Historical novels, with some exceptions, present the past in a more interesting manner than do the formal histories which are intended as chronicles of actual facts. It has been said, on the one hand, that “truth is stranger than fiction,” and on the other that “fiction is often more truthful than fact.” Fiction is undoubtedly more truthful in the presentation of the manners and social life of the period portrayed than is formal history. The history of Cave-in-Rock and the careers of the outlaws identified with the place is not only stranger than fiction, but is besprinkled with many tragic and melodramatic scenes which, although almost unimaginable, are actually true. For more than a century fiction writers have used the Cave as a background for stories. These authors by freely discarding the leading facts and drawing on their own imaginations wrote stories less original than might otherwise have been produced.
No effort has been made to compile a more or less complete collection of works of fiction pertaining to the Cave. The stories and poems commented on in the course of this chapter are only such as were incidentally found while in search of history. Although this fiction has very little of facts for a basis, and most of the scenes are far from probable, nevertheless it necessarily stands not only as Cave-in-Rock literature, but also as a contribution to the good, bad, or indifferent literature of America. The fact that more than one edition was published of the Cave-in-Rock novels here referred to
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 indicates, to some extent that they represent some of the types of stories then in demand.
Stories dealing with mysterious murders and highway robberies have always found many enthusiastic readers. It seems that every decade of the nineteenth century produced at least one new tale of Cave-in-Rock. And in our own times the writings of some well-known living authors show that the Cave is still supplying material for fiction.
In Irvin S. Cobb’s story “The Dogged Under Dog,” (originally published in the Saturday Evening Post, August 3, 1912, and shortly thereafter printed in Cobb’s book entitled Back Home) one of the characters, recalling some of the rough men who lived near the Cave when that country was still new, says Big Harpe and Little Harpe were run down by dogs and killed and that “the men who killed them cut off their heads and salted them down and packed them both in a piggin of brine, and sent the piggin by a man on horseback up to Frankfort to collect the reward.”
Nancy Huston Banks in Oldfield, 1902, devotes a few pages to Cave-in-Rock, the Harpes, and a character she calls “Alvarado,” a mysterious Spaniard who frequented the lower Ohio valley and who was suspected of having been a comrade of Jean Lafitte. Mrs. Banks, in her next historical novel, ’Round Anvil Rock, 1903 (in which Philip Alston is one of the leading characters) refers to that section of Kentucky lying opposite the Cave as having been the “Rogues Harbor.”
The Harpes, Masons, and the Cave are introduced in The Ark of 1803, by C. A. Stephens. This book for boys, published in 1904, is intended as a picture of romances and tragedies incidental to early navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi. It serves that purpose
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 fairly well, although practically no statement made by the author regarding the Harpes and the Masons is in accordance with history or tradition.
 
View of Cave-in-Rock and Vicinity, 1833
It shows a landscape interesting in itself but false to the actual scene
(Reproduced from Charles Bodmer’s drawing)
Our earliest item relative to fiction pertaining to the Cave was found in a review published in The Port Folio, February, 1809, of Thomas Ashe’s Travels in America Performed in 1806, printed in London in 1808. The critics in Ashe’s day, and ever since, declared the writer of Travels a literary thief, bone thief, and infamous prevaricator and ridiculed his work on the ground that it was filled with incredible stories grafted onto authentic incidents and actual facts. This general condemnation gave the new book a wide circulation for a few years. The editor of The Port Folio devotes a dozen pages to his “entire contempt both of Mr. Ashe and his work.”
Most of the travelers who appeared after Ashe’s day and examined the Cave detected in his sketch a combination of facts and fiction that helped spread the name and history of this interesting and picturesque rendezvous of outlaws. Many a visitor still goes to the place expecting to explore the “upper cave” but soon discovers that its size has been wildly exaggerated by Ashe. His account of the Cave is one of the longest ever written and will always be of curious interest no matter from what standpoint it may be read, other than history. The reproach to Ashe is that he gave the hoax out as veritable facts encountered in his travels and never corrected this impression or acknowledged his purpose. About half of what he says concerning the Cave is at least highly probable; the remainder is wholly fictitious.
A casual investigation of the stories published after outlawry terminated at Ford’s Ferry, brought to light
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 two novels and a long poem in which the Cave serves as a background. Viewed from the standpoint of today their plots have the consistency of a dime novel. Browsing in the field of fiction also led to the discovery of the one time celebrated romance of Harpe’s Head.
Harpe’s Head, by Judge James Hall, was first published in America in 1833, and the following year was printed in London under the title of Kentucky, A Tale. It was later republished in America in Judge Hall’s volume, Legends of the West. Harpe’s Head is the only novel in which the notorious Harpes are introduced as characters. It is a story of a small emigrant family traveling from Virginia to western Kentucky over the route then endangered by the Harpes. All the characters are fictitious, except the two outlaws and their wives. No reference is made to their career at the Cave.
The romance is written in a dignified and graceful style. Atkinson’s Casket for November, 1833, in its comments on the book says “it has some masterly scenes,” and quotes one in full—a Virginia barbecue. Among other interesting sketches of pioneer times woven into Harpe’s Head is one of “Hercules Short” or “Hark Short, the Snake Killer,” a half-witted boy who performs extraordinary feats and who labors under the impression that he is a son of Big Harpe. On one occasion “Hark” remarks that his mother told him, “If anybody was to rake hell with a fine-comb they would not find sich a tarnal villain as Big Harpe.”
Edmund L. Starling, in his History of Henderson County, Kentucky, 1887, says: “The history of the Harpes in this portion of Kentucky, has long ago, and repeatedly found its way into the histories of Kentucky and other states, in pamphlets and the newspapers of
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 the country, and at one time was even dramatized for the American stage. But it was so desperate and appalling to all rational sensibilities that it was abandoned by the drama.” I did not find any pamphlets or dramas regarding the Harpes.
The earliest novel found using Cave-in-Rock for a background is Mike Fink, A Legend of the Ohio, by Emerson Bennett, who for a time was a well-known writer of thrilling romances. This melodrama was first published in Cincinnati in 1848, and although now a somewhat rare book, it ranked, judging from the number of editions issued, among widely-read stories of the middle of the last century. Its popularity was not due to any high literary merit, but to its wild and extravagant plot. The greater part of the story deals with bloody battles between a band of outlaws and the flatboat crew and passengers led by Mi............