e went to a barber shop for a
shave and haircut. Suddenly he raised up from the chair and leering
toward the street muttered at a man passing, "I thought that was the old
man going yonder." It was not Judge Hargis, the barber assured Beach, so
the drunken fellow settled back in the chair and the barber proceeded to
lather his face.

Beach's sister, who was married to Dr. Hogg, often took her drunken
brother in.

"Evylee's got no right to harbor Beach," Judge Hargis complained to his
wife. "He's tore up our home and he will do the same for Evylee and her
husband and for Dr. Hogg's business too. He's a plum vagabond and
spoiled. And put on top of that whiskey, and a gun in his hand, the Lord
only knows what that boy will do."

Out of one scrape into another, in jail and out, Beach Hargis went his
way. The mother pleading with the father to forgive him and let him have
another chance. The sister pleaded with Beach to quit drinking and
carousing.

On the 17th day of February, 1908, Beach, still maudlin drunk, went
again into his father's store. He didn't look at the guns in the racks
this time. He glanced toward the wareroom where the black coffins stood
in a row on wooden horses. "I'm looking for the old man," he muttered to
a clerk. Then he reeled toward the counter and asked the clerk to give
him a pistol. The clerk refused, saying he could not take a pistol out
of stock, but added, "Your Pa's pistol is yonder in his desk drawer. You
can take that."

Beach helped himself.

In the meantime Judge Hargis had come into the store just as Beach, with
the pistol concealed in his shirt, went out.

In the drugstore of his brother-in-law, Dr. Hogg, Beach terrorized
customers and the proprietor by pointing his pistol around
promiscuously. He reeled out of the place without firing, however, and
went back to his father's store. Someone later said all he had been
drinking was a bottle of Brown's Bitters.

From where Judge Hargis stood in one part of the double storeroom he
could see Beach sitting cross-legged in a chair near the front door.
Beach spat on his shoe and slowly whetted his pocket knife, scowling
sullenly now and then in his father's direction. He clicked the blade of
his knife shut and slipped it into his pocket and sat with his arms
dangling at his sides, head slumped on his breast.

A customer came in and asked Judge Hargis, "Where's Beach?"

The father pointed to the son. "There he is. I have done all I ca