y Sheriff Green Watkins, brother of Clay. When an enraged
posse found Amos they filled him with bullets. Sixty years before, Hen
Kilburn, grandfather of Chester Fugate, was taken from the county jail
in Jackson and lynched for killing a man. It was the first time such a
lynching had occurred at the county seat.

On Christmas morning in 1929, Chester Fugate was taken from the same
jail and shot to death, but not in the courthouse yard. The posse took
him out to a farm some miles away. That was the second lynching in
Bloody Breathitt. There was a heavy snow on the ground, making a soft
carpet for the swiftly moving feet of the mob numbering more than a
score, as they hurried their victim away. Before entering Fugate's cell,
they had bound the jailer, S. L. Combs, to make sure of no interference
from that source.

Some miles from the county seat they stopped in a thicket on a farm.

That morning farmer Jones got up before daylight and with lantern on arm
went out to milk the cows and feed the stock. He halted suddenly in the
unbeaten snow for from a nearby thicket came a strange sound. At first
the farmer thought it the moaning of a trapped animal. Holding the
lantern overhead he stumbled on a few yards to find Chester Fugate in a
pool of blood that stained the snow all about the crumpled figure.
Bleeding profusely from thirteen gunshot wounds, Chester survived long
enough to give the names of at least six of his assailants.

It was another outbreak in the Hargis-Cockrell feud.

Five of the men in the mob surrendered. They were bound over and
released on bail. All were kin of Clay Watkins: Samuel J. was his
brother, L. K. Rice his son-in-law, Allie Watkins his son, and Earl and
Bent Howard were his nephews. The men signed their own bonds together
with Jack Howard, uncle of Bent and Earl. The name of Elbert Hargis was
also affixed to the bonds. The sixth man named by Chester Fugate before
he died was Lee Watkins, a cousin of Clay, who said he would surrender.

The trouble went back more than a quarter of a century when Curtis
Jett--his friends called him Curt--and others assassinated James B.
Marcum and James Cockrell. Curt was a nephew of county Judge James
Hargis, who was said by some to be the master mind behind the murders.

The state militia was called out to preserve order during the trial.

Things had been turbulent in Breathitt before. Back in 1878 Judge
William Randall fled the bench after the slaying of cou