d
station, where all of them were shot dead by the posse.

Boone Logan was indicted for murder. At the trial he admitted the
killings; but he showed that the feud had cost the lives of not less
than twenty-three men, that not one person had been legally punished for
these murders, and that he had acted for the good of the public in
ending this infamous struggle. The court accepted this view of the case,
the community sustained it, and the "war" was closed.

A feud, in the restricted sense here used, is an armed conflict between
families, each endeavoring to exterminate or drive out the other. It
spreads swiftly not only to blood-kin and relatives by marriage, but to
friends and retainers as well. It may lie dormant for a time, perhaps
for a generation, and then burst forth with recruited strength long
after its original cause has ceased to interest anyone, or maybe after
it has been forgotten.

Such feuds are by no means prevalent throughout the length and breadth
of Appalachia, but are restricted mostly to certain well defined
districts, of which the chief, in extent of territory as well as in the
number and ferocity of its "wars," is the country round the upper waters
of the Kentucky, Licking, Big Sandy, Tug, and Cumberland rivers,
embracing many of the mountain counties of eastern Kentucky and
adjoining parts of West Virginia, Old Virginia, and Tennessee. In this
thinly settled region probably five hundred men have been slain in feuds
since our centennial year, and only three of the murderers, so far as I
know, have been executed by law.

The active feudists, as a rule, include only a small part of the
community; but public sentiment, in feud districts, approves or at least
tolerates the vendetta, just as it does in Corsica or the Balkans. Those
citizens who are not directly implicated take pains to hear little and
see less. They keep their mouths shut. They can neither be persuaded,
bribed, nor coerced into informing or testifying against either side,
but, on the contrary, will throw dust in the eyes of an investigator or
try to stare him down. A jury composed of such men will not convict
anybody.

When a feud is raging, nobody outside the warring clans is in any danger
at all. A stranger is safer in the heart of Feuddom than he would be in
Chicago or New York, so long as he attends strictly to his own business,
asks no questions, and tells no "tales." If, on the contrary, he should
express horror or curiosity