Perry County," continued the
Kentuckian, reminiscently. "Ol' Joe Eversole was a merchant in a town
called Hazard, an' he helped Fulton French to start a little store. In
time French almos' drove Eversole out o' business. That was a strange
fight, because neither French nor Eversole ever got into the
shootin',--indeed they remained frien'ly even when their supporters were
most bitter."

"Who carried on the feud, then?" asked Hamilton in surprise, "if the
principals didn't?"

"Wa'al, I guess the worst was a minister, the Rev. Bill Gambrill. Ho ran
the French side an' kep' the trouble stirred up all the time."

"I think I've heard of the Turner war, too," said the boy. "Was that the
same as the Howard-Turner fighting?"

"All of them were mixed up in each other's feuds in that Turner family,"
the Kentuckian replied, "but the 'Turner War' or the 'Hell's Half-Acre'
feud was in Bell County, an' it started over some question o' water
rights in Yellow Creek. It was a sayin' down in Bell County that it
couldn't rain often enough to keep Hell's Half-Acre free from stains o'
blood."

"It is a fearful record, Uncle Eli, when you put them together that
way," the boy said.

"An' I haven't even mentioned the worst o' them, the Hargis-Cockrill
feud in Breathitt County. That lasted for generations, an' started over
some election for a county judge. I don' know that any one rightly
remembers the time when Breathitt County wasn't the scene of some such
goin's on."

"But they are all over now, aren't they?"

"I was jes' goin' to tell yo'. They're all over but one, an' that one is
sometimes called the Baker-Howard or the Garrard-White feud, for all
four families were mixed up in it. Not so very long ago I was talkin' to
the widow o' one o' the men slain in that fightin', an' sayin' to her
how good it was that the feelin' had all died out, an' she said--thar
was a lot of us thar at the time--'I have twelve sons. Each day I tell
them who shot their father. I'm not goin' to die till one o' them shoots
him.' I'm reckonin' to hear o' trouble in Clay County mos' any time, but
I really think that is the last o' them."

"What started that?"

"An argument over a twenty-five dollar note," was the response. "But you
don't want to think these were the real causes; they were usually jes'
firebrands that made things worse. Most o' these hyeh feuds date back to
enmities made in the Civil War an' in moonshinin'."

"But why the war?" asked Ham