle Chunk Craft on Millstone Creek in Letcher County. Enoch is his real name. There's nothing he likes better than to tell of the days when he was one of Morgan's raiders. Then, when he was only twenty-two, that was in 1864, Uncle Chunk slept in a cornfield near Greenville, Tennessee, the very night General John Hunt Morgan, who had taken shelter in a house a couple of miles away, was betrayed by the woman of the house and shot to death by Unionists.

"We were tuckered out," he said, "had tramped through rain and mud and finally rolled in our blankets, if we were lucky enough to have one, and fell asleep wherever it was. I burrowed in with a comrade. But we didn't get much rest. For, first thing you know, seemed I'd just dozed off, someone come shoutin' through the cornfield that the General had been killed. We shouldered our muskets and stumbled off through the field, grumbling and growling that we'd 'tend to the ones that had betrayed him. But even if the woman had been found I reckon we'd a-shunned killin' her. There's a heap that goes on in war that a man don't like to think on."

Uncle Chunk was proud to own, however, that he saw hard fighting through Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky and was glad enough when the war was ended. He came back, married Polly Ann Caudill, and settled down in Letcher. It wasn't long until another war started. This time between his neighbors. But with all the carryings-on between John Wright and Clabe Jones in the adjoining counties of Floyd and Knott, Enoch Craft managed to stay friends with both sides. Whichever side happened to round in at his home, hungry and footsore from scouting in the woods for the other faction, found a welcome at Uncle Chunk's and plenty to eat. "Fill up the kittle, Polly Ann," he'd call to his wife, as he went on digging potatoes. "Here comes some of John Wright's crew." Or, "Put on the beans, I see Clabe Jones's men comin'!"

And fill up the kettle Polly Ann did.

After the belligerents had eaten their fill, Uncle Chunk would try to reason with them to let the troubles drop. "A man thinks better on a full gut than a empty one," he argued. And at last, through his help, the Clabe Jones-John Wright feud ended.

* * * * *

In Bloody Breathitt in 1886, Willie Sewell was shot from ambush while making molasses on Frozen Creek. That started feeling, for Willie had lots of kinfolks. He himself was not without sin, for he had killed Jerry South. The Souths were related to the Cockrells. But when Willie Sewell, who was a half-brother of Jim and Elbert Hargis, was shot the trouble, which became the Hargis-Cockrell feud, really began.

A quarter of a century after one of the most famous of Kentucky mountain trials--when Curt Jett was tried for the assassination of James B. Marcum and James Cockrell--the trouble was revived with the killing of Clay Watkins by Chester Fugate. This uprising, it was said, started when Sewell Fugate was defeated by Clay Watkins for the office of chairman of the county Board of Education. Chester quarreled with Clay over a petty debt. Three years before that time Amos, cousin of Chester, had shot and killed Deputy Sheriff Green Watkins, brother of Clay. When an enraged posse found Amos they filled him with bullets. Sixty years before, Hen Kilburn, grandfather of Chester Fugate, was taken from the county jail in Jackson and lynched for killing a man. It was the first time such a lynching had occurred at the county seat.

On Christmas morning in 1929, Chester Fugate was taken from the same jail and shot to death, but not in the courthouse yard. The posse took him out to a farm some miles away. That was the second lynching in Bloody Breathitt. There was a heavy snow on the ground, making a soft carpet for the swiftly moving feet of the mob numbering more than a score, as they hurried their victim away. Before entering Fugate's cell, they had bound the jailer, S. L. Combs, to make sure of no interference from that source.

Some miles from the county seat they stopped in a thicket on a farm.

That morning farmer Jones got up before daylight and with lantern on arm went out to milk the cows and feed the stock. He halted suddenly in the unbeaten snow for from a nearby thicket came a strange sound. At first the farmer thought it the moaning of a trapped animal. Holding the lantern overhead he stumbled on a few yards to find Chester Fugate in a pool of blood that stained the snow all about the crumpled figure. Bleeding profusely from thirteen gunshot wounds, Chester survived long enough to give the names of at least six of his assailants.

It was another outbreak in the Hargis-Cockrell feud.

Five of the men in the mob surrendered. They were bound over and released on bail. All were kin of Clay Watkins: Samuel J. was his brother, L. K. Rice his son-in-law, Allie Watkins his son, and Earl and Bent Howard were his nephews. The men signed their own bonds together with Jack Howard, uncle of Bent and Earl. The name of Elbert Hargis was also affixed to the bonds. The sixth man named by Chester Fugate before he died was Lee Watkins, a cousin of Clay, who said he would surrender.

The trouble went back more than a quarter of a century when Curtis Jett--his friends called him Curt--and others assassinated James B. Marcum and James Cockrell. Curt was a nephew of county Judge James Hargis, who was said by some to be the master mind behind the murders.

The state militia was called out to preserve order during the trial.

Things had been turbulent in Breathitt before. Back in 1878 Judge William Randall fled the bench after the slaying of county Judge John Burnett and his wife. However, the commencement of the Hargis-Cockrell feud in 1899 was over a contested election of county officers. The Fusionists or Republicans declared their men the winners, while the Democrats were equally certain of triumph. James Hargis was the Democrats' candidate for county judge, Ed Callahan for sheriff.

The leading law firm in all of eastern Kentucky at the time was that of James B. Marcum and O. H. Pollard, but when the election contest arose, the men dissolved partnership. Marcum represented the Republican contestants, his former partner looked to the affairs of the Democrats. Until this time Marcum had been a close personal friend as well as legal adviser to James Hargis.

Depositions for the contestants were being taken in Marcum's office when the two lawyers almost came to blows over Pollard's cross-examination of a witness, with Hargis and Callahan sitting close by. Harsh words were uttered and pistols drawn, and Hargis, Callahan, and Pollard were ordered from Marcum's office. When warrants were issued for them and Marcum also by police Judge T. P. Cardwell, Marcum appeared in court and paid a fine of twenty dollars. But Jim Hargis refused to be tried by Cardwell--the two men had been bad friends for some time. Then, instead of attempting alone the arrest of Hargis, the town marshal of Jackson, Tom Cockrell, called on his brother Jim to lend a hand.

It is said that when Tom went to arrest Hargis the latter refused to surrender, drawing his gun. But Tom covered Jim Hargis first. Whereupon Hargis's friend, Ed Callahan, who was close, covered Tom Cockrell and in the bat of an eye Jim Cockrell, his brother, covered Callahan. Seeing that the Cockrells had the best of them, both Jim Hargis and Ed Callahan surrendered. That incident passed without bloodshed and Marcum himself sent word to police Judge Cardwell that he didn't want to prosecute Hargis and asked that the case be dismissed, as it was.

That same year there was a school election.

"Marcum flew in a rage," said Hargis, "when I accused him of trying to vote a minor and he pulled his pistol on me but did not shoot."

Though that difference was also patched up, the families began taking sides in the many quarrels that followed. Accusations were made first by one side, then the other. Marcum accused Callahan of killing his uncle, and Callahan in turn charged that his father had been slain by Marcum's uncle.

In July, 1902, the flames of the feud were fanned to white heat.

Tom Cockrell, a minor, fought a pistol duel with Ben Hargis, Jim's brother, in a blind tiger, leaving Ben dead upon the floor. Tom was defended by his kinsman, J. B. Marcum, without fee. Tom's guardian, Dr. B. D. Cox, one of the leading physicians in Jackson, was married to a Cardwell whose family belonged to the Cockrell clan.

It was not long after Ben Hargis's death that his brother John, "Tige," was slain by Jerry Cardwell. Jerry claimed that it was in the exercise of his duty as train detective.

"Tige was disorderly," Jerry said, "when I tried to arrest him."

Anyway pistols were fired; Jerry was only wounded but Tige was killed. His death was followed shortly by that of Jim Hargis's half-brother. The shot came from ambush one night while he was making sorghum at his home, and no one knew who fired it.

On another night not long thereafter, Dr. Cox, who was guardian of the minor Tom Cockrell and the other Cockrell children, was hurrying along the streets of Jackson to the bedside of a patient.

When the doctor reached the corner across from the courthouse and in almost direct line with Judge Hargis's stable, he dropped with a bullet through the heart. Another shot was fired at close range and lodged in the doctor's body.

The evidence disclosed that at the time of the shooting Judge Hargis and Ed Callahan were standing together in the rear of Hargis's stable from which direction the shots came. The Cockrells stated that Dr. Cox had been slain because of his family relationship with them and because of his participation in the defense of young Tom Cockrell, his ward.

The story of Dr. Cox's death was still on many lips when Curt Jett, who was Sheriff Ed Callahan's deputy, met Jim Cockrell in the dining room of the Arlington Hotel where they engaged in a quarrel and exchange of bullets. Neither was injured, but bad feeling continued between them.

Sometime during the morning of July 28, 1902, Curt and a couple of friends concealed themselves in the courthouse. At noon that day, in broad daylight, Jim Cockrell was shot dead on the street from a second-story window of the building. Across the way, from a second-story window of Hargis's store, Judge Jim Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan saw the shooting.

Jim Cockrell had assisted his brother, the town marshal, in arresting Jim Hargis and was the recognized leader of the Cockrell faction. He had spared no effort in obtaining evidence in his brother's behalf when young Tom was tried for killing Ben Hargis in the blind tiger.

Under cover of darkness Curt Jett and his companions were spirited away from the courthouse on horseback and no arrests were made.

In the meantime the trial of young Tom Cockrell for killing Ben Hargis was moved to Campton, but Judge Jim Hargis and his brother, Senator Alex Hargis, declared that they'd never reach Campton alive if they should go there to prosecute young Tom. So the case was dismissed. "Our enemies would kill us somewhere along the mountain road," the Hargises declared.

Jim Hargis loved his wife and children. He idolized his son Beach, who spent his days hanging around his father's store and squandering money that the doting parent supplied.

Up to November 9, 1902, according to information supplied by J. B. Marcum, there had been thirty persons killed in Breathitt County as a result of the feeling between the factions and to quote Marcum's own words, "the Lord only knows how many wounded."

After Marcum's assassination on May 4, 1903, his widow wrote the _Lexington Herald_ that there had been thirty-eight homicides in Breathitt County during the time James Hargis presided as county judge. J. B. Marcum and his wife both had known for a long time that he was a marked man. Indeed, ever since he had represented the Fusionists in contesting the election of Jim Hargis as county judge, it was an open secret that Marcum would meet his doom sooner or later. Added to this was the animosity aroused on the Hargis side by Marcum's defense of young Tom Cockrell for killing Jim Hargis's brother Ben.

Marcum made an affidavit which he filed in the Breathitt Circuit Court declaring that he was marked for death. Others substantiated his statement by swearing to various plots that had been concocted to assassinate him. As a matter of fact while the feeling was raging high in the contest case he was a prisoner in his own home for seventy-two days, afraid to step out on his own porch. To protect himself against bullets he had a barricade built joining the rear of his house with a small yard. Whenever he left his home, which was seldom, he was accompanied by his wife and he carried one of his small children.

Once he went to Washington and stayed a month. It was during that time that his friend Dr. Cox was assassinated. A client of Marcum's by the name of Mose Feltner came to his home to acquaint the lawyer with a plot against his life. Mose told how he had been given thirty-five dollars to commit the deed and a shotgun for the purpose. He also took Marcum to a woods and showed where four Winchester rifles had been concealed by him and his three companions. The guns, Mose said, were kept there during the day but were carried at night so that if he or his companions met Marcum they were prepared to kill him. The plot, so Mose declared, was to entice Marcum to his office on some pretext or other. Mose was to waylay him and pull the trigger. Mose went further. He told Marcum that the county officials had promised him immunity from punishment if he would carry out the plot and kill Marcum. When at last the election contest furore had quieted down Marcum concluded it was safe to venture forth to his law office and resume his practice.

On the morning of May 4th he had gone to the courthouse to file some papers in the case. He lingered for a while in the corridor to greet this one and that, then walked slowly through the corridor toward the front door. From where he stood talking with a friend, Benjamin Ewen, Marcum could see across the street Judge James Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan sitting in rocking chairs in front of Hargis's store. When the shots were fired that killed Marcum neither Hargis nor Callahan stirred. Their view was uninterrupted when the lifeless body plunged forward. They remained seated in their rocking chairs, looking neither to right nor to left. They made no effort to find out who did the shooting.

"My God! they have killed me!" cried Marcum as bullets struck through the spine and skull and he lunged forward dead.

Curt Jett, tall and angular with red hair and deep-set blue eyes, a man of many escapades, was convicted of the murder and sent to the penitentiary for life. The evidence of Captain B. J. Ewen, with whom Marcum was talking when shot, disclosed that Tom White, one of the conspirators, walked past Marcum glaring at him to attract his attention. As he did so Curt in the rear of the hallway of the courthouse fired the shots. Curt Jett's mother was a sister to Judge Hargis, and Curt, though only twenty-four at the time, was a deputy under Ed Callahan.

Nine years later on the morning of May 4, 1912, Ed Callahan, while sitting in his store at Crockettsville, a village some twenty-five miles from Jackson, the county seat, was killed. Callahan too was a marked man and knew it. Connecting his house and the store he had built a stockade to insure his safety as he passed from one to the other. There was a telephone on the wall near the back window of the store and he had just hung up the receiver after talking to a neighbor when two bullets in quick succession whizzed through the window from somewhere across the creek. One entered Callahan's breast, the other his thigh. Members of his family rushed to his side and carried him, sheltered by the stockade, to his home where he died.

The old law of Moses, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" still prevailed.

It is estimated that from 1902, when the Hargis-Cockrell feud started over an election contest, to 1912, more than one hundred men had lost their lives.

Like the feuds of Scotland, those of the southern mountains usually found kin standing by kin, but sometimes they quarreled and killed each other. In the Hargis-Cockrell feud, Marcum's sister was the wife of Alex Hargis. Curt Jett's mother was a half-sister to Alex and Jim Hargis. His father was a brother of the mother of the Cockrells, Tom and Jim. Yet Curt was openly accused of killing Jim Cockrell. Dr. Cox, who was slain early in the fray, was the guardian of young Tom Cockrell and Mrs. Cox was a sister of the police judge of Jackson, T. P. Cardwell, Jr., who was in office when he issued warrants for Marcum, Jim Hargis, and Ed Callahan when they had quarreled in Pollard's law office at the time depositions were being taken in the election contest.