John Hardy was a Black worker for the Shawnee Coal company, and one pay-day night he killed another Black man in a crap game over a dispute of 25 cents (some accounts say that it was 75 cents). Before the game began, he laid his pistol on the table saying to it ‘Now I want you to lay here; and the first nigger that steals money from me, I mean to kill him.’ About midnight he began to lose, and claimed that one of the negros had taken 25 cents of his money. The man denied the charge, but gave him the amount; whereupon he said ‘Don’t you know that I won’t lie to my gun?’ Thereupon he seized his pistol and shot the man dead. He was hanged for murder in 1894 in McDowell County, West Virginia, soon after which a song gained increasingly popular circulation among both black and white Appalachian singers. It was recorded by Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis, Hobart Smith, John Cohen, Buell Kazee, Doc Boggs, the Carter Family and others.