On the night of June 22, 1887, the bodies of four dead men lay wrapped
in sheets on cooling boards in the musty sitting room of an old boarding
house in Morehead, Rowan County, Kentucky. Only the bullet-shattered
faces, besmeared with blood, were exposed. Their coffins had not yet
arrived from the Blue Grass. No friend or kinsman watched beside the
bier that sultry summer night; they had prudently kept to their homes,
for excitement ran high over the battle that had been fought that day in
front of the old hostelry which marked, with the death of the four, the
end of the Martin-Tolliver feud.
While the bodies lay side-by-side in the front part of the shambling
house, there sat in the kitchen, so the story goes, a slatternly old
crone peeling potatoes for supper--should the few straggling boarders
return with an appetite, now that all the shooting was over.
It was the privilege of old women like Phronie in the mountains of
Kentucky to go unmolested and help out as they felt impelled in times of
troubles such as these between the Martins and Tollivers.
The place was strangely quiet. Indeed the old boarding house was
deserted. For those who had taken the law in their own hands that day in
Rowan County had called a meeting at the courthouse farther up the road.
The citizenry of the countryside, save kin and friend of the slain
feudists, had turned out to attend.
"Nary soul to keep watch with the dead," Phronie complained under her
breath. "It's dark in yonder. Dark and still as the grave. A body's got
to have light. How else can they see to make it to the other world?" She
paused to sharpen her knife on the edge of the crock, glancing
cautiously now and then toward the door of the narrow hallway that led
to the room where the dead men lay.
The plaintive call of a whippoorwill far off beyond Triplett Creek,
where one of the men had been killed that day, drifted into the quiet
house.
"It's a sorry song for sorry times," murmured old Phronie, "and it ought
to tender the heart of them that's mixed up in these troubles. No how,
whosoever's to blame, the dead ort not to be forsaken."
There was a sound behind her. Phronie turned to see the hall door
opening slowly. "Who's there?" she called. But no one answered. The door
opened wider. But no one entered.
"It's a sign," the old woman whispered. "Well, no one can ever say
Phronie forsaken the dead." It was as though the old crone answered an
unspoken command. She put down the crock of potatoes and the paring
knife. Wiping her hands on her apron, Phronie took the oil lamp, with
its battered tin reflector, from the wall. "Can't no one ever say I
forsaken the dead," she repeated, "nor shunned a sign or token. The
dead's got to have light same as the living."
Holding the lamp before her, she passed slowly along the narrow hall on
to the room where the dead men lay wrapped in their sheets. She drew a
chair from a corner and climbed upon it and hung the lamp above the
mantel. It was the chair on which Craig Tolliver, alive and boastful and
fearless, had sat that morning when she had brought him hot coffee and
cornbread while he kept an eye out for the posse, the self-appointed
citizens who later killed the Tolliver leader and his three companions.
The flickering light of the oil lamp fell upon the ghastly faces of the
dead men.
For a moment the old woman gazed at the still forms. Then suddenly her
glance fixed itself upon the face of Craig Tolliver.
Slowly the lashes of Craig's right eye moved ever so slightly.
Phronie was sure of it. She gripped the back of the chair on which she
stood to steady herself, for now the lid of the dead man's eye twitched
convulsively. As the trembling old woman gaped, the eye of the slain
feudist opened and shut. Not once, but three times, quick as a wink.
"God-a-mighty!" shrieked Phronie, "he ain't dead! Craig Tolliver ain't
dead!" She leaped from the chair and ran fast as her crooked old limbs
would carry her, shrieking as she went, "Craig Tolliver ain't dead!"
Some say it was just the notion of an old woman gone suddenly raving
crazy, though others, half believing, still tell the story of the
winking corpse.