tared white and
trembling at each other. Finally one of the girls reached out of the
small window up under the eaves and, with the aid of a branch from the
cherry tree close by, caught hold of the rope on the farm bell. Once the
rope was in her hand she pulled it quickly again and again. The clanging
of the bell brought the men from the fields but as they approached on
the run through the cornfield and potato patch, Beach threw a leg over
his horse and galloped away, shooting into the air.

He continued on the rampage. Out of one scrape into another.

His mother died of a broken heart. She had done all she could for her
son but Beach Hargis went his reckless way.

He was sent to prison a second time, for the safety of all concerned,
but he escaped about the time of the World War. No one has seen hide or
hair of him since then. There have been many conjectures as to his
whereabouts but no one really knows what has come of Judge Jim Hargis's
slayer.

There is a fine State College in Morehead, Rowan County, Kentucky, where
Judge Will Young, whose eloquence saved Beach from the gallows, lived
and died. On the college campus there is a Hargis Hall, named for Thomas
F. Hargis, a Democrat and captain in the Confederate Army, and a
relative of the reckless Beach.

As for Beach's cousin, Curt Jett, accused of murder, rape, and even the
betrayal of a pretty mountain girl, convicted of the slaying of J. B.
Marcum, he was pardoned from the penitentiary, got religion, and was,
the last heard from, preaching the gospel through the mountains of
Kentucky.

For all the shedding of blood of kith and kin in the Hargis-Cockrell
feud, when our country was plunged into the World War, Bloody Breathitt
had no draft quota because so many of her valiant sons hastened to
volunteer.

* * * * *

Although many of the feuds in the Blue Ridge grew out of elections, they
were not prompted by ambition, for the offices contested were not high
ones like that of senator or congressman. Frequently they were lesser
posts such as that of sheriff or jailer or school-board trustee. When
the strife finally led to assassination the motive usually was the
desire for safety. The one feared had to be removed by death.

One famous feud, however, was started over the possession of a wife's
kitchen apron.

Tom Dillam's wife left him and one day passing his farm she spied a
woman working in the field wearing one of