Free Days of Darkness by John Ed Ed Pearce Page B

when he heard that Tharp was riding into Jackson alone. He stationed himself and his rifle, “The Death of Many,” in bushes above the trail and killed Tharp. He soon discovered his error. Tharp was not only a respected citizen but an honored member of the Klan, and within hours Kilburn was arrested and thrown into jail. The same day Ed Callahan sent out word for every member of the Klan and every Callahan follower to report at ten o’clock that night “around the courthouse.”
    Shortly after dark the riders began arriving, and by ten o’clock a ring of hundreds of men encircled the courthouse and jail. Citizens of Jackson kept to their homes, and guards were posted at the door of practically every house in town.
    With Callahan and a few close friends giving the orders, a committee was named to call on Bill Combs, the jailer, and demand thekeys to the jail. Combs refused, but since he was a popular and respected man, he was not harmed and was allowed to keep the keys, but was escorted from the jail. Members of the mob then took axes and chopped down the jail door, seized Kilburn, and dragged him, struggling and cursing, toward the noose dangling above the front door of the courthouse. A black man, jailed with Kilburn but guilty of nothing more than having taken food to him while he was in hiding, was dragged out, too. Kilburn had been wounded by an axe blow and was bleeding profusely. The black man screamed and begged. But no word was spoken as the two of them were pulled up. Orders were given—and posted on the courthouse door—that the bodies were to be left hanging until after eight o’clock the next morning. The sight of them dangling there was a fearful message to Captain Strong as well as the people of Jackson.
    Ed Callahan was now the most powerful individual in Breathitt County. Old Captain Strong seemed not only to realize the fact but to accept it. Increasingly he withdrew from active participation in the political life and conflicts of the county. He was called Uncle Bill by most of his neighbors and apparently assumed that the old enmities had been forgotten. He was wrong. One morning he had to go to the store, saddled up his old mule, put his little grandson on behind him, and made a leisurely ride through the familiar countryside.
    At the store, the old captain bought a few things, sat for a while talking, and then began the trip home. He could not know, as he passed up Lick Branch, that Big John Aikman and two of his henchmen were lying in a dense clump of woods above the trail. Big John, released from prison, had vowed for a time that he had found religion and forsworn his violent ways, but in the end the call of the gun was too much. As Captain Strong rode slowly by, Aikman’s rifle barked. The first volley killed the old Union bushwhacker. The second burst killed his mule. His grandson fell to the ground, screaming, as Aikman and his men rushed from hiding and riddled the aged captain with a dozen bullets. They did not harm the boy, who ran home with the dread news.
    The death of Captain Bill Strong marked an end to the feuds growing out of the Civil War, though most of the feuds were not directly attributable to the war, as some historians have charged; practically all of the feudists had fought on the same side. But the bloodiest feud, one that shattered the image and the social fabric of Breathitt County, while it had no connection to the causes or outcome of the Civil War, sprang directly from the Strong-Callahan-Deaton conflicts.

The Last and Bloodiest Feud
    The worst feud to tear Breathitt County apart has come to be known as the Hargis-Cockrell feud, though it might as easily be called the Hargis-Cockrell-Marcum-Callahan War. It started, not surprisingly, over an election. And it involved friends and close relatives. Scratch a feud and you’ll find tragedy and heartbreak.
    As has happened many times in Breathitt County, the first signs of this trouble