When such men engage in combat blood is sure to flow. As to who began the difficulty there is but little doubt. Official reports to the Governor, which will be found later on, place the blame upon Eversole. After a short exchange of blows between the men, Gambriel was fired upon by secreted friends of Eversole. Attempting to escape by running around a house, Gambriel was fired upon from another quarter and fatally wounded. Staggering and reeling, he turned upon Eversole, who fired into his head, instantly killing him. Several parties were indicted for the murder, but one only was tried. The trial resulted in a hung jury the first time, and in an acquittal on the second trial. It has always been an open secret about town that the man who fired upon Gambriel while he attempted to escape death, has never been indicted, and that he was an officer at that time. The killing created intense feeling. Gambriel had many friends. He was a staunch French adherent and it was well within the course of reason for French to regard the killing of the man as a challenge. The Eversoles themselves believed that Gambriel's friends would not pass lightly over the homicide and prepared to meet all danger. The clans, disbanded (?) but a short time before, reassembled and for several months roamed the ill-fated county at will, terrorizing its inhabitants and defying the law. But little fighting was done. It seems that they contented themselves with manoeering, marching and counter-marching. In such warfare, if warfare it was, the innocent were made to suffer more than the warriors. Such an armed vagabondage was as useless as it was silly. It furnished material for the sensational newspaper, but even these failed to discover anything of the heroic about this campaign. The leaders must have felt something of that themselves, for during the winter the armies were again disbanded. Permanent restoration of peace, however, was not to come to Perry County yet for a time. The apparent calm through the winter was suddenly disturbed in the following April, when the news of the brutal assassination of Joseph C. Eversole and Nick Combs excited and horrified Hazard. On the morning of April 15th, 1888, the valley of Big Creek, Perry County, became the scene of a tragedy which might well cause one's blood to run cold with horror, one's cheek to blush with shame. On the Sabbath day, when human hearts should turn to God in prayer, when nature even seems to bow in reverence, the birds of the forests sing His praises with more than usual sweetness, two lives were hurled into eternity without warning, murdered, butchered from ambush.