Read Days of Darkness for Free Online

up with him until he was crossing a field. I yelled to him to stop; he dropped his gun and fell down, but when he got to his feet he pulled a pistol. I told him to throw down his pistol but when he would not I killed him. I shot at him four times, but I was on my horse running and did not hit him but two or three times.”
    Two of Lewis’s men were killed, five wounded. The posses limped back to Harlan. (Some historians think this attack has been confused with the previous one and say that only one attack on the Howard home actually occurred. The results were quite similar, though Wilse’s role, and the number killed, are different.)
    Now Governor Buckner received another letter, and an intriguing one, this from Wilse and Will Jennings, interesting not only for its contents but for its grammar and rather literary tone, in contrast to the scribblings of Lewis and others, and because it indicates that Wilse was feeling a measure of desperation. Parts of it follow.
    My Dear Sir:
    We see from some of the Louisville papers that you have been asked to send troops up here in the mountains to capture us, and that the papers are full of slush about us being desperadoes, outlaws and thieves, murderers, cutthroats and God knows what else. In justice to ourselves and to the thousands of friends in Harlan and the surrounding counties, we cannot afford to let such outrageous falsehoods go unnoticed.
    We will not pretend to give you a detailed account of the feud in thiscounty … but it began as far back as the war. There was a crowd of people in this town who wanted to be supreme rulers … and when any stranger would come to town … they did not like, they would try to run him off or have him killed, and did send many innocent men to their eternal home. [We were] selected by some unknown power to resist their attacks and became involved in the feud … and must bear the hardships we now bear, and must sneak around at night “like a galley slave, scourged to his dungeon.”
    We are as anxious to give up and stand trial as men can be, but that would be like committing suicide, as old Judge Lewis and his crowd of bushwhackers of the “Law and Order” party say that if they get us in jail they intend to burn the jail and we know they will do it. We will give bail in the amount of $75,000 and … can get ¾ of the people in Harlan County to go on our bond. If we did give bond we would have to stay hid and would have somebody to fight all the time … they would try to kill us just as hard then as now…. One man can arrest both of us if we are guaranteed protection, but we will never give up to Judge Lewis and his bushwhackers … this is the kind of Law and Order Party the devil has presiding in Hell.
    No one has ever asked us to surrender, and no attempt was ever made to arrest us, but on occasion they have come and fired on us, as they did this time, and then we would fight, and usually whip the hell out of them. Judge Lewis and his crowd slipped up to about 20 yards of where we were and fired on us, hitting one innocent boy by the name of Bird Spurlock, and then fled. Wilson Howard was the only one that fought them, and he whipped the entire ten bushwhackers [This would indicate that Lewis had a posse of only nine men, as E.B. Allen stated]. If there had been one man in the party with the least bit of bravery or manhood he could have killed Howard, as he stood out open and sent the lead sailing into them as they ran like the cowardly curs they are.
    With reference to the people in this section, they are quite law-abiding people, are never molesting anyone. As there is a just God … they will have to answer for the unjust assault made on these people, whose only fault is they let us stay amongst them.
    As to the charges they lay to us in Missouri, we desire to say that if your excellency will pardon us for the indictments in Harlan County against us we assure you that we will come as