End of a Feud

In Kentucky's Clay County Walter Webb came to be considered almost immortal until vengeance drew a good bead on him this month and he turned out to be only human. Last week 900 mourners climbed up the jagged dirt road--really a dry creek-bed--to his farm for the burial. "There was tears shed from every, eye," said his daughter Zola. "It was the most hurt crowd I ever saw." Three ministers invoked blessings and golden chrysanthemums were piled high on the grave. Then the kinfolk and the curious drifted away, leaving Widow Doric Webb and the five children alone in the ramshackle house on the wild, hard land.

They Ran Him Home. Walter Webb, big, strong and blue-eyed, was once a soldier and twice married. He was too vivid to be ignored, too likable when sober, too lethal when drunk. He killed his best friend in a quarrel over local politics and was put away for two years, although Doric always said, "He done it in self-defense." In 1944, to avenge another killing, Webb and a friend shot down a man in broad daylight at Hen's Corner, a moonshine saloon in the county seat of Manchester (pop. 1,706). Under oath Webb testified so roguishly, with such good humor, that they both went free.

In 1949 he killed Billy White in a woman's room, dueling to the death before her eyes. Webb later explained: "He kept on popping lead at me. I knew I was going to hell, and I figured he should go down too." He was never tried, but thereafter was always on trial for his life. On a lonely road a machine gun put 48 holes in his car and 14 bullets in his legs. In ten months he was ambushed four times. He was hit 30 times in all, but defiantly he proclaimed: "The Lord is with me and He will never let them steal my life."

Bullets raked his 320 lean and hilly acres, killed a hog, a mule and a dog, and pinked daughter Zola's left ear. Webb thought it best to go away for awhile. For two years he worked in Hamilton, Ohio, and made his name there slashing off a man's ear in a fight. He came back often, disguised sometimes in his 80-year-old mother's pink bonnet and skirts. This spring he thrust away all fear and came home for good. "They run me home, and that's as far as I'm going," he said.

They Laid Him Low. One day early this month, a rifleman waited patiently in the tall corn near the home pasture, until, at twilight, Webb began to plow. The legend was that Webb wore armor and could only be killed by a bullet in the brain. The marksman aimed carefully, and at 200 feet his aim was true. He fired twice again--while daughter Ursley Jean raised her father in her arms--and hit Webb twice again, but the first bullet was enough.

At first, nobody in Clay County believed that Walter Webb was dead, at 50, and then everybody said his death was inevitable and long overdue. The law officers promised to find the sniper but, with all their bloodhounds, they never had found the other men who shot at Walter Webb. "I wouldn't want a better man," said Dorie Webb. "I wouldn't even want to look for one."

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