Soft-voiced, hard-eyed men in Kentucky's "Bloody" Harlan County began saying Ambrose Metcalfe was a "candidate" (meaning, for the graveyard) almost as soon as he pinned on a policeman's badge in 1946. It took him just two years and eight months to get there. Last week, when his kinfolk took his bullet-riddled body up the dusty Poor Fork road and buried it in a little family cemetery, many a hillman thought Ambrose had actually outlived his life expectancy.
In a sense, Ambrose Metcalfe had courted death; he was a black-haired, buck-toothed gunman with insolent eyes and heavy...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
