by Lisa Alther
Wall Hatfield persuaded his Kentucky Hatfield constable cousins that the three McCoys needed to be tried in the Tug Fork Valley, where the fight had occurred and where some elderly witnesses to it resided.30 He also expressed the wish of the Hatfield brothers to be near Ellison as he struggled for his life.31 In light of the tragedy to come, preventing the McCoy sons from reaching the safety of the Pikeville jail seems a somewhat sinister move on Wall’s part, but his overall behavior during the feud suggests idealism and naïveté more than cunning.
So the three McCoy prisoners were taken back toward the Tug Fork in a horse-drawn wooden box on runners that was used to haul harvested corn.32 When they reached Preacher Anse Hatfield’s house, Devil Anse and two dozen supporters were milling around the yard. Preacher Anse invited the constables, the Hatfield brothers, and several others to dinner and a discussion of what should happen next. The conversation no doubt involved a debate between Preacher Anse Hatfield, who felt the McCoy sons should be taken to Pikeville for trial, and Wall Hatfield, who wanted them tried in the Tug Fork Valley.
Fed up with the fine points of this legal debate, Devil Anse Hatfield abruptly ordered all the Hatfields to “fall into line.”33 The talking was over, and Devil Anse Hatfield, former leader of the Logan Wildcats, was taking charge. The McCoy sons were loaded back into the corn sled, tied into place, and dragged down the path toward the river.34 Devil Anse then dismissed Jim McCoy, who had remained with his brothers up to this point.
Ellison Hatfield, still alive after twenty-six knife wounds to his bowels and a gunshot wound in his back, was being tended by his mother and his pregnant wife at a friend’s house near the river in West Virginia. Toward dusk, under amassing storm clouds, Devil Anse’s band ferried the three McCoy sons across the river in an old skiff and marched them to an abandoned schoolhouse, forcing them to lie on the floor, their hands bound.35 What happened to them next would depend upon whether Ellison lived or died.
It was raining heavily by now, and the only light came from a flickering lantern at the door. Armed Hatfields guarded the schoolhouse and patrolled the yard, on the lookout for an assault by the McCoys to rescue the three prisoners.36 Twelve years earlier Good Elias Hatfield, aided by Devil Anse and a community leader named Dr. Elliot Rutherford, had arranged to have this schoolhouse, now deserted, built on land Elias had donated. The teacher had been a man named Charlie Carpenter, soon to play a crucial role in the unfolding feud drama.
Sarah McCoy, the boys’ mother, again accompanied by Tolbert’s young wife, rode through the rain to the schoolhouse and pleaded with Devil Anse for her sons’ lives. He assured the sodden women that he would return the young men to Kentucky alive, regardless of whether his brother Ellison lived or died. But he warned them that the prisoners would die if any McCoys tried to rescue them.
Devil Anse allowed the two women to talk with the McCoy sons. Ending up in tears, Sarah McCoy and her daughter-in-law spent the night at a nearby house and returned in the morning. Jim McCoy also arrived at the schoolhouse, standing silently, watching and waiting to see if he could help his captive siblings.37
Ellison “Cottontop” Mounts, illegitimate son of Ellison Hatfield and his first cousin Harriet Hatfield Mounts, was tall and muscular, with pale blond hair and light gray eyes. Said to be albino, he had the intelligence of an eight-year-old and a strident laugh that irritated the other Hatfields, who manipulated him into taking the fall for a murder probably committed by Devil Anse Hatfield’s son Cap. Courtesy of Paul C. Mays, Pikeville, Kentucky
Ellison “Cottontop” Mounts, a woods-colt son of Ellison Hatfield,38 entered the schoolhouse and made threats against the McCoy brothers for stabbing and shooting his father. Tall and muscular, with pale blond hair and light gray eyes, Cottontop was said to be albino, with the intelligence of an eight-year-old and a strident laugh that irritated the other Hatfields.39 A photo of him from the end of the feud shows a nice-looking young man with close-cropped hair and a surly curl to his full upper lip. He was later manipulated into taking the rap for a murder thought to have been committed by Devil Anse Hatfield’s son Cap—and he hanged for it—but for now Wall Hatfield intervened and sent Cottontop away.
Preacher Anse Hatfield crossed the Tug Fork from Kentucky to plead with his cousin Devil Anse to take the McCoy sons to Pikeville for trial. Devil Anse replied that if Ellison recovered, he would do that. Tellingly, he didn’t indicate what he would do if Ellison died.40 Dyke Garrett, an itinerant preacher who had perhaps served in the war as a chaplain with Devil Anse, also visited him and urged him to release the McCoy brothers into the custody of the law.41 (It’s possible that these two visits from preachers were actually one and the same, Preacher Anse being the more likely of the two to have visited since he had been involved in adjudicating the murder right from the start.)
Rumors swirled that Ranel McCoy was approaching the schoolhouse with a posse. But Ranel instead was in Pikeville, unable to persuade authorities to assist him against the Hatfields on his sons’ behalf.
Unfortunately for all concerned, Ellison died two days after his stabbing.
Coleman A. Hatfield curiously left no account whatsoever of the tragedy that ensued.42 Perhaps he was too horrified by the roles played in it by his father and grandfather, Cap and Devil Anse Hatfield. Instead, he turned his attention to a mysterious character named Charlie Carpenter, a red-haired former schoolteacher with hyperthyroid eyes, which stayed so busy scanning the surroundings for possible danger that they never alighted on the person with whom Carpenter was talking. He carried a pistol under his coat and could shoot a walnut from the highest branches of a tree with his rifle. He claimed he had been shot at once a year for seventeen years, though he didn’t say why.
After Ellison Hatfield’s death, Carpenter composed a document to legitimize vigilante justice against the McCoy sons. Among other things, it said, “Now, therefore, be it resolved that . . . the guilty be punished according to their deeds, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that all other things which be just and proper be done for the good of our community.”43 A few men reportedly walked away from this meeting, including, perhaps, Devil Anse’s older brother, Wall. Those remaining signed it with their X’s.
Devil Anse Hatfield fulfilled his promise to Sarah McCoy to bring her sons back to Kentucky alive. He and some twenty of his henchmen took them across the Tug Fork—possibly because he believed that if they killed the three in Kentucky and returned to their West Virginia homes, geography would protect them from arrest by Kentucky authorities.
Once they reached the Kentucky shore, using Carpenter’s document as authorization, Devil Anse ordered the three young men bound to pawpaw trees in a sinkhole where the carcasses of some sheep-killing dogs had recently been tossed. The stench of the rotting dogs was said to be suffocating.44 The McCoys were blindfolded and told to make their peace with God. Cottontop Mounts, in the trials that later ended the feud, testified that the sinister Charlie Carpenter tied the young men to the pawpaw trees and hung a lantern on a branch above their heads so that the firing squad could see their targets. He further stated that Carpenter; Devil Anse, Johnse, Cap, and Bill Tom Hatfield; Alex Messer; and Tom Chambers fired the fifty shots that killed the three McCoy brothers.
One researcher claims that Bud McCoy, only eighteen—and innocent of Ellison’s murder, at least according to Truda McCoy, because he had been mistaken for his brother Bill—begged for his life. Devil Anse Hatfield wanted to spare him. But Jim Vance walked over to Bud, put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger, saying, “A dead man tells no tales.”45 But Devil Anse’s grandson Coleman A. Hatfield insists that Jim Vance had had a falling out with Good Elias Hatfield over some timberland and wasn’t even present that night when the McCoy brothers were executed.46 Cottontop Mounts later testified that Alex Messer shot Bud McCoy in the head.
Jim McCoy heard the deadly fusillade while sitting on a friend’s
porch on the West Virginia side of the river. He had already learned of Ellison Hatfield’s death, so he had a pretty good idea of what the shots meant. He organized a search party to cross the river in the direction of the rifle fire.
Jim McCoy found his brothers that same night47—Tolbert with a hand against his head, as though to fend off the bullets that had passed through his palm and entered his skull; Pharmer pitched forward from a pawpaw trunk, swaying from the ropes that bound him; and Bud kneeling, with part of his head blown off.
It was a soft summer evening, fireflies flaring lazily, mirroring the shimmering stars in the blue-black sky overhead. On a night like this, these damaged young men, murderers and the murdered alike, should have been lying in the arms of willing young lovers instead of killing one another with knives and guns. What had gone wrong with them? No one could say, and the river just kept on flowing.
Ellison Hatfield was buried in West Virginia the day after his death. On an ox-drawn sled, the bodies of the McCoy sons were hauled the six miles to their parents’ home above Blackberry Fork. They were buried that day in separate coffins in a single grave on a shelf of land next to the cabin.48
Soon after, Charlie Carpenter, the evil schoolmaster, was spotted heading south through the West Virginia hills toward Tennessee. Half a century later one of his former students had a friendly encounter with him in Washington State, but nothing more was ever heard from or about him.49 A friend of the Hatfields later blamed the entire feud that ensued on “that bull-eyed Charlie Carpenter” and his vigilante resolution.50
Devil Anse’s great-grandson Coleman C. Hatfield relates the story of the Pawpaw Murders in one succinct sentence: “Someone took the McCoy brothers across the Tug where they bound them to pawpaw bushes and shot them dead.”51
Someone, indeed.
As though attempting to explain why Ranel McCoy didn’t organize a posse to rescue his sons, Truda McCoy repeatedly stresses that Ranel raced to Pikeville to arrange bail and to hire a lawyer to represent them. He appears to have believed that he was still dealing with the modern justice system—which had served the valley well with regard to stolen livestock—rather than with a reversion to blood feud vengeance. Truda also emphasizes that Sarah McCoy didn’t summon Ranel home from Pikeville when Devil Anse Hatfield seized their sons because Devil Anse had assured her of their sons’ safe return to Kentucky but also of their immediate death if armed McCoys tried to rescue them.52
After his unsuccessful visit to Pikeville, Ranel McCoy returned to his cabin on Blackberry Fork, accompanied by Roseanna, who was still working for the Clines. The morning after the execution, Ranel and Sarah learned of their sons’ murders in the pawpaw patch.53
Beside himself, Ranel started assembling a posse of relatives and neighbors, but Sarah begged him not to participate in any more killing, to let the courts mete out justice to the Hatfields. She had heart problems and punctuated her plea by passing out. Ranel obliged his wife, canceled his posse, and stayed home to grieve, which many of his kinsmen felt was a mistake, believing the Hatfields could be stopped only by an equivalent show of force. One neighbor was quoted as saying, “If they think they’ve got ye on the run, they’ll keep after ye.”54
And they did.
7
DEVIL ANSE AND THE HELLHOUNDS
Once again, the Tug Fork Valley froze with horror. Three sons of Ranel McCoy had killed Devil Anse Hatfield’s younger brother Ellison, and a group of twenty-three Hatfield supporters had executed the McCoy boys in return. Good Elias Hatfield, the reluctant feudist, called these Hatfield supporters who always did his older brother’s bidding “Anse’s Hellhounds.”1 The pack was poised for further pursuits.
But for the moment the only man in motion was Ranel McCoy, who made several trips to Pikeville to initiate legal proceedings against Devil Anse and the Hellhounds.2 In September 1882, a grand jury finally issued indictments against Devil Anse and twenty Hatfield supporters. Four days later bench warrants were issued for some seventeen witnesses for the state.3
At the next session of the court several months later, however, the Pike County sheriff reported himself unable to arrest any of the indicted. He wrote “not found in this county February 19, 1883” beside each name in the records.4 Perhaps the sheriff felt that justice had already been served by the murders of Ellison Hatfield’s killers and that it was best to let sleeping hellhounds lie. Or perhaps he and his deputies feared confronting the armed bands of Hatfields who continued to visit Kentucky whenever they pleased. One reporter wrote that “there are none of the local authorities brave enough to try” to capture the Hatfields.5 Whatever the case, every last indicted Hatfield or Hatfield supporter evaded arrest for the next five years.
“It was known throughout Kentucky and West Virginia,” one researcher explained, “that any judge who lifted his gavel in the mountain regions did so at the risk of his life, that civil authorities were not powerful enough to combat family or clan rule, that the instructions of the court could be carried out only if people to whom they applied were in a mood to comply.” Because the Tug Fork split the valley in which both the Hatfields and the McCoys lived, geography introduced thorny issues about jurisdictions and—the reunited nation still mired in Reconstruction—states’ rights.6 Law officers from one state weren’t supposed to apprehend suspects in the other state, so those who committed crimes had only to cross the river in order to avoid arrest, as Devil Anse Hatfield’s crew had done after murdering the McCoy sons in the pawpaw patch.
Ranel McCoy didn’t agree with the sheriff’s assessment of the situation and kept agitating for the Pike County court to require West Virginia to deliver the indicted murderers to Kentucky. He also worked to assemble a posse to enter West Virginia and hunt them down. But his wife, Sarah, kept urging him to turn the other cheek, as advised in the New Testament, in stark contrast to the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye resolution adopted by the Hatfields that fatal night in the pawpaw patch.
A Hatfield historian maintains that “nearly everyone who has written about the Hatfield and McCoy feud has had to deal with the fact that very little happened between February 1883 and January 1887.”7 Such a statement would surely have come as news to several who were terrorized, beaten, shot, and killed during this period, as well as to those who fled the strife-torn area. An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal on June 30, 1885, stated, concerning the feud regions of Kentucky, “A reign of terror prevails. The quieter citizens are cowed, and those peaceably disposed are leaving that section and coming down within the confines of civilization.”8
Truda McCoy notes that it was almost impossible to figure out what actually did happen during the years immediately following the Pawpaw Murders because no one kept track of the events at the time. She reports, without details, that a young son of Larkin “Lark” McCoy, Harmon’s second son, was ambushed and murdered by someone associated with the West Virginia Hatfields. She describes his funeral, with armed Hatfields watching from the far bank of the Tug Fork and armed McCoys expecting them to attack at any moment.9
Another episode during this supposedly quiescent period was the ambush of John and Hense Scott, two cousins of Ranel McCoy, whose family was trying to remain neutral. While riding their horses along a road, Hense was shot in the shoulder and John in the knee, such that he limped for the rest of his life. Both their horses were killed.10
Some Hatfields later explained to the Scott brothers that they had mistaken them for Ranel McCoy and Ranel’s older brother Big Jim11 (or for Ranel’s son Calvin12). Learning that Ranel was planning to travel to Pikeville to consult with Perry Cline about the stalled indictments against the Hatfields for the Pawpaw Murders, the Hatfields had intended to kill Ranel to avoid the resuscitation of the warrants. Apparently they didn’t consider the possibility that new indictments for the murders of Ranel and his companion might take their place.
Following the Pawpaw Murders,
Devil Anse Hatfield seemed to stay out of the spotlight, behaving like a mountain padrone, sending forth his Hellhounds to execute his instructions. His primary deputy was his second son, Cap, a grim-faced, heavyset young man who had received his first serious wound at age fifteen at a drunken Christmas Eve dance when he was mistaken for his brawling brother Johnse and shot in the abdomen. A portion of his colon was destroyed, and for a long time anything he ate would spill out of his wound rather than continuing to pass through his intestines.13 Such an injury would make anyone grim. It would certainly have made it hard for him to get dinner dates.
In photos of him as a young man, Cap Hatfield wears a trimmed beard and mustache, and bangs slicked down across his forehead, in addition to a pistol in a shoulder holster. He looks a bit like Hitler, only gloomier.14 Cap was blind in one eye from an accident with a percussion cap in his youth; his good eye was blue. The feud reporter who described Devil Anse Hatfield as resembling Stonewall Jackson disliked Cap immensely, for reasons unknown, saying, “I do not think that I ever saw a more hideously repulsive face in all my life.” He also labeled Cap “quarrelsome and vindictive,” claiming that he was “simply a bad young man, without a single redeeming point.”15
Though some of the worst excesses of the feud have been laid at Cap Hatfield’s feet, he appears uneasy and unhappy in his role as his father’s deputy. The same reporter who despised Cap also observed that Devil Anse seemed to regard him as “a very useful tool for carrying out his purposes.”16 Like all narcissists, Devil Anse had the time of day only for those who advanced his own agenda, incapable of caring that Cap might have had goals of his own that service to his father was preventing him from pursuing. Cap Hatfield’s grandson Coleman C. claimed that Devil Anse “sent Cap out to raid the McCoys and commit other frighteningly violent acts while remaining in the background. Such decisions embittered Cap, who carried the bitterness to his grave.”17 Cap’s son Coleman A. concurred that his father “seemed haunted by the experiences of his youth.”18
