Afterward, the Hatfields still came over into Kentucky, but they came in numbers, and armed. The McCoys did the same when they ventured into West Virginia. This state of affairs continued for five years.
The killing of the McCoy boys seems to have slaked Devil Anse’s desire for revenge. Randal McCoy was another story. If the sheriff would not or could not control the Hatfields, perhaps the courts could. Randal finally got in touch with Perry Cline, a Pikeville lawyer who had served in the state House of Delegates and as jailer and deputy sheriff. Cline had reportedly had some unfortunate dealings with Devil Anse over some land and may have welcomed a chance to get even. Furthermore, he still had political ambitions, and a publicized case against the Hatfields, the West Virginia savages who had murdered fine Kentucky boys, might be politically profitable.
Devil Anse had stayed out of the courts for almost five years since slaughtering the McCoy boys and didn’t take kindly to the prospect of going to jail now, since he was involved in efforts to develop his holdings in Logan County and did not need adverse publicity or a long prison term. When he heard that Randal was conferring with Perry Cline, he was worried. When he got word that Randal was planning to go into Pikeville, Anse assumed it was to see Cline and decided that he had better stop him. He sent members of his clan across the Tug to ambush McCoy on his way to town. Fortunately for Randal, the gunmen mistook two other men for Randal and his son Calvin and promptly shot and killed John and Henderson Scott, nephews of Randal who had been visiting. (Should these be counted as feud deaths?) Randal and Calvin, leaving home later, rode into town without incident. Devil Anse was upset when he found that his gunmen had killed a couple of strangers.
Once more, the Hatfields had blood on their hands, though no one could prove that they had killed the Scotts. Within days, Cap Hatfield and his friend Tom Wallace added to the trouble. The Hatfields disliked Nancy, Johnse’s wife, for browbeating him, which seemed to belittle Hatfield manhood. They suspected that Nancy and her sister Mary, who was married to Bill Daniels, not only carried rumors and gossip but had warned the McCoys of danger several times. So one night Cap and Wallace burst into the Daniels home, and while Cap held Bill Daniels and his daughter at bay, Wallace whipped Mary Daniels with a cow’s tail, a painful and degrading punishment. That done, he then guarded Daniels and Mary while Cap whipped their daughter. This was gratifying to Wallace; the Daniels girl had lived with him for a while but had left him and had laughed at his pleas that she return. The Daniels family could identify their assailants if they could find someone to arrest them. They never did.
Then Jeff McCoy, in the fall of 1886, killed Fred Wolford, a Pike County mail carrier, while at a dance (this had nothing to do with the feud), and decided to visit West Virginia for a while. He went to the home of his sister Nancy, Johnse’s wife, and there heard of the whipping of his sister Mary and her daughter by Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace. This infuriated Jeff. He let his temper get the better of his common sense and went after Cap and Wallace. With the help of a friend, Josiah Hurley, he went to Wallace’s home, found him working in the field, captured him, and set out to take him to jail in Pikeville. But as they went through the woods, Wallace bolted and escaped. Jeff and Hurley followed him to Cap’s cabin and shot the place up, but to no avail, the cabin being too sturdy to take by force.
Cap returned, saw how they had shot up his cabin, and set out to capture the offenders. With a group of helpers, he overtook the two, captured them, and started out with them for Logan. When they stopped at a home along the way, Jeff escaped and made for the Tug Fork and Kentucky. With Cap and Wallace banging away at him, he made the creek, jumped in and, swimming most of the way under water, made the Kentucky shore. But as he attempted to pull himself up the bank, he was shot and killed by Cap.
Devil Anse wrote Perry Cline and said that he was sorry about the killing, that he had no animosity toward relatives of Jeff, and blamed all the commotion on Nancy (McCoy) Hatfield, and Mary (McCoy) Daniels.
Anse had reason to hope that it would all blow over. It was a violent time throughout the Big Sandy Valley, and much of Kentucky. There was, as Otis Rice points out, far more concern among Kentuckians living along the West Virginia border about bands of criminals who operated from both states, preying on the public with impunity, than about the Hatfields and McCoys, who preyed only on each other. Far more serious feuds had been or were tearing apart several other Eastern Kentucky counties, so that regional, state, and national newspapers tended to ignore the Hatfield-McCoy fuss.
But while Anse was willing to stop the trouble, Perry Cline had no such aim. In the governor’s race of 1887, Cline promised to deliver the McCoy vote to the Democratic candidate, Simon Bolivar Buckner, who promised in return that if elected he would try to bring the Hatfields to justice.
The idea of facing the authority of the state of Kentucky did not appeal to the Hatfields, and on August 29, 1887, Nat Hatfield dropped a note to Perry Cline:
My name is Nat Hatfield. I am not a single individual by a good many, and we do not live on Tug River but all over this county. We have been told … that you and your men are fixing to invade this county for the purpose of taking the Hatfield boys … we, forty-nine in number at present, do notify you that if you come into this county to take or bother any of the Hatfields we will follow you to hell or take your hide, and if any of the Hatfields are killed or bothered in any way, we will charge it up to you and your hide will pay the penalty. … we have a habit of making one-horse lawyers keep their boots on and we have plenty of good strong rope left. We have no particular pleasure in hanging dogs, but we know you and have counted the miles and marked the tree.
Undeterred, Jake and Larkin McCoy went over into West Virginia to capture Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace, who had whipped their sister Mary and her daughter. They caught Wallace and took him to Pikeville, but within a week he escaped from jail, probably with the help of the jailer. This irritated the McCoy boys, and in the spring of 1888 Wallace was found dead in a West Virginia field.
Perry Cline, ignoring the increasing hostility, took some indictments against the Hatfields and traveled to Frankfort to ask Governor Buckner to keep his promise. Buckner made a formal request of Governor E.W. Wilson of West Virginia to extradite Devil Anse and nineteen of his clansmen to Kentucky for the murder of the three McCoy boys. Buckner then announced that the state of Kentucky would offer a reward of $500 for the delivery of Anse to the Pike County jail. Upon the advice of Perry Cline, Buckner named Pike County deputy sheriff Frank Phillips to receive the prisoners when and if Governor Wilson delivered them.
Governor Wilson was in no hurry to act. There were a lot of Hatfields and Hatfield supporters in the state, and they flooded the governor’s office with requests that the Kentucky request be ignored. Tired of the delay, Perry Cline obtained warrants for twenty of the men mentioned in the indictments, gave them to Frank Phillips, and told him to see what he could do. Considering the awesome reputation of the mountain feudists for marksmanship, it is remarkable to note how much Phillips was able to do.
He was not your ordinary deputy. Kentucky Adjutant General Sam Hill described him as “a handsome little fellow, with piercing black eyes, ruddy cheeks and a pleasant expression, but a mighty unpleasant man to project with.” Phillips was reputedly a great hand with the women, given to drink, and possessed of a quick temper. He set out for West Virginia and a week later returned with his first prisoner. It was none other than old Selkirk McCoy, who had earned the McCoy hatred by voting with the Hatfields in the case of Floyd Hatfield’s hog. They threw poor Selkirk into the Pikeville jail.
Phillips then seemed to get delusions of grandeur and took it upon himself to engage in interstate diplomacy. He wrote to Governor Wilson (on Perry Cline’s stationery), enclosing fifteen dollars for warrants against various Hatfields, saying he was acting as agent of the governor of Kentucky. Wilson replied that fees should be sent to the secretary of state. What Wilson did not say was that he had heard that
Perry Cline had persuaded Governor Buckner to offer large rewards for the capture of the Hatfields and had then promised the Hatfields that he would use his influence with the governor to reduce or rescind the rewards if they, the Hatfields, would pay him. There was another report that the Hatfields had promised Cline they would stay out of Kentucky if Buckner would cancel the rewards and that Cline had approved their offer. A.J. Auxier, a Pikeville attorney hired to represent the men indicted for the McCoy murders, said the report was correct and that the Hatfields had given him expense money, $225 of which was to be paid to Cline. G.W. Pinson, clerk of the Pike County Criminal Court, made much the same statement. Obviously, Cline was keeping the feud fires hot and playing both sides for profit.
Governor Wilson was not eager to take part in such crooked antics. Neither was Goveror Buckner. But in his address to the Kentucky legislature on December 31, 1887, Buckner indulged in a bit of flowery oratory concerning his determination to suppress the “violent conduct of a comparatively few lawless individuals.” The Hatfields took this as a threat against them.
Phillips had already shown that Kentucky authorities were willing to invade West Virginia to bring Hatfields to trial in Kentucky. Devil Anse could not afford to let that happen to him. He knew that if he went into a Kentucky court for killing the three McCoy boys, he would spend a lot of valuable time in prison. He moved to prevent that. On January 1, 1888, Anse called the clan to assemble. They met at Jim Vance’s home. There they decided they had to get rid of Randal McCoy and his family, who could testify against them if they were captured and taken to trial, which was becoming more of a possibility with Frank Phillips tearing around.
Anse complained that he was feeling bad, and Jim Vance was named to head the killing contingent. Under Vance’s command were Cap, Johnse, Bob, and Elliott Hatfield, Ellison Mounts (mean, not too bright, often called Cotton or Cotton Top), Tom Chambers, Charles Gillespie, and Doc Ellis. They all swore to follow Vance regardless of danger, and Vance himself swore: “May hell be my heaven, I will kill the man that goes back on me tonight, if powder will burn.” That afternoon they set out for the McCoy home. They stopped at Cap’s for supper. It was getting dark, but there was a bright moon, and they crossed the Tug and rode toward the McCoy home without trouble, on the way passing the polling place where the trouble had started.
Vance ordered his men not to shoot until he gave the signal. Silently, they surrounded the McCoy home where Randal, his son Calvin, his wife Sarah, and their daughters Alifair, Josephine, and Adelaide were sleeping. Vance called for the McCoys to come out and surrender as prisoners of war. Calvin jumped into his clothes, ran downstairs, and told his mother to stay in bed. Then he went back upstairs, while Randal manned a downstairs window. About that time, against orders, thick-headed Johnse fired off a premature shot into the cabin, and shooting began in general. Johnse was the first hit, getting a load of shot in the shoulder.
Vance ran to the side of the cabin and tried to set it on fire. Chambers lighted a pine knot, climbed from a pile of logs to the cabin roof, and tried to poke the flaming knot into the loft, but Calvin fired from below, blowing a hole in the roof, temporarily blinding Chambers and blowing off three of his fingers. But the fire set by Vance fared better and soon was spreading dangerously.
Calvin called on the girls to try to put it out, and they threw what water they had in the house on the flames, but when they tried to get outside for more, Vance warned that he would kill them if they stepped outside. They then threw what buttermilk they had in a churn on the blaze, but the fire still spread.
Alifair opened the kitchen door for air. Seeing the men in the bright moonlight, she called out to Cap that she recognized him. Cap and Johnse called to Ellison Mounts to shoot her. Mounts fired and Alifair collapsed. Josephine screamed, and Calvin, hearing her, called down to ask what was the matter. Josephine cried that Alifair had been shot. Sarah, hearing this, left her bed and ran to where Alifair lay sprawled, halfway out the door. Vance ordered her back into the house and raised his rifle as if to shoot. She knelt and crawled toward her daughter but Vance struck her with his rifle, knocking her to the ground.
“Oh, God,” she cried, “let me go to my girl! Oh, she’s dead! For the love of God, let me go to her!” Again Vance swung his rifle, breaking her hip. Sarah put out a hand and tried to rise, but Johnse pulled his pistol and beat her over the head until she lay motionless on the ground.
As the fire spread, Calvin realized that something drastic had to be tried. “I’m going to make for the corn crib,” he told Randal. “That’ll draw their fire. When I do, you go out the front and try to make it to the woods.”
It worked. Running, dodging, Calvin almost made it to the crib before a fusillade cut him down. But while the Hatfields were concentrating on him, Randal, carrying his rifle and extra bullets, reached the woods. Vance knew it would be foolhardy to follow him. With the cabin in full flames, they set fire to the smokehouse and rode off toward West Virginia, knowing they had failed badly. They could hear the cries of the girls as they rode away. Mounts, Chambers, and Johnse were wounded. Behind them they left Calvin and Alifair dead and Sarah critically wounded, with an arm and hip broken and her skull crushed.
When Randal came from behind a pigpen where he had been hiding, he found that Adelaide and Josephine had made good their escape and had come back and built a fire, trying to protect their mother from the cold. Neighbors, attracted by the sight of fire in the night, rushed to the McCoy home, horrified at what they found. They carried Sarah to the home of her son Jim. Two days later Calvin and Alifair were buried alongside their three brothers, Tolbert, Pharmer, and Randolph Jr. Sarah was taken by wagon to the home of Perry Cline in Pikeville. There she was tended by her daughter Rose Anna, who left her Aunt Betty’s and made the care of her mother her one cause in her morose, lonely life.
Regional newspapers, which had largely ignored the Hatfield-McCoy trouble in their preoccupation with better known feuds, now paid it attention, though often erroneously. The Courier-Journal reported that:
In 1882 parties led by a man named Hatfield abducted three boys named McCoy and conveyed them to West Virginia. A reward was offered for the arrest of the Hatfield party, and one of the gang is captured, who is now in the Pike County jail. On Sunday last others of the same party went to the residence of Randolph McCoy and killed his wife, his son and set fire to the house … two little girls escaped and succeeded in recovering the dead bodies from the flames…. the Pikeville jail is strongly guarded, but fears were entertained that an attempt would be made to release the member of the gang confined there.
The “member of the gang,” was none other than poor, old Selkirk McCoy, whose only crime was voting according to his conscience.
The Cincinnati Enquirer and later the Wheeling Intelligencer declared that:
Alfara, the eldest daughter, was the first to open the door … and in the glaring light was shot dead by the fiends outside…. Calvin next appeared and he was shot dead. [Randolph’s] wife … in escaping from the burning building … was shot through the head and … at last accounts will die. Randal McCoy escaped from the burning house … and opened fire upon the attacking party. He is known to have killed one of the gang by the name of Chambers and … shot Cap Hatfield in the shoulder, putting the rest to flight.
Pikeville was on fire with outrage against the slaughter on Blackberry Creek. Randal demanded that Sheriff Harmon Maynard take a posse and go after the Hatfields, with or without warrants or extradition papers. Maynard, a cautious lawman, declined. Frank Phillips did not. He had become a terror to the supposedly dangerous Hatfields; in repeated raids into West Virginia, he had captured and jailed Wall Hatfield, Tom Chambers, Elias Mitchell, Andrew Varney, L.S. McCoy (a son of Selkirk), Moses Christian, Sam Mahon, Dock Mahon, and Plyant Mahon.
Gathering a posse, Phillips now rode openly across the Tug and before long came upon Cap and Jim Vance. They were walking, accompanied by Jim’s wife Mary, toward Cap’s house
, when Mary shouted that there was “a whole passel” of men around the hill. Vance and Cap dived behind rocks and opened fire. Phillips and his posse spread out. One of his men got a bead on Vance and shot him in the stomach. Vance cried to Cap that he was killed, but Phillips, an old mountain fighter himself, crawled carefully around to Vance’s rear, where he saw that Vance was only wounded. Casually he walked up to Vance and put a bullet through his brain. During this exchange, Cap managed to roll down the hill and escape into the woods.
With Vance’s scalp on Phillips’s belt, the Hatfields were reluctant to tackle him head-on. They rode up and down the West Virginia side of the Tug as before, but they no longer came over into Kentucky. But on January 19, 1888, Phillips decided that he would take the fight to them, and with a posse he invaded Hatfield territory. Along Grapevine Creek, a branch of the Tug, they ran into the Hatfields and a constable, J.R. Thompson, armed with a warrant for the arrest of the killers of Jim Vance. A firefight broke out. Bud McCoy was the first to fall, shot in the leg. Then Bill Dempsey, a young Hatfield adherent, was shot in the leg, crawled behind a shuck pen, and, when Phillips approached, begged for mercy, explaining that he had been ordered by the sheriff to join a posse to chase the Kentuckians out of West Virginia. Phillips calmly put a bullet through his head.
No one knew it at the time, but the shooting part of the Hatfield-McCoy feud was about over. Instead, the battle was taken over by courts and lawyers. Later, Pike County Judge Wagner and County Attorney Lee Ferguson went to Frankfort to ask for troops to defend the county, saying that the violence had little to do with Hatfields or McCoys but was Pike County against Logan County, Kentucky against West Virginia. West Virginia state senator John Floyd, in a plea to the West Virginia governor, made a similar plea, insisting that “the Hatfields are not interested in the difficulty any more than other citizens, while the McCoys … constitute but a small portion of the [Kentucky] gang.” Floyd laid the blame for the continuing hostility on Perry Cline.
Days of Darkness Page 9