Part 11

Then early one morning the Eversole faction learned to their astonishment that French and his army had evacuated the town during the night.

Many theories were advanced in explanation of this singular action. Some attributed it to fear. Those better acquainted with the temper and make-up of the French clan scouted that idea and suggested that French was seeking reinforcement in the country, and that at an opportune moment he would sweep down upon the village, trap the hemmed-in Eversoles, and annihilate them with overwhelming forces.

This seemed a rational conclusion. With French gone from town, Eversole declined to be caught in such a trap, as trap it would have been, and to prevent the execution of French's plan the Eversoles themselves retreated to a section of the country peopled with their sympathizers.

However, Eversole did not leave Hazard open to undisputed occupation. He left a bait there, a small force. If French should learn of the weakness of the garrison he would be tempted to sweep down upon it. In doing so he would find Eversole striking in his rear. French himself was shrewd and refused to fall into the trap.

Eversole scouted everywhere, frequently on the trail of French. During the month of June, in the dark of night, the latter reentered Hazard, took possession of his fortified places where most of his men remained secreted, while the more daring of them walked the streets the next morning, bantering the Eversoles that had been left in town. Their leader was at once notified by messenger to the country of the state of affairs. He had but few men with him at that time, but with these started for town. Seven or eight men, fortunately for him, joined his ranks on the way.

It was late in the day when Hazard was reached, but the lateness of the hour did not defer attack. From well selected positions the Eversoles opened a plunging fire upon the housed-up French men. These replied to the fusilade with equal spirit. Hundreds of shots were fired at a great expenditure of ammunition and without appreciable result. Only one man was seriously wounded on the side of French. No casualties were admitted by the Eversoles.

The darkness of the night brought the engagement to a close. French withdrew from town.

This kind of almost bloodless warfare continued throughout the summer with no decisive result. Both clans grew weary. Great expense had been incurred in keeping a large, paid army. The leaders were threatened with bankruptcy. So when the friends of both sides interceded, French and Eversole seemed more than willing to appoint and send representatives to a conference, which was held on Big Creek in Perry County. It was attended by prominent citizens of both Perry and Leslie counties, who were anxious to bring about a settlement of the war.

Articles of agreement were finally drawn up, in which the belligerents agreed to return to their homes, to disband their armies, and to surrender their arms and ammunition.

This agreement was duly signed by the representatives of the clans and duly witnessed.

In accordance with this agreement, French surrendered his arms to the county judge of Leslie County, while Eversole placed his guns in charge of Josiah Combs, county judge of Perry County.

The clans disbanded. Still, there were but few who promised themselves lasting results from the Big Creek Treaty of Peace. It was nothing more _than a scrap of paper_. The compromise had not been prompted by any desire for friendship.

Its underlying motive was mercenary. The chieftains sought merely to avoid financial outlay. The welfare of the country, respect for the law, these were considerations of secondary importance only, if taken into account at all. This may be fairly deducted from the fact that the old distrust of each other never vanished. _The grudge was there_, it rankled still.

Indeed, it was but a short time after the conclusion of the treaty that French claimed to have unquestionable authority for the charge that Eversole had violated the stipulations by repossessing himself of the guns. These, as we have seen, had been turned over to Judge Josiah Combs, who, by the way, was the father-in-law of Joe Eversole.

When Eversole was confronted with this breach of a solemn treaty he attempted to justify it by declaring that at no time had it ever been observed by French, who, he maintained, had never in fact disbanded his army, and that the surrender of arms had only been partial, a blind.

Whether these reports had been actually brought to the ears of the chieftains, or had been invented by them in order to manufacture some sort of pretext upon which to renew hostilities, must ever remain in doubt. Future events seem to prove rather clearly that neither of the parties was in very good faith toward keeping the peace. Both French and Eversole appeared singularly well prepared to re-enter the war. The ink had hardly dried on the treaty when Perry County was again thrown into turmoil and strife.

What had the authorities been doing during this period of quasi warfare? We find absolutely no record of any sort of any attempt to maintain the dignity of the law.

As in Rowan County, many of the court officers were rank partisans, who used their power to protect in outlawry their own particular friends and kindred. Those not in their favor had little cause to appeal to the law, had they been inclined to do so, which they were not. It seemed to suit both sides perfectly to let justice sheath her sword and stand idle, and--blind as usual.

On the 15th of September, 1887, Joe Eversole and Bill Gambriel, a French sympathizer, met in the streets of Hazard, when a quarrel ensued. This was followed by a most sanguinary duel in which Gambriel was killed.

Gambriel was a minister of the gospel, a typical mountaineer, tall, powerful and game. He would fight at the drop of a hat and drop the hat himself. It was said of him that he considered moonshine whiskey of much benefit for the stomach, and a game at cards an agreeable diversion from the cares and toils of life. It was said of him, too, that he carried a testament in one pocket, a deck of cards, a bottle of liquor and a pistol in the others. This had been told in a joke; but straightway this description of him was accepted as a fact and was widely published in the papers at the time.

The truth of the matter is that he was a man who entertained rather singular, independent and free ideas of the duties of a preacher. He was a good man, and had a wide circle of friends.

Joe Eversole was physically a small man, of slight stature, but quick and agile as a boy. Certainly he was fearless.

When such men engage in combat blood is sure to flow. As to who began the difficulty there is but little doubt. Official reports to the Governor, which will be found later on, place the blame upon Eversole.

After a short exchange of blows between the men, Gambriel was fired upon by secreted friends of Eversole. Attempting to escape by running around a house, Gambriel was fired upon from another quarter and fatally wounded. Staggering and reeling, he turned upon Eversole, who fired into his head, instantly killing him.

Several parties were indicted for the murder, but one only was tried. The trial resulted in a hung jury the first time, and in an acquittal on the second trial. It has always been an open secret about town that the man who fired upon Gambriel while he attempted to escape death, has never been indicted, and that he was an officer at that time.

The killing created intense feeling. Gambriel had many friends. He was a staunch French adherent and it was well within the course of reason for French to regard the killing of the man as a challenge. The Eversoles themselves believed that Gambriel's friends would not pass lightly over the homicide and prepared to meet all danger. The clans, disbanded (?) but a short time before, reassembled and for several months roamed the ill-fated county at will, terrorizing its inhabitants and defying the law.

But little fighting was done. It seems that they contented themselves with manoeering, marching and counter-marching. In such warfare, if warfare it was, the innocent were made to suffer more than the warriors.

Such an armed vagabondage was as useless as it was silly. It furnished material for the sensational newspaper, but even these failed to discover anything of the heroic about this campaign.

The leaders must have felt something of that themselves, for during the winter the armies were again disbanded. Permanent restoration of peace, however, was not to come to Perry County yet for a time.

The apparent calm through the winter was suddenly disturbed in the following April, when the news of the brutal assassination of Joseph C. Eversole and Nick Combs excited and horrified Hazard.

On the morning of April 15th, 1888, the valley of Big Creek, Perry County, became the scene of a tragedy which might well cause one's blood to run cold with horror, one's cheek to blush with shame.

On the Sabbath day, when human hearts should turn to God in prayer, when nature even seems to bow in reverence, the birds of the forests sing His praises with more than usual sweetness, two lives were hurled into eternity without warning, murdered, butchered from ambush.

When a man resents an insult, when passion clouds all reason, and in momentary frenzy, under the impulse of hot, red blood, he shoots his fellow man, there is yet some excuse. But when men with the savage instinct of beasts of prey fall upon their unsuspecting victims from ambush, like the tiger that glides noiselessly through the thick jungle and suddenly springs upon its prey, then the word man becomes a mock and devil is the proper epithet.

Nowhere in the valley of Big Creek could a more suitable spot have been selected from which to accomplish such a hellish crime as was committed on that fatal Sunday morning, than the one chosen by the red-handed demons.

The valley is narrow, the hills enclosing it are steep, rugged and covered with dense forest. The spot where the murderers were in hiding, commanded an uninterrupted view of the road up and down the valley. Nothing short of a lynx's eyes could have penetrated the leafy, thicket-grown murderers' retreat.

On the day of the murder, Joe Eversole, in company of his father-in-law, Judge Josiah Combs and the latter's youthful nephew, Nick Combs, bade a last farewell to his family and the host of friends at Hazard and started for Hyden where the regular term of the Circuit Court was scheduled to begin the following morning. This court Eversole and Judge Combs had always attended, having been practising members of the bar there for years. Of this fact the assassins had been well informed.

They seemed to have feared that their intended victims might possibly leave for Hyden a day or two in advance of court, which they had done on several occasions in the past, so the murderers prepared for such an exigency and stationed themselves at the ambush for at least a day before that memorable Sunday.

Their patient waiting was rewarded on Sunday morning by the appearance of the victims. On the way the three travelers were joined by one Tom Hollifield, an officer, who was conveying a prisoner, Mary Jones, to Hyden. Judge Combs rode by the side of the officer, well in advance of Eversole and young Nick Combs.

They had passed the ambush some forty yards or more, when suddenly the roar of rapidly fired guns echoed and re-echoed through the valley. At the sound of the shots Judge Combs turned and saw, to his horror, that the messengers of death had accomplished their cruel mission, saw Joe Eversole and Nick Combs fall from their rearing and plunging horses, saw them struggle in their blood and then lay still.

Paralyzed with horror and agony, he gazed upon the scene. He had no sense or realization of his own danger, for in danger he had been. It was purely accident that he had ridden in advance of his kinsmen.

One of the assassins climbed down the steep hillside and approached the body of Nick Combs, who was then in his death-throes. He had fainted, but upon the approach of the assassin, opened his eyes.

The murderer, finding life still lingering in the mangled, bleeding body, raised his rifle to finish the bloody work. The youth begged piteously to shoot him no more, that death would claim him in a few moments. Mountains might have been moved by his pleadings, but not the heart of the cowardly assassin. "Dead men tell no tales," he exclaimed, with a smile of derision upon his lips. Slowly he raised the Winchester rifle, placed the muzzle against the boy's head and fired, dropping the eyeballs from their sockets.

The murderer then calmly rifled the pockets of Eversole of their contents and retreated, thus adding the crime of robbery to that of murder.

Judge Combs, brought to himself, spurred his horse to utmost exertion and dashed like a maniac into Hyden to bring the news.

The scene of the crime was within about three hundred yards of a house. Shortly after the shooting one Fields, the owner of the house or cabin, and one Campbell proceeded to the scene of the tragedy.

They found the dead in a pool of blood, lying within a few feet of each other. They discovered Eversole's pockets turned inside out. Nick Combs' horse was found, shot, in a little meadow by the side of the road, while Eversole's horse was afterwards caught some miles further down the stream.

The news of the tragedy aroused the people to instant action. A force of men was assembled, who started upon the trail of the murderers. The place of ambush was found. It was located exactly sixty-one feet from the point where the bodies had been found, in a dense spruce-pine thicket. Several of the pine bushes had been bent over and the tops tied together, thus forming a complete screen and shelter.

Behind this blind or screen they found a considerable depression in the earth, a natural rifle pit. This had been filled with leaves and appeared packed and trodden into the ground. Numerous footprints were plainly visible. Remnants of meals were also found. Everything tended to confirm the theory that the assassins had been there for at least two days before the killing. From this screen the trail was followed up the hill until it divided. One of the trails led to the top of a high ridge, one turned to the right, another to the left. This discovery proved that there had been at least three assassins. When this fact became known the pursuers retreated, seemingly afraid of an ambush. They reasoned that three or more men so desperate as to commit a cold-blooded double murder in the broad-open light of day, almost in sight of human habitation, would and could, in this wild mountain region, successfully fight an even larger force than was at the command of the pursuers.

The bodies of Eversole and Combs were conveyed to Hazard in the afternoon and consigned to their graves amid a great concourse of sorrowing people.

Thus the bloody drama ends. The sombre curtain of mourning falls. The story of the brutal assassination is finished. Justice hides her head in shame for no one has ever been punished for it.

The French faction was at once openly charged with responsibility for the outrage. French himself was indicted. So boldly and undisguised were these accusations circulated that French feared for his safety and again surrounded himself with men. He almost immediately withdrew from town and scouted through the country.

If those who committed the murder of Eversole, or their accessaries, had hoped to thereby crush the enemy, they found themselves sadly mistaken. The vacancy created by the death of Joe Eversole was quickly and ably filled by John Campbell, a man of acknowledged bravery, as well as caution, and well-fitted as a leader in such a struggle.

He surrounded the town with guards; squads of men patrolled the streets; his force made repeated scouts into the neighboring hills. No man not in possession of the password could enter town. An unauthorized attempt to do so drew upon the rash one the fire of many guns. Campbell had been for days in hourly expectation of an attack by French. He, therefore, believed it wise to resort to military methods and discipline. The rigid order to shoot any one who dared to pass into town without first giving the pass-word resulted in his own death.

He was returning one night from his usual rounds when, on approaching a sentry, he found him asleep. He ordered him harshly to arise, when the man, half asleep, and dazed, threw the gun to his shoulder and fired. Campbell uttered a groan and fell heavily to the ground.

The sentry, on perceiving his mistake, gave the alarm; the wounded chieftain was carried to his home, where an examination of his wound by the surgeons disclosed the fact that he had been fatally wounded. He lingered, however, for more than thirty days in intense agony before he died--the victim of his own precautions.

During Campbell's leadership one Shade Combs conceived the grand idea that he was the man who might summarily end the war by killing off certain obnoxious members of the French faction. He communicated his plans to Campbell, who furnished him the required men. But by some means Combs' intended victims had gotten wind of his scheme and forestalled it in such manner that the hunter now became the hunted. One fine morning, while saddling his horse, a well-directed shot from ambush ended his life.

Such were conditions in Perry County during the summer and fall of 1888. People who had continued entirely neutral, grew exceedingly nervous. One never knew when his turn would come next to die from a shot from the bushes. The law had utterly failed to give the citizens the protection to which they were entitled. The state and county government enforced the collection of taxes but seemed unable to enforce the law. Had the people of Perry County withheld their hands from their purse-strings and refused to pay taxes, we honestly believe that the high authorities would very quickly have found or invented a remedy for the lawlessness which was depriving the State of revenue. The citizens of Perry County would have been justified in a rebellion against taxation, unless the government protected them in their rights. When people are taxed, they in turn are supposed to have their lives and property protected. When one consideration of a contract fails, the other may be avoided.

On the 9th of October, 1888, the news of another assassination increased the terror of the people. Elijah Morgan, a French adherent, a man of courage and unswerving determination, was shot and killed within less than two miles of Hazard--shot from ambush.

On the morning of his death he and one Frank Grace were on their way to town in pursuance of an agreement that had been entered into by him with members of the Eversole faction. Morgan was the son-in-law of Judge Combs, but in spite of all efforts from that direction to throw his influence with the Eversoles he had continued to remain loyal to French and for this he was promptly slain.

His death had been decreed some time before this, but his shrewdness and knowledge of the tactics of his enemies had made him a very slippery proposition. A ruse was, therefore, resorted to. For a short time previous to his death Morgan had frequently expressed his desire for peace, an earnest wish to lay down his arms, and to be permitted to return to peaceful pursuits. This commendable desire on his part assisted his enemies in the formulation of plans for his destruction. They assured him with every pledge of sincerity that he should not be molested; that he might freely come to town whenever he wished; that on a certain day (the day of the murder) if he would meet them at Hazard, they would all renew the friendship that had existed until the feud tore them asunder.

Morgan promised to attend the proposed peace jubilee. Little did he dream that the pretended friends were cold-blooded, calculating enemies, seeking his life under the miserable mask of friendship; that to be certain of success, to avoid any possible miscarriage of the plot, every avenue of escape had been carefully considered and guarded against.

Assassins were placed at various points along the road and at convenient spots in town.

The actors in the tragedy were all at their posts when Morgan stepped upon the scene, unknowingly playing the chief role.

Within less than two miles, in fact, but little more than a mile from town, at a spot where the road is flanked by large overhanging cliffs on one side and the steep river bank on the other, Morgan was fired upon. With a bullet in his back he sank to the ground. A number of shots followed the first one. Grace was driven to cover. Morgan, in his death struggle, rolled over the river bank where a small tree arrested further descent. Grace, not daring to abandon his place of comparative safety, remained a helpless spectator of the agonies of his dying friend.

Country people, traveling toward town, at last came to Morgan's relief, but he died within a few hours.

As soon as the alarm had been given, a posse of his friends started in pursuit of the murderers, but nothing came of it.

The French faction openly charged the Eversoles with the murder. The Eversoles expressed indignation at the imputation. They had no right to complain. On other occasions they had themselves preferred similar charges against French upon no better authority than suspicions based upon suspicious circumstances. The murder of Morgan had followed closely upon the heel of the assassination of Shade Combs for which the Eversoles held the French faction responsible. Certainly there were some well-grounded suspicions that the slaying of Morgan was an act of retaliation on the part of the Eversoles.

Now the State government and the circuit judge began to take a hand in the matter. It was time. Circuit Judge Lilly, a gentleman of the highest type, an able jurist, had somehow or other seemed unable to inspire the district with respects for his courts. This district embraced the counties of Breathitt, Letcher, Perry, Knott and others. In each of those lawlessness had spread to such an extent that the judge found himself defied on every hand and felt himself compelled to request the State to furnish troops for his courts.

This led to the following spirited correspondence between the Governor and Judge Lilly:

Hazard, Ky., Nov. 13, 1888.

To the Governor of Kentucky:

Sir:--Captain Sohan has succeeded in organizing a company of about 45 State Guards in Perry County. He informs me that he has no orders and does not know whether he will be ordered back to Louisville or to go with me to Whitesburg, thence to Hindman and thence to Breathitt; but, in any event, expects to be ordered away from here very soon. Mr. B. F. French is here with 15 or perhaps more men, well armed, and the people are so much alarmed, fearing that they will be left to the mercy of these men, that I have decided that I will take the responsibility upon myself to order the Perry Guards on duty, hoping that you will approve my action and order them on duty, and let their pay begin on the 17th instant.

I will not attempt to hold courts at Letcher, Knott, or Breathitt unless you send guards along. No good can be accomplished by holding courts in any of those counties without a guard. If a sufficient guard is present, I think that much good will be accomplished in and by the moral effect it will have on the people by showing them that you are determined to have the courts held and the laws enforced, and to give protection to the good citizens.