He continued on the rampage. Out of one scrape into another.
His mother died of a broken heart. She had done all she could for her son but Beach Hargis went his reckless way.
He was sent to prison a second time, for the safety of all concerned, but he escaped about the time of the World War. No one has seen hide or hair of him since then. There have been many conjectures as to his whereabouts but no one really knows what has come of Judge Jim Hargis’s slayer.
There is a fine State College in Morehead, Rowan County, Kentucky, where Judge Will Young, whose eloquence saved Beach from the gallows, lived and died. On the college campus there is a Hargis Hall, named for Thomas F. Hargis, a Democrat and captain in the Confederate Army, and a relative of the reckless Beach.
As for Beach’s cousin, Curt Jett, accused of murder, rape, and even the betrayal of a pretty mountain girl, convicted of the slaying of J. B. Marcum, he was pardoned from the penitentiary, got religion, and was, the last heard from, preaching the gospel through the mountains of Kentucky.
For all the shedding of blood of kith and kin in the Hargis-Cockrell feud, when our country was plunged into the World War, Bloody Breathitt had no draft quota because so many of her valiant sons hastened to volunteer.
Although many of the feuds in the Blue Ridge grew out of elections, they were not prompted by ambition, for the offices contested were not high ones like that of senator or congressman. Frequently they were lesser posts such as that of sheriff or jailer or school-board trustee. When the strife finally led to assassination the motive usually was the desire for safety. The one feared had to be removed by death.
One famous feud, however, was started over the possession of a wife’s kitchen apron.
Tom Dillam’s wife left him and one day passing his farm she spied a woman working in the field wearing one of her aprons. Mrs. Dillam flew into a rage, climbed the rail fence, and deliberately snatched the apron off the other woman. Tom went after her to the home of his father-in-law, John Bohn, to recover the apron. He quarreled with his wife and instantly killed Bohn who tried to interfere.