Old McGill and old Eversole had fought the Lutts faction for twenty years, but old Lutts had ever proved a most formidable antagonist, and when he brought the fearful Johnse Hatfield up to Moon mountain as aide, there was both renewed caution and consternation in the McGill camp. Then, when old Cap Lutts finally killed the elder Sap McGill on Hellsfork, one Sunday morning, they foresaw an eclipse that would bedim their day of power and their impotent chagrin and rage was unbounded. Where his father had left off, young Sap then took up the feud with a re-enforced vengeance.
Then one day when the tidings came down to Junction City that the old King of Moon mountain had been killed by a revenuer, the exultation of the McGill faction was unconfined. Following closely upon this, a traitor sneaked down from Hellsfork and whispered to old Eversole the news of the arrest and spiriting away of Lem Lutts. The accrued glee of Eversole and young Sap with this opportune turn of affairs reached a stage that demanded expression. Wherefore, they celebrated with a public barbecue on the Courthouse lawn, and great rejoicing was mingled with sanguine prophecies, and the drunker Sap became the louder his avowals to annihilate the Lutts faction.
Eversole and young Sap plotted, then, to waylay Lem Lutts as soon as he was released from prison, and during the interval they killed three of the Lutts' sympathizers, and took Jutt Orlick into the fold. But throughout this apparent upperhand in the war, Sap and Eversole had an apprehension that grew day by day, and of which they exchanged serious comments.
The very silence of Hatfield, the man who now marshalled the Lutts faction, was significant and alarming. If old Cap Lutts' war-name was an awesome enunciation, the name of Johnse Hatfield was equally fearful. His name was scoffed at in public, but secretly he was a haunting bugbear to these murder partners.
In one respect, Hatfield was unlike old Cap Lutts. Lutts would fight so long as the enemy was in sight and then quit. All the old man wanted was to be left alone and unmolested. But not so with this Hatfield. He had the reputation of following his enemy up, and he did it with a confidence and deliberation that was little short of uncanny. He had been literally shot to pieces in other family wars, but always survived and always followed. It was the shadow of this relentless Nemesis that filled Sap and Eversole with a nervous unrest. These two conspirators not only owned practically all the realty in Junction City, but they, moreover, owned and controlled the Judge of the Court, the County prosecutor, and the Sheriff, and through Sap McGill old Eversole was the dictator supreme in Junction City.
He was postmaster and the post-office occupied one corner of his merchandise store. In the event that any citizen appeared lax or half-hearted in his partisanship, Eversole would accost him with a leering, soft-spoken reminder, which mild petition pounded more like the pungent echo of a gun-crack than a voice, and the delinquent always heeded.
In a sense, old Hank Eversole was a philanthropist of no mean generosity. Anybody could get a tombstone out of old Hank. These ornaments were a sort of hobby of his. If the deceased's relatives could not pay cash, he procured one and took a mortgage on the stone. If they rejected all overtures on the pay plan, he furnished one and placed it at his own expense, and gave it gratis. He maintained that plain boards were a disgrace to a well-ordered graveyard, and not meant for Junction City.
It was the second Tuesday in May, and the sun shone brightly and the air was scented with the mingled odors of spring. Junction City had taken on a sudden new life. The May term of circuit court was in session and the activity and life astir here was more animated than that which attended a court term for many a year, for the reason that there was a murder trial in progress.
In this festering crime-stained town, where hired assassination brewed under contract by day, and was returnable at night with its toll of blood, a murder was not a sensational episode, but a real murder trial was. Here the chief conspirators, who had made the Judge and the Prosecutor and the Sheriff, had the law by the throat; and they dumped the offal of their deeds into subservient arms of the law, and burdened and shackled it with collusions it dare not drop. Wherefore, the law winked and connived with these murder lords in brazen malfeasance inflicted upon the commonwealth, and trials assumed all the aspects of a hurried laugh-provoking comedy, despite the grim fact that its elements involved human life. The swearing out of warrants had long since fallen obsolete. In times past, charges had been made and warrants issued, but when the day of trial arrived, there were no witnesses at hand, and the prosecuting witness was usually the farthest distant.
Thus, it transpired that the trial which opened the circuit court at Junction City on this May day was to the denizens a memorable one. Although the trial itself, which was never finished, was not a factor in what followed, still, this trial was remembered as having opened a day that ended with a scrambled, tragic event which ground the McGill-Eversole combination to a pulp, and marked an era of new political and social ethics in Junction City.