In the drugstore of his brother-in-law, Dr. Hogg, Beach terrorized customers and the proprietor by pointing his pistol around promiscuously. He reeled out of the place without firing, however, and went back to his father’s store. Someone later said all he had been drinking was a bottle of Brown’s Bitters.
From where Judge Hargis stood in one part of the double storeroom he could see Beach sitting cross-legged in a chair near the front door. Beach spat on his shoe and slowly whetted his pocket knife, scowling sullenly now and then in his father’s direction. He clicked the blade of his knife shut and slipped it into his pocket and sat with his arms dangling at his sides, head slumped on his breast.
A customer came in and asked Judge Hargis, “Where’s Beach?”
The father pointed to the son. “There he is. I have done all I can for him and I cannot go about him or have anything to do with him.” Then Judge Hargis repeated that Beach was destroying his business and would do the same with Dr. Hogg’s business if Evylee kept on harboring him.
Not a word was spoken between father and son. But as Jim Hargis walked in his direction, Beach pulled himself up out of his chair, stepped around behind the spool case that stood on the end of the counter, leered at his father and moved toward him. Beach came within three feet of his father. The next thing they were grappling.
Terrified bystanders and clerks heard the report of five pistol shots. All five of the shots lodged in Jim Hargis’s body. By this time the two men were on the floor. The father holding the son down with one arm, lifted in his right the smoking pistol. “He has shot me all to pieces,” gasped Judge Hargis as he handed the pistol to a bystander. He died in a few minutes.
Loyal to her unfortunate son, Louellen, the widow of Judge Hargis, set about to get the ablest lawyers in the state to defend him. Will Young, matchless orator of Rowan County, was not able to clear Beach on the first trial. On the second, however, aided by the legal skill of Governor William O. Bradley, D. B. Redwine, J. J. C. Bach, Sam H. Kash, and Thomas L. Cope, Beach was sentenced to the penitentiary for life instead of the gallows.
As the years went by the mother continued to plead for her son’s freedom. Time and again she made the journey to Frankfort to beg mercy of the governor. Weary and sad she lingered outside the door of the mansion. She hovered close to the entrance of the chief executive’s suite in the capitol, pleading by look, if word was denied her. Finally the governor pardoned Beach Hargis, because, it was said, His Excellency could no longer bear the sight of the heartbroken mother. Beach was pardoned on promise of good behavior.
But scarcely was he back in Breathitt County when pistol shots were heard again. He rode out to the farm of relatives a few miles from Jackson and when the womenfolk spied him galloping up the lane they took to the attic in terror. Beach, reeling drunk, staggered into the dining room where the table was set for dinner. There was a platter of fried chicken, another of hot biscuits. He shot all the biscuits off the plate, threw the chicken out the door and didn’t stop till he had riddled every dish on the table.
The womenfolk up in the attic, with fingers to ears, stared white and trembling at each other. Finally one of the girls reached out of the small window up under the eaves and, with the aid of a branch from the cherry tree close by, caught hold of the rope on the farm bell. Once the rope was in her hand she pulled it quickly again and again. The clanging of the bell brought the men from the fields but as they approached on the run through the cornfield and potato patch, Beach threw a leg over his horse and galloped away, shooting into the air.