So far as that went, it really was not so much the
death of the victim as the survival of his destroyer--and his fashion
of living afterwards--which made warp and woof for the fabric of the
tragedy.
With the passage of time the actuating causes were somewhat blurred in
perspective. The main facts stood forth clear enough, but the underlying
details were misty and uncertain, like some half-obliterated scribble on
a badly rubbed slate upon which a more important sum has been overlaid.
One rendition had it that the firm of Stackpole Brothers sued the two
Tatums--Harve and Jess--for an account long overdue, and won judgment in
the courts, but won with it the murderous enmity of the defendant pair.
Another account would have it that a dispute over a boundary fence
marching between the Tatum homestead on Cache Creek and one of the
Stackpole farm holdings ripened into a prime quarrel by reasons of
Stackpole stubbornness on the one hand and Tatum malignity on the other.
By yet a third account the lawsuit and the line-fence matter were
confusingly twisted together to form a cause for disputation.
Never mind that part though. The incontrovertible part was that things
came to a decisive pass on a July day in the late '80's when the two
Tatums sent word to the two Stackpoles that at or about six o'clock of
that evening they would come down the side road from their place a mile
away to Stackpole Brothers' gristmill above the big riffle in Cache
Creek prepared to fight it out man to man.
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