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whiskey, and one must wonder how much Judge Wilson Lewis had to do with lighting the fire. Lewis himself, in a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal of September 23, 1889, declared that the death of Little Bob Turner at the hand of Wix Howard had for all purposes ended the real family feud. From then on, he said, it was really a matter of the “Turners joining an effort by law enforcement officers to control the whisky traffic” personified by Wilse Howard, who resisted efforts of the law-abiding people to bring the evil booze under control. His own statements strengthen the belief that Lewis was the one who kept the feud going and provoked Wilse Howard into retaliation.
    Most of the Howards seem to have been reluctant about entering the armed conflict; indeed, most of the large family never took part in the feud. Wilse was an exception, and it is probably significant that the ties between Alice and her slender, dark-haired son were especially strong; Wilse had a lot of Jennings blood in him. When he heard of the encounter between his mother and the Turners, he took the news sourly.
    The following week, on the road to Hagan, Virginia, Wilse ran into Will Turner, reputedly the toughest of the Turners, and a man named Bob Maupin. Insults were followed by gunfire, but no one was hurt. Wilse went home and reported the skirmish, and the Howards took precautions against a possible attack. Sure enough, that night the Howard home was attacked by a group led by Will Turner. In the dark, little was accomplished, but Will Turner was wounded. He left a few days later, saying he was going out West to recuperate. Will Jennings, Alice’s brother, had moved to Indiana, but with trouble looming, Wilse and his mother sent for him, and he was soon seen riding with what became known as the Wilse Howard gang.
    In the late summer of 1887, Will Turner came home and George Turner wrote Captain Ben Howard a most remarkable letter, one that again raises questions about which side was outside the law. “The bulldog of the Turners has returned,” he wrote, “with all of his teeth intact.” He then challenged the Howards to meet the Turners “in open battle at Harlan Courthouse [He may have meant the town rather than the building, but the Howards took it to mean the building] and decide by the arbitraiment of blade and bullet who has the better right to rule the county.”
    The Howards had cause for worry. Wilson Lewis, who was kin to the Turner and Cawood families, had been elected county judge and was said to be determined to kill off the Howards and take over the whiskey business. Moses Turner had been elected sheriff. While Will was out West recuperating, a man named Huff had tried to negotiate a truce between the two clans but had received little encouragement from the Turners. “I’d rather have my boys brought home on blankets,” said Mrs. George Turner. “My boys will never lay down their arms.” But Huff persisted, James Howard and Hezekiah Jennings came into Harlan and met with the Turners, and a truce of sorts was accepted. But Little George and Carlo “Bony” Turner were not parties to the agreement, and Wilse warned that they could not be trusted to keep the peace. He was right. As the Howards rode home from the meeting, someone—Wilse claimed that it was Little George—fired at them from a brushy cliff. No one was hurt, but Wilse swore he would clean out the Turners, truce or no. The shooting soon resumed.
    So when the Howards received George Turner’s challenge, Ben Howard sent out word to family members, and a council of war was held at the log “fort” on the river. (Relatively few of the Howards attended, indicating that most of the family wanted to be left out of the feud.) James Howard, Wilse’s older brother, sent word back to George Turner that the Howards would meet them on the appointed day in Harlan. Berry Howard, who had been jailer and