July, 1902, the flames of the feud were fanned to white heat.

Tom Cockrell, a minor, fought a pistol duel with Ben Hargis, Jim's
brother, in a blind tiger, leaving Ben dead upon the floor. Tom was
defended by his kinsman, J. B. Marcum, without fee. Tom's guardian, Dr.
B. D. Cox, one of the leading physicians in Jackson, was married to a
Cardwell whose family belonged to the Cockrell clan.

It was not long after Ben Hargis's death that his brother John, "Tige,"
was slain by Jerry Cardwell. Jerry claimed that it was in the exercise
of his duty as train detective.

"Tige was disorderly," Jerry said, "when I tried to arrest him."

Anyway pistols were fired; Jerry was only wounded but Tige was killed.
His death was followed shortly by that of Jim Hargis's half-brother. The
shot came from ambush one night while he was making sorghum at his home,
and no one knew who fired it.

On another night not long thereafter, Dr. Cox, who was guardian of the
minor Tom Cockrell and the other Cockrell children, was hurrying along
the streets of Jackson to the bedside of a patient.

When the doctor reached the corner across from the courthouse and in
almost direct line with Judge Hargis's stable, he dropped with a bullet
through the heart. Another shot was fired at close range and lodged in
the doctor's body.

The evidence disclosed that at the time of the shooting Judge Hargis and
Ed Callahan were standing together in the rear of Hargis's stable from
which direction the shots came. The Cockrells stated that Dr. Cox had
been slain because of his family relationship with them and because of
his participation in the defense of young Tom Cockrell, his ward.

The story of Dr. Cox's death was still on many lips when Curt Jett, who
was Sheriff Ed Callahan's deputy, met Jim Cockrell in the dining room of
the Arlington Hotel where they engaged in a quarrel and exchange of
bullets. Neither was injured, but bad feeling continued between them.

Sometime during the morning of July 28, 1902, Curt and a couple of
friends concealed themselves in the courthouse. At noon that day, in
broad daylight, Jim Cockrell was shot dead on the street from a
second-story window of the building. Across the way, from a second-story
window of Hargis's store, Judge Jim Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan saw
the shooting.

Jim Cockrell had assisted his brother, the town marshal, in arresting
Jim Hargis and was the recognized leader of the Cockrell faction. He had
sp