provocation. Even a dispute over the ownership of a hog resulted in
another killing. Old Randall grew more bitter as time went on, what with
Rosanna the mother of an illegitimate child and Jonse, even though he
lived with her under his father's own roof, being faithless to the girl.
And when, after the McCoys stabbed Ellison Hatfield to death, Devil Anse
avenged his brother's death by inciting his clan to slay Randall's three
boys, Little Randall, Tolbert and Phemer, the leader of the McCoys vowed
he'd not rest until he wiped out the last one of the other clan.

There were killings from ambush, open killings, threats, house-burnings.
Once the McCoys had outtricked Devil Anse and had stolen his favorite
son Jonse away while he was courting Rosanna. They meant to riddle him
with bullets. But the Hatfields got word of it. Rosanna had betrayed her
own family, so the McCoys felt, for the love of Jonse. The Hatfields
came galloping along the road by moonlight, surrounded the McCoys,
demanded the release of the prisoner, young Jonse, and even made a McCoy
dust young Hatfield's boots.

When the law tried to interfere, Devil Anse built a drawbridge to span
the creek beside which his house stood, stationed a bevy of armed
Hatfields around his place, and ruled his clan like a czar, directing
their every deed.

The bloody feud did not end until 1920, after Sid Hatfield on Tug Fork,
which with Levisa forms Big Sandy, had shot to death some nine men led
by Baldwin-Felts detectives. They had killed Mayor Testerman of the
village of Matewan. And when they came to arrest Sid on what he termed a
trumped-up charge he reached for his gun. Sid, then chief of police of
Matewan, West Virginia, had been accused of opposing labor unions among
the coal miners and the coming of the detectives was the result. Though
Hatfields and McCoys were both miners and coal operators, the killing of
the detectives by Sid had no direct bearing upon the early differences
between the clans. But the wholesale killing on the streets of Matewan
in 1920 marked the end of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Devil Anse lived to see peace between his family and the McCoys.

Through thick and thin Levicy Chafin Hatfield stood by her man, though
she pleaded with him to give up the strife.

They waged their blood battles on Levisa Fork and Tug, on Blackberry and
Grapevine, creeks that were tributaries to the waters that swelled the
Big Sandy as they flowed down through the mo