Melissy of the Bar Double G - Chapter 14 Concerning the Boone-Bellamy-Yarnell Feud

The story that Ferne Yarnell told them in the parlor of the hotel had its
beginnings far back in the days before the great war. They had been
neighbors, these three families, had settled side by side in this new land
of Arkansas, had hunted and feasted together in amity. In an hour had
arisen the rift between them that was to widen to a chasm into which much
blood had since been spilt. It began with a quarrel between hotheaded
young men. Forty years later it was still running its blind wasteful
course.

Even before the war the Boones had begun to go down hill rapidly. Cad
Boone, dissipated and unprincipled, had found even the lax discipline of
the Confederate army too rigid and had joined the guerrillas, that band of
hangers-on which respected neither flag and developed a cruelty that was
appalling. Falling into the hands of Captain Ransom Yarnell, he had been
tried by drumhead courtmartial and executed within twenty four hours of
his capture.

The boast of the Boones was that they never forgot an injury. They might
wait many years for the chance, but in the end they paid their debts.
Twenty years after the war Sugden Boone shot down Colonel Yarnell as he
was hitching his horse in front of the courthouse at Nemo. Next Christmas
eve a brother of the murdered man--Captain Tom, as his old troopers still
called him--met old Sugden in the postoffice and a revolver duel followed.
From it Captain Tom emerged with a bullet in his arm. Sugden was carried
out of the store feet first to a house of mourning.