Days of Darkness by John Ed Ed Pearce Page A

But little frictions build into major conflicts. Time and circumstance.
    On this particular election day, August 7, 1882, Tolbert McCoy, with a good load of whiskey aboard, chose the occasion to demand that Elias (“Bad Lias”) Hatfield pay him the $1.75 that Tolbert claimed Lias owed him. Lias replied angrily that he had paid the debt months before. Tolbert called him a liar. Deacon Anse Hatfield (not to be confused with Devil Anse) was able to calm the two, but just then Ellison Hatfield awoke from a liquor-induced nap and called Tolbert names. Tolbert turned his wrath on Ellison. Pulling a knife, he hacked away at Ellison’s stomach, while Tolbert’s brothers, nineteen-year old Pharmer and fifteen-year old Randolph Jr., rushed to help him. Ellison tried to wrestle the knife away from Tolbert, but the two younger McCoys also began cutting at him. When Deacon Anse again tried to separate the battlers, Ellison grabbed a large rock. Pharmer pulled a pistol and shot Ellison in the back. Elias wrested the pistol from Pharmer and tried to shoot him, but the McCoys at that point turned and ran into the woods.
    They were overtaken and placed in the custody of Pike County Justices of the Peace Joe and Tolbert Hatfield and Constable Matthew Hatfield. Figuring that the West Virginia Hatfields would soon try to avenge the shooting of Ellison, Deacon Anse urged that the McCoys be taken to the Pikeville jail at once, where they would be safe. They agreed. They never got there.
    This was not the first disagreement between the two clans. Some scholars have tried to trace the feud to the Civil War, but the fact is that the majority of both Hatfields and McCoys fought for the South, though members of both clans, including Devil Anse, leader of the West Virginia clan, deserted and came home well before the war ended. Upon his return home, Devil Anse formed a unit of the Home Guards known as the Logan Wildcats, in whose ranks were several McCoys, including for a while clan leader Randal McCoy. These Home Guards were little more than bushwhackers, foraging to support their ranks and stealing livestock for which they were supposed to pay. Seven years after the war, Asa McCoy was still trying to settle a suit against various Hatfields for four of his hogs they had taken. Various members of the McCoy clan were charged with stealing everything from horses to bee gums and raw leather.
    The first real trouble, however, resulted from the death of Harmon McCoy, younger brother of Randal. Unlike most of his family and neighbors, Harmon joined the Union Army. He stayed only ayear and came home after being hospitalized with a broken leg. He was not given a big welcome. In fact, he was warned that the Logan Wildcats, all ex-Confederates, would be calling on him. This alarmed him, and he hid out in a cave, where the Wildcats caught and killed him. Devil Anse and his lieutenant, Jim Vance, were the wildcats most often mentioned as the trigger men. No one was ever brought to trial for the killing, and it is doubtful if most of the McCoys cared much. But the incident created some tension between the families.
    Mountain families at the time let their hogs run loose in the woods; it was cheaper and easier than keeping them penned and having to feed them. They marked their hogs with ear marks or clips so they could identify them when the hogs were rounded up for fall hog-killing. In the autumn of 1878 Floyd Hatfield rounded up his hogs and drove them to his home at Stringtown, on the Kentucky side of the Tug Fork. It was there that Randal McCoy, stopping casually on his way into Stringtown, saw a hog that he thought bore his markings, and said so, in effect accusing Hatfield of stealing his hog. This was a serious insult in the hills, and Floyd took offense, denying it heatedly. Randal, a contentious sort, went immediately to the Deacon Anse Hatfield, a justice of the peace, and brought suit against Floyd.
    The trial, held in Deacon Anse’s