KENTUCKY VENDETTA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 149, 25 June 1908, Page 6

KENTUCKY VENDETTA.

AMAZING RECORD.' NEW YORK, May 5. The remarkable ten-year feud be^ tween the .Hargis and Cockrill fac".tions in Kentucky, which has befn marked continually by murder and , other outrages, reached another development last night, when' ex-Sherif£ j Ed. Callahan, chief lieutenant of Jim j Hargis, was mortally wounded by his ! brother-in-law, John Spicer, during a fight in Callahan's store1 at Crocketts■rille. A moment later Spicer was shot by Callahan's 'Spn,- Wilson, and' 1 fell dead.across the victim's body.' At the same time, in Jackson, Kentucky,. Daniel White, a Hargisite, shot and killed Jim Fugate, of the Cockrill faction, at the height of another revolver battle in the .street.

An entire .section of the State, known locally as "the duel county," is in an uproar, and factioriists are flocking to Jackson and to Crockettsville from the neighbouring mountains and hamlets, and it is feared that there may be more bloodshed. The fued between the Hargises and the Cockrills originally began over a neighbours' ,quarrel about a piece of ground. The "political pull" enjoyed by one party or the other has usually been strong enough to prevent the punishment of the murderers, whose tragic quarrels and fighting remind one strongly of some Sicilian vendetta in the Middle Ages. The newspapers are cynical to-day, remarking that if; would be rather a good thing to round up and imprison the entire family of the Hargises and Cockrills, and so prevent further bloodshed. .What with promiscuous shooting of the feudists and agrarian outrages perpetrated by nightriders on the estates of recalcitrant tobacco planters, Kentucky is getting a pretty bad name

A despatch, published here this evening, says that the "night-riders" of Boyle County, Kentucky, " last night destroyed a number of tobacco plant beds, owned by Mr Joseph Ware, by blowing them up with dynamite. Governor Wilson ordered out a company of the State Militia to-day, and soldiers are attempting to run down the perpetrators of the outrage.