onnecting his house and the store he had built a stockade
to insure his safety as he passed from one to the other. There was a
telephone on the wall near the back window of the store and he had just
hung up the receiver after talking to a neighbor when two bullets in
quick succession whizzed through the window from somewhere across the
creek. One entered Callahan's breast, the other his thigh. Members of
his family rushed to his side and carried him, sheltered by the
stockade, to his home where he died.

The old law of Moses, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" still
prevailed.

It is estimated that from 1902, when the Hargis-Cockrell feud started
over an election contest, to 1912, more than one hundred men had lost
their lives.

Like the feuds of Scotland, those of the southern mountains usually
found kin standing by kin, but sometimes they quarreled and killed each
other. In the Hargis-Cockrell feud, Marcum's sister was the wife of Alex
Hargis. Curt Jett's mother was a half-sister to Alex and Jim Hargis. His
father was a brother of the mother of the Cockrells, Tom and Jim. Yet
Curt was openly accused of killing Jim Cockrell. Dr. Cox, who was slain
early in the fray, was the guardian of young Tom Cockrell and Mrs. Cox
was a sister of the police judge of Jackson, T. P. Cardwell, Jr., who
was in office when he issued warrants for Marcum, Jim Hargis, and Ed
Callahan when they had quarreled in Pollard's law office at the time
depositions were being taken in the election contest.

Though Curt Jett, Mose Feltner, John Abner, and John Smith confessed to
the assassination of J. B. Marcum, saying Jim Hargis and Ed Callahan
planned the crime, Hargis and Callahan protested innocence. Even so
Marcum's widow got a judgment for $8000 against the two for killing her
husband. After John Smith confessed and was dismissed he turned bitterly
against Hargis and Callahan and their faction and was suspected of
attempting to assassinate Callahan a year before the deed was
accomplished.

Around the store of Judge James Hargis conversation turned often to the
troubles. If a woman came in to buy a can of baking powder she looked
stealthily about before gossiping with another. If a man entered to buy
a plug of tobacco or a poke of nails to mend a barn or fence, his swift
eye swept the faces of customers and loiterers and presently he'd sidle
off to one side and talk with some of his friends.

Young Beach Hargis, upon whom his father