by Lisa Alther
One night while the McCoy men were busy plotting elsewhere, Martha Jackson McCoy, the wife of Ranel’s fourth son, Sam, and the eventual source for much of Truda McCoy’s feud information, came to stay with Ranel’s wife, Sarah, and daughter Roseanna, who was visiting, at the McCoys’ cabin on Blackberry Fork. In the middle of the night, they heard noises. Roseanna and Martha climbed into the loft to look down through some loopholes into the yard, where they counted fifteen armed men on horseback in the moonlight. One dismounted and stepped onto the porch. Terrified, the two young women fell over a pile of new lumber and sent it crashing to the floor. Then Martha tripped over a water bucket that also clattered across the floor. Convinced the house was full of armed McCoys, the men raced off into the darkness.19
Meanwhile, Johnse Hatfield’s marriage to Nancy McCoy was not faring well, even though they had produced two children, naming their firstborn son William Anderson after Devil Anse. A schoolgirl no longer, Nancy “wore her raven black hair parted in the middle, drawn tightly back and twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her luminous black eyes were shadowed by long black lashes and arched brows, but she possessed the fair complexion that rarely ever combines with this color of hair and eyes.”20
Johnse, ever the Hatfield family Lothario, had, however, grown impervious to Nancy’s beauty and was continually being summoned to feud-related shenanigans. Like his younger brother Cap, he seemed unable to say no to his father, just as he had proved himself unable to defy his father in order to marry Roseanna McCoy—if marriage was, in fact, what both Johnse and Roseanna had wanted, which is impossible to say. Johnse was also drunk much of the time, which of course didn’t help matters. Belle Beaver may have fled Happy Hollow, but he had found other women to take her place. Nancy, for her part, didn’t hesitate to lash him with her sharp tongue. For all his womanizing, Johnse had a reputation for being henpecked. As one researcher put it, Nancy McCoy “had taken the powder out of his gun.”21
Twice when drunk, Johnse Hatfield tried to kill Nancy, first by sneaking into her bedroom with a rifle in the middle of the night.22 The second time, he led her into a field where his brother Cap was hiding behind a stump with a gun, poised to pick her off. Once she spotted him, Nancy informed Cap that if she ever saw him on her property again, she would kill him.23 No one who knew her doubted that she would. Cap did his best to avoid her after that. Truda McCoy refers to her as a “Hellcat,” a worthy match indeed for any Hellhound.24
Nor were Nancy McCoy’s other in-laws happy with her. In the autumn of 1886, Devil Anse Hatfield became convinced that a spy was betraying the Hatfield camp. Someone was supplying the McCoys with information about Hatfield activities, thereby making them more vulnerable to arrest under the outstanding indictments for the Pawpaw Murders. The McCoys had discovered a Hatfield hideout, and they had also burned down a remote cabin that the Hatfields used as a refuge.25 The Hatfields concluded that Nancy was the source, conveying information acquired from her drunken husband, Johnse, to her sister, Mary McCoy Daniels (like Nancy, a daughter of the murdered Harmon McCoy), who lived across the river in Kentucky. Mary, in turn, was conveying it to their uncle Ranel. As one writer later put it, in the hills the best ways to spread news are to “telegraph, telephone, or tell-a-woman.”26
One night when Mary’s husband, Bill Daniels, was gone, twelve masked men broke into their house and kicked and beat Mary unconscious.27 Then they whipped Daniels’s elderly mother with the tail of a recently butchered cow. The old woman fell over a chair, broke her hip, and passed out.
The next morning Bill Daniels returned home to find his wife and mother, both still unconscious, covered with contusions and clotted wounds. When they came to, they could positively identify only Tom Wallace, who had a white streak through his hair that his mask hadn’t concealed. They assumed that the cowardly Cap Hatfield was with him since Wallace worked for Cap. Besides, who else could have dreamed up the idea of donning masks to beat women unconscious with a cow tail? Old Mrs. Daniels was crippled for the rest of her life.28
Cap Hatfield’s son admits that Cap conducted this raid and agrees that the men used a cow’s tail whip, but he maintains that Bill Daniels, a mild and peaceable man, was present and had to be restrained by the raiders—understandably—while both his wife, Mary, and her sister, Nancy McCoy Hatfield, were beaten. In this version, old Mrs. Daniels wasn’t present and wasn’t crippled for life.29
Then again, this attack may not have been related to the feud at all. Tom Wallace had been living with the daughter of Bill and Mary Daniels, who had recently rejected him because he had faked a marriage ceremony in which he had pretended to marry her.30 What is clear, though, is that the Hatfields had shown a willingness to harm women as well as men, setting an unfortunate precedent.
Soon after, Nancy Hatfield’s and Mary Daniels’s brother Jeff McCoy, third son of Harmon, killed a postman for calling him a liar at a Kentucky dance.31 To escape arrest, Jeff crossed the river to West Virginia, where he first heard about the beatings of his sisters (or of Mary and her mother-in-law, depending upon which version he heard) by Tom Wallace and Cap Hatfield.
Jeff McCoy and an accomplice went to Cap Hatfield’s house, seized Tom Wallace, put him on a horse, and were leading him to the Pikeville jail when Tom jumped off the horse and escaped into the woods. Jeff shot him as he fled, grazing his hip. Jeff trailed Tom back to Cap’s house, where he fired many bullets into the logs of the cabin in an attempt to retrieve his escaped prisoner.32
Furious that his ill wife had been exposed to gunfire and his house had been shot up, Cap Hatfield had his uncle Wall Hatfield, justice of the peace for that district of West Virginia, appoint him constable. Cap issued a warrant for Jeff McCoy’s arrest for shooting Tom Wallace and then apprehended Jeff.
This time, as Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace escorted Jeff McCoy to the Logan, West Virginia, jail, Jeff escaped. He raced to the Tug Fork and plunged into it—even though it was winter and the water was freezing. He swam across, mostly underwater, while bullets from Cap’s and Tom’s guns pocked the water all around him. As he rose from the river on the Kentucky side to grab a sapling and haul himself up the bank, one of the men shot him dead.
As Truda McCoy tells it, with her flair for vivid detail, a gang of the Hatfield Hellhounds first captured Jeff McCoy and tied him to a tree.33 While they were playing cards to determine who would shoot him, his sister Nancy McCoy Hatfield heard from a neighbor that the Hatfields had seized Jeff. Nancy tied her toddler to a bedpost at home and raced to her brother’s rescue, creeping up and untying him from the tree. Jeff made a dash for her house while she climbed a tree to rest and to enjoy the consternation of the Hatfields down below as they discovered that their prisoner had escaped.
Jeff McCoy then stalked Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace through the winter woods, and they him. They won, creeping up on him by his campfire one night. They dragged him to the West Virginia bank of the river and told him that if he could swim across they would let him go. After he had successfully reached the Kentucky shore, they shot him in the back as he scaled the bank.
Lark and Jake McCoy, Jeff’s brothers and Harmon McCoy’s first and second sons, vowed to avenge Jeff’s death. They rode to West Virginia, tracked down Tom Wallace, arrested him, and escorted him to the Pikeville jail. Tom escaped.34 Some say he hit the peg-legged jailer over the head with a coffeepot and swam the river to West Virginia.35 Others say that the jailer, a friend or the recipient of a bribe, released him.*******36
The day after Christmas in 1886, perhaps feeling the spirit of the season, a chagrined Devil Anse Hatfield asked his son Cap’s wife, Nancy, to write a letter to Perry Cline in which Devil Anse apologized for the death of Jeff McCoy. He insisted that it was Tom Wallace and not Cap who had shot Jeff. He also placed blame at the feet of Nancy McCoy Hatfield and Mary McCoy Daniels for being such busybodies. Forswearing any animosity toward the McCoys, Devil Anse signe
d his letter to the man from whom he had wrung five thousand acres, “Your friend.” He expressed hope that the hostilities were at an end.37
They weren’t.
In the spring of 1887, the skunk-haired Tom Wallace was found shot through the heart in West Virginia.38 By Jake and Lark, some said.39 By Bud McCoy, their dangerous younger brother, others said. By two bounty hunters who brought Wallace’s scalp with its distinctive white streak to Jake and Lark for a reward, say others.40 But Coleman C. Hatfield claims that Tom Wallace fathered a child in West Virginia in 1921.41 So who knows who this unfortunate Tom Wallace look-alike with the skunk-pelt hair, shot through the heart by assassins unknown, really was?
Simon Bolivar Buckner, governor of Kentucky, promised to bring the West Virginian Hatfields to justice if McCoy supporter Perry Cline delivered the Kentucky McCoy vote to him. Trying to rule a state overrun with feuds, Buckner liked the idea of being able to blame West Virginians for some of the mayhem. Courtesy of Library of Congress
But more was afoot than just the murder of a nonrelated Hatfield supporter.
Perry Cline had recently become a lawyer, one unmoved by the apologies of his new pen pal concerning the murder of his nephew Jeff McCoy by his old nemesis’s son and his son’s skunk-haired sidekick. Around this time, Cline was described by a Louisville newspaper as “a tall, rather stoop-shouldered man, with a pale face and full, long, black beard,”42 one with an “intelligent, gentlemanly bearing.”43 Cap Hatfield’s son Coleman A. Hatfield says rather uncharitably that Cline’s “ill-fitting clothes made him appear more ancient than his years.” He also ridicules his legal training, claiming that he read law in a chimney corner at night, rather than at a certified law school.44
During the run-up to Kentucky’s 1887 gubernatorial race, Cline had promised to deliver the McCoy vote to Simon Bolivar Buckner in return for Buckner’s assurance that, if elected, he would bring the Hatfields to justice.45 Buckner won the race, so Perry Cline, the Pike County prosecuting attorney, and Frank Phillips (on whom, more later) traveled to Frankfort, Kentucky, to meet with him. They described how the Hatfields were endangering citizens in their area and discouraging outside investment.46 Rather than pursuing indictments of Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace for the recent murder of his nephew Jeff McCoy, Cline sought the reactivation of the five-year-old indictments of Devil Anse Hatfield and his followers for the Pawpaw Murders.
Governor Buckner, trying to rule a state overrun with feuds (see chapter 12), took a shine to the notion of being able to blame West Virginians for some of the mayhem. There had been talk of railroad lines in southeastern Kentucky, which would facilitate the extraction of timber and coal, but no industrialist wanted to invest in a region so rife with violence.47
One Pikeville businessman working to bring mining and timber interests to the area was Col. John Dils. He had survived the Civil War, despite being dragged down a hill by his horse during a battle and left for dead by Confederate soldiers. Having supported his Union regiment with his own money, he sold some supplies confiscated during raids and kept the proceeds. Charged with fraud as a result, he received a dishonorable discharge from the Union army.
Colonel Dils joined a partisan band run by the notorious and aptly named Union guerrillas Alf Killen and Joel Long (ancestors-in-law of the author), who were loosely affiliated with Dils’s 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry. It’s believed that Dils was captured by the equally notorious Confederate guerrillas Rebel Bill Smith and Vincent Witcher.48 Devil Anse Hatfield’s Logan Wildcats were allied with Rebel Bill, as noted earlier, and Bad Jim Vance had served under Vincent Witcher prior to joining the Logan Wildcats. No one knows how Dils managed to avoid execution by Rebel Bill and regain his freedom.49
Now that the war was over, Colonel Dils was partially deaf from being dragged down the hill by his horse, and some of his ribs were damaged. But he had managed to become the second richest man in Pikeville, buying 15,000 acres of land for 2.5 cents an acre. By the time of Jeff McCoy’s murder, he was worth some $40,000 (almost $1 million today).50
Col. John Dils, a businessman, led Union forces in southeastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia during the Civil War. Although he didn’t participate directly in feud events, he pulled strings behind the scenes to dismount his old Civil War rival, Devil Anse Hatfield. From Ely, Big Sandy Valley
In a drawing of Colonel Dils done about this time, he sports a glossy, shapely mustache and beard that make him resemble a Shih Tzu—this in contrast to the messy, scraggly bird’s nests on the feudists’ faces. A sketch of his Pikeville house shows an elegant Victorian mansion with a widow’s walk, front porticos upstairs and down, and a wrought-iron fence51—this in contrast to the dogtrot log cabins in the Tug Fork Valley.
Although Colonel Dils didn’t participate directly in feud events, there is little question that he was pulling strings behind the scenes in an effort to dismount his old Civil War rival Devil Anse Hatfield.52 Former guardian of both Perry Cline and Frank Phillips, two emerging young leaders of the McCoy cause, Colonel Dils no doubt applauded and encouraged, perhaps even actively engineered, their decision to revive the Hatfield indictments for the Pawpaw Murders.
Alarmed by Perry Cline’s visit to Governor Buckner and by the former’s apparent determination to reactivate the indictments, Devil Anse Hatfield regressed to his Wildcats days. You might say that he lapsed into paranoia—except that his fears and suspicions were justified. He wrote a threatening letter to Perry Cline, again via his daughter-in-law, signing himself fictitiously as the “President and Secretary of the Logan County Regulators.” The letter said, among other things, “We have plenty of good strong rope left, and our hangman tied a knot for you and laid it quietly away until we see what you do. We have no particular pleasure in hanging dogs, but we know you and have counted the miles and marked the tree.”53 Feeling the need for a show of force in the face of disapproval from the entire state of Kentucky, Devil Anse claimed to have forty-nine supporters, even though most put the number at about a dozen fewer than that.54
Around this same time, Ranel McCoy was standing in the doorway of his cabin on a ridge above Blackberry Fork, looking out to the graves of his sons who had been executed in the pawpaw patch. A bullet fired from the woods sank into the molding right beside him.55
In consequence, Perry Cline surrounded himself with armed bodyguards.56 On September 10, 1887, Governor Buckner fulfilled his campaign promise to Cline by posting rewards for the indicted Hatfields, ensuring that bounty hunters from all over the country would arrive to participate in their pursuit. He also sent an extradition demand for the indicted Hatfields to the governor of West Virginia, E. Willis Wilson, and authorized Pikeville to appoint a special deputy to receive them.57
Frank Phillips, the second husband of Nancy McCoy, daughter of Harmon. Perceived as a roughneck, Frank was a grandson of one of the wealthiest men in Pike County, Kentucky. He led the Kentucky posses that invaded West Virginia to arrest the indicted Hatfields, killing Jim Vance and Bill Dempsey. Courtesy of West Virginia State Archives
The man selected as special deputy, Bad Frank Phillips, a rowdy twenty-five-year-old, already had two ex-wives and four children. His father, Billy Phillips, had been killed while serving heroically—some might say suicidally—as a sentinel for Colonel Dils’s 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry. During a battle, the elder Phillips received an order to retreat because area Confederates were advancing. But brave Billy refused to abandon his post or to run from rebels. So a bunch of them swarmed him, and he was never seen or heard from again.58 Billy Phillips had been a friend of Harmon McCoy, and Billy’s son Frank was friendly with some of the younger McCoys, who lived across a ridge from his home on Johns Creek.59
Colonel Dils was, for a time, the guardian of Frank Phillips, who was born in 1862, not long after his father left Johns Creek to fight in the war.60 Frank appears to have inherited the courage and foo
lhardiness of his father, whom he never met. A representative sent by Governor Buckner to assess the feud 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.”61 Said to enjoy shooting at innocent strangers’ feet to make them dance,62 he had a drinking problem and a way with women that rivaled Johnse Hatfield, who was the same age.63
A strange undated photo of Frank Phillips that looks like a publicity still for a Western movie features a drooping coal-black mustache, a cowboy hat, a bone- or ivory-handled pistol hanging across his abdomen, and a rifle in one hand.64 Although perceived as a roughneck, Frank was a grandson of one of the wealthiest men in Pike County.65 This leaves us with the rather touching impression that he was constantly trying to live up to his unknown father’s reputation for fearlessness.
Perry Cline, Frank Phillips, and Ranel McCoy settled down to wait for the indicted Hatfields to arrive for trial from West Virginia. But Governor Wilson found various reasons for delay in sending them, largely because an old friend of Devil Anse, John Floyd, assistant secretary of state to Governor Wilson, was championing the Hatfield cause.66 John Floyd’s father and uncle had been among Devil Anse’s Confederate commanders during the Civil War.67