University of California Berkeley 
 
CHAKLES WILLIAM QUANTKELL. 
 
NOTED GUERRILLAS, 
 
 OR THE 
 
 WARFARE OF THE BORDER. 
 
 BEINtf A HISTOBT OP THE LIVES AND ADVENTURES OP 
 
 QUANTRELL, BILL ANDERSON, GEORGE TODD, DAVE POOLE, 
 FLETCHER TAYLOR, PEYTON LONG, OLL SHEPHERD, 
 ARCH CLEMENTS, JOHN MAUPIN, TUCK AND 
 WOOT HILL, WM. GREGG, THOMAS MAU- 
 PIN, THE JAMES BROTHERS, THE 
 YOUNGER BROTHERS, 
 ARTHUR McCOY, 
 
 AND NUMEROUS OTHER WELL KNOWN 
 
 GUERRILLAS OF THE WEST. 
 
 BT 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS, 
 Author of "Shelby and His Men," "Shelby's Expedition to Mexico," Eta. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 ST. LOUIS, MO. i 
 
 BRYAN, BRAND & COMPANY. 
 
 CHICAGO, ILL., THOMPSON & WAKE FIELD. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, OAL., A. L. BANCROFT & CO. 
 
 1877. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM QUANTRELL, 
 
 frontispiece* 
 
 COLEMAN YOUNGER, . 
 
 
 THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER, 
 JAMES YOUNGER 
 
 . . 111 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CLARK HOCKENSMITH, . 
 WILL HULSE, . . 
 LEE McMURTY, 
 T. F. MAUPIN, . 
 TUCK HILL, . 
 WOOT HILL, . 
 OLL SHEPHERD, 
 GEORGE SHEPHERD, , 
 
 . .239 
 . . . 290 
 . 290 
 t . 90 
 
 825 
 , . . 825 
 . .872 
 ... 872 
 
 Copyright, 1877, by 
 N. M. Bryan. 
 
 Becktold A Co., Binders, 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
,4-5 
 
 "The standing side by side till death, 
 The dying for some wounded friend, 
 The faith that failed not to the end, 
 The strong endurance till the breath 
 And body took their way apart, 
 I only know. I keep my trust, 
 Their vices I earth has them by heart. 
 Their virtues 1 they are with iheir dust. 99 
 
 M529791 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 The Guerrilla and the motives that governed him His tactics in 
 War His patience in adversity His wonderful pistol practice 
 His marvelous horsemanship His peculiar and graphic mill- 
 itary dialect How he blended the ferocity of a savage with the 
 
 tenderness of a woman 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CAUSES THAT PRODUCED THE GUERRILLA. 
 
 Border difficulties with the Red Legs and Jayhawkers of Kansas- 
 Many deeds of lawlessness and cruelty committed by irresponsi- 
 ble Robbers and unjustly attributed to the Guerrillas Driven 
 to war by the murder of friends or the destruction of property 
 they fought to kill and studied killing as a science. . 19 
 
 CHAPTER -HI, 
 
 AMERICAN GUERRILLAS COMPARED WITH THOSE OP OTHER COUNTRIEa. 
 
 The Guerrillas of France, Spain, Italy and Mexico They fought 
 for their religion and lived by plunder Sometimes brave, but 
 generally cowardly and cruel They in no manner compared 
 with the Guerrillas of America in courage, endurance, or the 
 science of warfare Fra Diavolo and Napoleon Colonel Dupin 
 and Capt. Ney's Guerrillas in Mexico under Maximilian- 
 General Francis Marion of the Revolution. 23 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 QUANTRELL. 
 
 His early life His home and his devotion to his mother The trip 
 across the plains The murder on the prairie The lonely watch 
 of the wounded brother by the side of the dead one The battle 
 with the wolves and the vultures Rescued by an old Indian, . 31 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 QUANTRELL AND THE KANSAS JAYHAWKERS. 
 
 His slow recovery from his wounds Dreams and reveries- 
 Becomes a school teacher visits Leavenworth and assumes 
 the name of Charley Hart. Graphic description of the typical 
 Kansas Jayhawker Jim Lane, Jennison and Montgomery 
 Quautrell, alias Charley Hart, joins the Jayhawkers and Is 
 enrolled in the company that murdered his brother His quiet 
 and gentlemanly demeanor wins the respect of his new asso- 
 
CONTENTS Of 
 
 dates, and he is chosen Orderly Sergeant Active operations 
 against 'Border Ruffians" and hostile Indians A mysterious 
 visitation The mysterious handwriting becomes legible, but 
 who holds the bloody pen? Quantrell is promoted to a 
 Lieutenantcy His Captain becomes communicative He dies 
 soon afterwards with a hole in his forehead The Lieutenant 
 buys a handsome uniform and adds another pistol to his belt 
 The scene of operations transferred to Lawrence Organization 
 of political clubs Quantrell becomes a Liberator The raid into 
 Missouri and the attack on Morgan Walker's house The Lib- 
 erators are liberated The mysterious handwriting stands 
 revealed, and Quantrell becomes a Guerrilla. . .86 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 QUANTRELL'S FIRST BATTLES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 Carthage, Wilson's Creek, Lexington Organization of the Guer- 
 rillasHanging of Searcy Poole,, Gregg, Jarrette, Coger, Todd, 
 Cole Younger and others Younger's pistol practice and how it 
 began to bear fruit- Excitement in Kansas City The Guerrillas 
 disband The reorganization Quantrell and his men surprised at 
 the Tate House A "light" The desperate battle "Shot guns 
 to the front" The charge The second surprise at the house 
 of Samuel C. Clark Capt. Peabody charges the dwelling 
 Blunt's duel with the Federal trooper The rush for liberty 
 The pursuit and the ambuscade 60 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BATTLES AND SURPRISES. 
 
 The killing of young Blythe Dreadful slaughter at the "Blue Cut" 
 Peabody again on the war-path Quantrell and his men sur- 
 prised in the Low House The desperate combat The Guer- 
 rillas again disband Quantrell and George Todd, disguised as 
 Federal officers, visit Hannibal and St. Joseph in quest of 
 ammunition and arms Renewal of active operations An inof- 
 fensive Lieutenant Southern girls captured and placed in front 
 of the militia column as they hunt for Guerrillas A fight on the 
 Prairie Dave Poole's adventure with the Plainsman George 
 Todd and his men ambush a flat-boat on the Big Blue The des- 
 perate leap into the river A Challenge An amusing incident 
 Quantrell wounded Cole Younger performs a desperate deed 
 to save a comrade 68 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Preparations for the attack on Independence Dick Yager teaches a 
 ScMitinel how to shoot Cole Younger, dressed as a market 
 woman, visits Independence A troublesome sentinel is shot 
 down The fight Col. Buell's surrender 92 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER EX. 
 
 LONE JACK. 
 
 Coffee, Crockett, Shelby, Jackman, Tracy, Hunter, Hays Prepara- 
 tions for the attack The barred banner behind the hedgerow- 
 Gallant defence by Colonel Foster Tragic death of a young 
 mother Reorganization of Quantrell's command Hanging Jay- 
 hawkers An old man's plea for his boy Desperate adventure 
 of Scott, Haller, Younger, Whitsett and Poole Narrow escape 
 of George Shepherd Rifle pits Combats with militia and 
 Jayhawkers John C. Moore rescues a friend Unfortunate 
 expedition of Captain Harrison. . . . . , . 100 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MARCH SOUTH. 
 
 A smiling stranger attempts to assassinate Quantrell Is detected 
 and hung Cole Younger's Winter campaign Robbery and hor- 
 rible murder of Colonel Henry Younger by Jennison's men 
 Persecution and death of Mrs. Younger John Younger hanged 
 and beaten by a mob Cole Younger has a "little fun" His 
 Christinas raid into Kansas City Winter Quarters The traitor 
 A surprise and a desperate fight Dangerous descent of a 
 bluff Fi^ht at Little Blue An old negro woman saves Cole 
 Younger 's life , 128 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 QUANTRELL VISITS RICHMOND. 
 
 His memorable interview with the Confederate Secretary of War 
 Capture of the steamer "Sara Gaty," and intrepidity of Captain 
 McCloy Bill Anderson The murder of his sisters transforms 
 the quiet working man into an incarnate demon The solemn 
 oath by the bedside of his sister Jesse and Frank James An 
 ambuscade The Guerrillas attack Plattsburg Swimming the 
 Missouri River The treacherous quicksand Jesse James goes 
 on a Romantic Expedition A Tavern that was "full" Todd 
 lies in wait for a Company of Red Legs Quantrell carries the 
 war into Kansas. . ... 16$ 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LAWRENCE. 
 
 The gathering of the clans "Lawrence or Hell" The black flag 
 unfurled The march to Lawrence A romantic incident The 
 attack A day of slaughter Incidents of the massacre, etc. 
 The retreat back to Missouri The torch and the revolver 
 An incident of gallantry, poetry and mystery A list of those 
 Who went to Lawrence IBS 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A COUNTER-BLOW. 
 
 General Order No. 11 Schofield, Ewing and Bingham Scalping 
 
CONTENTS X1 
 
 begins A brave old man whose "time had come'* Frank 
 James, Poole and others have a romantic adventure A young 
 soldier in a bad fix How Frank James did not shoot him 
 "Boys and babies are not difficult to kill" General Blunt almost 
 falls into a trap Cole Younger charges into a bayou . . 20$ 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 QUANTRELL AGAIN. 
 
 An easy capture and unjustifiable killing Quick work with the 
 militia Quantrell in a close place Safety in a swamp "A pair 
 that beat four aces" The fight at Arrow Rock Quantrell seeks 
 rest and quiet in Howard County Attempt to arrest Bill An- 
 derson and his men by Confederate Soldiers His escape and 
 march Northward Coger has an Adventure Two Foragers 
 narrowly escape Death A Party of Guerrillas attack a house iu 
 in Kansas City Romantic adventure with a Mountain Boomer 
 Arthur McCoy and how he got into a scrape Adventures of a 
 noted Spy and Guerrilla A brave German and his pitchfork 
 Capt. Lea puts a stop to Cotton speculating Cole Younger 
 again . . . 226 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PREPARING FOR PRICE'S RAH). 
 
 Frank and Jesse James are sent on an errand John Thrailkill Per- 
 secution and death of his sweetheart render him desperate, and 
 he becomes a Guerrilla Capture of Keytesville Furious attack 
 on Fayette The Centralia Massacre Anecdote of Major Rol- 
 lins Guerrilla operations in Howard county, . . . 288 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 AFTER CENTRALIA. 
 
 Peyton Long kills a courier with two human ears in his pocket- 
 Fights with the Germans Arthur McCoy, the "Wild Irishman" 
 Death of Todd Death of Anderson Jesse James shoots a 
 preacher Is afterward shot through the lungs and captured 
 A heroine A remarkable pistol shot Closing incidents of the 
 
 Guerrilla war, 811 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE DEATH OF QUANTRELL. 
 
 The march from Missouri to Kentucky Interesting adventures A 
 young Lieutanent gets Quantrell under cover of a Mississippi 
 rifle Wonderful nerve of the famous Guerrilla Blood-thirsty 
 executions Combats and skirmishes Sue Mundy Death of 
 
 Quantrell. 882 
 
 CHAPTER XVHI. 
 
 AFTER THE WAR. 
 
 The James and Younger boys The Guerrillas in Mexico Numerous 
 desperate and romantic adventures 448 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I WRITE of an organization whose history might well have 
 massacre put over against it as an epitome. I do not say 
 epitaph, because only the equable, perhaps, are entitled to epi- 
 taphs. He who wore the blue or the gray if starred, or barred, 
 or epauletted needed simply the recognition of a monument to 
 become a martyr. But the Guerrilla 'had no graveyard. What 
 mutilation spared, the potter's field finished. No cortege 
 followed the corpse ; beneath the folds of the black flag there 
 was no funeral. Neither prayer, nor plaint of priest, nor peni- 
 tential pleading went up for the wild beast dead by his lair, 
 hard hunted yet splendid at last in the hopeless equanimity of 
 accepted death. But the wild beast was human. The sky was 
 just as blue for him ; in the east the dawn was just as strange 
 for him ; the tenderness of woman was just as soft for him ; the 
 trysting by the gate was just as dear to him ; the cottage hearth 
 was just as warm for him, and the fields beyond the swelling 
 flood were j ust as green for him, as though upon the crest of the 
 blithe battle he had ridden down to the guns as Cardigan did, 
 impatient bugles blowing all about him or, scarfed and 
 plumed, he had died as Pelham died, the boy cannonier 
 
 "Just as the spring came laughing through the strife 
 With all its gorgeous cheer." 
 
 Some of the offspring of civil war are monstrous. The priest 
 who slays, the church which becomes a fortress, the fusillade 
 that finishes a capitulation, the father who fires at his son, the 
 child who denies sepulchre to its parent, the tiger instinct that 
 slays the unresisting, the forgetfulness of age, and the cruel 
 blindness that cannot see the pitifulness of woman these sprang 
 
14 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 from the loins of civil war, as did also the Guerrilla full-armed, 
 full-statured, terrible ! His mission was not to kill, alone, but 
 to terrify. At times he mingled with the purr of the tiger the 
 silkiness of the kitten. Hilarity was a stage in the m iroh he 
 made his victim take to the scaffold. Now and then before a 
 fusillade there wus a frolic. Harsh words were heard only when 
 from the midst of some savage melee a timid comrade broke 
 away or bent to the bullet blast. The softer the caress the 
 surer the punishment. The science of killing seemed to bring 
 a solace with it, and to purr also meant to be amiable. Sharing 
 his blanket like Rhoderick Dhu shared his plaid, on the morrow 
 his Coliantogle Ford was the contents of his revolver. 
 
 It is not easy to analyze this species of murder, all the more 
 certain because of its calculation. The time to refuse quarter 
 is in actual conflict. Conscience then a sleepy thing in civil 
 war at best is rarely aroused in time to become aggressive. 
 Through the smoke and the dust it is difficult to see the white, 
 set face and the haunting eyes of the early doomed. In 
 the rain of the rifle-balls, what matters the patter of a 
 prayer or two? Discrimination and desperation are not apt to 
 ride in the same squadrons together, and yet the Guerrilla, with 
 a full revolver, has been known to take possession of his victim 
 and spare him afterwards. Something, no matter what some 
 memory of other days, some wayward freak, some passing 
 fancy, some gentle mood, some tender influence in earth, or air, 
 or sky made him merciful when he meant to be a murderer. 
 
 The warfare of the Guerrilla was the warfare of the fox joined 
 to that of the lion. He crept from the rear, and he dashed from 
 the front. If the ambuscade hid him, as at Lone Jack, the 
 noonday sun shone down full upon the open prairie slaughter of 
 Centralia. In either extreme there was extermination. Death, 
 made familiar by association, merged its constraint into com- 
 radeship, and hid at the bivouac at night the sword-blade that 
 was to be so fatal in the morning. Hence all the roystering in 
 the face of the inevitable all that recklessness and boisterous- 
 ness which came often to its last horse, saddle and bridle, but 
 never to its last gallop or stratagem. 
 
 There are things and men one recognizes without ever having 
 seen them. The Guerrilla in ambush is one of these. Before a 
 battle a Guerrilla takes every portion of his revolver apart and 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 15 
 
 lays it upon a white shirt, if he has one, as*darefully as a surgeon 
 places his instruments on a white towel. In addition, he 
 touches each piece as a man might touch the thing that he 
 loves. The words of command are given in low tones, as if in 
 the silence there might be found something in mitigation of the 
 assassination. Again, he is noisy or indifferent to his purposes. 
 He acts then upon the belief that doomed men, whose sense of 
 hearing is generally developed to the greatest acuteness, lose 
 effect in this advance upon the unknown. 
 
 And how patient they were these Guerrillas. One day, two, 
 three a couple of weeks at a stretch they have been known 
 to watch a road cold it may be, hungry most generally, inex- 
 orable, alert as the red deer and crouching as the panther. At 
 last a sudden ring of rifles, a sudden uprearing of helpless 
 steeds with dead men down under their feet, and the long vigil 
 was over, the long ambuscade broken by a holocaust. 
 
 Much horse-craft was also theirs. Born as it were to the 
 bare-back, the saddle only made it the more difficult to unseat 
 them. Create a Centaur out of a Bucephalus, and the idea is 
 fixed of their swiftness and prowess. Something also of 
 Rarey's system must have been theirs, as a matter of course, for 
 the Guerrilla was always good to his horse. He would often go 
 unfed himself that his horse might have corn, and frequently 
 take all the chances of being shot himself that his horse might 
 come out of a close place unhurt. In situations where a neigh 
 would amount almost to annihilation, even so much as a whinny 
 was absolutely unknown. Danger blended the instinct of the one 
 with the intelligence of the other. For each there was the same 
 intuition. Well authenticated instances are on record of a 
 Guerrilla's horse standing guard for his master, and on more 
 than one occasion, when cut off from his steed and forced to 
 take shelter from pursuit in fastnesses well nigh inaccessible, 
 the Guerrilla has been surprised at the sudden appearance of his 
 horse, no more desirous than himself of unconditional captivity. 
 Much, therefore, of humanity must have entered into the rela- 
 tionship of the rider with his steed. He had to blanket him of 
 nights when the frost was falling and the north wind cut as a 
 knife; he had to talk low to him, rest him when he was tired, 
 feed him when he was hungry, spare the spur when there was no 
 need for it, slacken the girth when the column was at rest, cast 
 
16 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 aside as inhuman the accursed Spanish bit, and do generally 
 unto him as the Guerrilla would have been done by had nature 
 reversed the order of the animals and put a crupper in lieu of 
 a coat. Kindness makes cavalry. Murat said once that the 
 best among the cuirassiers were those who embraced their horses 
 before they did their mistresses. He found a trooper walking, 
 one day, who was leading a horse. Both were wounded, the 
 dragoon a little the worst. " Why do you not ride?" asked the 
 Prince. The soldier saluted and answered: " Because my 
 horse has been shot." " And you?" " I have been shot, too, 
 but I can talk and my horse cannot. If he could, maybe he 
 would say that he is harder hit than I am." Murat naade the 
 cuirassier a captain. 
 
 The Guerrilla also had a dialect. In challenging an advanc- 
 ing enemy the cry of the regular was: " Who goes there?" That 
 of the Guerrilla: "Who are you?" The regular repeated the 
 question thrice before firing; the Guerrilla only once. No 
 higher appreciation had ever desperate courage, or devoted 
 comradeship, or swift work in pitiless conflict, or furious gallop, 
 or marvelous endurance, than the Guerrilla's favorite summing 
 up: "Good boy to the last." If upon a monument he had 
 leave to write a folio, not a word more would be added to the 
 epitaph. Sometimes the Guerrilla's dialect was picturesque; 
 at other times monosyllabic. After Lawrence, and when Lane 
 was pressing hard in pursuit, a courier from the rear rode hur- 
 riedly up to Quantrell and reported the situation. "How do 
 they look?" enquired the chief. "Like thirsty buffaloes making 
 for a water course." "Can't the rear guard check them?" 
 "Can a grasshopper throw a locomotive off the track, Captain 
 Quantrell?" 
 
 "Once," relates a Lieutenant of a Kansas regiment, "I was 
 shot down by a Guerrilla and captured. I knew it was 'touch and 
 go with me, and so I said what prayers I remembered and made 
 what Masonic signs I was master of. The fellow who rode up 
 to me first was stalwart and swarthy, cool, devilish-looking and 
 evil-eyed. Our dialogue was probably one of the briefest on 
 record, and certainly to me one of the most satisfactory. 'Are 
 you a Mason?* he asked. 'Yes.' 'Are you a Kansas man?' 
 'Yes.' 4 G d d n you!' This did not require an answer, 
 it appeared to me, and so I neither said one thing nor another. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 17 
 
 He took hold of his pistol and I shut my eyes. Something 
 began to burn my throat. Presently he said again, as if he had 
 been debating the question of life and death rapidly in his own 
 mind: 'You are young, ain't you?' 'About twenty -five.' 
 'Married?' 'Yes. f 'Hate to die, I reckon?' 'Yes.' 'You are 
 free!' I tried to thank him, although I did not at first realize 
 his actions or understand his words. He got mad in a moment, 
 and his wicked eyes fairly blazed. 'You are free, I told you I 
 D n your thanks and d n you !' " " From that day to this," 
 the Lieutenant continued, "I am at a loss to know whether my 
 wife saved me or the Masons." 
 
 Neither ; and yet the Guerrilla himself might not have been 
 able to tell. Perhaps it was fate, or a passing tenderness, or 
 something in the prisoner's face that recalled a near one or a 
 dear one. Some few among them, but only a few, believed 
 that retaliation should be a punishment, not a vengeance ; and 
 these, when an execution was unavoidable, gave to it the 
 solemnity of the law and the condonement of civilization. The 
 majority, however, killed always and without ado. They had 
 passwords that only the initiated understood, and signals which 
 meant everything or nothing. A night bird was a messenger ; a 
 day bird a courier. To their dialect they had added woods- 
 craft, and to the caution of the proscribed men the cunning of 
 the Indian. They knew the names or the numbers of the 
 pursuing regiments from the shoes of their horses, and told the 
 nationality of troops by the manner in which twigs were broken 
 along the line of march. They could see in the night like other 
 beasts of prey, and hunted most when it was darkest. No 
 matter for a road so only there was a trail, and no matter for a 
 trail so only there was a direction. When there was no wind, 
 and when the clouds hid the sun or the stars, they traveled by 
 the moss on the trees. In the day time they looked for this 
 moss with their eyes, in the night time with their hands. Living 
 much in fastnesses, they were rarely surprised, while solitude 
 developed and made more acute every instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion. By degrees a caste began to be established. Men stood 
 forth as leaders by the unmistakable right of superior address 
 and undaunted courage. There was a kind of an aristocracy of 
 daring wherein the humblest might win a crown or establish a 
 dynasty. Respect for personal prowess begat discipline, and 
 2 
 
18 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OH 
 
 discipline strengthened by the terrible pressure of outside 
 circumstances kept peace in the midst of an organization 
 ostensibly without a government and without a flag. Internal 
 feuds came rarely to blows, and individual quarrels went 
 scarcely ever beyond the interests of the contending principals. 
 Free to come and go ; bound by no enlistment and dependent 
 upon no bounty ; hunted by one nation and apologized for by 
 the other ; prodigal of life and property ; foremost in every 
 foray and last in every rout ; content to die savagely and at bay 
 when from under the dead steed the wounded rider could not 
 extricate himself ; merciful rarely and merciless often ; loving 
 liberty in a blind, idolatrous fashion, half reality and half 
 superstition ; holding no crime as bad as that of cowardice ; 
 courteous to women amid all the wild license of pillage and 
 slaughter; steadfast as faith to comradeship or friend; too 
 serious for boastfulness and too near the unknown to deceive 
 themselves with vanity ; eminently practical because constantly 
 environed ; starved to-day and feasted to-morrow ; victorious in 
 this combat or decimated . in that ; receiving no quarter and 
 giving none ; astonishing pursuers by the swiftness of a retreat, 
 or shocking humanity by the completeness of a massacre ; a 
 sable fringe on the blood-red garments of civil war, or a 
 perpetual cut-throat in ambush in the midst of contending 
 Christians, is it any wonder that in time the Guerrilla organiza- 
 tion came to have captains, and leaders, and discipline, and a 
 language, and fastnesses, and hiding places, and a terrible 
 banner unknown to the winds, and a terrible name that still 
 lives as a wrathful and accusing thing from the Iowa line to the 
 Pacific Ocean? 
 
CHAPTER H. 
 
 CAUSES THAT PRODUCED THE GUERRILLA. 
 
 "T~T IS the province of history to deal with results, not to con- 
 -A- demn the phenomena which produce them. Nor has it the 
 right to decry the instruments Providence always raises up in 
 the midst of great catastrophes to restore the equilibrium of 
 eternal justice. Civil war might well have made the Guerrilla, 
 but only the excesses of civil war could have made him the un- 
 tamable and unmerciful creature that history finds him. When 
 he first went into the war he was somehow imbued with the old- 
 fashioned belief that soldiering meant fighting and that fighting 
 meant killing. He had his own ideas of soldiering, however, 
 and desired nothing so much as to remain at home and meet its 
 despoilers upon his own premises. Not naturally cruel, and 
 averse to invading the territory of any other people, he could not 
 understand the patriotism of those who invaded his own territory. 
 Patriotism, such as he was required to profess, could not spring 
 up in the market-place at the bidding of Red Leg or Jayhawker. 
 He believed, indeed, that the patriotism of Jim Lane and Jen- 
 nison was merely a highway robbery transferred from the 
 darkness to the dawn, and he believed the truth. Neither did 
 the Guerrilla become merciless all of a sudden. Pastoral in 
 many cases by profession, and reared among the bashful and 
 timid surroundings of agricultural life, he knew nothing of the 
 tiger that was in him until death had been dashed against his 
 eyes in numberless and brutal ways, and until the blood of his 
 own kith and kin had been sprinkled plentifully upon things 
 that his hands touched, and things that entered into his daily 
 existence. And that fury of ideas also came to him slowly 
 which is more implacable than the fury of men, for men have 
 heart, and opinion has none. It took him likewise some time 
 
20 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 to learn that the Jayhawker's system of saving the Union was a 
 system of brutal force, which bewailed not even that which it 
 crushed ; that it belied its doctrine by its tyranny ; stained its 
 arrogated right by its violence, and dishonored its vaunted 
 struggles by its executions. But blood is as contagious as air. 
 The fever of civil war has its delirium. When the Guerrilla 
 awoke he was a giant ! He took in, as it were, and at a' single 
 glance, all the immensity of the struggle. He saw that he was 
 hunted and proscribed ; that he had neither a flag nor a govern- 
 ment ; that the rights and the amenities of civilized warfare were 
 not to be his ; that a dog's death was certain if he surrendered 
 even in the extremest agony of battle ; that the house which 
 sheltered him had to be burnt ; the father who succored him 
 nad to be butchered; the mother who prayed for him had to be 
 insulted ; the sister who carried food to him had to be impris- 
 oned ; the neighborhood which witnessed his combats had to be 
 laid waste ; the comrade -shot down by his side had to be put to 
 death as a wild beast and he lifted up the black flag in self- 
 defence and fought as became a free man and a hero. 
 
 Much obloquy has been cast upon the Guerrilla organization 
 because in its name bad men plundered the helpless, pillaged 
 friend and foe alike, assaulted non-combatants and murdered the 
 unresisting and the innocent. Such devil's work was not Guer- 
 rilla work. It fitted all too well the hands of those cowards 
 crouching in the rear of either army and courageous only where 
 women defended what remained to themselves and their chil- 
 dren. Desperate and remorseless as he undoubtedly was, the 
 Guerrilla saw shining down upon his pathway a luminious patriot- 
 ism, and he followed it eagerly that he might kill in the name of 
 God and his country. The nature of his warfare made him respon- 
 sible of course for many monstrous things he had no personal 
 share in bringing about. Denied a hearing at the bar of public 
 opinion, the bete noir of all the loyal journalists, painted blacker 
 than ten devils, and given a countenance that was made to 
 retain some shadow of all the death agonies he had seen, is it 
 strange in the least that his fiendishness became omnipresent as 
 well as omnipotent? To justify one crime on the part of a Fed- 
 eral soldier, five crimes more cruel still were laid at the door of 
 the Guerrilla. His long gallop not only tired but infuriated his 
 hunters. That savage standing at bay and dying always as a 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 21 
 
 wolf dies when barked at by hounds and bludgeoned by coun- 
 trymen, made his enemies fear him and hate him. Hence from 
 all their bomb-proofs his slanderers fired silly lies at long range, 
 and put afloat unnatural stories that hurt him only as it deep- 
 ened the savage intensity of an already savage strife. Save in 
 rare and memorable instances, the Guerrilla murdered only 
 when fortune in open and honorable battle gave into his hands 
 some victims who were denied that death in combat which they 
 afterward found by ditch or lonesome roadside. Man for man, 
 he put his life fairly on the cast of the war dice, and died when 
 the need came as the red Indian dies, stoical and grim as 
 a stone. 
 
 As strange as it may seem the perilous fascination of fighting 
 under a black flag where the wounded could have neither sur- 
 geon nor hospital, and where all that remained to the prisoners 
 was the absolute certainty of speedy death attracted a number 
 of young men to the various Guerrilla bands, gently nurtured, 
 born to higher destinies, capable of sustained exertion in any 
 scheme or enterprise, and fit for callings high up in the scale of 
 science or philosophy. Others came who had deadly wrongs to 
 avenge, and these gave to all their combats that sanguinary hue 
 which still remains a part of the Guerrilla's legacy. Almost 
 from the first a large majority of Quantrell's original command 
 had over them the shadow of some terrible crime. This one 
 recalled a father murdered, this one a brother waylaid and shot, 
 this one a house pillaged and burnt, this one a relative assassi- 
 nated, this one a grievous insult while at peace at home, this 
 one a robbery of all his earthly possessions, this one the force 
 which compelled him to witness the brutal treatment of a mother 
 or sister, this one was driven away from his own like a thief in 
 the night, this one was threatened with death for opinion's 
 sake, this one was proscribed at the instance of some designing 
 neighbor, this one was arrested wantonly and forced to do the 
 degrading work of a menial ; while all had more or less of wrath 
 laid up against the day when they were to meet face to face and 
 hand to hand those whom they had good cause to regard as the liv- 
 ing embodiment of unnumbered wrongs. Honorable soldiers in 
 the Confederate army amenable to every generous impulse and 
 exact in the performance of every manly duty deserted even 
 the ranks which they had adorned and became desperate Guer- 
 
22 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 rillas because the home they had left had been given to the 
 flames, or a gray-haired father shot upon his own hearth-stone. 
 They wanted to avoid the uncertainty of regular battle and 
 know by actual results how many died as a propitiation or a 
 sacrifice. Every other passion became subsidiary to that of 
 revenge. They sought personal encounters that their own 
 handiwork might become unmistakably manifest. Those who 
 died by other agencies than their own were not counted in the 
 general summing up of a fight, nor were the solacements of any 
 victory sweet to them unless they had the knowledge of being 
 important factors in its achievment. As this class of Guerrillas 
 increased, the warfare of the border became necessarily more 
 cruel and unsparing. Where at first there was only killing in 
 ordinary battle, there became to be no quarter shown. The 
 wounded of the enemy next felt the might of this individual 
 vengeance acting through a community of bitter memories 
 and from every stricken field there began, by and by, to come 
 up the substance of this awful bulletin : Dead such and such a 
 number wounded none. The war had then passed into its fever 
 heat, and thereafter the gentle and the merciful, equally with 
 the harsh and the revengeful, spared nothing clad in blue that 
 could be captured. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 AMERICAN GUERRILLAS COMPARED WITH THOSE OF OTHEB 
 COUNTRIES. 
 
 rriHERE have been Guerrillas in other countries, notably in 
 J- France, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Before the days of 
 breech-loaders and revolvers, and in fields of operation almost 
 wholly unfit for cavalry, it was easy warfare for irregular bands 
 to lie along mountainous roads, or hide themselves from ordina- 
 ry pursuit in tangled thickets and stretches of larger timber. 
 They fought when they felt like it, and were more formidable 
 in reputation than in prowess. The American's capacity for 
 war can be estimated in a great degree by the enterprising na- 
 ture of his individual efforts. If, as a Guerrilla, he can guard 
 defiles, surprise cantonments, capture convoys, disappear in the 
 mountains, make at times and before superior numbers the 
 difficulty not so much in fighting him as in finding him, discover 
 and hold his own passes, learn the secrets of nature so that the 
 rain or the snow storm will be his ally and the fog his friend be 
 sure the seeds are there for a harvest of armed men no matter 
 whether regular or irregular that need only the cultivation of 
 sensible discipline to become the most remarkable on earth. 
 Essentially a nation of shop-keepers, trades-people and farmers 
 before the great civil struggle began, the rapidity with which 
 armies were mobilized and made into veterans, was marvelous. 
 Nothing like a Guerrilla organization had ever before existed in 
 the history of the country, and yet the strife was scarcely two 
 months old before prominent in the field were leaders of Guer- 
 rilla bands more desperate than those of La Vendee, and organ- 
 izers and fighters more to be relied upon and more blood-thirsty 
 than the Fra Diavolas of Italy, or the El Empecinados of Spain. 
 La Vendee, among other things, was the war of a republio 
 
24 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 upon a religion; of Marat, which meant pandemonium, upon 
 the Pope, who meant Christ. The cities fought the country, 
 the forests were attacked by the plains. In the gloom of the 
 fastnesses giants were developed. Beneath the mask of the 
 executioner was the cowl of the monk, and behind the judge of 
 a court martial sat the implacable embodiment of Jacobin sur- 
 veillance. On one side cynicism, on the other ferocity; on one 
 side blind fury buttressed upon fanaticism, on the other the air- 
 iness of a skepticism which denied the priesthood that it might 
 succeed to its possessions. From amid this chaos of contend- 
 ing devils preying alike upon the province which held to the 
 crown, or the city which had adoration for the Directory, La 
 Rochejacquelin was born. He was an inferior Quantrell wear- 
 ing a short sword instead of a six-shooter. He went often to 
 mass, and on the eve of every battle he took the sacrament. 
 Sometimes he fought well and sometimes badly. A word un- 
 known to border warfare belonged to his vocabulary, and his- 
 tory has repeated it often when writing of Hoche and Houchard. 
 It was Panic. Victory was near to La Rochejacquelin often, 
 but just as his hands opened wide as it were to lay hold thereon 
 and close again in exultation, Panic dashed them aside as 
 though smitten by a sudden sword-blade. It was so at Mar- 
 tigne Briant, and Vihiers, at Vue and at Bonquenay. These 
 desperate Guerrillas of La Vendee these monks in harness 
 and high priests in uniform made bonnets rouge out of buck- 
 ram, and fled from imaginary grenadiers who were only shocks 
 of wheat. It was also a war of proclamations. In the charges 
 and counter-charges, the appeals on the one side to the good 
 God and on the other to the omnipotent Committee of Public 
 Safety, many a forlorn Frenchman, given over to contemplated 
 death, slipped through everybody's fingers; another evidence 
 of palpable weakness which was as foreign to the Missourian's 
 executive economy as the word panic to his vocabulary. 
 
 Michael Pezza, surnamed Fra Diavolo, from his diabolic cun- 
 ning in escaping all pursuit, was an Italian, half patriot and 
 half brigand. Much of his reputation is legendary, but for all 
 that it has inspired one or two operas and a dozen romances. 
 He was to Italy what El Empecinado was to Spain, Canaris to 
 Greece, and Abd-el-Kader to Africa. Born amid the moun- 
 tains, he knew the crags by their sinister faces, and the precipi- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 25 
 
 ces from the roar of their cataracts. Before he fought Napo- 
 leon he had stopped travelers upon the highway. When he had 
 use for the robber, however, Ferdinand IV. made him a colonel 
 and a duke and set him to guard the passes of the Apennines. 
 A dozen audacious deeds will cover the space of his whole 
 career one which was unquestionably bold but scarcely enter- 
 prising. All who spoke his language were his friends. He had 
 eyries like the eagle, and fought fights where, when he was shot 
 at, it was declared to be like shooting at the sky. Beyond a 
 convoy or two made to lose their property, and a straggling 
 band or two cut to pieces, he did no devil's work in a twelve- 
 month of splendid opportunity for all who hated the invaders 
 and saw from their mountain fastnesses the very blackness of 
 darkness overshadow a land that wore perpetually the garments 
 of -Paradise. Finally a French detachment especially charged 
 to look after the much dreaded Guerrilla struck his trail and 
 followed it to the end. The French numbered eight hundred, 
 the Italians fifteen. Take Quantrell, or Todd, or Anderson, 
 or Pool, or Coleman Younger, or Jesse James, or Haller, or 
 Frank James, with fifteen hundred men, and put to catch them 
 eight hundred Federals ! What analyst now, in the light of past 
 history, will say that out of the eight hundred six might safely 
 return alive to tell the story of the slaughter. 
 
 The hunt went on, the hunted having every advantage over 
 the hunters. They saw him, touched him, had him ; suddenly 
 nobody was there. He did not fight ; he only hid himself and 
 ran away. Nothing stopped, the pursuit, however. Neither 
 mountain torrent, nor full-fed river, nor perpendicular rock, nor 
 tempests by night, nor hurricanes by day. When brought to 
 bay at last, Fra Diavola did what never Guerrilla did yet of 
 Anglo Saxon birth or raising, he disguised himself as a charcoal 
 dealer, mounted an ass, deserted his followers, and sought to 
 creep out of the environment as best he could. He did not suc- 
 ceed, but the effort exhibited the standard of the man. 
 
 The list is a long one to choose from, but apposite selections 
 are difficult to handle. At every step taken towards a contrast 
 between a Missouri Guerrilla and a Guerrilla of foreign reputa- 
 tion, there is an obstacle. Nowhere exists the same civilization. 
 In no single instance are the surroundings and the institutions 
 the same. One common bond, however, i* the fiery crucible of 
 
26 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 civil war, and by this and from out this must they come to judg- 
 ment, standing or falling. 
 
 There was El Empecinado, the Spaniard. He did in the Py- 
 renees what Fra Diavolo did in the Apennines. Each system 
 was the same perpetual skirmishes, mostly unimportant, and 
 sudden disappearance. Both fought the French. The nobility 
 were for Napoleon, the peasants against him, and this added 
 intensity to the strife. But to beat El Empecinado was to 
 accomplish nothing. His band scattered on all sides into fast- 
 nesses where it was impossible to find them, and reorganized at 
 some place in the mountains which they had intrenched, provis- 
 ioned, and made inaccessible. He was the creature of the 
 Junta, and the Junta was the hunted mother of liberty In Spain. 
 Hurled from village to village, threatened hourly, attacked at 
 all times, having the chief seat of its administration in some 
 ruined chapel, some hovel in the shrubbery, or some hole in the 
 ground, it decreed, notwithstanding it all, the independence of 
 Spain. But in fight after fight El Empecinado was so badly 
 worsted that he began to be accused of treason by his own men 
 and suspected by the Junta. Finally, and after many races, 
 and chases, and ambuscades, he was brought to his last assur- 
 ance and stratagem at Cifuentes. The war of the thickets and 
 the ravines was over. Having in his favor the enormous advan- 
 tage of four men to his adversary's one, he stood forth in battle 
 against General Hugo, of the French grenadiers, and was 
 destroyed. At Centralia, and with the odds reversed and 
 largely on the other side, George Todd rode over and shot 
 down a superior column of Federal infantry massed upon open 
 ground and standing in line, shoulder to shoulder, with fixed 
 bayonets and loaded muskets. 
 
 There were the bands of Mina and El Pastor, who instead of 
 being Guerrillas were barbarians. By these neither age nor sex 
 was spared. Not content with killing women and children, 
 they tortured them ; they burned them alive. The elder Mina 
 had carried before him in battle a flag bearing the device of vae 
 victis. As he was more formidable and unsparing than either 
 El Empecinado or Fra Diavolo, he was to the same extent more 
 popular. Success, however unsatisfactory, made him dangerous 
 in more ways than one to the invaders. Germans, English, 
 Italians, and even French, deserted to him. In the course of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 27 
 
 five days fifteen hussars, twenty artillerymen, a company of 
 British sappers, and fourteen French foot soldiers came over to 
 his banner. Of course none of these could ever surrender, and 
 became in time the most ferocious of this ferocious band. Under- 
 neath all the terrible vengeance taken by these Guerrillas there 
 was the undying consciousness of terrible wrongs. Fra Diavola 
 had been tied up in a public market place and scourged brutally 
 by the public executioner ; El Empecinado had had his ears slit - r 
 the younger Mina's mistress had been outraged before his eyes, 
 her piercing cries haunting his sleep for months thereafter ; El 
 Pastor's old father, in returning late from a country town, had 
 been first robbed and then beaten to death; and Xavier, the 
 youngest of the Junta's bloody instruments and the most chiv- 
 alrous, knew scarcely anything of the war until he had barely 
 escaped assassination with his life. Does not history repeat 
 itself? From the brooding vision of Quantrell there was never 
 absent the white, set face of a murdered brother. To make 
 tense the nerves and steel the heart of Cole man Younger, there, 
 wet with his life's blood, were the white hairs of a loved father 
 slain upon the highway. Anderson remembered to his dying 
 day one beautiful sister buried beneath the falling walls of her 
 prison house, and another so disfigured that when those dearest 
 to her dug her out from the wreck they did not know her. 
 
 Of the Minas there were two uncle and nephew. It wa 
 the strange destiny of the elder to have to encounter in his own 
 field of operations a woman. Unnatural as it may appear the 
 most ferocious band which infested Biscay was commanded by a 
 woman named Martina. So indiscriminating and unrelenting 
 was this female monster in her murder of friends and foes 
 alike, that Mina felt himself compelled to resort to extermina- 
 tion. Surprised with the greater part of her following, not a 
 soul escaped to tell the story of the massacre. One wild beast 
 had devoured another, and that was all ! 
 
 Treachery of comrades is a somewhat prominent feature in all 
 these records of Spanish Guerrilla warfare, but in Missouri it 
 was absolutely unknown. Mina himself had a sergeant named 
 Malcarado who attempted to betray him to the enemy. He 
 succeeded so far as to lead a French patrol to the room in 
 which his chief was still sleeping in bed. But suddenly 
 aroused, Mina defended himself desperately with the bar of 
 
28 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 the door and kept the attacking party at bay until Gustra, his 
 chosen comrade, assisted him to escape. Taking Malcarado 
 afterwards he shot him instantly, together with the village cure 
 .and three alcaldes implicated in the effort at kidnapping. 
 
 In Mexico, under Maximilian, the French had an organization 
 known to the army of occupation as the Contre Guerrillas, that 
 is to say Imperial Guerrillas, who fought when they could and 
 exterminated where they could the Republican Mexican Guer- 
 rillas. Colonel Dupin, who- commanded them, more nearly 
 assimilated Quantrell in his manner of fighting than any other 
 leader of Guerrillas history has yet passed in review. He was 
 desperately cruel, but he fought fast and hard. Distance was 
 nothing to him, nor fatigue, nor odds, nor the difficulties of a 
 position necessary to assault, nor any terra incognita the tropics 
 could array to ride into. He had the flexibility of the panther 
 and the grip of the bull-dog. Nothing uniformed and allied to 
 Juarez ever lived after he once laid hold upon it. Past sixty, 
 bronzed brown as a bag of leather, a school girl's face, covered 
 with decorations, straight as Tecumseh, he led his squadrons 
 through ambuscades sixty miles long, and made the court mar- 
 tial bring up eternally the rear of the combat. Any weapon 
 fitted his hand, just as any weapon fitted the hand of Quantrell. 
 Ruse, stratagem, disguise, ambushment, sudden attack, furious 
 charge, unquestioned prowess, desperate resolve in extremity, 
 unerring rapidity of thought all these elements belonged to 
 him by the inexorable right of his profession, and he used them 
 all to terrify and to exterminate. 
 
 With Dupin also in Mexico was Captain Ney, Duke df 
 Elchingen, and grandson of that other Ney who, when thrones 
 were tumbling and fugitive kings flitting through the smoke of 
 Waterloo, cried out to D'Erlon: "Come and see how a Marshal 
 of France dies on the field of battle." 
 
 Ney had under him an American squadron, swart, stalwart 
 fellows, scarred in many a border battle and bronzed by many a 
 day of sunshiny and stormy weather. Names went for naught 
 there. Hiding themselves in the unknown beyond the Rio 
 Grande, those cool, calm men asked cne of another no question 
 of the past. Nothing of retrospect remained. Content to 
 march and fight and be prodigal of everything save brag or 
 boast, they carried no black flag and they often gave quarter. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER . 29 
 
 And how they fought! Dupin taking note of many other 
 things besides took note also of this. Once when a day of 
 battles opened ominously, and when from the far front the story 
 came back of repulses savoring strongly of disaster, he chose this 
 little band alone for a desperate charge and patched with it swiftly 
 the riven ranks of his routed soldiery. When the hot work 
 was over and done, and when not anywhere in street, or town, 
 or cfrapparal beyond the town, an enemy struggled save in the 
 last sure agonies of death, he bade the balance of the regiment 
 defile past their guidon and salute it with sloping standards and 
 Tictorious music. In that day's fierce melee rode some t of 
 QuantrelTs best and bravest. Their comrades knew them not, 
 for they made no sign ; and yet thrice was the sword of Capi ain 
 Ney put out to wave the foremost back it being a point of hon- 
 or with a French cavalry officer to permit no subaltern to pass 
 him in a charge and thrice did he cry alourt and warn the bold- 
 est that if they went by him they went by ftt their peril. One 
 of these pressing thus hard behind the gallait Ney was John C. 
 Moore, once a member of Marmaduke's staff, and later a 
 trained athlete in the arena where Shelby's giants struggled 
 only for renown and glory. War found him ar enthusiast and 
 left him a philosopher. He drifted into Mexico a little behind 
 the tide which bore his chieftain out, and for want of other 
 things to do joined the Contre Guerrillas. He was always 
 merciful in combat, and fought in the reckless old style just 
 because it was fashionable to fight so, and because he g^ve so 
 little thought to-day whether the morrow would be peaceful in 
 bivouacs or stormy with sudden ambuscades. He was the 
 centre of a group of dauntless spirits who dreamed of empire 
 in the land of the Aztecs, and who never for a moment lost 
 faith in the future or saw need for despair in the present 
 until imbecility rose upon and mastered resolution and forced 
 Maximilian from a throne to a dead-wall. 
 
 There were no Guerrillas in the days of the revolution, for in 
 no sense of the word could General Marion and his men be 
 considered as such. Strictly partisan in some respects, and 
 fighting here, there, and everywhere as occasion or opportunity 
 permitted, he never for a moment severed communication with 
 the goverment his patriotism defended, nor relied for a day 
 upon other resources than those of the departments regularly 
 
30 NOTED GUEBKILLAS, OH 
 
 organized for military supremacy. As part of the national 
 army, he entered as an important factor in the plans of every 
 contiguous campaign. His swamp warfare made him formid- 
 able but never ferocious. He rarely killed save in open battle, 
 and being seldom retaliated upon, he had nothing to retaliate 
 for in the way of an equilibrium. It required, indeed, all the 
 excesses of the civil war of 1861-5 to produce the genuine 
 American Guerrilla more enterprising by far, more deadly, 
 more capable of immense physical endurance, more fitted by 
 nature for deeds of reckless hardihood, and given over to less 
 of. penitence or pleading when face to face with the final end, 
 than any French or Spanish, Italian or Mexican Guerrilla 
 notorious in song or story. He simply lived the life that was in 
 him, and took the worst or best as it came and as fate decreed 
 it. Circumstances made him unsparing, and not any predis- 
 position in race or rearing. Fought first with fire, he fought 
 back with the torch; and branded as an outlaw first in 
 despite of all reason, he made of the infamous badge a birth- 
 right and boasted of it as a blood-red inheritance while 
 flaunting it in the face of a civilization which denounced the 
 criminals while condoning the crimes that made them such. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 QUANTRELL. 
 
 ONE-HALF the country believes Quantrell to have been a 
 highway robber crossed upon the tiger ; the other half that 
 he was the gallant defender of his native South. One-half be- 
 lieves him to have been an avenging Nemesis of the right; the 
 other a forbidding monster of assassination. History cannot 
 hesitate over him, however, nor abandon him to the imagination 
 of the romancers those cosmopolitan people who personify him 
 as the type of a race which reappears in every country that is a 
 prey to the foreigner the legitimate bandit in conflict with con- 
 quest. He was a living, breathing, aggressive, all-powerful 
 reality riding through the midnight, laying ambuscades by 
 lonesome roadsides, catching marching columns by the throat, 
 breaking in upon the flanks and tearing a suddenly surprised rear 
 to pieces ; vigilant, merciless, a terror by day and a superhu- 
 man if not a supernatural thing when there was upon the earth 
 blackness and darkness. 
 
 Charles William Quantrell was to the Guerrillas their voice 
 in tumult, their beacon in a crisis, and their hand in action. 
 From him sprang all the other Guerrilla leaders and bands 
 which belong largely to Missouri and the part Missouri took in 
 the civil war. Todd owed primary allegiance to him, and so 
 did Scott, Haller, Anderson, Blunt, Poole, Younger, Maddox, 
 Jarrette, the two James brothers Jesse and Frank Shepherd, 
 Yager, Hulse, Gregg all in fact who became noted afiewards 
 as enterprising soldiers and fighters. His was the central 
 figure, and it towered aloft amid all the wreck and overthrow 
 and massacre that went on continually around and about him 
 until it fell at last as the pine falls, uprooted by Omnipotence 
 or shivered by its thunderbolt. 
 
32 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 The early life of Quantrell was obscure and uneventful. 
 Born in Hagerstown, Maryland,. July 20, 1836, and raised there- 
 until he was sixteen years of age, he remained always an obe- 
 dient and an affectionate son. His mother had been left a 
 widow when he was only a few years old, and had struggled 
 bravely and with true maternal devotion to keep a home for her 
 children and her children in it. Inheriting self-reliance in an 
 eminent degree, and something of that sadness which is th& 
 rightful offspring of early poverty, the boy Quantrell was taken 
 in his sixteenth year to Cleveland, Ohio, by an old friend of 
 his family, a Colonel Toler, and there given an excellent English 
 education. He never saw his mother again. His first separa- 
 tion was his final one. 
 
 As early as 1855 Missouri and Kansas had been at war. 
 Seward's Irrepressible Conflict began then passed from its 
 quiescent to its aggressive stage then, and opened the crevasse 
 in the embankment then which was to let through all the floods- 
 of sectional bitterness and strife and deluge the whole land with 
 the horors of civil war. Men were baptized then who were to 
 become later notorious apostles of plunder and invasion. Old 
 John Brown was a creature of that abolition madness which 
 began at Osawatomie Creek and ended at Harper's Ferry. 
 Jim Lane killed his first man in that war ; Montgomery came 
 first to the front after the adoption of the Lecompton Constitu- 
 tion, and learned so well the uses of the torch that later he 
 burned Rome, Georgia, wantonly, and hung a dozen or so of its 
 non-combatants ; Jennison gave something of the robber prom- 
 ise that was in him ; General John W. Reid added greener 
 laurels to his Mexican wreath ; Jo. Shelby, that eagle of the 
 foray, first changed his down for his feathers ; there were fierce 
 sectional fires lit all along the border; the two States hated 
 each other and harried each other's accessible lands; from 
 Leavenworth south to Fort Scott dragon's teeth were sown 
 broadcast as wheat is sown in the fall, and so when the first 
 drum beat was heard in 1861, and when the first bugle note was 
 sounded, the throat-cutting had already begun. 
 
 For some time preceding 1855, Quantrell's only brother had 
 been living in Kansas. He was older by several years than 
 Charles, had been more of a father to him than a playmate, and 
 was then the mainstay of the struggling widow, still fighting 
 
THE WAKFAKE OF THE BOEDER S3 
 
 the uncertain battles of life heroically and alone. The strife 
 along the border had somewhat subsided, and something of 
 comparative peace had succeeded to the armed irruption, when 
 the elder Quantrell wrote to the younger and urged him to come 
 at once to his home in the disputed Territory. A trip to 
 California was contemplated, and the one in Kansas would not 
 go without the one in Ohio. 
 
 About the middle of the summer of 1 856 both brothers began 
 their overland journey, each having a wagon loaded with 
 provisions, four good mules each, and more or less money 
 between them. One negro man was also carried along a sort 
 of general utility person part hostler and part cook. In 
 addition he was also free. The three were together when that 
 unprovoked tragedy occurred which was to darken and blacken 
 the whole subsequent current of the younger brother's life, and 
 link his name forever with some of the savagest episodes of 
 some of the most savage Guerrilla history ever recorded. 
 
 Although there was comparative peace at that time, armed 
 bands still maintained their organization throughout the entire 
 State. Some were legitimate and some illegitimate. A few 
 lived by patriotism, such as it was, and a good many by plun- 
 der. Here and there worse things than stealing were done, and 
 more than one belated traveler saw the sun set never to rise 
 again, and more than one suspected or obnoxious settler disap- 
 peared so quietly as scarcely to cause a ripple of comment upon 
 the placid surface of neighborhood events. Especially impla- 
 cable were one or two companies owing allegiance to Lane. In 
 the name of Abolitionism they took to the highway, and for the 
 sake of freedom in Kansas great freedom was taken with other 
 people's lives and property. Camped one night on the Little 
 Cottonwood River, en route to California, thirty armed men 
 rode deliberately up to the wagons where the Quantrells were 
 and opened fire at point-blank range upon the occupants. The 
 elder Quantrell was killed instantly, while the younger- 
 wounded badly in the left leg and right breast was left upon 
 the bank of the stream to die. The negro was not harmed. 
 Scared so dreadfully at first as to be unable to articulate, he yet 
 found his speech when the robbers began to hitch up the teams 
 and drive offi the wagons, and pleaded eloquently that food and 
 shelter might be left for the wounded man. " Of what use? " 
 3 
 
34 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 the leader of the Jayhawkers sneered, "he will die at best, and 
 if we did not think that he would die, we would be sure to 
 finish him." And so they drove away, taking not only the 
 wagons and teams, but the tent and the negro, leaving Quan- 
 trell alone with his murdered brother, the wide wilderness of 
 prairie and sky above and about him everywhere and death's 
 door so close to his own hands that for the stretching out he 
 might have laid hold thereon and entered in. Not content, 
 however, with being robbers and cut-throats, they added petty 
 thieving to cowardly asssasination. The pockets of both were 
 rifled, every dollar was taken from each, a ring from a finger 
 of the living and a watch from the person of the dead. 
 
 It was two days before the wounded brother was foand two 
 days of agony, retrospects, and dreams it may be of a stormy 
 future. Something of the man's wonderful fortitude abode 
 with him to the end. He heard the clangor of ominous pinions 
 and the flapping of mysterious wings that splotched the prairie 
 grass with hateful splotches of beak and claw. He dragged 
 himself to the inanimate heap lying there festering in the sum- 
 mer's sun, and fought a desperate double fight against the 
 talons that would mutilate and the torments of fever and thirst 
 that were burning him up alive. And in the darkness came 
 other sounds than the rising of the night wind. A long, low 
 howl at first that had the subdued defiance of hunger in it, and 
 then the shuffling of creeping feet and the mingling of gray and 
 darkness in the nearest cover. The wolves were abroad 
 coming ever closer and closer, and crouching there in the 
 prairie grass, knowing scarcely aught of any difference between 
 the living and the dead. He did not cry out, neither did he 
 make moan. All night long by the corpse he watched and 
 defended seeing on the morrow the sun rise red out of a sea 
 of verdure, and hearing again on the morrow the clangor of 
 ominous pinions and the flapping of mysterious wings. 
 
 From the road to the stream it was fifty good steps, and be- 
 tween the two an abundance of luxuriant grass. The descent 
 to the water was very steep, and broken here and there by gul- 
 lies the rains had cut. Until an intolerable thirst drove him to 
 quit his watch by his brother's corpse, and quit his uncomplain- 
 ing fight against buzzard and prairie wolf, he never moved from 
 the dead man's side. In the two nights and days of this mourn- 
 
THE WAItFAfiE OF THE BOEDER 35 
 
 ful vigil he did not sleep. He could not walk, and yet he rolled 
 himself down to the river and back again to the road dragging 
 his crippled body over the broken places and staunching his 
 wounds with the rankest grass. He would live ! He had never 
 thought how necessary life could become to him. There was 
 much to do. The dead had to be buried, the murder had to be 
 avenged, and that demand fixed as fate and as inexorable 
 had to be made which required sooner or later an eye for an 
 eye and a tooth for a tooth. What he suffered during the two 
 days and nights, when the mutilated brother watched by the 
 murdered one, he would never tell. Indeed, he rarely referred 
 to his past, aiid spoke so little of himself that those who knew 
 him longest knew the least of his history, and those who ques- 
 tioned him the most assiduously got less satisfaction than those 
 who questioned him not at all. 
 
 Early in the morning of the third day, and just after Quan- 
 trcll had dragged himself back from the river to the road, suf- 
 fering more and more of agony from his already swollen and 
 inflamed wounds, an old Shawnee Indian, Golightly Spiebuck, 
 happened to pass along, and became at once the rough but 
 kindly Samaritan of the Plains. The dead man was buried, and 
 the wounded one placed gently in the Indian's wagon and car- 
 ried by easy stages to his home, a few miles south of Leaven- 
 worth. Spiebuck died in 1868, but he often told the story of 
 the rescue. It took him four hours to dig the grave deep 
 enough for the dead man. There was neither coffin, nor shroud, 
 nor funeral rite. Dry-eyed and so ghastly white that he looked 
 to Spiebuck like the ghost of the departed come back to claim 
 the due of decent sepulchre', Quantrell watched the corpse 
 until the earth covered it, and then he hobbled to his knees 
 and turned his dry eyes up to where he believed a God to be. 
 Did he pray? Yes, like Caligula, perhaps, and that the whole 
 Jayhawking fraternity had but a single neck, capable of being 
 severed by a single blow. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 QUANTRELL AND THE KANSAS JAYHAWKERS. 
 
 /^vUANTRELL recovered slowly. He had youth, a fine phy- 
 ^) sique, great energy and determination of character ; but 
 his mind appeared to dominate over and hold his body in sub- 
 jection. He would lay for hours at a time with his hands over his 
 eyes his pale cheeks lit up with a kind of hectic flush, and his 
 respiration so noiseless and imperceptible that Spiebuck's old 
 Indian wife and nurse more than once declared him dying. But 
 he was not dying; he was thinking. Afterwards there came 
 weary weeks of the stick and crutch. Summer was dead on the 
 hills, and autumn had already begun to frighten the timid leaves 
 with the white ghost of the snow. The cripple had become to 
 be a convalescent, the convalescent had become to be a man a 
 little pale, it may be, but cured of his wounds and his reveries. 
 If any knew of the murder and the robbery upon the Cotton* 
 wood, they had forgotten both. Either was so familiar and so 
 matter of fact that the law regarded the thief complacently, and 
 public opinion took sides with the murderer thus making for 
 each an equal justification. One. man remembered, however 
 one calm, grave man something: of a set sadness always about 
 his features, and now and then an eager, questioning look that 
 seemed to appeal to the future while recalling and re-establish- 
 ing the past. 
 
 Quantrell was very patient. Sometimes tigers lick the cru- 
 crifix; sometimes sheep become wolves. He took a school; 
 taught the balance of the year 1856 ; got into his possession all 
 the money he needed ; paid Mr. and Mrs. Spiebuck liberally 
 for every care and attention; shook hands cordially with the 
 good old Indians on the 15th day of August, 1857, and went to 
 Leavenworth. As he had never permitted confidences, he had 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 37 
 
 no need of a disguise. The simple Charley Quantrell had be- 
 come to be the simple Charley Hart, and that was all. The 
 Nemesis was about to put on the national uniform. The lone 
 grave by the Cottonwood river had begun to have grass upon 
 it, and there was need that it should be watered. 
 
 Leavenworth City belonged at that time to the Jayhawkers, 
 and the Jayhawkers to all intents and purposes belonged to Jim 
 Lane. The original Jayhawker was a growth indigenous to the 
 soil of Kansas. There belonged to him as things of course a 
 pre-emption, a chronic case of chills and fever, one starved cow 
 and seven dogs, a longing for his neighbor's goods and chattels, 
 a Sharpe's rifle, when he could get it, and something of a Bible 
 for hypocrisy's sake something that savored of the real pres- 
 ence of the book to give backbone to his canting and snuffling. 
 In somo respects a mountebank, in others a scoundrel, and in 
 all a thief he was a character eminently adapted for civil war 
 which produces more adventurers than heroes. His hands were 
 large, hairy and red proof of inherited laziness and a slouch- 
 ing gait added to the ungainliness of his figure when he walked. 
 The type was ail of a kind. The mouth generally wore a calcu- 
 lating smile the only distinguishable gift remaining of a Puri- 
 tan ancestry but when he felt that he was looked at the calcu- 
 lating smile became sanctimonious. Slavery concerned him 
 only as the slave-holder was supposed to be rich; and just so 
 long as Beecher presided over emigration aid societies, 
 preached highway robbery, defended political murder, and sent 
 something to the Jayhawkers in the way of real fruits and 
 funds, there surely was a God in Israel and Beecher was 
 his great high priest. Otherwise they all might go to the devil 
 together. The Jayhawker was not brave. He would fight 
 when he had to figlit, but he would not stand in the last ditch 
 and shoot away his last cartridge. Born to nothing, and eter- 
 nally out at elbows, what else could he do but laugh and be 
 glad when chance kicked a country into war and gave purple 
 and fine linen to a whole lot of bummers and beggars? In the 
 saddle he rode like a sand bag or a sack of meal. The eternal 
 44 age r cake" made a trotting horse his abomination, and he had 
 no use for a thoroughbred, save to steal him. When he 
 abandoned John Brown and rallied to the standard of Jim Lane 
 when he gave up the fanatic and clove unto the thief he 
 
38 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 simply changed Ms leader without changing his principles. 
 
 General James H. Lane, for some time previous to the break- 
 ing out of the war and for sometime afterwards, was omnipotent 
 in Kansas. Immense bonhommie, joined to immense vitality, 
 made him a political giant. Of infinite humor, rarely skilled in 
 the arts of judging human nature, passably brave, though 
 always from selfish impulses, brilliant in speech, exaggerated in 
 sentiment, vivid in expresson, and full of that intangible yet 
 all-mastering pathos which has ever and will ever find in the 
 West its most profitable employment, he soon became the 
 Melchisedec of the Kansas militia and the founder of a line of 
 Jayhawkers. Blood had already stained his hands. The civili- 
 zation to which his principles owned origin permitted him the 
 wives of other people if he could win them, and he went about 
 with the quest of a procuress and the encompassnient of Solo- 
 mon. Reversing the alphabet in the spelling out of his morals, 
 he made v the first letter of the new dispensation, because it 
 stood for virility. The mantle of John Brown had fallen upon 
 his shoulders, and yet it did not fit him. John Brown was the 
 inflexible partisan ; Jim Lane the ambitious man of talent. One 
 would have given everything to the cause which he espoused 
 did give his life ; the other stipulated for commissions, senato- 
 rial robes, and political power. John Brown could never have 
 passed from the character of destructive to that of statesman ; 
 but Jim Lane, equal to either extreme, put readily aside with 
 one hand the business of making raids, and took up with the 
 other the less difficult though more complicated business of 
 making laws. 
 
 Jennison was of inferior breed and mettle. None of his ideas 
 ever rose above a corral of rebel cattle, and he made war like a 
 brigand, and with a cold brutality which he imagined gave to 
 his unsoldierly greed the mask of patriotism. 
 
 Montgomery, dying by inches of consumption, and feeling 
 a craving for military fame without having received from society 
 or nature the means of acquiring it, was content to become 
 infamous in order to become notorious. He was the patron of 
 the assassin and the incendiary. 
 
 These three embryotic embodiments of all that was to be for- 
 bidding and implacable in border warfare came in and out of 
 Leavenworth a great deal in those brief yet momentous months 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 39 
 
 preceding that mighty drama which from a small Kansas pro- 
 logue was to overshadow and envelop a continent. Quantrell, 
 known now as Charles Hart, 'became intimate with Lane, and 
 ostensibly attached himself to the fortunes of the anti-slavery 
 party. If, in order to advance an object or to get a step nearer 
 to the goal of his ambition, it became necessary to speak of John 
 Brown, he always spoke of him as of one for whom he had great 
 admiration. General Lane, at that time a Colonel, was in com- 
 mand of a regiment whose headquarters were at Lawrence. 
 Thither from Leavenworth went Quantrell, and soon became 
 enrolled in a company to which belonged all but two of the men 
 who did the deadly work at the Cottonwood river. If the whole 
 Quantrell episode had not been forgotten, however, certainly 
 there was nothing to recall it in the sad face, slender figure, 
 drooping blue eyes and courteous behavior of the new recruit. 
 He talked little and communed with himself a great deal. 
 While others amused themselves with cards, or women, or wine, 
 Quantrell rode over the country in every direction, and made 
 himself thoroughly acquainted with its geography and topog- 
 raphy. Who knows but what even then the coming events of 
 that terrible sack and pillage were beginning to cast their shad- 
 ows before. 
 
 First a private and then an orderly sergeant, Quantrell soon 
 won the esteem of his officers and the confidence of his men. 
 It was getting along pretty well through 1858, and what with 
 brushes with the Border Ruffians, as the Missourians were 
 called, and scouting after depredating Indians, Lane's command 
 was kept comparatively active. It was required also to furnish 
 covering parties for trains running on the Underground Rail- 
 road, and scouts along the whole line of the border from Kaw 
 River to the Boston Mountains. One day Quantrell and three 
 men were sent down to the neighborhood of Wyandotte to meet 
 a wagon load of negroes coming out of Missouri under the 
 pilotage of Jack Winn, a somewhat noted horse-thief and 
 abolitionist. One of the three men failed to return when 
 Quantrell and his comrade did, nor could any account be given 
 of his absence until a body was found near a creek several days 
 afterward. In the centre of the forehead was the round, 
 smooth hole of a navy revolver bullet. Those who looked for 
 Jack Winn's safe arrival were also disappointed. Ke had been 
 
40 NOTED GUEREILLAS, OK 
 
 shot just inside the fence of a cornfield, and in falling had fallen 
 face foremost in some rank weeds and briars which completely 
 covered him. People traveling the road passed and repassed 
 the corpse almost hourly, but the buzzards found it first and 
 afterwards the curious. There was the same round hole in the 
 forehead, and the same sure mark of the navy revolver bullet. 
 
 Somebody's hand-writing was becoming to be legible ! 
 
 Next, four companies received marching orders for service 
 down about Fort Scott, and Quantrell's was among the four. 
 The Missourians of late had been swarming over the border 
 thick in that direction, and Lane wanted to know more of what 
 they were doing. Some skirmishing ensued, and now and then 
 there was a sudden combat. Quantrell was the first in every 
 adventurous enterprise and the last to leave upon every 
 skirmish line. Of the four companies detailed to do duty in 
 the vicinity of Fort Scott, all the members of each returned 
 except sixty. The death of forty-two of these was attributed 
 to the enemy, of the other eighteen to the manifold calamities 
 of war. Two of the eighteen bodies were recovered, however, 
 and there was the same round, smooth hole in the middle of the 
 forehead. Evidently the Border Ruffians had navy revolvers 
 and knew just where to shoot a man when it was intended to 
 shoot him only once. 
 
 Things went on thus for several months. Scarcely a week 
 passed that some sentinel was not found dead at his post, some 
 advanced picquet surprised and shot at the outermost watch 
 station. The men began to whisper one to another and to cast 
 about for the cavalry Jonah who was in the midst of them. 
 One company alone, that of Captain Pickens the company to 
 which Quantrell belonged had lost thirteen men between 
 October, 1857, and March, 1858. Another company had lost 
 two, and three one each. A second Underground Railroad 
 conductor named Rogers had been shot through the forehead, 
 and two scouts from Montgomery's command named Stephens 
 and Tarwater. 
 
 From the privates this talk about a Jonah went to the Cap- 
 tains, and from the Captains to the Colonel. Just as Lane 
 began to busy himself with this story of an epidemic whose 
 single symptom was a puncture in the forehead the size of a 
 navy revolver bullet, Quantrell was made a Lieutenant in 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 41 
 
 Pickens' company. Therefore if this Jonah was in the line of 
 promotion, it certainly was not in contemplation to cast him 
 overboard to the fishes. 
 
 Quantrell and Pickens became intimate as a Captain and 
 Lieutenant of the same company should and confided many 
 things to each other. One night the story of the Cottonwood 
 River was told, and Pickens dwelt with just a little of relish 
 upon the long ride made to strike the camp of the unsuspecting 
 emigrants, and the artistic execution of the raid which left 
 neither the dead man a shroud nor the wounded man a blanket. 
 The Lieutenant turned his face away from the light of the 
 bivouac fire and essayed to ask a question or two. Could 
 Pickens just then have seen his eyes scintillant, and dilated 
 about the pupils as the eyes of a lion in the night he might 
 have been tempted to try over again the argument of the Cot- 
 tonwood crossing-place. He did not see them,rhowever, and so 
 he told all how the plunder was divided, the mules sold, the 
 money put all together in one pile and gambled for, the kind of 
 report made to headquarters, and the general drunk which 
 succeeded the return and ushered in forgetfulness. 
 
 Three days thereafter Pickens and two of his most reliable 
 men were found dead on Bull Creek, shot like the balance in 
 the middle of the forehead. 
 
 This time there was a genuine panic. Equally with the rest, 
 Quantrell exercised himself actively over the mysterious 
 murders, and left no conjecture unexpressed that might suggest 
 a solution of the implacable fatality. Who was safe? What 
 protection had Colonel Lane in his tent, or Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Jeuuison in his cabin? The regiment must trap and slay this 
 hidden monster perpetually in ambush in the midst of its opera- 
 tions, or the regiment woukl be decimated. It could not fight 
 the unkown and the superhuman. 
 
 For a time after Pickens' death there was a lull in the 
 constant conscription demanded by the Nemesis. Mutterings 
 of the coming storm were beginning to be heard in every direc- 
 tion, while all over the political sky there were portents and 
 perturbations. Those who believed that the nation's life was at 
 hazard had no time to think of men. The new Lieutenant 
 bought himself a splendid uniform, owned the best horse in the 
 Territory, and instead of one navy revolver now had two. 
 
42 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 It is not believed that at this time Quantrell was suspected, 
 for in a long conversation held with him by Lane, the full par- 
 ticulars of the plan adopted to discover and arrest the mys- 
 terious murderer were' discussed in every detail. He waited 
 several weeks to see what would become of the exertions made 
 to trace the handwriting on the foreheads of the victims, and 
 then apparently dismissed the subject from his mind. At all- 
 events he no longer referred to it in conversation, or expressed 
 an opinion upon it one way or the other. He had his duties to 
 perform as an officer of cavalry, and he had no inclination to 
 help on the work of the detectives. Probably two months after 
 his conversation with Lane, Quantrell was ordered to take his 
 own company and details from three others amounting in the 
 aggregate to one hundred and fourteen men and make a scout 
 out towards the extreme western border of the Territory. 
 Although the expedition saw neither a hostile Indian nor a Mis- 
 sourian, thirteen of the Jayhawkers never again answered at 
 roll-call. The old clamor broke out again in all its fury, and 
 the old suspicions were extravagantly aroused. Quantrell was 
 called upon to explain the absence of his men, and reported 
 calmly all that he knew in the premises. Detached from the 
 main body and ordered out on special duty, they had not 
 returned when their comrades did. The bodies of three of 
 them had been found shot through the forehead, and although 
 he had tried every art known to his ingenuity to learn more of 
 the causes which produced this mysterious fatality, he was no 
 nearer the truth than his commanding officer. Not long after 
 this report two men from another company were missing, and 
 then an orderly attached to the immediate person of Colonel 
 Lane. This orderly had been killed under peculiar circum- 
 stances. The citizens of Lawrence gave a supper one night to 
 some distinguished Eastern people, and Colonel Lane presided 
 at the table. His orderly was with him, and as the night deep- 
 ened he drank freely and boasted a great deal. Among the 
 things which he described with particular minuteness was an 
 attack upon a couple of emigrants nearly two years before and 
 the confiscation of their property. Quantrell was not at the 
 banquet, but somehow he heard of the orderly's boast and 
 questioned him fully concerning the whole circumstance. After 
 this dialogue there was a dead man I 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 43 
 
 There came also from the East about this time some sort of a 
 disease known as the club mania. Those afflicted with it and 
 it attacked well nigh the entire population had a hot fever 
 described as the enrollment fever. Organizations of all sorts 
 sprang up Free Soil Clubs, Avengers, Men of Equal Rights, 
 Sons of Liberty, John Brown's Body Guard, Destroying 
 Angels, Lane's Loyal Leaguers, and what not and every one 
 made haste to get his name signed to both constitution and 
 by-laws. Lawrence especially affected the Liberator Club, 
 whose undivided mission was to find freedom for all the slaves 
 in Missouri. Quantrell took its latitude and longitude with the 
 calm, cold eyes of a political philosopher and joined it among 
 the first. As it well might have been, he soon became its vital- 
 izing influence and its master. The immense energy of the 
 man making fertile with resources a mind bent to the accom- 
 plishment of a certain fixed purpose suggested at once to the 
 Club the necessity of practical work if it meant to make any 
 negroes free or punish any slaveholders. He knew how an- 
 entire family of negroes might be rescued. The risk was not 
 much. The distance was not great. The time was opportune. 
 How many would volunteer for the enterprise ? At first the 
 Club argued indirectly that it was a Club sentimental not a 
 Club militant. It would pray devoutly for the liberation of all 
 the slaves in all the world, but it would not fight for them. What 
 profit would the individual members receive if, after gaining all 
 Africa, they lost their own scalps? Quantrell persevered, how- 
 ever, and finally induced seven of the Liberators to co-operate 
 with him. His plan was to enter Jackson county, Missouri, 
 with three days' cooked rations, and ride the first night to 
 within striking distance of the premises it was intended to 
 plunder. There hidden completely in the brush and vigilant 
 without being seen or heard wait again for the darkness of the 
 second night. This delay of a day would also enable the 
 horses to get a good rest and the negroes to prepare for their 
 hurried journey. Afterwards a bold push and a steady gallop 
 must bring them all back safe to the harbor of Lawrence. Per- 
 haps the plan really was a daring one, and the execution 
 extremely dangerous ; but seven Liberators out of eighty-four 
 volunteered to accompany Quantrell, and in a week everything 
 was ready for the enterprise. 
 
44 NOTED GUEEKILLAS, OR 
 
 Morgan Walker was an old citizen of Jackson county a 
 veritable pioneer. He had settled there when buffalo grazed on 
 the prairies beyond Westport, and when in the soft sands along 
 the inland streams there were wolf and moccasin tracks. 
 Stalwart, hospitable, broad across the back, old-fashioned in his 
 courtesies and his hospitalities, he fed the poor, helped the 
 needy, prayed regularly to the good God, did right by his 
 neighbors and his friends, and* only swore occasionally at the 
 Jayhawkers and the Abolitionists. His hands might have been 
 rough and sun-browned, but they were always open. None 
 were ever turned away from his door hungry. Under the old 
 roof of the homestead no matter what the pressure was nor 
 how large the demand had been the last wayfarer got the same 
 comfort as the first and altogether they got the best. This 
 man Morgan Walker was the man Quantrell had proposed to 
 rob. Living some five or six miles from Independence, and 
 owning about twenty negroes of various ages and sizes, the 
 probabilities were that a skillfully conducted raid might leave 
 him without a servant. 
 
 Between the time the Liberators had made every preparation 
 for the foray and the time the eight men actually started for 
 Morgan Walker's house, there was the space of a week. After- 
 wards those most interested remembered that Quantrell had not 
 been seen during all that period either in Lawrence or at the 
 headquarters of his regiment. 
 
 Everything opened auspiciously. Well mounted and armed, 
 the little detachment left Lawrence quietly, rode two by two and 
 far apart until the point of the first rendezvous was reached 
 a clump of timber at a ford on Indian Creek. It was the 
 evening of the second day when they arrived, and they tarried 
 long enough to rest their horses and eat a hearty supper. 
 Before daylight the next morning the entire party were hidden 
 in some heavy timber two miles to the west of Walker's house. 
 From this safe retreat none of them stirred except Quantrell. 
 Several times during the day, however, he went backwards and 
 forwards ostensibly to the fields where the negroes were at 
 work, and whenever he returned he always brought something 
 either for the horses or the men to eat. 
 
 Morgan Walker had two sons true scions of the same stock 
 and before it was yet night these two boys and also the father 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 45 
 
 might have been seen cleaning up and putting in excellent order 
 their double-barrfel shot-guns. A little later three neighbors, 
 likewise carrying double-barrel shot-guns, rode up to the house, 
 dismounted, and entered in. Quantrell, who brought note of 
 many other things to his comrades, brought no note of this. If 
 he saw it he made no sign. 
 
 The night was dark. It had rained a little during the day, 
 and the most of the light of the stars had been put out by the 
 clouds, when Quantreli arranged his men for the dangerous 
 venture. They were to proceed first to the house, gain posses- 
 sion of it, capture the male members of the family, put them under 
 guard, assemble the negroes, bid them hitch up all the wagons 
 and teams possible, and then make a rapid gallop for Kansas. 
 
 Fifty yards from the main gate the eight men dismounted and 
 fastened their horses. Arms were looked to, and the stealthy 
 march to the house began. Quantrell led. He was very cool, 
 and seemed to see everything. The balance of the marauders 
 had their revolvers in their hands ; his were in his belt. Not a 
 dog barked. If any there had been aught save city bred, this, 
 together with the ominous silence, would have demanded a 
 reconnoissance. None heeded the surroundings, however, and 
 Quantrell knocked loudly and boldly at the oaken panels of 
 Morgan Walker's door. No answer. He knocked again and 
 stood perceptibly to one side. Suddenly, and as though it had 
 neither bolts nor bars, locks nor hinges, the door flared open 
 and Quantrell leaped into the hall with a bound like a red deer. 
 'Twas best so. A livid sheet of flame burst out from the 
 darkness where he had disappeared as though an explosion 
 had happened there followed by another as the second barrels 
 of the guns were discharged, and the tragedy was over. Six 
 fell where they stood, riddled with buckshot. One staggared to 
 the garden, bleeding fearfully, and died there. The seventh, 
 hard hit and unable to mount his horse, dragged his crippled 
 limbs to a patch of timber and waited for the dawn. They 
 tracked him by his blood upon the leaves and found him early. 
 Would he surrender ? No ! Another volley, and the last Liber- 
 ator was liberated. Walker and his two sons, assisted by three 
 of his stalwart and obliging neighbors, had done a clean night's 
 work and a righteous one. Those who had taken the sword had 
 perished by it. 
 
46 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Events traveled rapidly those fiery and impatient days, and 
 soon all the county was up and exercised over the attack made 
 upon Morgan Walker's house, and the deadly work which 
 followed it. Crowds congregated to look upon the seven dead 
 men, laid one alongside of another, and to .see what manner of 
 a man remained a prisoner. Thus was Quantrell first introduced 
 to the citizens of Jackson county, but little could any tell then 
 of what iron nerve that young stripling had, what grim endur- 
 ance, what inexorable purpose to make war practical and 
 uniorgiviug. 
 
 Morgan Walker kept his own counsel. Quantrell was 
 arraigned before a grand jury summoned especially for the 
 occasion of his trial, and honorably acquitted. The dead were 
 buried, the living was let go free, and the night attack soon 
 became to be a nine days' wonder. Men had their suspicions 
 and that was all. Some asked why seven should be taken and 
 the eighth one spared, but as no answer came in reply, the 
 question was not repeated. Little by little public interest in 
 the event died out, and Quantrell went back to Lawrence. 
 There, however, the hunt was up, and he saw at a glance and 
 instinctively that the desperate game he had been playing had 
 to be played, if played any longer, on the edge of a precipice. 
 Salvation depended alone upon something speedy and sure. 
 His intention at this time was undoubtedly to have killed Lane 
 before he abandoned Lawrence forever, and he went deliberately 
 to his quarters for that purpose. Called away in the forenoon 
 to some point thirty miles distant, Lane had not returned when 
 Quantrell' s blood-thirsty preparations had all been finished. 
 Time pressed, and he could not wait. Associating with himself 
 two desperate frontiersmen from Colorado, and openly defj^ng 
 the Jayhawkers and the Abolitionists, Quantrell simply changed 
 the mode of his warfare without mitigating aught of its affect- 
 iveness. Infuriated at the intrepid actions of the man, and 
 learning more and more of that terrible disease whose single 
 symptom has already been described, Lane offered heavy 
 rewards for the Guerrilla's head. Quantrell laughed at these 
 and fought on in his own avenging fashion all through the 
 balance of the year 1860 and up to within a few months of the 
 fall of Fort Sumpter in 1861. He probably told but twice in 
 his career the true story of his life in Kansas once to George 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 47 
 
 Todd, and once to Jesse and Frank James. Each time he 
 dwelt upon the fact that out of the thirty-two men who killed 
 his brother and wounded him, two only escaped the final pun- 
 ishment, and these because they left the Jayhawkers and moved 
 to California. Every Jayhawker shot in the forehead had been 
 shot by his own hand, and every sentinel killed at his post, and 
 every picquet left dead at the outtermost station, was but 
 another victim offered up as a sacrifice to appease the unquiet 
 spirit of the elder Quantrell. The younger never made an 
 official estimate of the number slain in this manner, but the 
 evidence is almost indisputable that a few over a hundred fell 
 by his hand and the hands of the two Colorado trappers who 
 joined him about nine months before the war commenced. The 
 raid upon Morgan Walker was the work of Quantrell' s con- 
 triving. Understanding in a moment that only through their 
 fanaticism could three of the original thirty-two who murdered 
 his brother and who belonged to the Liberator Club be made 
 to get far enough away from Lawrence for an ambuscade, he set 
 the Jackson county trap for them, baited it with the rescue of 
 a negro family, and they fell into it. His week's absence 
 preceding the attack was spent in arranging its preliminaries. 
 Neither Walker nor his friends were to fire until he had aban- 
 doned the balance of the party to their fate, and each time that 
 he had left the camp in the woods the day that was to usher in 
 the bloody night, he had been to Walker's house and gone 
 through with him, as it were, and carefully a rehearsal of all the 
 more important parts of the sanguinary play. 
 
 No consuming passion for revenge no matter how constantly 
 fed and persistently kept alive was adequate to the part Quan- 
 trell played in Kansas from 1857 to 1861. Something his 
 character had some elements of nerve, cunning, and intellect 
 belonging to it by the inherent right of training and develop- 
 ment that carried him successfully through the terrible work 
 and left his head without a single gray hair, his face without a 
 single altered feature. The attitude must have been superb, 
 the daily equanimity royal. The march was towards ruin or 
 deification, and yet day after day he anointed himself, made 
 awry things smooth before a mirror, put perfume upon his 
 person, and a rose in his button-hole. Under waning moons of 
 nights, by lonesome roadsides and haunted hollows, he took kid 
 
48 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 gloves from his hands as he writ legibly the writing ' of the 
 revolver. Women turned back upon him as he passed them on 
 the streets, and felt to stir within their hearts as tfre blue eyes 
 lit up in courtly recognition and the pale face flushed a little in 
 glad surprise the girls' romantic hunger for the men. He 
 never boasted. So young, and yet he was a Sphinx. Eternally 
 on guard when he was not in ambush, he no more mispro- 
 nounced a word than he permitted rust to appear upon his 
 revolver barrels. If it could be said that he ever put on a 
 mask, the name for it was gravity. He never endeavored to 
 make death ridiculous, for he knew that in the final summing up 
 death had never been known to laugh. He ate with those 
 doomed by his vengeance, touched them, knee to knee, as they 
 rode in column, talked with them of love, and war, and politics, 
 lifted his hand to his hat in salute as he bade the stationed 
 guards of the night be vigilant, and returned in an hour to shoot 
 them through the forehead. Dead men were brought in, slain 
 undoubtedly by the unerring hand of that awful yet impalpable 
 Nemesis, and he turned them nonchalantly over in the sunlight, 
 recognized them by name, spoke something of eulogy or com- 
 radeship by the wet blankets whereon they lay, and wrote in his 
 dairy, as the summing up of a day's labor: "Let not him that 
 girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." 
 If any thinking strange things of the plausible, reticent, 
 elegant man going his way and keeping his peace shot some 
 swift, furtive glance at him as he stood by the dead of his own 
 handicraft, the marble face moved not under the scrutiny. He 
 had mastered all human emotion, and sat superbly waiting the 
 denouement as though he felt to the uttermost that 
 "The play was the tragedy Man, 
 And its hero the Conqueror Worm." 
 
 There are those who will denounce him for his treachery and 
 seek to blacken his name because of the merciless manner in 
 which he fought. He recks not now of either extreme the 
 comradeship that would build him a monument durable as 
 patriotism or the condemnation which falsified his motives in 
 order to lessen his heroism. For Quantrell the war commenced 
 in 1856. Fate ordered it so, and transformed the ambitious yet 
 innocent boy into a Guerrilla without a rival and without a peer. 
 It was the work of Providence that halt by the river, that 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 49 
 
 murderous onslaught, that two days' battle with things which 
 mutilated, those hours given for the revenge of a lifetime to be 
 concentrated within a single span of suffering and Providence 
 might well cause this for epitaph to be written over against the 
 tomb of Quantrell : 
 
 "The standing side by side till death, 
 
 The dying for some wounded friend, 
 
 The faith that failed not to the end, 
 
 The strong endurance till the breath 
 
 And body took their ways apart 
 
 I only know. I keep my trust. 
 
 Their vices! earth has them by heart; 
 
 Their virtuosi they are with their dust." 
 
 4 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 QUANTRELL'S FIRST BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAS. 
 
 E war drums were being beaten all over the land. Prone 
 JL amid the ruins of Fort Sumpter the United States flag 
 symbolical of an indivisible nation was down amid its debris, the 
 Palmetto, in lieu of it, waving high over the ramparts. It was 
 as though a mighty torch had been cast in the midst of the 
 hatreds and the passions of two desperate sections, and that 
 the thing called Civil War was its conflagration. Armies began 
 to muster. People with picking and stealing fingers had already 
 commenced to count the chances of the strife and take sides 
 with the strongest. In the womb of the future the typical 
 American Guerrilla quickened preternaturally. Politicians 
 became soldiers, and statesmen took to the field. Battle was 
 about to kill men; posterity to judge them. A few peace 
 ravens notably in Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri croaked 
 out something about armed neutrality with a fiery energy of 
 words which cost nothing to weaponless hands. Here and 
 there compromise with the beautiful mask of patriotism hiding 
 its Medusa head seduced from the standards of the right some 
 noble and generous spirits. Imbecility crept into corners, and 
 hypocrisy admitted at last that war cut through everything. 
 The hour of those adventurous souls had struck who believed it 
 a necessary diversion to the universal ferment. They hoped to 
 change the fanaticism of secession into the fanaticism of glory, 
 and to satisfy the conscience of the border States by intoxicating 
 it with victory. A few conservatives sporadic rather than 
 epidemical threw themselves helplessly across the path of the 
 Revolution, and betwixt weeping and lamentation entreated a 
 hearing. It was accorded by both sections, but like people of 
 half parties and half talents, they excited neither hatred nor 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 51 
 
 anger. Events stepped across their prostrate bodies and 
 marched on towards results that were utterly absolute. 
 
 Quantrell did not enquire which side he should de fend ; brave, 
 the weaker; Southerner, the Confederacy; sincere, the right. 
 His position made his creed. From Marion to him the appre- 
 ciation of duty was not wide apart, the one understanding it as 
 a Christian who never had to wear sackcloth because he was out 
 of money to buy absolution, the other as a helpless waif blown 
 westward by restless emigration winds and wrecked upon the 
 pittiless lee-shore of Kansas hospitality. If for both there had 
 been the same auspices, one would have cut off the left ear 
 while the other cut off the right. 
 
 In May, 1861, Quantrell enlisted in Captain Stewart's company 
 of cavalry, an organization composed of hardy settlers from 
 what was then known as the Kansas Neutral Lands. As a 
 private he served with conspicuous daring in the battles of 
 Carthage, Wilson's Creek, and Lexington, but especially at the 
 latter place did his operations in presence of the enemy attract 
 attention. Mounted there on a splendid horse, armed with a 
 Sharpe's carbine and four navy revolvers, for uniform a red 
 shirt, and for oriflamme a sweeping black plume, he advanced 
 with the farthest, fell back with the last, and was always cool, 
 deadly, and omnipresent. General Price himself notorious 
 for being superbly indifferent under fire remarked his bearing 
 and caused mention to be made of it most favorably. 
 
 Quantrell marched with the army retreating from Lexington 
 as far southward as the Osage River. Winter was approaching, 
 active operations could not go on in the nature of things for 
 some time, and the old yearning for Guerrilla service came 
 over him again with an influence that would not be resisted. 
 Stewart, the captain, knew of his aspirations for several days, and 
 so did General Rains, the commander of the division to which 
 his company was attached as an independent company. Neither 
 objected and Quantrell turned ba,ck alone from the Osage 
 River, skirted rapidly the flanks of the detached cavalry col- 
 umns pursuing General Price, and arrived in Jackson county 
 late in the autumn of 1861. At first his exploits were confined 
 to but eight men a little band that knew nothing of war save 
 how to flight and to shoot who lived along the border and who 
 had already some scores to settle with the Jayhawkcrs. The 
 
52 NOTED GUEBBILLAS, OB 
 
 original eight the nucleus of a Guerrilla organization which 
 was to astonish the whole country twice once by its ferocity 
 and once by its prowess were William Haller, James and John 
 Little, Edward Coger, Andrew Walker the son of that Morgan 
 Walker Quantrell had known under sterner auspices John 
 Hampton, James Kelly, and Solomon Basham. Haller a 
 young and dauntless spirit was one of those men who are 
 themselves ignorant of their own powers until a crisis comes in 
 their experience and circumstances give them a duty to perform. 
 Just of age, impetuous as Murat, of an old and wealthy family, 
 handsome, to the grace of a. cavalier adding the stern political 
 conviction of an Ironside, he rode through his fitful military 
 life at a gallop and drank the wine of battle to its dregs before 
 they brought him back from his last combat 
 
 "The life upon his yellow hair, 
 But not within his eyes." 
 
 These eight men, or rather nine, for Quantrell commanded 
 encountered first their hereditary enemies, the Jayhawkers. 
 Lane entered Missouri only upon grand occasions ; Jennison 
 every once and awhile and as a frolic. One was a colossal 
 thief; the other a picayune one. Lane dealt in mules by herds, 
 horses by droves, wagons by parks, negroes by neighborhoods, 
 household effects by the ton, and miscellaneous plunder by the 
 city full ; Jennison contented himself with the pocket-books of 
 his prisoners, the pin money of the women, and the wearing 
 apparel of the children. Lane was a real prophet of dema- 
 gogueism, with insanity latent in his blood ; Jennison a sans 
 culotte who, looking upon himself as a bastard, sought to become 
 legitimate by becoming brutal. 
 
 It was again in the vicinity of Morgan Walker's that Quan- 
 trell with his little command ambushed a portion of Jennison 's 
 regiment and killed five of his thieves, getting some good 
 horses, saddles, bridles, and revolvers. The next fight occurred 
 upon the premises of Volney Ryan, a citizen of Jackson county, 
 and with Company A., of Burris' regiment a regiment of 
 Missouri militia, notorious for three things robbing hen-roosts, 
 stealing horses, and running away from the enemy. The eight 
 Guerrillas struck Company A. just at daylight, charged it home, 
 charged through it, and charged back again, and when they 
 
GEORGE TODD. 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 53 
 
 returned from the pursuit they counted fifteen dead, the fruits 
 of a running battle. 
 
 Chaos had now pretty well come again. In the wake of a 
 civil war which permitted always the impossible to the strongest, 
 beggars got upon horseback and began driving everj' decent 
 thing before them to the devil. In the universal upheaval lean 
 people saw how they might become fat, and paupers how they 
 might become kings. To the surface of the cauldron because 
 of the tremendous heat beneath it there came things mean, 
 cowardly, parasitical, crouching, contemptible, bad. Beasts of 
 prey became numerous, and birds of ill-omen flew hither and 
 thither. The law it was the sword ; the process it was the 
 bayonet; the constitution it was hung upon a gibbet; the 
 right the 
 
 41 Good old rule, the simple plan, 
 
 That he can get who has the power, 
 
 And he can keep who can." 
 
 One Searcy, claiming to be a Southern man, was stealing all 
 over Jackson county and using violence here and there when he 
 could not succeed through persuasion. Quantrell swooped 
 down upon him one afternoon, tried him that night, and hung 
 him the next morning. Before they pulled him up, he essayed 
 to say something. He commenced: "Not so fast, gentlemen! 
 It's awful to die until red hands have had a chance to wash 
 themselves." Here his voice was strangled like the voice of a 
 man who has no saliva in his mouth. Four Guerrillas dragged 
 on the rope. There seemed to be as his body rested at last 
 from its contortions the noise as of the waving of wings. 
 Could it be that Searcy 's soul was taking its flight? Seventy-five 
 head of horses were found in the dead man's possession, all 
 belonging to citizens of the county, and any number of title 
 deeds to lands, notes, mortgages, and private accounts. All 
 were returned. The execution acted as a thunder-storm, it 
 restored the equilibrium of the moral atmosphere. The border 
 warfare had found a chief. 
 
 The eight Guerrillas had now grown to be thirty. Among 
 the new recruits were David Pool, John Jarrette, William 
 Gregg, John Coger, Richard Burns, George Todd, George 
 Shepherd, Coleman Younger, and several others of like enter- 
 prise and daring. An organization was at once effected, and 
 
54 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Quantrell was made Captain; William Haller, 1st Lieutenant; 
 William Gregg, 2d ; George Todd. 3d ; and John Jarrette, 
 Orderly Sergeant. The eagles were beginning to congregate ; 
 the lions to hunt en masse. 
 
 Pool, an unschooled Aristophanes of the civil war, laughed 
 at calamity and rrfocked when any man's fear came. But for its 
 picturesqueness, his speech would have been comedy personified. 
 He laughed loudest when he was deadliest, and treated fortune 
 with no more dignity in one extreme than another. Gregg a 
 grim Saul among the Guerrillas made of the Confederacy a 
 mistrees, and, like the Douglass of old, was ever tender and 
 true to her. Jarrette, the man who never knew fear, added to 
 an immense activity an indomitable will. Events b ent to him as 
 distance disappeared before his gallops. He was, par excellence, 
 a soldier of the saddle. John Coger never missed a battle nor 
 a bullet. Wounded twenty-two times, he Jived as an exemplifi- 
 cation of what a Guerrilla could endure the amount of lead he 
 could comfortably get along with and keep fat. Steadfastness 
 was his test of merit comradeship his point of honor. He who 
 had John Coger at his back had a mountain. Todd was the in- 
 carnate devil of battle. He thought of fighting awake, dreamed 
 of it when asleep, mingled talk of it with topics of the day, 
 studied campaigns as a relaxation, and went hungry many a day 
 and shelterless many a night that he might find an enemy and 
 have his fill of battle. Quantrell had always to hold him back, 
 and yet he was his thunderbolt. He discussed nothing in the shape 
 of orders. A soldier who discusses is like a hand which would 
 think. He only charged. Were he attacked in front a charge; 
 in the rear a charge ; on either fiank a charge. Finally, in 
 a desperate charge, and doing a hero's work upon the stricken 
 roar of the 2d Colorado, he was killed. This was George Todd. 
 Shepherd a patient, cool, vigilant, plotting leader he knew all 
 the roads and streams, all the fords and passes, all modes of 
 egress and ingress ; all safe and dangerous places ; all the treacher- 
 ous non-combatants and the trustworthy ones everything, in- 
 deed, that the few needed to know who were fighting the many. 
 Burns fought. Others might have ambition and seek to sport the 
 official attributes of rank; he fought. In addition there were 
 among the Guerrillas few better pistol shots. It used to do- 
 Quantrell good to see him on the skirmish line. Golem an 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 55 
 
 Younger a boy having about his neck still the purple track a 
 rope ploughed the night the Jayhawkera shot down his old 
 father and strung him up to a black jack spoke rarely, and was 
 away a great deal in the woods. What was he doing, his com- 
 rades began to enquire, one of another. He had a mission to 
 perform he was pistol practicing. Soon he was perfect, and 
 then it was noticed that he laughed often and talked a great 
 deal. There had come to him now that intrepid gaiety which 
 plays with death. He changed devotion to his family into 
 devotion to his country, and he fought and killed with the con- 
 science of a hero. 
 
 The new organization was about to be baptized. B arris, 
 raiding generally along the Missouri border, had a detachment 
 foraging in the neighborhood of Charles Younger's farm. This 
 Charles Younger was an uncle of Coleman, and he lived within 
 three miles of Independence, the countj^-seat of Jackson 
 county. The militia detachment numbered eighty-four and the 
 Guerrillas thirty-two. At sunset Quantrell struck their camp. 
 Forewarned of his coming, they were already in line. One 
 volley settled them. Five fell at the first fire and seven more 
 were killed in the chase. The shelter of Independence alone, 
 where the balance of the regiment was as a breakwater, saved 
 the detachment from utter extinction. This day the 10th of 
 November, 1861, Cole Younger killed a militiaman seventy-one 
 measured yards. The pistol practice was bearing fruit. 
 
 Independence was essentially a city of fruits and flowers. 
 About every house there was & parterre and contiguous to every 
 parterre there was an orchard. Built where the woods and the 
 prairies met, when it was most desirable there was sunlight, and 
 when it was most needed there was shade. The war found it 
 rich, prosperous and contented, and it left it as an orange that 
 had been devoured. Lane hated it because it was a hive of 
 secession, and Jennison preyed upon it because Guerrilla bees 
 flew in and out. On one side the devil, on the other the deep 
 sea, patriotism, that it might not be tempted, ran the risk very 
 often of being drowned. Something also of Spanish intercourse 
 and connection belonged to it. Its square was a plaza ; its streets 
 centered there ; its court house was a citadel. Truer people 
 never occupied a town ; braver fathers never sent their sons to 
 war ; grander matrons never prayed to God for right, and purer 
 
56 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 women never waited through it all the siege, the sack, the pil- 
 lage and the battle for the light to break in the east at last, the 
 end to come in fate's own good and appointed time. 
 
 Quantrell had great admiration for Independence ; his men 
 adored it. Burris' regiment was still there fortified in the 
 court house and one day in February, 1862, the Guerillas 
 charged the town. It was a desperate assault. Quantrell and 
 Pool dashed down one street, Cole Younger and Todd down 
 another, Gregg and Shepherd down the third, Haller, Coger, 
 Burns, Walker and others down the balance of the approaches 
 to the square. Behind heavy brick walls the militia of course 
 fought, and fought besides at a great advantage. Save seven 
 surprised in the first moments of the rapid onset and shot down, 
 none others were killed, and Quantrell was forced to retire from 
 the town after taking some necessary ordnance, quartermaster 
 and commissary supplies from the stores under the very guns of 
 the court house. None of his men were killed, though as many 
 as eleven were wounded. This was the initiation of Indepen- 
 dence into the mysteries as well as the miseries of border war- 
 fare, and thereafter and without a month of cessation, it was to 
 get darker and darker for the beautiful town. 
 
 Swinging back past Independence from the east the day after 
 it had been charged, Quantrell moved up in the neighborhood of 
 Westport and put scouts upon the roads leading into Kansas 
 City. Two officers belonging to Jennison's regiment were 
 picked up a Lieutenant, who was young, and a Captain, who 
 was of middle-age. They had only time to pray. Quantrell 
 always gave time for this, and had always performed to the 
 letter the last commissions left by those who were doomed. 
 The Lieutenant did not want to pray. "It could do no good," 
 he said. u God knew about as much concerning the disposi- 
 tion it was intended to be made of his soul as he could suggest 
 to him." The Captain took a quarter of an hour to make his 
 peace. Both were shot. Men commonly die at God's appointed 
 time ; beset by Guerrillas, suddenly and unawares. Another of 
 the horrible surprises of civil war. 
 
 At first, and because of QuantrelPs presence, Kansas City 
 swarmed like an ant-hill during a rain-storm ; afterwards, and 
 when the dead officers were carried in, like a firebrand had been 
 cast thereon. A regiment came out after the Guerillas, but 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 57 
 
 Quantrell fell back through Westport, killed nine straggling 
 Federals there, and made his camp, after a rapid march, at 
 David George's place on the Sni, a large stream of water in 
 Jackson county, abounding in fastnesses and skirted by almost 
 inaccessible precipices and thickets. From the Sni to the Blue 
 another Jackson county stream historic in Guerrilla annals 
 Quantrell returned the third day. While at the house of Charles 
 Cowherd a courier came up with the information that Indepen- 
 dence, which had not been garrisoned for some little time, was 
 again in possession of a company of militia. Another attack was 
 resolved upon. On the night of February 20th, 1862, Quantrell 
 marched to the vicinity of the town and waited for the daylight. 
 The first few faint streaks in the east constituted the signal. 
 There was a dash altogether down South Main street, a storm 
 of cheers and bullets, a roar of iron feet on the rocks of the 
 roadway, and the surprise was left to work itself out. It did, 
 and reversely. Instead of the one company reported in posses- 
 sion of the town, four were found, numbering three hundred 
 men. They manned the court house in a moment, made of its 
 doors an eruption and of its windows a tempest, killed a noble 
 Guerrilla, Young George, shot Quantreli's horse from under him, 
 held their own everywhere and held the fort. As before, all 
 who were killed among the Federals, and they lost seventeen, 
 were those killed in the first few moments of the charge. Those 
 who hurried alive into the court house were safe. Young 
 George, dead in his first battle, had all the promise of a bright 
 career. None rode further nor faster in the charge, and when 
 he fell he fell so close to the fence about the fortified building 
 that it was with difficulty his comrades took his body out from 
 under a point-blank fire and bore it off in safety. 
 
 It was a part of QuantrelPs tactics to disband every now and 
 then. "Scattered soldiers," he argued, "make a scattered 
 trail. The regiment that has but one man to hunt can never 
 find him." The men needed heavier clothing and better horses, 
 and the winter, more than ordinarily severe, was beginning to 
 tell. A heavy Federal force was also concentrating in Kansas 
 City, ostensibly to do service along the Mississippi River, really 
 to drive out of Jackson county a Guerrilla band that under no 
 circumstances possible at that time could have numbered over 
 fifty. Quantrell, therefore, for an accumulation of reasons, 
 
58 NOTED GUEREILLAS y OR 
 
 ordered a brief disbandment. It had hardly been accomplished 
 before Independence swapped a witch for a devil. Burris evac- 
 uated the town ; Jennison occupied it. In his regiment were 
 trappers who trapped for dry goods, fishermen who fished for 
 groceries. At night passers-by were robbed of their pocket- 
 books ; in the morning market women of their meat baskets. 
 Neither wiser, perhaps, nor better than the Egyptians, the 
 patient and all-suffering citizens had got rid of the lean kine in 
 order to make room for the lice. 
 
 Alert always, and keeping a vigilant eye ever upon the 
 military horizon, Quantrell ordered a rally of his disbanded 
 Guerrillas. As it was in the days of the raiding Highlanders, 
 so in the times that tried men's souls along the border. If 
 R Roderick Dhu had his Malise, Captain Quantrell had his 
 splendid rider. From house to house the summons flew. The 
 farmer left his plow to speed it, the maiden forgot her trysting 
 to help on the messenger, settlement spoke to settlement through 
 a smoke in a hollow or a fire on a hill, patriotism had a language 
 unknown to the invaders, and the mustering-place rarely ever 
 missed a man. 
 
 At the appointed time, and at the place of David George, the 
 reassembling was as it should be. Quantrell meant to attack 
 Jennison in Independence and destroy him if possible, and so 
 moved in that direction as far as the Little Blue Church. Here 
 be met Allen Farmer, a regular red Indian of a scout, who 
 never forgot to count a column or know the line of march of an 
 enemy, and Farmer reported that instead 'of three hundred 
 Jayuawkers being in Independence there were six hundred. 
 Too many for thirty-two men to grapple, and fortified at that, 
 they all said. It would be murder in the first degree and 
 unnecessary murder in addition. Quantrell, foregoing with a 
 struggle the chance to get at his old acquaintance of Kansas, 
 flanked Independence and stopped for the night at the residence 
 of Zan. Harris, a true Southern man and a keen observer of 
 passing events. Early the next morning be crossed the Big 
 Blue at the bridge on the main road to Kansas City, surprised 
 and shot down a detachment of thirteen Federals watching it, 
 burned the structure to the wtiter, and marched rapidly in a 
 south-west direction, leaving Westport to the right. At noon 
 the command was at the residence of Alexander Majors, a 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 59 
 
 partner in that celebrated freighting firm of Russell, Majors & 
 Waddell, the pioneers of the West as well as its victims. Rus- 
 sell was a giant in a civilization which produced big men. The 
 plains were immense and so was his intellect. He planned busi- 
 ness as generals planned campaigns, and took in the whole 
 territory from Philadelphia to Santa Fe at a glance. Wnddell 
 was his cabinet man, Majors his man for the field. Altogether 
 they established an empire and created a dynasty which took 
 the unscrupulous power of a venal government to uproot and 
 destroy. It was the empire of business sense and 4he dynasty 
 of executive ability. When the war came they were looked 
 upon as disloyal in order that they might be robbed, and Con- 
 gress finished what the government had begun. In revolutions 
 there is no repentance, there is only expiation ; but who in the 
 end is to make good this plunder of its citizens by a power 
 constituted solely to protect them? 
 
 After the meal at Majors', Quantrell resumed his march, 
 sending Haller and Todd ahead with an advance guard and 
 bringing up the rear himself with the main body of twenty- two 
 men. Night overtook him at the Tate House, three miles east 
 of Little Santa Fe, a small town in Jackson county close to the 
 Kansas line, and he camped there. Haller and Todd were still 
 further along, no communication being established between 
 these two parts of a common whole. The day had been cold 
 and the darkness was bitter. That weariness which comes with 
 a hard ride, a rousing fire, and a hearty supper, fell early upon 
 the Guerrillas. One sentinel at the gate kept drowsy watch r 
 and the night began to deepen. In various attitudes and in 
 various places, twenty-one of twenty-two men were sound 
 asleep, the twenty-second keeping watch and ward at the gate 
 in the freezing weather. It was just twelve o'clock, and the fire 
 in the capacious fire-place was burning low. Suddenly a shout 
 was heard. The well-known challenge of "Who are you ?" arose 
 on the night air, followed by a pistol shot, and then a volley. 
 Quantrell, sleeping always like a cat, shook himself loose from his 
 blankets and stood erect in the glare of the firelight. Three 
 hundred Federals, following all day on his trail, had marked him 
 take cover at night and went to bag him boots and breeches. 
 They had hitched their horses back in the brush and stole upon 
 the dwelling afoot. So noiseless had been their advance, and so 
 
60 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 close were they upon the sentinel before they were discovered, 
 that he had only time to cry out, fire, and rush for the timber. 
 He could not get back to his comrades, for some Federals were 
 between him and the door. As he ran he received a volley, but 
 in the darkness he escaped. 
 
 The house was surrounded! To the men within-side this 
 meant, unless they could get out, death by fire and sword. 
 Quantrell was trapped, he who had been accorded the fox's 
 cunning and the panther's activity. He glided to the window and 
 looked out cautiously. The cold stars shone, and the blue figures 
 under them and on every hand seemed colossal. The fist of a 
 heavy man struck the door hard, and a deep voice commanded : 
 4 'Make a light." There had been no firing as yet save the shot 
 of the sentinel and its answering volley. Quantrell went 
 quietly to all who were still asleep and bade them get up and 
 get ready. It was the moment when death had to be looked in 
 the face. Not a word was spoken. The heavy fist was still 
 hammering at the door. Quantrell crept to it on tip-toe, listened 
 a second at the sounds outside, and fired. "Oh!" and a stal- 
 wart Federal fell prone across the porch, dying. "You asked 
 for a light, and you've got it, d n you," Quantrell ejaculated, 
 cooler than his pistol barrel. Afterwards there was no more 
 bravado. "Bar the doors and barricade the windows!" he 
 shouted; "quick, men!" Beds were freely used and applicable 
 furniture. Little and Shepherd stood by one door; Jarrette, 
 Younger, Toler, and Hoy barricaded the other and made the 
 windows bullet-proof. Outside the Federal fusilade was inces- 
 sant. Mistaking Tate's house for a frame house when it was 
 built of brick, the commander of the enemy could be heard 
 encouraging his men to shoot low and riddle the dwelling. 
 Presently there was a lull. Neither party fired for the space of 
 several minutes, and Quantrell spoke to his people: "Boys, we 
 are in a tight place. We can't stay here, and I do not mean to 
 surrender. All who want to follow me out can say so ; all who 
 prefer to give up without a rush can also say so. I will do the 
 best I can for them." Four concluded to appeal to the 
 Federals for protection; seventeen to follow Quantrell to the 
 death. He called a parley, and informed the Federal com- 
 mander that four of his followers wanted to surrender. "Lat 
 them come out," was the order. Out they went and the fight 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 61 
 
 began again. Too eager to see what manner of men their 
 prisoners were, the Federals holding the west front of the house 
 huddled about them eagerly. Ten Guerrillas from the upper 
 story fired at the crowd and brought down six. A roar followed 
 this, and a rush back again to cover at the double quick. It 
 was hot work now. Quantrell, supported by James Little, Cole 
 Younger, Ho3 r , and Stephen Shores, held the upper story, while 
 Jarrette, Toler, George Shepherd, and others held the lower. 
 Every shot told. The proprietor of the house, Major Tate, 
 was a Southern hero, gray-headed but Roman. He went about 
 laughing. "Help me to get my family out, boys," he said, 
 "and I will help you to hold the house. It's about as good a 
 time for me to die, I reckon, as any other, if so be that God 
 wills it. But the old woman is only a woman." Another 
 parley. Would the Federal commander let the women and 
 children out? Yes, gladly, and the old man too. There was 
 eagerness for this, and much of veritable cunning. The family 
 occupied an ell of the mansion with which there was no com- 
 munication from the main building where Quantrell and his men, 
 were save by way of a door which opened upon a porch, and 
 this porch was under the concentrated fire of the assailants. 
 After the family moved out the attacking party would throw 
 skirmishers in, and then the torch. Quantrell understood it 
 in a moment, and spoke up to the father of the family: "Go 
 out, Major. It is your duty to be with your wife and children." 
 The old man went, protesting. Perhaps for forty years the 
 blood had not coursed so pleasantly and so rapidly through his 
 veins. Giving ample time for the family to get safely beyond 
 the range of the fire of the besieged, Quantrell went back to his 
 post and looked out. He saw two Federals standing together 
 beyond revolver range. "Is there a shot-gun here?" he asked. 
 Cole Younger brought him one loaded with buck-shot. 
 Thrusting half his body out the nearest window, and receiving 
 as many volleys as there were sentinels, he fired the two barrela 
 of his gun so near together that they sounded as one barrel. 
 Both Federals fell, one dead, the other mortally wounded. 
 There followed this daring and conspicuous feat a yell so- 
 piercing and exultant that even the horses, hitched in the timber 
 fifty yards away, reared in their fright and snorted with terror. 
 Black columns of smoke blew past the windows where the 
 
62 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OE 
 
 Guerrillas were, and a bright red flame leaped up toward the 
 ky on the wings of the wind. The ell of the house had been 
 fired, and was burning fiercely. QuantrelPs face just a little 
 paler than usual had a set look that was not good to see. The 
 tiger was at bay. Many of the men's revolvers were empty, 
 and in order to gain time to load them, another parley was had. 
 The talk was of surrender. The Federal commander demanded 
 immediate submission, and Shepherd, with a voice heard above 
 the rage and the roar of the flames, pleaded for twenty minutes. 
 No. Ten? No. Five? No. Then the commander cried out in a 
 voice not a whit inferior to Shepherd's in compass: "You have 
 one minute. If, at its expiration, you have not surrendered, not 
 a single man among you shall escape alive." i 'Thank you," said 
 Cole Younger, sotto voce, "catching comes before hanging.'* 
 "Count sixty Uien, and be d d to you," Shepherd shouted as a 
 parting volley, and then a strange silence fell upon ail these des- 
 perate men face to face with imminent death. When every man 
 was ready, Quantrell said briefly: "Shot guns to the front.' 
 Six, loaded heavily with buck-shot, were borne there, and he put 
 himself at the head of the six men who carried them. Behind 
 these were those having only revolvers. In single file, the 
 charging column was formed in the main room of the building. 
 The glare of the burning ell lit it up as though the sun was 
 shining there. Some tightened their pistol belts. One fell 
 upon his knees and prayed. Nobody scotfed at him, for God 
 was in that room. He is everywhere when heroes confess. 
 There were seventeen who were about to receive the lire ol 
 three hundred. 
 
 Ready ! Quantrell flung the door wide open and leaped out. 
 The shot-gun men Jarre tte, Younger, Shepherd, Toler, Little 
 and Hoy were hard behind him. Right and left from the thin 
 short column a fierce fire beat into the very faces of the Fed- 
 erals, who recoiled in some confusion, shooting, ho \vever, from 
 every side. There was a yell, and a grand rush, and when the 
 end had come and all the fixed realities figured up, the enemy 
 had eighteen killed, twenty-nine badly wounded, and five pris- 
 oners, and the captured horses of the Guerrillas. Not a man oi 
 Quantrell's command was touched, as it broke through the cor- 
 don on the south of the house and gained the sheltering timber 
 beyond. Hoy, as he rushed out the third from Quantrell and 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 63 
 
 fired both barrels of his gun, was so near to a stalwart Federal 
 that he was struck over the head with a musket and knocked 
 senseless. To capture him afterwards was like capturing a dead 
 man. But little pursuit was attempted. Quantrell halted at the 
 timber, built a fire, reloaded every gun and pistol, and took a 
 philosophical view of the situation. Enemies were all about 
 him. He had lost five men four of whom, however, he was 
 glad to get rid of and the balance were afoot. Patience ! He 
 had just escaped from an environment sterner than any yet 
 spread for him, and fortune was not apt to offset one splendid 
 action by another exactly opposite. Choosing, therefore, a 
 rendezvous upon the head- waters of the Little Blue, another his- 
 toric stream of Jackson county, he reached the residence of 
 David Wilson late the next morning, after a forced march of 
 great exhaustion. The balance of the night, however, had still 
 to be one of surprises and counter-surprises not alone to the 
 Federals, but to the other portion of Quantrell's command 
 under Haller and Todd. Encamped four miles south of the 
 Tate House, the battle there had aroused them instantly. Get- 
 ting to saddle quickly, they were galloping back to the help of 
 their comrades when a Federal force, one hundred strong, met 
 them full in the road. Some minutes of savage fighting ensued, 
 but Haller could not hold his own with thirteen men, and 
 retreated, firing, to the brush. Afterwards everything was 
 made plain. The four men who surrendered so abjectly at the 
 Tate House imagined it would bring help to their condition if 
 they told all they knew, and they told wituout solicitation the 
 story of Haller' s advance and the whereabouts of his camp. 
 An hundred men were instantly despatched to surprise it or 
 storm it, but the firing had aroused the isolated Guerrillas, and 
 they got out in safety, after a rattling fight of some twenty 
 minutes. 
 
 Moving up from David Wilson's to John Flannery's, Quan- 
 trell waited until Haller joined him, and then disbanded for the 
 second time, fixing his rendezvous when all the men were well 
 mounted again at a designated point on the Sni. 
 
 In April, 1862, Quantrell, with seventeen men, was camped 
 at the residence of Samuel C. Clark, situated three miles south- 
 east of Stony Point, in Jackson county. He had spent the night 
 there and was waiting for breakfast the next morning, when 
 
64 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Captain Peabody, at the head of one hundred Federal cavalry,, 
 surprised the Guerrillas and came on at the charge, shooting 
 and yelling. Instantly dividing the detachment in order that 
 the position might be effectively held, Quantrell, with nine men, 
 took the dwelling, and Gregg, with eight, occupied the smoke- 
 house. For a while the fight was at long range, Peabody hold- 
 ing tenaciously to the timber in front of Clark's, distant about 
 one hundred yards, and refusing to come out. Presently, how 
 ever, he did an unsoldierly thing or, rather, an unskillful 
 thing he mounted his men and forced them to charge the 
 dwelling on horseback. Quantrell's detachment reserved 
 their fire until the foremost horsemen were within thirty feet, 
 and Gregg permitted those operating against his position to 
 come even closer. Then a quick, sure volley and twe nty-seven 
 men and horses went down together. Badly demoralized, 
 but in no manner defeated, Peabody rallied again in the 
 timber, while Quantrell, breaking out from the dwelling- 
 house and gathering up Gregg as he went, charged the 
 Federals fiercely in return and with something of success. The 
 impetus of the rush carried him past a portion of the Federal 
 line, where some of their horses were hitched, and the return of 
 the wave brought with it nine valuable animals. It was over 
 the horses that Andrew Blunt had a hand-to -hand fight with a 
 splendid Federal trooper. Both were very brave. Blunt had 
 just joined. No one knew his history. He asked no questions 
 and he answered none. Some said he had once belonged to the 
 cavalry of the regular army ; others, that behind the terrible 
 record of the Guerrillas he wished to find iso lation. Singling out 
 a fine sorrel horse from among the number fastened in his front, 
 Blunt was just about to unhitch him when a Federal trooper, 
 superbly mounted, dashed down to the line and fired. Blunt 
 left his position by the side of the horse and strode out in the 
 open, accepting the challenge defiantly and closing with his an- 
 tagonist. The first time he fired he missed, although many of 
 the men believed him a better pistol shot than Quantrell. The 
 Federal calmly sat his horse, fired the second shot deliberately 
 and again missed. Blunt went four paces towards him, took a 
 quick aim and fired very much as a man would at something 
 running. Out of the Federal's blue overcoat a little jet of dust 
 spurted up and he reeled in his seat. The man, hard hit in the 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 65 
 
 right breast, did not fall, however. He gripped his saddle with 
 his knees, cavalry fashion, steadied himself in his stirrups, and 
 fired three times at Blunt in quick succession. They were now 
 but twenty paces apart, and the Guerrilla was shortening the 
 distance. When at ten he fired his third s hot, the heavy dra- 
 goon ball struck the gallant Federal fair in the forehead and 
 knocked him dead from his horse. While the duel was in pro- 
 gress, brief as it was, Blunt had not watched his rear, to gain 
 which a dozen Federals had started from the extreme right. He 
 saw them, but he did not hurry. Going back to the coveted 
 steed, he mounted him deliberately and dashed back through 
 the lines closed up behind him, getting a fierce hurrah of en- 
 couragement from his own comrades and a wicked volley from 
 the enemy. 
 
 It was time. A second company of Federals in the neighbor- 
 hood, attracted by the firing, had made a junction with Peabody 
 and were already closing in upon the houses from the south. 
 Surrounded now by one hundred and sixty men, Quantrell was 
 almost in the same desperate strait as at the Tate House. His 
 horses were in the hands of the Federals, it was some little dis- 
 tance to the timber, and the environment was complete. Cap- 
 tain Peabody, himself a Kansas man, knew who led the forces 
 opposed to him and burned with the des ire to make a finish of 
 this Quantrell and his reckless band at one clean sweep. Not 
 content with the one hundred and sixty men already in positions 
 about the house, he sent off post haste to Pink Hill for additional 
 reinforcements. Emboldened also by their numbers, the Federals 
 had approached so close to the positions held by the Guerrillas 
 that it was possible for them to utilize the shelter the fences 
 gave. Behind these they ensconced themselves while pouring a 
 merciless fusillade upon the dwelling-house and smoke-house in 
 comparative immunity. This annoyed Quantrell, distressed 
 Gregg and made Cole Younger one of the coolest heads in 
 council ever consulted look a little anxious. Finally a solution 
 was found. Quantrell would draw the fire of this ambuscade ; 
 he would make the concealed enemy show himself. Ordering 
 all to be ready and to fire the very moment the opportunity for 
 execution was best, he dashed out from the dwelling-house to 
 the smoke-house, and from the smoke-house back again to the 
 dwelling. Eager to kill the daring man, and excited somewhat 
 5 
 
66 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 by tlieir own efforts made to do it, the Federals exposed them- 
 selves recklessly. Then, owing to the short range, the revolvers 
 of the Guerrillas began to tell with deadly effect. Twenty at 
 least were shot down along the fences, and as many more 
 wounded and disabled. It was thirty steps from one house to 
 the other, yet Quantrell made the venture eight distinct and 
 separate times, not less than one hundred men firing at him as 
 he came and went. On his garments there was not even the 
 smell of fire. His life seemed to be charmed his person pro- 
 tected by some superior presence. When at la st even this 
 artifice would no longer enable his men to fight with any degree 
 of equality, Q mntrell determined to abandon the houses and the 
 horses and make a dash as of old to the nearest timber. "I 
 had rather lose a thousand horses," he said, when some one re-, 
 monstrated with him, "than a single man like those who have 
 fought with me this day. Heroes are scarce ; horses are 
 everywhere." 
 
 In the swift rush that came now, fortune again favored him. 
 Almost every revolver belonging to the Federals was empty. 
 They had been relying altogether upon their carbines in the 
 fight. After the first onset on horseback one in which the 
 revolvers were principally used they had failed to reload, and 
 had nothing but empty guns in their hands after Quantrell for 
 the last time drew their fire and dashed away on the heels of it 
 to the timber. Pursuit was not attempted/ Enraged at the 
 escape of the Guerrillas, and burdened with a number of dead 
 and wounded altogether out of proportion to the forces 
 engage 1, Captain Peabody caused to be burned everything 
 upon the premises which had a plank or a shingle about it. 
 
 Something else yet was also to be done. Getting out 
 afoot as best he could, Quantrell saw a company of cavalry 
 making haste from towards the direction of Pink Hill. It was 
 but a short distance to where the road he was skirting crossed a 
 creek, and commanding this crossing was a perpendicular bluff 
 inaccessible to horsemen. Thither he hurried. The work of 
 am bush me nt was the work only of a moment. George Todd, 
 alone of all the Guerrillas, had brought with him from the house 
 a shot-gun. In running for life, the most of them were unin- 
 cumbered. Tue approaching Federals were the reinforcements 
 Peabody had ordered up from Pink Hill, and as Quantrell's 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 67 
 
 defence had lasted one hour and a half, they were well on their 
 way. As they came to the creek the foremost riders halted that 
 their horses might drink. Soon others crowded in. until all the 
 ford was thick with animals. Just then from the bluff above a 
 leaden rain fell as hail might from a cloudless sky. Rearing 
 steeds trampled upon wounded riders. The dead dyed thf clear 
 water red. Wild panic laid hold of the helpless mass cut into 
 gaps, and flight beyond the range of the deadly revolvers came 
 first to all and uppermost. There was a rally, however. Once 
 out from under fire the Lieutenant commanding the detachment 
 called a halt. He was full of dash, and meant to see more of the 
 unknown on the top of the hill. Dismounting his men a*:d putting 
 himself at their head, he turned back for a fight, marching 
 resolutely forward to the bluff. Quantrell waited lor the the 
 attack to develop itself. The Lieutenant moved right onward. 
 When within fifty paces of the position, George Todd rose up 
 from behind a rock and covered the young Federal with his 
 unerring shot-gun. It seemed a pity to kill him, he was so 
 brave and collected, and yet he fell riddled just as he had 
 drawn his sword and shouted "Forward!" to his lagging men. 
 To Todd's signal there succeeded a fierce revolver volley, and 
 again were the Federals driven from the hill and back towards 
 their horses. Satisfied with the results of this fight made 
 solely as a matter of revenge for burning Clark's building 
 Quantrell fell away from the ford and continued his retreat on 
 towards his rendezvous upon the waters of the Sni. Peabody, 
 however, had not yet had his say. Coming on himself in the 
 direction of Pink Hill, and mistaking these reinforcements for 
 Guerrillas, he had quite a lively fight with them, each detach- 
 ment getting in several vollies and killing and wounding a 
 goodly number before either discovered the mistake. 
 
CHAPTER VH. 
 
 BATTLES AND SURPRISES. 
 
 ^~\UANTRELL and his command were all on foot again, and 
 ^%> Jackson county was filled with troops. At Kansas City 
 there was a large garrison, with smaller ones at Independence, 
 Pink Hill, Lone Jack, Stoney Point, and Sibley. Peabody 
 caused the report to be circulated that a majority of Quantrell's 
 men were wounded, and that if the brush was scoured thor- 
 oughly they might be picked up here and there and summarily 
 disposed of. Raiding bands therefore began the hunt. Old 
 men were imprisoned because they could give no information of 
 a concealed enemy; young men were murdered outright; 
 women were insulted and abused. The uneasiness that had 
 heretofore rested upon the county gave place now to a feeling 
 of positive fear. The Jayhawkers on one side and the militia 
 on the other made matters hot. All travelling was dangerous. 
 People at night closed their eyes in dread lest the morrow 
 should usher in a terrible awakening. One incident of the hunt 
 is a bloody memory yet with many of the older settlers of 
 Jackson county. An aged man by the name of Blythe, 
 believing his own house to be his own, fed those whom he 
 pleased to feed, and sheltered all whom it suited him to shelter. 
 Among his many warm personal friends was Coleman Younger. 
 The Colonel commanding the fort at Independence sent a scout 
 one day to find Younger, and to make the country people tell 
 where he might be found. Old man Blythe was not at home, 
 but his son was a fearless lad of twelve years. He was taken 
 to the barn and ordered to confess everything he knew of 
 Quantrell, Younger, and their whereabouts. If he failed to 
 speak truly he was to be killed. The boy, in no manner 
 frightened, kept them some moments in conversation, waiting 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 69 
 
 for an opportunity to escape. Seeing at last what he imagined 
 to be a chance, he dashed away from his captors and entered 
 the house under a perfect shower of balls. There, seizing a 
 pistol and rushing through the back door towards some timber, 
 a ball struck him in the spine just as he reached the garden 
 fence and he fell back dying but spendid in his boyish courage 
 to the last. Turning over on his face as the Jayhawkers rush- 
 ed up to finish him, he shot one dead, mortally wounded 
 another, and severely wounded the third. Before he could 
 shoot the fourth time, seventeen bullets were put into his body. 
 It seemed as if God's vengeance was especially exercised in the 
 righting of this terrible wrong. An old negro man who 
 happened to be at Blythe's house at the time, was a witness of 
 the bloody deed, and, afraid of his own life, ran hurriedly into 
 the brush. There he came unawares upon Younger, Quantrell, 
 Haller, Todd, and eleven of their men. Noticing the great 
 excitement under which the negro labored, they forced him to 
 tell them the whole story. It was yet time for an ambuscade. 
 On the road back to Independence was a pass between two 
 embankments known as "The Blue Cut." In width it was 
 about fifty yards, and the height of each embankment was about 
 thirty feet. Quantrell dismounted his men, stationing some at 
 each end of the passage-way, and some at the top and on either 
 side. Not a shot was to be fired until the returning Federals 
 had entered in, front and rear. From the Blue Cut this fatal 
 spot was afterward known as the Slaughter Pen. Of the thirty- 
 eight Federals sent out after Cole Younger, and who, because 
 they could not find him, had brutally murdered an innocent 
 boy, seventeen were killed, while five not too badly shot to 
 be able to ride barely managed to escape into Independence, 
 the avenging Guerrillas hard upon their heels. 
 
 The next rendezvous was at Reuben Harris', ten miles south 
 of Independence, and thither all the command went, splendidly 
 mounted again and eager for employment. Some days of 
 preparation were necessary. Richard Hall, a fighting black- 
 smith who shot as well as he shoed, and knew a trail as 
 thoroughly as a piece of steel, had need to exercise much of 
 his handiwork in order to make the horses good for cavalry. 
 Then there were many rounds of cartridges to make. A 
 Guerrilla knew nothing of an ordnance-master. His laboratory 
 
70 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 was in his luck. If a capture did not gain him caps, he had to 
 fall back on ruse, or stratagem, or blockade-running square 
 out. Powder and lead in the raw were enough, for if with these 
 he could not make himself presentable at inspection he had no 
 calling as a fighter in the brush. 
 
 It was Quantreli's intention at this time to attack Harrison- 
 ville, the county-seat of Cass county, and capture it if possible. 
 With this object in view, and after having made every prepara- 
 tion available for a vigorous campaign, he moved eight miles 
 east of Independence, camping near the Little Blue, in the 
 vicinity of Job Crabtree's. He camped always near or in a 
 house. For this he had two reasons. First, that its occupants 
 might gather up for him all the news possible ; and, second, 
 that in the event of a surprise a sure rallying point would 
 always be at hand. He had a theory that after a Guerrilla was 
 given time to get over the first effects of a sudden charge or 
 ambushment, the very nature of his military status made him 
 invincible ; that after an opportunity was afforded him to think, 
 a surrender was next to an impossibility. 
 
 Before there was time to attack Harrisonville, however, a 
 scout reported Peabody again on the war-path, this time bent on 
 an utter extermination of the Guerrillas. And he well nigh 
 kept his word. From Job Crabtree's Quantrell had moved to 
 an unoccupied building known as the Low House, and then 
 again from this house he had gone to some contiguous timber to 
 bivouac for the night. About 10 o'clock the sky suddenly 
 became overcast, a fresh wind blew up from the east, and rain 
 fell in torrents. Again the house was occupied, tne horses 
 bein hitched along the fence in the rear of it, the door on the 
 south, and the only door, having a bar put across it in lieu of a 
 sentinel. Such soldiering was perfectly inexcusable, and it 
 taught Quantrell a lesson he remembered to the day of his 
 death. In the morning preceding the night of the attack 
 Lieutenant Nash, of Peabody's regiment, commanding two 
 hundred men, had struck Quantreli's trail, lost it later on, and 
 then found it again just about sun-set. He was advised of his 1 
 having gone from the Low House to the brush, and of his 
 having come back to it when the rain began to fall heavily. To 
 a certain extent this seeking, shelter was a necessity on the part 
 of Quantrell. The men had no cartridge boxes, and not all of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 71 
 
 them overcoats. If once their ammunition was permitted to 
 become damaged, it would be as though sheep should attack 
 wolves. Nash, supplied with everything needed in any weather, 
 waited patiently for the Guerrillas to become snugly ensconced 
 under shelter, and then surrounded the house. Before a gun 
 was fired, the Federals had every horse belonging to the 
 Guerrillas, and were bringing to bear upon the only door every 
 available carbine in the command. At first all was confusion. 
 Across the logs which once had supported an upper floor, some 
 boards had been laid, and sleeping upon them were Todd, Blunt, 
 and William Carr. Favored by the almost impenetrable darkness, 
 Quantrell determined upon an immediate abandonment of the 
 house. He called loudly twice for all to follow him and dashed 
 through the door under a galling fire. Those in the loft did not 
 hear him, and maintained in reply to the Federal vollies a lively 
 fusillade. Then Cole Younger, James Little, Joseph Gilchrist, 
 and a young Irish boy a brave new recruit turned back to 
 help their comrades. The house became a furnace. At each of 
 the two corners on the south these four men fought, Younger 
 calling on Todd in the interval of every volley to come out of 
 the loft and come to the brush. They started at last. It was 
 four hundred yards to the nearest she Iter, and the ground was 
 very muddy. Gilchrist was shot down, the Irish boy was 
 killed, Blunt was wounded and captured, Carr surrendered, 
 Younger had his hat shot away, Little was unhurt, and Todd, 
 scratched in four places, finally got safely to the timber. But it 
 was a miracle. Twenty Federals singled him out as well as 
 they could in the darkness and kept close at his heels, firing 
 whenever a gun was loaded. Todd had a musket which, when 
 it seemed as if they were all upon him at once, he would point 
 at the nearest and make pretense that he was going to shoot. 
 When they halted and dodged about to get out of range, he 
 would dash away again, gaining wtiat space he could until he 
 had to turn and re-enact the same unpleasant pantomime. Reach- 
 ing the woods at last, he fired point blank and in reality now, kill- 
 ing with a single discharge one pursuer and wounding four. Part 
 of Nash's command were still on the track of Quantrell, but after 
 losing five killed and a number wounded, they returned again to 
 the house but returned too late for the continued battle. The 
 dead and the two prisoners were all that were left to them. 
 
72 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Little Blue was bankfull, and the country was swarming with 
 militia. For the third time Quantrell was afoot with unrelenting 
 pursuers upon his trail in every direction. At daylight Nash 
 would be after him again, river or no river. He must get over 
 or fare worse. The rain still poured down ; muddy, forlorn, 
 well-nigh worn out, yet in no manner demoralized, just as 
 Quantrell reached the Little Blue he saw on the other bank 
 Toler, one of his own soldiers, sitting in a canoe. Thence- 
 forward the work of crossing was easy, and Nash, coming on an 
 hour afterwards, received a volley at the ford where he expected 
 to find a lot of helpless and unresisting men. 
 
 This fight at the Low House occurred the first week in May, 
 1862, and caused the expedition against Harrisonville to be 
 abandoned. Three times surprised, and three times losing all 
 horses, saddles, and bridles, it became again necessity to 
 disband the Guerrillas in this instance as in the two preceding 
 it. The men were dismissed for thirty days with orders to 
 remount themselves, while Quantrell taking Todd into his 
 confidence and acquainting him fully with his plans started in 
 his company for Hannibal. It had become urgently necessary 
 to replenish the supply of revolver caps. The usual trade with 
 Kansas City had been cut off. Of late the captures had not 
 been as plentiful as formerly. Recruits were coming in, and 
 the season for larger operations and enterprises was at hand. 
 In exploits where peril and excitement were about evenly 
 divided, Quantrell took great delight. He was so cool, so calm ; 
 he had played before such a deadly game ; he knew so well how 
 to sfirile when a smile would win, and to frown when a frown 
 was a better card to play, that something in this expedition 
 appealed to everything quixotic in his intrepidity. Todd was all 
 iron ; Quantrell all guile. Todd would go at a circular-saw ; 
 Quantrell would sharpen its teeth and grease it where the 
 friction was. One purred and killed ; the other roared and 
 killed. What mattered the mode, however, so only the end was 
 the same. 
 
 Clad in the full uniform of Federal Majors supplies of 
 which Quantrell kept constantly on hand even at a day so early 
 in the war as this they rode to* Hamilton, a little town on the 
 Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and remained for the night 
 at the principal hotel. A Federal garrison was there two 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 73 
 
 companies of Iowa infantry and the Captain commanding took 
 a great fancy to Todd, insisting that he should leave the hotel 
 for his quarters and share his blankets with him. , 
 
 Two days' were spent in Hannibal, where an entire Federal 
 regiment was stationed. Here Quantrell was more circumspect. 
 "When asked to give an account of himself and his companion, 
 he replied promptly that Todd was the Major of the Sixth 
 Missouri Cavalry and himself the Major of the Ninth. Unac- 
 quainted with either organization, the commander at Hannibal 
 had no reason to believe otherwise. Then he asked about that 
 special cut-throat Quantrell. Was it true that he fought under 
 a black flag? Had he really ever belonged to the Jayhawkers? 
 How much truth was in the stories the newspapers told of his 
 operations and his prowess? Quantrell became voluble. In 
 rapid yet picturesque language he painted a perfect picture of 
 the war along the border. He told of Todd, Jarrette, Blunt, 
 Younger, Haller, Poole, Shepherd, Gregg, Little, the Cogers, 
 and all of his best men just as they were, and himself also just 
 as he was, and closed the conversation emphatically by remark- 
 ing: "If you were here, Colonel, surrounded as you are by a 
 thousand soldiers, and they wanted you, they would come here 
 and get you." 
 
 From Hannibal after buying quietly and at various times 
 and in various places fifty thousand revolver caps Quantrell 
 and Todd went boldly into St. Joseph. This city was full of 
 soldiers. Colonel Harrison B. Branch was there in command of 
 a regiment of militia a brave, conservative, right-thinking 
 soldier and Quantrell introduced himself to Branch as Major 
 Henderson, of the Sixth Missouri. Todd, by this time, had put 
 on in lieu of a Major's epaulettes, with its distinguishing leaf, 
 the barred ones of a Captain. "Too many Majors traveling 
 together," quaintly remarked Todd, "are like too many roses 
 in a bouquet: the other flowers don't have a chance. Let me 
 be a Captain for the balance of the trip." 
 
 Colonel Branch made himself very agreeable to Major Hen- 
 derson and Captain Gordon, and asked Todd if he was any 
 relation to the somewhat notorious Si. Gordon, of Platte, 
 relating at the same time an interesting adventure he once had 
 with him. En route from St. Louis, in 1861, to the headquar- 
 ters of his regiment, Colonel Branch, with one hundred and 
 
74 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 thirty thousand dollars on his person, found that he would have 
 to remain over night in Weston and the better part of the next 
 day. Before he got out of the town Gordon took it, and with 
 it he took Colonel Branch. Many of Gordon's men were known 
 to him, and it was eminently to his interest just then to renew 
 old acquaintanceship and be extremely complaisant to the new. 
 Wherever he could find the largest number of the Guerrillas, 
 there he was among them, calling for whisky every now and 
 then, and telling incessantly some agreeable story or amusing 
 anecdote. Thus he got through with what seemed to him an 
 interminably long day. Net a dollar of his money was touched, 
 Gordon releasing him unconditionally when the town was 
 abandoned and bidding him make haste to get out lest the next 
 lot of raiders made it the worse for him, 
 
 For three days, off and on, Quantrell was either with Branch 
 at his quarters, or in company with him about town. Todd 
 elsewhere and indefatigable was rapidly buying caps and 
 revolvers. Branch introduced Quantrell to General Ben. Loan, 
 discussed Penick with him and Penick's regiment a St. 
 Joseph officer destined to give Quantrell in the near future some 
 stubborn fighting passed in review the military situation, 
 incidentally referred to the Guerrillas of Jackson county and 
 the savage nature of the warfare going on there, predicted the 
 absolute destruction of African slavery, and assisted Quantrell 
 in many ways in making his mission thoroughly successful. 
 For the first and the last time in his life Colonel Branch was 
 disloyal to the governmc nt and its flag he gave undoubted aid 
 and encouragement during those three days to about as uncom- 
 promising an enemy as either ever had. 
 
 From St. Joseph Quantrell and Todd came to Kansas City in 
 a hired hack, first sending into Jackson county by a man 
 unquestionably devoted to the South the whole amount of the 
 purchases made in both Hannibal and St. Joseph. 
 
 Within three miles of Kansas City a Federal sentinel on 
 outpost duty rudely halted the driver of the hack, an Irishman 
 as belligerant as a game cock, and wanted to know who lie was, 
 what sort of people his passengers were, and what business 
 decent hackmen had traveling at such an unseemly hour of the 
 night. The driver answered curtly, assuring the soldier that his 
 passengers were two Illinois gentlemen, and that they were 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 75 
 
 going about their own business and into Kansas City. During: 
 the dialogue Todd quietly opened the hack door opposite" to the 
 sentinel and stepped out. Quantrell followed him. It was 
 quite dark, but they knew the direction from the course of the 
 river and followed it down to the farm of William Bledsoe, jv 
 staunch Southerner and a man of immense assistance to the 
 Guerrillas in many ways. The poor driver, however, fared 
 badly. In order to verify the truth of his report, the sentinel 
 examined the hack for himself, only to find it empty. Neither 
 his vociferations, nor the Icok of genuine surprise upon his face 
 at the trick his passengers had played him, saved him from the 
 guard house that night, and from a good long term in prison 
 afterwards. 
 
 Blunt, entirely recovered from his wound, was at Bledsoe's. 
 Three nights after his capture he had escaped from Peahody r 
 taking with him a captain's horse, saddle and bridle, and killing 
 two of the guards who tried to halt him. With Blunt were six 
 others of the command, who joined Quantrell and came on with 
 him to Jackson county. At David George's, Gregg, with 
 another detachment, was ready for work, and at John More's 
 Jarrette and Younger having in charge another detachment 
 were waiting for the sounding of the tocsin. Soon a veritable 
 hornet's nest was stirred up, the swarming, buzzing, and sting- 
 ing of the next few days being desperately wickad. Quantrell 
 had not yet succeeded in getting all of his men together 
 when a scout of twenty-five Federals struck four of his men at 
 John Shepherd's, killed Theodore Blythe, and burned a couple 
 of houses belonging to two friends of the Guerrillas. An eye 
 for an eye was the edict, and a tooth for a tooth. Quantrell, 
 resting a little from his recent trip, was at Toler's when the 
 news of the raid was brought to him. Taking eight men 
 instantly and selecting a spot on the Independence and Harri- 
 sonville road eight miles south of Independence, as the place of 
 ambuscade, he stationed eight as deadly men to do his deadly 
 work as ever mounted a horse or fired a pistol. Quantrell and 
 George Shepherd occupied what might be called the centre of 
 the line, Jarrette, Oil. Shepherd, and Mart. Shepherd, the rear 
 or left, and Todd, Blunt, Little, and Younger the front or right. 
 As a signal when the rear files of the Federal column had 
 passed well beyond John Jarrette and his two comrades Jar- 
 
76 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 rette was to fire, aiid then the entire squad was to charge. 
 Every order was obeyed to the letter. Never a bloodier over- 
 throw followed a IrL-fer fight. Three minutes five at the very 
 furthest ended all. Only one out of twenty-five escaped. 
 Furious before, this savage episode made Peabody ferocious. 
 He swarmed out of Independence with two hundred men and 
 spread himself over the country, shooting at every male thing 
 he saw. Quantrell, Jarrette, and Todd were together and were 
 pressed by twenty Federals for seventeen miles. It was a stern 
 chase and a long one, and ended only when the night fell, each 
 Guerrilla losing his horse, and each receiving a slight wound. 
 Seven of the twenty pursuers were killed and five wounded. 
 At John Shepherd's, Younger, Oliver Shepherd and George 
 Shepherd were surrounded by another detachment of Federals 
 numbering thirty-two. Everything fought about the premises. 
 Indeed it was a day of battles in Jackson county battles of 
 twos and threes battles of squads and parts of companies 
 battles by bush and stone battles here, there, and everywhere. 
 It was getting hot for the three Guerrillas in John Shepherd's 
 house, and Cole Younger was just on the eve of sallying out at 
 the head of the two Shepherds, when Scott, Martin Shepherd, 
 John Coger, and Little attacked the Federals furiously in the 
 rear, making a sufficient diversion for all purposes of escape. 
 
 It was time to concentrate ; the Guerrillas were being 
 devoured piece-meal. .Quantrell multiplied himself. Gathering 
 up Haller at Morgan Walker's, and Gregg at Stony Point, he 
 galloped down into Johnson county in order to scatter his trail 
 a little. In the intervals of picquet fighting he recruited. 
 Some splendid fellows came to him here John Brinker, Ogden, 
 Halley, McBurgess, Thomas Little, Joseph Fickell, William 
 Davenport, and several others. In a week he was back again 
 in Jackson county, and from Jackson county into Kansas, 
 surprising the town of Aubry, capturing its garrison, consisting 
 of one company, and putting all but one to the sword who were 
 not killed in the attack. This single exception was a younor 
 Lieutenant from Brown county, clever of speech, amiable of 
 disposition, and artless as a school girl. He seemed never to 
 have realized the manner of men who had him. Not so much a 
 philosopher as he was free from guile, he became an enigma to 
 the Guerrillas because they had never made the acquaintance of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 77 
 
 his species. Quantrell kept him for purposes of exchange. A 
 good man of his, Hoy, had been knocked senseless the night of 
 the fight at the Low House, and captured, and he wanted to get 
 him released. The Lieutenant was offered in exchange for the 
 private, but not for the Guerrillas were any of the immunities 
 of civilized war ; Quantrell's courteous application was thrown 
 back rudely in his face. The lines were being drawn tightly 
 now, and before the summer was over and the harvests were 
 ended, the Black Flag would be raised. 
 
 What should be done with the Lieutenant? Many said death. 
 To spare a Kansas man was to offend the God of a Guerrilla. 
 To take a prisoner and then not to kill him, was an insult to the 
 inspiration of the ambuscade. These desperate men had laws, 
 however unwritten but none the less inexorable on account of 
 it. One especially accorded life to any prisoner vouched for or 
 endorsed by any Guerrilla. Quantrell stood for the Lieutenant. 
 Thenceforward those who at first demanded his life, would have 
 defended it to the last cartridge. As Quantrell was in the act 
 of releasing him a few days afterwards, he said in parting: "Go 
 back to your people. I like you very much, but between them 
 and me there can never again be peace.'* Still as one who 
 seemed incapable of understanding his situation, the Lieutenant 
 thanked him and replied: "As for me, I never hurt any one in 
 my life." Civil war, which leaves nothing but tombs, here left 
 a fountain. 
 
 The conflict deepened. The tide of the conflict was at its 
 flood. Many eyes were attracted towards Quantrell, and many 
 journalists were busy with the tale of his exploits. Imagination 
 made of him a monster. No crime was too black for him ; no 
 atrocity too brutal; no murder too monstrous; no desperate 
 deed too improbable. Let all the West be harried, and the tiger 
 slain in his lair ! 
 
 The hunt began. Quantrell passed again through Jackson 
 county and entered Johnson from the west. At Mrs. Daven- 
 port's he met first a company of militia and dealt them one of 
 his telling blows, killing eleven, and pushing the balance back 
 into Warrensburg. The taste of such Guerrilla work as this 
 was bitter in the mouth of the Federal commander at Warrens- 
 burg, and he spat his dread at Quantrell over the petticoats of a 
 lot of women. Arresting Miss Brinker, the sister of John 
 
78 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OR 
 
 Brinker, and one of the most beautiful and accomplished 
 women of the West, he put her at the head of two hundred men, 
 together with four other Southern girls, and rode through the 
 county in this fashion, hunting for Quantrell. Ambushed 
 alonir the high road, and having in his favor position, prowess, 
 and experience, Quantrell yet saw the whole line pass by him as 
 it were in review, firing not a gun at them, nor charging a 
 single squadron. Unknown to all of them, these angels of the 
 column had saved it from destruction. Baffled thus thrice by 
 the presence of these women, who were held a week as hostages, 
 Quantrell abandoned active operations for the time and went 
 into camp at Captain Perdue's, sending out detachments hither 
 and thither in quest of ammunition and adventure. The 
 supplies sent forward from St. Joseph some time before had not 
 yet arrived. Stinted somewhat in revolver caps, and deficient 
 somewhat in navy revolvers, a well contested fight of an hour or 
 two generally left the command unable to be effective until the 
 next day. Cole Younger and George Shepherd were sent into 
 Jackson county, therefore, to procure ammunition ; others were 
 ordered into Cass for horses ; while Todd, having a command 
 of twelve men, had made for him the opportunity so ardently 
 -desired, of conducting a raid into Kansas. Then the lighting 
 began again a week of fruitful and extended fighting. Haller, 
 in Cass, the very first day, met twenty militia on an open prairie 
 with five men and cut the whole squad to pieces. He relied 
 always on the charge, and drilled his men constantly in horse- 
 back firing, the faster the horses went the better the shooting. 
 When these twenty Federals came upon him, he halted his 
 squad and asked each man by name what should be done. "A 
 fight or a footrace, eh, boys?" This was Haller. Little said 
 charge, Coger said charge, Poole said the same, Blunt the same, 
 they all said it, and charge it was. A charge on the prairie 
 means death. No trees, no hollows, no stones, no shelter 
 body to body and hand to hand this is prairie fighting. 
 Prowess tells. Death helps him who fears him least. He who 
 dodges is in danger. Fortune's great uncertain eye looks down 
 upon the melee and brightens when it falls upon the bravest. 
 The quickest is the safest ; the coolest the least exposed. 
 
 Haller's attack was a hurricane ; a little cloud no bigger than 
 a man's hand grappled with the horizon. His pistol practice 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 79 
 
 was superb. Beyond the killing there was a singular episode. 
 With the Federals, and in the forward file, was a scout, sun- 
 browned and huge, who had for uniform a complete suit of 
 buckskin. Evidently a plainsman and an ugly customer, he 
 shot swiftly yet without effect. Some about him stood not for 
 the onset; he awaited it as though it were the coming of 
 buffalo. Dave Poole singled him out, and as he closed with 
 him, contrary to his custom, demanded a surrender. Buckskin 
 laughed a little scornfully, lifted himself up high in his stirrups, 
 leant over far to the right and grasped with his left hand, as 
 with a grasp of iron, Poole's long black beard. In his right 
 hand a bright bowie knife shone. "Gracious!" cried Poole, 
 always grotesque, "here's your regular Indian fighter; but 
 scalp or no scalp, he's powerful strong." And he was. He 
 held Pool so close to him that he could not use his revolver, and 
 while he held him he was working viciously with his knife. One 
 slash cut into his right shoulder, another gashed his cheek, a 
 third scored his left arm deeply, and the fourth might have 
 gone surer home, when Haller, acquit of all who had come 
 before him, turned back to the rescue and shot the frontiersman 
 dead from his saddle. "As he lay," said Poole afterwards, 
 "he looked in length about eight feet." 
 
 Younger and Shepherd worked hard and fast, and got 
 together a load of ammunition sufficient for a week of solid 
 service. While after a wagon to haul it out, seventy-five 
 Federals surrounded them in a house and demanded a sur- 
 render. No ! the word was not in their vocabulary. Close to 
 the house stood an orchard, and growing luxuriantly in this a 
 heavy crop of rye. Where it was thickest their horses had 
 been hitched, and beyond the horses was a skirt of timber. 
 Gaining the first under a shower of balls, thev soon gnined the 
 other, but not unhurt. Four buckshot had struck Youi^ger, 
 three drawing blood, and Shepherd was hit too hard to ride 
 beyond the nearest shelter. 
 
 As Todd came along on the road to Kansas, Younger joined 
 him near the Blue and struck the enemy about the line. Some 
 fighting occurred, as the night came, but Todd chang3d his 
 position further to the west, crossiug into Kansas to the right of 
 Olathe. Six government wagons loaded with supplies, and 
 convoyed by parts of two infantry companies, were his first 
 
80 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 emoluments. Scattered along the highway in disorder, and 
 drunk, some of them, to incapacity, the poor infantry fellows 
 didn't know a Guerrilla from a gate-post. Todd went through 
 the convoy at a canter, sparing nothing along the line. One 
 huge Dane, very drunk and very noisy, took a couple of minutes 
 to die, seventeen revolver bullets in his body, and four thrusts 
 of his own bayonet. 
 
 In one wagon there was whisky, and before Todd knew it,, 
 several of his men were boisterous ; they demanded more blood. 
 Having turned back with his captures toward Missouri, Todd 
 left with them a small escort and started forward again in order 
 to gratify this demand one which accorded so well with his 
 own desires. Where Quantrell had burned the bridge over Big 
 Blue upon the road leading from Independence to Kansas City, 
 the Federals had established a ferry. An old tete du pont there 
 had been turned into a stockade, garrisoned by half a company. 
 Todd stalked it as a Highlander stalks red deer. When he 
 could no longer walk, he crept; when he could no longer 
 creep, he crawled. Some fog was on the river, and here and 
 there a fire with a smoke, which lay heavy along the under- 
 growth. Doomed men have no dreams. Armed shadows rose 
 slowly out of the ground, and yet they did not see them. This 
 mirage of the rising of armed men ia well known to persons 
 accustomed to frequent ambuscades. This day. at the ford 
 nineteen Federals were doing duty, and when Todd reached 
 the river they were in a large flatboat crossing from the 
 Independence to the Kansas City side. Merriment abounded 
 with them, and a sentimental young soldier was heard clearly 
 
 to sing: 
 
 "The cruel war is over, 
 
 Ouce more with her is he : 
 'You've learnt to love since last we met,' 
 
 He says, but nought says she. 
 <You'll wed the happy Somebody, 
 
 And me you'll quite forget! 
 
 Would I were he, my darling 1 
 
 TOM are/' cried Colinette." 
 
 It was of love and a furlough, and something sweet at the 
 lastsomething that tasted of red lips and of devotion. Poor 
 fellow! He did not wait until the end of the war before hia 
 furlough came to him forever. Others talked loudly. Some 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 81 
 
 trailed trickling fingers through the water. A few scanned the 
 western bunk, but saw nothing. Ttie boat's bow was on the 
 beach, and a hand had been lifted to the rope to make it fast ; 
 but what mattered the boat death was there. Not a soul 
 escaped. Ten fell dead the first fire, four leaped into the river 
 and were drowned, and five were finished leisurely. Todd's 
 ambushments were parts of the ferocity of a system, and not 
 the ferocity of his nature. The youth of the love song might 
 have been spared had the bullets been any respecter of persons. 
 The boat was sunk, the dead were not even buried, and Todd 
 galloped on to rendezvous at Reuben Harris'. With the blood 
 scarcely washed from his hands, or the powder smoke from his 
 face, he hastened on the next morning to another ambuscade on 
 the Harrisonville and Independence road. South of the 
 residence of John Fristoe there grew a hazel thicket of con- 
 spicuous hiding capacity. Up from the midst of it a lone elm 
 reared itself, tall and shapely. Todd remarked it standing like 
 a sentinel, and spoke to Younger: "God put it there for some 
 wise purpose. Let a good climber climb to its top and tell us 
 of the country." This unaffected reliance upon the wisdom of 
 God is heard often where the work to be done is veritable 
 devil's work. 
 
 Martin Shepherd, agile as a squirrel of the hills, mounted 
 quickly to the lookout, and reported just as quickly the 
 advance of a Federal column. Fired upon at the distance of 
 twenty feet, and charged simultaneously with the volley, five 
 fell from their horses dead and a number wounded rushed away 
 in retreat, keeping their saddles with difficulty. Only the 
 covering party of a column two hundred strong had been 
 encountered, and while Blunt, Younger, James Von, William 
 Bledsoe, Dick Yager, and Vis. Acres were down in the road 
 gathering up revolvers, ammunition, and such other things of 
 the dead as were needed, the main body came rushing on, firing 
 furiously and bent on revenge. Todd fell back slowly on foot 
 to his horses, mounted in no haste, and skirmishing then and in 
 fine order gained the timber. Each soldier, besides the horse 
 he rode, had three others to protect, thus making the question 
 not so much one of fighting as taking care of the captures. 
 Five scouts Yager, Blunt, Von, Younger, and Shepherd were 
 thrown forward to find the enemy, who had not pursued. Five 
 6 
 
52 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OR 
 
 better men never took a hot trail at a gallop eager, daring, 
 splendidly mounted, and pressing always forward for a closer 
 fight. After a swinging gallop of several miles, a Federal rear 
 guard, seventy-five strong, was struck at the house of Dr. 
 Pleasant Lee. The five fought the seventy-five. At the first 
 fire Von killed an orderly sergeant, and kept closing up. For 
 twenty seconds or so the melee was fierce. The first line formed 
 across the road to stop the Guerrillas was rode over or cut to 
 pieces, the second gave way, and the third faltered. Then the 
 whole rear guard formed behind a stone fence, the balance of 
 seventy-five on the defensive against five. At such odds the 
 Guerrillas fought continually. Younger returned to Todd, 
 reported the coast clear, and advised that a push be made 
 rapidly, and at once for the camp of Quantrell, the captured 
 Kansas wagons now having come up, and the necessary horses to 
 mount all the new recruits having been secured. 
 
 Moving by way of Blue Springs and Pink Hill, and on 
 towards headquarters at Stony Point, Todd was set upon and 
 hard bestead. The prince of ambuscaders fell into an ambus- 
 cade. The man of the surprise and the sudden volley, had his 
 own tactics administered to him, none the less unpalatable 
 because of their being familiar. Seventy-five Federals laid a 
 trap for him close to the Sni, and he rode into it snugly. If to 
 the skillfulness of the ambushment there had been added the 
 coolness of the Guerrilla, decidedly the credit side of the 
 killing would have been the Federal side. But just outside the 
 teeth of the trap a tremulous watcher let his gun go off. It 
 signalled a volley of course, but a volley of miscalculation. 
 No charge followed it. Loading where they stood, and forget- 
 ting to all appearances every reliance upon the revolver, Todd 
 got time to break out from his bad position. The carbine he 
 carried in his hand was shot in two, and Martin Shepherd, a 
 lion in every combat, mortally wounded. As he reeled he fired 
 both barrels of his shot-gun, killing a Federal at each discharge, 
 and before he fell Cole Younger caught him in his arms and 
 brought him out. Others were wounded, though not mortally. 
 Todd, coolest in danger, like Massena, and deadliest, dashed 
 through the ambushment and on towards the Pink Hill bridge 
 across the Sni, the seventy-five Federals following fast, soon to 
 be reinforced by one hundred and twenty-five more. Skirmish- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 83 
 
 ing ensued heavily. The wagons, before encountering the 
 enemy at the ambuscade, had been parked in an out of the way 
 place far from a main road, and only the extra horses now had 
 to be looked to. The bridge was in sight, and beyond it was 
 Quantrell and reinforcements. The trot quickened into a 
 gallop and Todd had struck the west end of it, well ahead of 
 the pursuers in the rear, when from the eastern approach a 
 fierce fire beat into his very face and a blue mass rushed into 
 the road and halted. Hemmed in as he was, and hampered 
 with horses, he rushed at the squadrons blocking up his passage 
 way and strove to cut through. The fire was too severe, the 
 odds too unreasonable. Blunt was wounded, Yager was 
 wounded, Younger had two horses killed under him, Von was 
 wounded, Bledsoe was wounded twice, Todd had his hat shot 
 off and four holes through Ms coat, and those covering his rear 
 could hold it only a moment or two longer. At the bridge the 
 Sni made a bend, the bulge of the stream pushing towards the 
 east ; when he got to the western approach he was in the com- 
 plete envelopment of a cul de sac. Neither able to move 
 backwards nor forwards ; on the right hand the Sni, and on the 
 left hand the Sni; two hundred Federals in his rear and an 
 unknown number in his front. this was Todd's predicament. 
 The river was there, it is true, but the banks on the west were 
 ten feet high and perpendicular. He would take to the water 
 below the bridge, and be the first also to take the leap. Twice 
 his horse refused him, but lifting him the third time by a spur 
 stroke, and giving him the rein and a cheering cry, he sprang 
 sheer over the steep into the river, halting there under fire to 
 guide, as it were, and encourage his men. All got over in 
 safety, carrying with them the bulk of the extra horses, and at 
 daylight the next morning he was in the camp of Quantrell, 
 near Pallett's on the Sni. 
 
 While encamped here, and waiting for the operations of the va- 
 rious detachments sent out to be completed, Quantrell had receiv- 
 ed the consignment of arms and ammunition forwarded to Quan- 
 trell by Quantrell from St. Joseph. In addition to an unusually 
 large number of revolver caps, one hundred and sixty-eight 
 new navy revolvers worth every one of them its weight in gold 
 made glad the eyes of the Guerrillas and light their hearts. 
 They would try them also in a forward movement the next day. 
 
84 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 Todd's old antagonists were in Pink Hill, easy of access, and 
 thither Quantrell marched. Choosing a position west of the 
 place that was a natural ambuscade, he made ready to execute 
 a manoeuvre never before attempted. Behind an embankment 
 that was a perfect shelter, the horses were hitched. To the 
 right and left of the road, and running parallel with it for two 
 hundred yards and more, were ditches for draining purposes, 
 now dry and deep enough to shelter the men ; in these fifty 
 soldiers could fight five hundred. Gregg was chosen to com- 
 mand a decoy party consisting of ten men, and sent forward at 
 once to fight the Federals awhile, retreat slowly, fight again, 
 then retreat, then turn once more about, and finally with 
 nothing of trepidation and with scarcely a show of speed, lead 
 them into the lion's den. The name of Gregg was even then 
 beginning to make the Jayhawkers tremble. He had the nerve 
 of an inflexible will in council, and on the battle-field the impet- 
 uosity of youth. Under all circumstances his example was one 
 of intrepidity. He seemed to recognize no other aspiration 
 than the triumph of his cause. He devoted himself to Quan- 
 trell like Todd, Cole Younger, Poole, Blunt, the Shepherds, 
 the Littles, and many others by a double worship, to his 
 principles as a Guerrilla, to his person as a friend. Honest, 
 modest, silent without other ambition than that of serving his 
 country as became a hero, he did superbly the hardest thing to 
 do on earth his whole duty. 
 
 Keeping well under cover until within one hundred yards of 
 Pink Hill, Gregg broke out of the timber at a run and dashed 
 furiously into the town. For the first few moments all was dire 
 confusion, no one heeding orders, and none making head 
 against the Guerrillas until they had shot down fifteen in the 
 streets, wounded eleven, and crippled, cut loose, and stampeded 
 not less than sixty horses. Afterwards from dwellings, garden 
 fences, store-houses, corn cribs, from behind chimneys and out 
 of the tops of hay stacks and wheat stacks two hundred 
 Federals took shelter and drove Gregg out. He retreated a 
 short distance and turned about. They would not follow him. 
 Try how he would, not a soldier left his place of security. He 
 tempted them next with bravado. Sending Cole Younger, 
 James Vaughn, and James Tucker back to ride about and 
 around Pink Hill, he calmly waited himself just beyond gun- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 85 
 
 shot until they should get ready to follow. These three 
 skirmished with everything they saw for an hour. Now on one 
 side of Pink Hill and now on another, no one would come out 
 to try a grapple with them. At length, and as if to vary the 
 monotony of so much recklessness on the one side and so much 
 cowardice on the other, a splendid horse broke away from the 
 town and ran some distance in the direction of the three Guer- 
 rillas. Vaughn rode forward to capture him. If he dashed at 
 the Federal horse he knew he should scare him and lose him, 
 but if he went gently the chances were good for success. Fifty 
 concealed soldiers fired at him incessantly as he rode slowly up 
 to the horse and as slowly back again. Twice he took off his 
 hal and waved it towards the nearest marksmen who shot the 
 closest to him, and twice he dismounted within easy range to 
 adjust his saddle. Fortune deserted him at last, however, and 
 when he had the least reason to expect it. Full five hundred 
 yards from the nearest house, he was struck in the right breast 
 by a heavy ball, which passed through the lung and out at the 
 back, near the spine. In losing him, Quantreli lost a soldier 
 conspicuous for enterprise, and remarkable for the coolness of 
 an intrepidity which was unconscious of its own excess. 
 
 Unwilling to follow Gregg, and afraid to move out of Pink 
 Hill, the commander of the two hundred Federals cooped up 
 there sent a Union citizen who knew the country well post-haste 
 to Independence for reinforcements, but Quantreli moved 
 that night into Johnson county, and camped for several days on 
 Walnut creek. They were after him, however. Commanded 
 by a dashing officer, one hundred Federal calvary came up from 
 Clinton, in Henry county, and struck Quantreli afoot at the 
 house of William Asbury. In his front was an opi*n prairie, 
 arid in his rear a large orchard in which his noises were hitched. 
 The Federals came right onward at a gallop, fron'ed into 
 line swiftly, and dashed down to within thirty yards of the 
 house only to meet a withering volley and to fail back in mucii 
 confusion, leaving behind them all their dead and wounded. 
 Rallying beyond range, the gallant leader of tlie Fed ra's 
 formed another line, placed himself again at its head, and strove 
 to urge it forward. Instead of men he talked to stocks or stones. 
 Some make-believes of charges fooled him tw ce or thrice, when 
 drawing off in sheer disgust, he took up a position of masterly 
 
86 NOTED GUEEEILLAS, OE 
 
 observation something over a mile away upon the prairie. 
 Gregg, with three men Cole Younger, Henry Ogden, and 
 George Maddox followed him and fought him at every step, 
 driving in his picquets twice, and keeping his cowardly detach- 
 ment in a constant state of uproar. 
 
 While preparing to mount and attack in return, Dave Poole 
 and John Brinker hurried up with the unpleasant information 
 that two hundred Federals, attracted by the firing, were coming 
 up rapidly from the direction of Harrisonville. Quantrell's 
 force numbered exactly sixty-three, capable of whipp : ng easily 
 the one hundred within striking distance, but inadequate to the 
 other tasK. The Federal wounded, numbering eighteen, he had 
 looked after carefully. Not belonging to any of the commands 
 waging upon him a war of extermination, he had no desire to 
 make them responsible for the cruelties of other organizations. 
 Rapid always, whether in retreat or advance, Quantrell traveled 
 two miles in a southeast direction through some heavy timber, 
 thence across a prairie to Big Creek, over Big Creek to Devil's 
 Eidge, and from Devil's Ridge northeast towards Pleasant Hill. 
 By this time seven hundred Federals were on his track, well 
 mounted and full of fight. It rained all day the first day out 
 from Asbury's, the roads became muddy, and the streams began 
 to rise. During most of the second night Quantrell scattered 
 his trail at suitable places, and used whatever of stratagem was 
 best to retard pursuit. At daylight Pleasant Hill was three 
 miles to the right, and Big Creek within sight on the left. The 
 sky had cleared up, and Quantrell stopped for breakfast six 
 miles west of the town. All night long also had the Federals 
 marched, reaching Pleasant Hill an hour later than Quantrell 
 and breakfasting there. Peabody led their advance with three 
 hundred cavalry, four hundred more marching on in supporting 
 distance behind him. He had some old scores to settle and 
 some ugly old wounds to get ointment for. 
 
 Quantrell had halted in Swearingen's barn, and the Guerrillas 
 were drying their saddle-blankets. One picquet, Hicks George 
 an iron man, who could sleep in the saddle, and eat as he 
 ran, who faced every suspicious thing until he fathomed it, and 
 explored every mysterious thins: until he mastered it: watched 
 the rear against attack. Peabody received George's fire for 
 George would have fired at angel or devil in the line of his 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE ORDER 87 
 
 duty and drove him towards Quantrell at a full run. Every 
 preparation possible under the circumstances had been made, 
 and if the reception was not as warm as expected, the Federals 
 could attribute much of it to the long night march and the 
 rainy weather. The horses were hitched in the rear of the barn 
 to protect them as far as possible, and the Guerrillas lined and 
 lay along the fence in front. 
 
 Quantrell stood by the open gate calmly, with his hand upon 
 the latch ; when George entered in he would close it and fasten 
 it. The crest of the wave of Peabody's onset had reared itself 
 up to within thirty feet of the fence when the Guerrillas 
 delivered a crushing volley, and sixteen Federals, borne on by 
 the impetus of the rush, crashed against the barricade and fell 
 there, some wounded and- some dead. Others fell as the ebb 
 came, and more dropped out here and there before the disorgan- 
 ized mass got back again safely from the deadly revolver range. 
 After them hot dashed Quantrell himself, George Maddox, Jar- 
 rette, Cole Younger, George Morrow, Gregg, Blunt, Poole and 
 Haller, following them fast to the timber and gathering upon 
 their return all the arms and the ammunition of the killed and 
 wounded. At the timber Peabody rearranged his lines, 
 dismounted his men, and came forward again at a double- 
 quick and yelling. Do what he would, the charge spent itself 
 before it could be called a charge. Never nearer than one 
 hundred yards of the fence, he skirmished at long range for 
 nearly an hour and finally took up a position one mile south of 
 the barn, awaiting reinforcements. Quantrell sent out Cole 
 Younger, Poole, John Brinker and William Haller, to u lay up 
 close to Peabody," as he expressed it, and keep him and his 
 movements steadily in view. The four dare-devils multiplied 
 themselves. They attacked the pickets, rode around the whole 
 camp in bravado, firing upon it from every side, and finally 
 agreed to send a flag of truce in to Peabody with this manner 
 of a challenge : 
 
 "We, whose names are hereunto annexed, respectfully ask 
 of Colonel Peabody the privilege of fighting eight of his best 
 men, hand to hand, and that he himself make the selection, and 
 send them out to us immediately." This was signed: Coleman 
 Younger, William Haller, David Poole and John Brinker. 
 
 Younger bore it. Tieing a white handkerchief to a stick he 
 
88 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 rode boldly up to the nearest picket and asked for a parley. 
 Six started toward him, and he bade four go back. The message 
 was carried to Peabody, but he laughed at it and scanned the 
 prairie in every direction for the " coming reinforcements. 
 Meanwhile Quantrell was retreating. His four men cavorting 
 about Peabody were to amuse him as long as possible and then 
 get away as best they could. Such risks are often taken in 
 war ; to save one thousand men sometimes one hundred are 
 sacrificed. Death equally with exactness has its mathematics. 
 
 The reinforcements came up rapidly. One hundred joined 
 Peabody on the prairie, and two hundred masked themselves by 
 some timber on the north and advanced parallel with QuantrelFs 
 line of retreat a flank movement intended to be final. Haller 
 hurried off to Quautrell to report, and Peabody, vigorous and 
 alert now, threw out after the three remaining Guerrillas a 
 cloud of cavalry skirmishers. The race was one for life. Each 
 started for the barn on a keen run. It was on the eve of 
 harvest, and the wheat, breast high to the horse, flew away 
 from before the feet of the racers as though the wind was 
 driving through it an incarnate scythe blade. As Pool struck 
 the eastern edge of this wheat, a very large jack, belonging to 
 Swearingen, joined in the pursuit, braying loudly at every jump, 
 and leading the Federals by a length. Comedy and tragedy 
 were in the same field together. Carbines rang out, revolvers 
 cracked, the jack brayed, the Federals roared with merriment, 
 and looking back over his shoulder as he ran, Poole heard the 
 laughter and saw the jack, and imagined the devil to be after 
 him leading a lot of crazy people. 
 
 The barn was almost gained, and Brinker and Younger were 
 through the gate, into the lot, and away on the track of Quan- 
 trell, when the two hundred flanking Federals burst from their 
 cover on the north and cut Poole squarely off from the gap he 
 had to go through to get out of the barn lot. It was a rain of 
 bullets now. His gun was shot out of his hand. His horse 
 was wounded and blown ; he was in a trap ; and something like 
 a roar went up of "surrender!" "surrender!" "surrender!" 
 But he did not. surrender. Turning his horse to the west where 
 it seemed to him there was a panel lower than the rest, he 
 drove on it, or through it, or over it, with a crashing and a 
 splintering that jarred the whole fence and dragged him well 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 89 
 
 nigh from his saddle. Younger and Brinker were not yet out 
 of sight when he was up with them again, the whole three dash- 
 ing on together upon QuantrelPs trail, the pursuing Federals 
 close behind. 
 
 In a hollow close to Fred. Farmer's house Quantrell formed 
 his sixty-three men on foot to fight seven hundred. Peabody 
 struck him first and got his fire at ten steps before he knew it. 
 Fifteen saddles were emptied here James Morris and young 
 More, son-in-law of DavH Yeager, performing several acts of 
 conspicuous bravery. In each hand a revolver, and advancing 
 continually, they fired so rapidly and so accurately that it might 
 well have been taken for a company. Peabody, sick of fighting 
 Quuntrell on horseback, dismounted beyond range and divided 
 his command sending one part of it to the west and keeping 
 the other at the south. The flanking detachment, closing up 
 from the north, also divided, keeping one portion there and 
 sending the other to close up the gap on the east. Thus was 
 the environment complete ; sixty-three men were surrounded 
 by seven himdered. A series of desperate combats followed in 
 the thick brush ; charging those on the south and killing and 
 wounding twenty-two, those on the north were then looked 
 to, and then those on the east and the west. One charge 
 followed another, the combats culminating at every point over 
 desperate rallies for the horses. This hollow heW by Quantrell 
 vomitted fire and smoke as the mouth of a volcano. In the 
 gloom Titans struggled. To the long roll of musketry full, 
 sonorous, resonant there succeeded the shriller and sharper 
 notes of the revolver vollies. The two lines marked the strife 
 thus : the Federals wi^.h the more melodious music, the Guerril- 
 las with the more discordant. 
 
 Quantrell was getting anxious. Some of his horses had been 
 killed, and many of his best men were wounded. Gregg, Coger, 
 Poole, Cole Younger, Moore, Maddox, Morris, Brinker, Haller, 
 and a dozen others shot, more or less severely, fought on, yet 
 slowly. Attrition alone would make this conflict only one of 
 time ; to fight further, was to waste precious blood unneces- 
 sarily. 
 
 To the left-front of the hollow the south-front there lay 
 wounded probably a dozen Federals, and some of them had 
 dragged their hurt bodies below its crest for such shelter as it 
 
90 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 afforded from the balls, now coming from every direction. As 
 Quantrell passed hurriedly through them, from the south, to re- 
 pel a furious attack upon the north conspicuous alike by his 
 presence and the splendid coolness of his bearing a Federal 
 soldier raised himself up on his knees and fired at him, point 
 blank. The bullet, intended for the breast, struck Quantrell in 
 the right leg, below the knee, and cut clean through, narrowly 
 missing the bone. Quantrell fell, but leaped so quickly to his 
 feet, that his men imagined he had only stumbled. Gregg's 
 quick eyes, however, fathomed the movement at a glance, 
 and in an instant he had a pistol at the assassin's ear. u Pray !" 
 he said. The wounded Federal only shut his eyes and bowed 
 his head ; he had played a desperate game and lost that game; 
 that men sometimes play with death when they know death must 
 win. Gregg blew his brains out. 
 
 " Say nothing of my wound," Quantrell said to Gregg, so low 
 that none heard him, "and tell the men to mount rapidly and 
 at once." 
 
 Yelling, and charging upon the hollow from all sides, the 
 jubilant enemy now had everything their own way. To get out 
 was touch and go ; to stay there was absolute death. At the 
 mounting time, Jarrette found his horse dead, and so did Gregg r 
 George Shepherd, Toler, Tucker, Henry Ogden, Dick Maddox r 
 James Morris, -and Dick Burnes. These men had been doing 
 splendid work on the east, and had had no time to look to their 
 horses. They now broke through this line again on foot, and 
 fougiit slowly north, gaining a little at every step, and getting 
 little by little all their enemies behind them. To the com oat of 
 the squad, the individual combat succeeded. Quantrell and 
 John Coger went out together, each losing his horse a mile 
 from the battle-field. Will Haller and Gregg led a furious 
 charge to the north, broke through Peabody's lines in that di- 
 rection, dashed back by the barn of the morning's conflict, on 
 past Swearingen's house, and then east again. As they struck 
 the line under a steady fire, Kit Chiles, who was riding side by 
 side with Cole Younger, felt his horse sink beneath him. " I'm 
 gone," he said to Younger." "No; courage Kit," and Cole 
 dismounted there, helped him out from under his dead horse, and 
 up behind him on his own. Thus they rode away, and to his dying 
 hour Kit Chiles bore testimony with gratitude, that he owed his 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 91 
 
 life to his intrepid comrade. This standing side by side with one 
 another was Guerrilla tactics: t ! iey never abandoned their 
 wounded if one could ride or walk, or even crawl. Sometime* 
 three on one horse have been carried out from some disastrous 
 melee ; not unfrequently back to back two have stood one un- 
 hurt the other hurt too grievously to escape and died to- 
 gether. Quantrell taught such comradeship; in his bivouacs 
 and about his camp-fires he pictured to them what a blessed 
 thing was devotion. Frank Ojjd en carried out Jarrette, Blunt 
 carried out Hart, Poole carried out Haller. Those who rode the 
 strongest horses picked up the heaviest among the dismounted 
 men, and so on down this way in gradation, until not even so 
 much as a wounded horse, not too badly hurt to travel, was left 
 to the seven hundred Federals, still scouting through the brush y 
 firing into the hollow, and wondering what had become of the 
 encompassed Guerrillas. 
 
 Safely through the toils, and used up quite seriously in men 
 and horses, Haller rode rapidly for the Harrisonville and Inde- 
 pendence road, and reached it, after heavy skirmishing, at 
 James Wilson's. Th< nee marching north to Dupre's, and con- 
 centrating finally at Major J. F. Stom;street's, the command was 
 disbanded until the following night, with the rendezvous agreed 
 upon the house of Fleming Harris. Quantrell himself was- 
 one of the first to arrive, mounted on an old blind mare, saddle- 
 less and bridleless, John Coger leading her into camp with a 
 rope. Within a mile from the place of the fight, twenty cavalry- 
 men overtook them, killed their horses, wounded Coger and drove 
 each afoot into the timber, Quantrell walking with great pain. 
 After night, Coger stumbled upon a blind mare by accident, 
 and as it was the best that could be done, Quantrell rode her 
 bare-back, while he walked and led her the blind emphatically 
 leading the blind for Coger had an old wound not entirely 
 healed, and a new one, that though comparatively slight, gave 
 him some trouble. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 QUANTRELL recovered slowly. His wound was more serious 
 than he at first admitted, and to neglect there had surceeded 
 erysipelas. Forced to change his positions in the brush often, 
 and cut off frequently from needful medical attention, several 
 weeks elapsed before his men could be got together again. Not 
 idle, however, in the interval nor indifferent to events, they had 
 worked faithfully for Col. Upton Hays, who was recruiting a 
 regiment for the Confederate service. 
 
 Colonel Buell, of soldierly character, honor and courage, held 
 Independence with six hundred men. The citizens respected 
 him because he was just ; the Guerrillas because he was merciful ; 
 his soldiers because he was firm. Order and stability are the 
 two necessities of a garrison. Buell was the same one day as 
 another. A patriot without being a proscriptionist ; a stern 
 fighter who was not a hangman ; a rigid executive officer without 
 being an executioner he sometimes was twice successful: once 
 by his manhood and once through his magnanimity. 
 
 In pursuance of superior orders issued through his head- 
 quarters, every male citizen of Jackson county between the ages 
 of eighteen and forty-five was required to take up arms and fight 
 against the South. They did take up arms, but they did not 
 fitrht against the South. Providence sent to their especial 
 deliverance a giant by the name of UPTON B. HAYS a military- 
 Moses indeed, who, raised up for a certain glorious work, died 
 before reaching the promised land. Death smote him in the 
 harness, and he fell where it was an honor to die. 
 
 Hays was of a family famous for great physical vigor and 
 courage. A plains' man before he was a soldier, immensity 
 had taught him self-reliance, and isolation that searching coin- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 9$ 
 
 munion which decides and hardens character. Treachery was 
 abhorrent to him, and baseness of heart aroused his indignation. 
 Of enormous energy, commanding presence, sonorous voice, 
 splendid horsemanship, he won men to him by the magnetism 
 of a magnificent manhood, and held them there through the 
 gentler gifts of appreciation and generosity. He understood 
 the war, for he had summed it up early. He disputed nothing ; 
 he sang no good man's song by the cradle of a young Con- 
 federacy who had suspended the habeas corpus and was muttering 
 of conscription ; he only stipulated that every blow should be 
 decisive. He believed that the people possessed no other con- 
 viction than that of their emotion ; that ID revolution temerity was 
 prudence ; and that on desperate occasions there was no hope 
 save in that despairing patriotism which risked everything with 
 the idea of saving it. 
 
 Indefatigable in recruiting as in other things, Colonel Hays 
 soon had organized for active service the materials of as fine a 
 regiment as ever followed a competent leader to war. It had 
 need to be baptized ; through baptism that sort of baptism 
 which picks out the bravest pud the best and puts them in the 
 fore front of the regiment to die came the touching of elbow 
 to elbow in battle, the winnowing that forever estopped a rout; 
 tenacity, endurance, fatalism that something of insanity which' 
 made them charge like Murat and die like Leonidas. 
 
 Well up from his ugly wound, and anxious for battle air and 
 exercise, Quantrell had sped the mustering cry from Guerrilla to 
 Guerrilla until at the Flannery rendezvous not six of his trusty 
 veterans were absent. Hays came also and talked of taking 
 Independence. Between the two the plan was arranged, and 
 ten days given to gather the forces and mould the bullets. Re- 
 cruiting officers from the South were entering Missouri in 
 every direction Col. Gideon W. Thompson, Col. John T. 
 Coffee, Col. Vard Cockrell, Capt. Jo. O. Shelby, Col. John T. 
 Hughes, Col. S. D. Jackman and it was necessary to strike a 
 blow. The more resounding it was made the better. After a 
 serious hurt, or when a bold dash left behind it a trail of clean 
 fighting and killing, the Federals always concentrated. The 
 little posts ran into the big ones. Scouting parties staid at 
 home for several days ; on the arms of the heavier headquarter 
 people there was crape. Fasting and pra} r er, of course, never 
 
S4 NOTED GUEEBILLAS, OE 
 
 came by way of propitiation, but cattle-stealing was less luxu- 
 riantly indulged in, and bedeviling citizens not so much of a 
 frolic. But then the wind that ruffled so rudely the blue uni- 
 forms blew benedictions to the recruiting folk. Borrowing 
 three of Quantrell's old men Cole Younger, Dick Yager and 
 Boon Muir and taking two of his own William Young and 
 Virgil Miller Col. Hays concluded to make a tour of his can- 
 tonments. Buell's oider had put into the brush well nigh the 
 entire arms-bearing population' of Jackson county. On all the 
 streams there were camps. Men drilled on the prairie edges 
 nearest to the timber, and where the undergrowth was thickest 
 there generally were silent ambuscades. The woods were in- 
 habited. Women sewed in the shade of the trees ; children 
 sported among the leaves. Uniformed as Federal soldiers, Col. 
 Hays and his little party rode into Westport where there was a 
 garrison fifty strong. Simulating a loyalty totally unfelt, the 
 -citizens had just given to the breeze a magnificent flag worth a 
 hundred dollars. It flew high and free as he rode in ; as he 
 rode out it was trampled and torn. The fifty soldiers garrison- 
 ing Westport were part of Jennison's regiment, especially ob- 
 noxious to the citizens, and given up, more or less, to predatory 
 excursions in the country round about. It was the same old 
 story of splendid personal recklessness and prowess. As Hays 
 trotted leisurely in at the head of his squad, an orderly at a cor- 
 ner saluted him, supposing him to be a Federal officer; the salute 
 was returned. As Dick Yager followed on behind, the orderly, 
 looking upon him only as a private, did not salute. "Why 
 do you refuse?" asked Dick. "You are a fool," said the 
 orderly. "But I am a fine shot," replied Yager, and he was, for 
 he put a dragoon pistol ball fair through the man's forehead. 
 The Jayhawkers swarmed. Seizing upon houses, fifty men 
 under cover fought, five. Hays separated his soldiers and kept 
 up an incessant fusillade. A German living in the place had 
 boasted a few days before of a desire to lead a company of ex- 
 termination against rebel women and children ; it was an effec- 
 tive way to end the war, he said. Younger treed the Dahomey 
 man in a house, which was barricaded, and swept the street in 
 front of it, while Yager was battering down the door to get in. 
 The doomed man fought like a wolf, but they killed him in his 
 xien and flung his body out of a window. Then they ran fight- 
 
COLEMAN YOUNGER. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 95 
 
 ing and separated. Hays cut the flag ropes and dragged the 
 loyal banner after him as he gallopped south, followed by Muir, 
 Young and Miller; Younger and Yager took the Kansas City 
 pike, ran north a mile and into one hundred cavalry coming up 
 to understand the battle. Jayhawkers front and rear, and a 
 blind lane running square to the right like a cul de sac. They 
 turned into it ; at the far end and across it a heavy fence had 
 just been built. Their pursuers yelled once in exultation they 
 knew the barrier at the finish arid poured into the lane's mouth 
 .a flood of steeds and steel. But the heavy new rails were as 
 pasteboard. Both horses held hard together and massed, as 
 it were, for the shock launched themselves forward like a bolt 
 from a catapulet, and Younger and Yager stretched away and 
 beyond in a free, full gallop. 
 
 The capture of Independence having been agreed upon, Hays 
 asked of Quantrell some accurate information touching the 
 strongest and best fortified points about the town. It was 
 three days to the attack ; the day before it was begun the infor- 
 mation should be forthcoming. "Leave it to me," said Cole 
 Younger, when the promise made to Hays had been repeated by 
 Quantrell, "and when you report, you can report the facts. A 
 soldier wants nothing else.'* The two men then separated. It 
 was the 7th day of August, 1862. 
 
 On the 8th, about 10 o'clock in the morning, an old woman 
 with gray hair and wearing spectacles, rode up to the public 
 square from the south. Independence was alive with soldiers ; 
 several market wagons were about the streets; the trade in 
 vegetables and the traffic in fruits was lively. This old woman 
 was one of the ancient time. A faded sun-bonnet, long and 
 antique, hid almost all the face. The riding-skirt, which once 
 had been black, was now bleached ; some tatters also abounded, 
 and here and there an unsightly patch. On the horse was a 
 blind bridle, the left rein leather and the right one rope. 
 Neither did it have a throat-latch. The saddle was a man's 
 saddle, strong in the stirrups and fit for any service. Women 
 resorted often to such saddles then ; civil war had made many 
 .a hard thing easy. On the old lady's arm was a huge market 
 basket, covered by a white cloth. Under the cloth were beets, 
 garden beans and some summer apples. As she passed the first 
 picket he jibed at her: "Good morning, grand-mother," he 
 
96 NOTED GUEREILLAS, Git 
 
 said. "Does the rebel crop need any rain out in your country ?' r 
 Where the reserve post was, the sergeant on duty took her 
 horse by the bridle, and peered up under her bonnet and into 
 her face. "Were you younger and prettier I might kiss you," 
 he said. "Were I younger and prettier," the old lady replied, 
 "I might box your ears for your impudence." "Oh! ho! you 
 old she-wolf, what claws you have for scratching!" and the 
 rude soldier took her hand with an oath and looked at it sneer- 
 ingly. She drew it away with such a quick motion and started 
 her horse so rapidly ahead that he did not have time to examine 
 it. In a moment he was probably ashamed of himself, and 
 so let her ride on uninterrupted. 
 
 Once well in town no one noticed her any more. At the 
 camp she was seen to stop and give three soldiers some apples out 
 of her basket. The sentinel in front of BuelPs headquarters 
 was overheard to say to a comrade: "There's the making of 
 four good bushwacking horses yet in that old woman's horse ;" 
 and two hours later, as she rode back past the reserve picket 
 post, the sergeant, still on duty, did not halt her himself, but 
 caused one of his guards to do it ; he was anxious to know what 
 the basket contained, for in many ways of late arms and ammu- 
 nition had been smuggled out to the enemy. 
 
 At first the old lady did not heed the summons to halt that 
 short, dry, rasping, ominous call which in all tongues appears 
 to have the same sound ; she did, however, shift the basket 
 from the right arm to the left and straighten up in the saddle 
 just the least appreciable bit. Another cry, and the old lady 
 looked back innocently over one shoulder and snapped out: 
 "Do you mean me?" By this time a mounted picket had 
 galloped up to her, ranged along side and seized the bridle of 
 the horse. It was thirty steps back to the post, maybe, where 
 the sergeant and eight men were down from their horses and 
 the horses hitched. To the out-post it was a hundred yards, 
 and a single picket stood there. The old lady said to the 
 soldier, as he was turning her horse about and doing it roughly : 
 "What will you have? I'm but a poor lone woman going peace- 
 ably to my home." "Didn't you hear the sergeant call for 
 you, d n you? Do you want to be carried back?" the 
 sentinel made answer. 
 
 The face under the sun-bonnet transformed itself; the de- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 97 
 
 mure eyes behind their glasses grew scintillant. From beneath 
 the riding-skirt a heavy boot emerged ; the old horse in the blind 
 bridle seemed to undergo an electric impulse ; there was the 
 gliding of the old hand which the sergeant had inspected into the 
 basket, and a cocked pistol came out and was fired almost before 
 it got straight. With his grasp still upon the reins of the old 
 woman's bridle, the Federal picket fell dead under the feet of 
 her horse. Then, stupefied, the impotent reserve saw a weird 
 figure dash away down the road, its huge bonnet flapping in the 
 wind, and the trail of an antique riding-skirt, split to the should- 
 ers, streaming back as the smoke that follows a furnace. Cole- 
 man Younger had accomplished his. mission. Beneath the bon- 
 net and the bombazine was the Guerrilla, and beneath the 
 white cloth of the basket and its apples and beets and beans, 
 the unerring revolvers. The furthest picket heard the firing, 
 saw the apparition, bethought himself of the devil, and took to 
 the brush. That night Quantrell made his report to Hays, and 
 the next night the mustering took place at Charles Coward's. 
 
 Col. John T. Hughes was there, a Christian who had turned 
 soldier, and who fought as he prayed. As the author of Doni- 
 phan's Expedition to Mexico, he had planted some fruits in the 
 fields of literature, and added some green things to the chaplets 
 of war. The soldiers knew him as a hero. Constitutionally 
 brave in the presence of men whom he wished to recruit, he 
 added to intrepidity, recklessness. 
 
 At daylight, on the morning of the llth, Hays, leading three 
 hundered and fifty men, saw the spires of Independence loom 
 up indistinctly through the morning mist. An attack was in 
 process of consummation ; some brave men were about to die. 
 Quantrell led the advance; the Guerrillas, jauntily dressed, 
 looked lithe and lean and tawny. Thanks to Younger, the leap 
 had not to be made in the dark ; spectres might be where the 
 spires were, but not the unknown. 
 
 Due west a mile from the town, the garrison had a camp; 
 about it were stone fences and broken ways bad for cavalry. 
 Buell had his headquarters in some strong houses, southwest of 
 the square; guards were on duty about the town. Cole Youn- 
 ger led the advance. The east was yet dim and uncertain ; the 
 grasses and the earth smelt sweet; it was a blessing to live. 
 The first picket a quarter of a mile from the square fired and 
 7 
 
98 NOTED GUERBILLAS, OK 
 
 ran, the pursuit thundering at his heels. BuelFs guard at his 
 headquarters fired on the advance, and Kit Chiles fell. " First 
 his horse, then the rider ; poor Kit," and Quantrell left the dead 
 body to lie until the battle was decided. 
 
 The camp was in the midst of the long roll when Quantrell 
 struck it; Haller shot down a drummer with uplifted stick. 
 John Jarrette was first over a stone fence, running along in front 
 of a line of tents, and as he alighted, he killed a big corporal at 
 his tent door. The Federals rallied manfully and fought from 
 the fences about their flanks, and from the broken ways and the 
 hollows. Hays' men dismounted, and rushing up afoot, sur- 
 rounded the encampment. Rock walls now replied to rock 
 walls, and cover answered cover. Buell, pent up in the houses 
 of his headquarters, fought stubbornly there with such forces as 
 were left to him ; the guards upon the streets had mostly been 
 killed. When the people of the place awoke, in many direc- 
 tions dead men were visible. 
 
 When once fairly joined, the issue thereafter, at no moment, 
 was in doubt. The line of fire contracted about the doomed 
 camp ; the enterprise of the sappers was making way fast 
 towards the doomed commander. Not a point in the hazardous 
 game of attack had been lost. As Younger had traced upon a 
 piece of paper, so were found the route, the streets, the guards, 
 the camp, the defences, the strong places and the weak places, 
 the Colonel's commodious dwelling house, and the sentinels' 
 approachable barracks. 
 
 Hays relieved Quantrell at the stone walls, and Quantrell 
 threw himself upon Buell. Buell fought from every door and 
 window of his domicile. A hundred men in houses are terrible. 
 If they fight, and if there is no artillery, they are murderous. 
 Buell fought, and there was no artillery. Hays kept creeping 
 slower and slower ; the rifles of the woodsmen kept telling and 
 telling. Quantrell could not advance there were the houses 
 that were no longer houses those fortresses of the besieged. 
 Yager was for smoking them out ; Poole suggested a keg of 
 gunpowder ; George Maddox, fire ; Haller, fire ; Jarrette, fire 
 the majority said fire a wagon loaded with hay was brought 
 and volunteers ran with it to the rear of an out-building and 
 fired it speedily. The out-house caught ; the roof of the fortress 
 caught ; the red heat eat its way downward ; the ashes as they 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 99 
 
 fell scorched and blistered, and then the calm, grave face of 
 Buell blanched a little. He grappled with his fate, however, 
 and fought the flames. Revolver vollies drove his men from the 
 roof. He put himself at the head of a forlorn hope, and went 
 at the double danger like a hero. Some wind blew. George 
 Shepherd lifted his hat from his hot brow and felt it blow cool 
 there: " God is here/* he said reverently. "Hush," replied 
 Poole, "God is everywhere." At that moment Colonel 
 Hughes fell. 
 
 A great cheer from the camp now a full, passionate, exultant 
 cheer, and then not a gunshot more. All was over. Colonel Buell, 
 no longer in command of a force, surrendered unconditionally. 
 As he had done unto others, so in a greater degree did others 
 do unto him. Black flag men were about him in great numbers, 
 but not so much as a single upbraiding was ever heard from a 
 Guerrilla's lips. If Quantrell's men could have been decorated 
 for that day's fight, and if at review some typical thing that 
 stood for glory could have passed along the ranks, calling the 
 roll of the brave, there would have answered modestly, yet 
 righteously: Haller, Gregg, Todd, Jarrette, Morris, Poole, 
 Younger, James Tucker, Blunt, George Shepherd, Yager, Hicks 
 George, Sim. Whitsett, Fletch. Taylor, John Ross, Dick Burns, 
 Kit Cbiles, Dick Maddox, Fernando Scott, Sam. Clifton, George 
 Maddox, Sam. Hamilton, Press. Webb, John Coger, Dan. 
 Vaughn, and twenty others, dead now, but dead in vain for 
 their country. There were no decorations, however, but there 
 was a deliverance. Crammed in the county jail, and sweltering 
 in the midsummer's heat were old men who had been pioneers 
 in the land, and young men who had been sentenced to die. 
 The first preached the Confederacy and it triumphant; the last 
 to make it so enlisted for the war. These jail-birds, either as 
 missionaries or militants, had work to do. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LONE JACK. 
 
 AFTER Independence there was a lull of a few brief days. 
 Kansas City drew in all of its outposts and showed a 
 naked front to whoever would attack. The swoop of the eagles 
 outside of it had alarmed the border ; Kansas prairies might 
 next resound with the iron feet of the marching squadrons. 
 
 Recruiting officers were riding up from the South through all 
 the summer days some to tarry awhile in Jackson county, and 
 some to borrow guides from Quantrell and strike unguarded 
 fords along the river. Enthusiasm that virile breeder of vol- 
 unteers was abroad in Missouri. Even in her remotest 
 extremities the Confederacy's life blood was in vigorous circu- 
 lation ; ossification at the heart commenced only when a factious 
 Congress began to put on crape at the mention of martial law. 
 
 En route to regions where battalions grew, Col. John T. 
 Coffee had entered the Southwest from Arkansas. He had been 
 the stern nurse of hardy men. The war found him a politician 
 and made him a patriot. He had great popularity through 
 much patience with the people. Men of the scythe- blade and 
 the plow, men who mowed in the lowlands and reaped on 
 the hillsides were not damned on the drill ground and badgered 
 at the inspection because Hardee and heathen with all too many 
 were synonymous terms. Round-shouldered riflemen shot none 
 the worse for dressing up badly in parade with square-shoul- 
 dered giants, and the stammerer who to keep some tryst or to 
 receive some blessing begged for a furlough got no aloes at 
 least in the little wine of human nature the service let be doled 
 out to him. Coffee recruited a regiment. 
 
 Col. Vard Cockrell, preceding Coffee a day's march or two, 
 awaited a junction at the Osage River. Cockrell was a Chris- 
 tian who sometimes preached. His revolutionary ideas were 
 but a form of his evangelical faith. He believed the devil the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 101 
 
 author of all evil in a spiritual point of view, the Abolitionists 
 the cause of all the trouble in a political. To fight both was 
 superlative orthodoxy. In battle it is believed that he prayed 
 notably short prayers like Lord Astley made at Edgehill, which 
 battle was fought between Charles 1. and the Puritans: "Oh! 
 Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget 
 Thee, do not Thou forget me. March on, boys !" Like Coffee, 
 Cockrell also recruited a regiment. 
 
 Captain J. O. Shelby only a captain then, leading CockrelFa 
 advance had marched from Tupuelo, Mississippi, on foot, 
 through Arkansas on foot, into Missouri on foot, and still north- 
 ward and northward on foot until he struck the horse line. The 
 most of those who followed him had no beards. He found them 
 ruddy country lads with here and there a city's eager, sallow 
 face, and he left them Indians. Shelby understood war both as 
 an instinct and a religion. He did not play the great man; he 
 was one. Some soldiers understood the movement solely of the 
 revolution ; Shelby both its movement and its direction. Some 
 had its intoxication ; he both its intoxication and its love. Its 
 energy, agitation, generosity, intrepidity all were his; but 
 nothing of its ferocity. His genius was his audacity; but it 
 was more. He saw God in men and he used them ; a fatalist, 
 and yet he left nothing to chance ; ardent, he made his enthu- 
 siasm subsidiary to his thought; feeling the passions, he yet 
 represented the superiorities of the epoch ; young, older officers 
 trusted their interests and ambitions to his keeping ; a giant, he 
 lifted his soldiers up to him; after caressing popularity, he 
 braved it as a wild beast which he dared to devour him ; a gen- 
 eral, beyond the mechanism of a division he grasped the ideal ; 
 courageous, his intrepidity had soul ; he had passions, but he 
 was generous ; crushing incapacity, he also plucked favoritism 
 up by the roots and out of his own breast ; he entered Missouri 
 a captain, and he left it a brigadier general, carrying his 
 brigade with him. 
 
 Col. S. D. Jackraan, part Guerrilla and part regular, carried 
 over to the line the circumspection of the ambuscade. He 
 fought to kill, and to kill without paying the price that ostenta- 
 tious fighting invariably costs. Patient, abiding as a rock in 
 the tide of battle ; satisfied with small gains, but not carried 
 away by large ones ; serene under any sky, and indomitable to 
 
102 NOTED GUEBEILLAS, OR 
 
 the end of the play, he also recruited a regiment which after- 
 wards grew into a brigade. 
 
 Col. Charles Tracy lying along the southern border of the 
 State for several months, waiting for a dash hurried up with the 
 crowd and threw himself in the van of the recruiting service. 
 Indefatigable ; once an Indian fighter ; on a trail like a Coinan- 
 che, and in the darkness like a night hawk ; winning with young 
 men and enterprising with brave ones ; a cavalryman by educa- 
 tion and a leader through great vitality and perception, he gath- 
 ered up a regiment in the midst of his enemies, and had it bap- 
 tized before it was armed. 
 
 Col. D. C. Hunter came also from his lair, as a grizzly might, 
 where the winter had been hard and the deep snows frozen. In 
 gaps in the Boston Mountains he had held on to roads until their 
 names grew evil, and on to passes until Federal detachments 
 swore the devil was there. He was a still hunter. No pomp, 
 nor circumstance, nor rattling scabbards made women turn and 
 curiosity preak out its neck when Hunter marched down to a 
 fight. Everything was matter of fact ; so many rounds so many 
 killed. To-morrow was to take care of itself; to-day belonged 
 to clean guns and dry powder. Eat certainly, when there 
 was anything to eat ; sleep most assuredly, when sleep could 
 be had. If neither was possible, then patience and another 
 round or two at the enemy. Such a man of course had no diffi- 
 culty in getting a regiment. 
 
 Coffee, Cockrell, Tracy, Hunter and Jackman, therefore 
 having communicated with Hays commenced recruiting. 
 Neither of these men desired a battle. The brush of Western 
 Missouri was full of Southern men, driven from their homes by 
 the militia. Little camps in the counties of Jackson, Clay, 
 Platte, Lafayette, Johnson, Cass, Bates and Ray, sent their 
 squads daily to either officer sent fours, twos, single volunteers, 
 bent only upon getting to the regular army and getting arms 
 after they reached there. Certainly, therefore, it was not tactics 
 for the Confederates to hunt for a fight, much less to take the 
 chances of a doubtful one. 
 
 Even the Guerrillas, as desperate as the nature of their serv- 
 ices had become, saw a single company swelled nearly to a reg- 
 iment. Establishing a rendezvous first in the neighborhood of 
 Blue Springs, and next at the residence of Luther Mason, three 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 103 
 
 hundred splendid young fellows came trooping in to Quantrell. 
 Jarre tte commanded one company, Gregg one, Scott one, and 
 Haller the old original organization. For the time Quantrell 
 had a battalion. Todd was lieutenant under Haller, Colemau 
 Younger under Jarrette, Hendrix under Gregg, and Gilkey 
 under Scott. Of the above, Quantrell is dead, Gilkey dead, Hal- 
 ler dead, Hendrix dead, Todd dead all slain in desperate 
 battle. 
 
 The fall of Fort Sumter, like a huge mine, had exploded the 
 passions of a continent. Missouri, hearing the deep and porten- 
 tous reverberations, listened with her hand upon her sword. 
 She had politicians but no statesmen ; determination but no 
 unanimity. Her Governor, reared in the facile and compromis- 
 ing school of American Democracy, showed a gloved hand to 
 those who kept perilous ward in the St. Louis Arsenal. 
 Beneath all its velvet, however, there was no iron. Three days 
 after Lyon took command he laughed ; as he looked city-ward 
 he was bland. In a week he was sullen and dangerous, 
 and began to show his teeth. In a month he was vicious and 
 shed the blood of women in the streets of St. Louis. It may 
 have been necessary. Trades-people and farmers need death 
 dashed against their eyes in some terrible way to understand 
 revolution. 
 
 Far west in the State some hastily gathered volunteers met 
 the United States dragoons under Sturgis. Retreating sullenly, 
 the dragoons turned once fairly to bay and Halloway and Mc- 
 Clannahan fell. Another necessity in this that it taught younger 
 officers how to die. The issue was made ; blood had been spilt 
 in the East and in the West ; Governor Jackson was a fugitive ; 
 his young men were mustering; the din of preparation re- 
 sounded throughout the State, and Lexington was named as a 
 mustering place. 
 
 Hither came a young man leading a cavalry company. His 
 uniform was attractive and differed only from that of the men in 
 the single point of a feather. Women lifted their eyes as he 
 passed and said: "How handsome he is." Men gazed after 
 him and his uniform and said complacently: "He dresses like a 
 soldier/' Quite a difference, truly, in the opinion expressed. 
 One reasoned from the head, and the other from the heart. 
 
 This uniformed company had something of drill, something 
 
104 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 of discipline, more of stalwart vigor and bearing. Its com 
 mander was Jo. O. Shelby, swarthy as an Arab, brown-eyed, 
 loved of the conflict, and having over him, as an invisible aure- 
 ole, the halo of an hundred battles. 
 
 The weeks and the war grew old together. Through Carth- 
 age, through Oak Hills, through Sugar Creek, through Elk 
 Horn, this man led his followers, and those who fought him best 
 will bear witness that only at long intervals did any enemy see 
 Jo. Shelby's back. 
 
 Shiloh lit all the Southern cotton-fields with fire, and Johnston 
 fell with the beautiful corpse of victory dead upon his dead, 
 cold heart. When the burial bugles sounded, mistress and 
 lover were buried together. And Farmington followed, and a 
 great retreat, and in the rear marched Shelby, the jaunty uni- 
 forms stained with mud of Corinth trenches the flowing feather 
 drooping in the rain of Corinth bivouacs. The sunshine was 
 alone upon their bayonets and in their faces. The first glistened 
 all along the route to Tupuelo, the last lit up with a great joy 
 when by the camp fires it was told how their captain had been 
 ordered to march two thousand miles into Missouri march to 
 the river to the Missouri river to halt there, fight there, re- 
 cruit there, and return from there a Colonel commanding. 
 
 From a Captain to a Colonel is a rugged way upwards at 
 times. Every step that Shelby took ran over in blood. He had 
 little faith in battle? where nobody was killed, and he valued his 
 fields by the number of the dead upon them. The richest acres 
 were those where the wreck lay thickest, and where, on either 
 flank, "men's lives fell off like snow." 
 
 Past the Mississippi, fretted with iron islands ; past White 
 River, black with the sombre fate of the Mound City ; past Lit- 
 tle Rock, listening to a siren's song, and dreaming of an early 
 peace ; past the Arkansas, sickly with conscripts ; up upon the 
 borders of Missouri, the promised land, he came, this leader 
 Shelby, having in his hands a last commission from Earl Van 
 Dorn, that peerless Launcelot, over whom the famous funeral 
 oration might have been pronounced when they carried him 
 away and buried him in Joyeuse Guard, the truest, noblest, 
 simplest ever uttered : 
 
 4 'Ah! Sir Launcelot, there thou liest that never wert matched 
 of earthly hands. Thou wert the fairest person, and the good- 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDEE 105 
 
 liest of any that rode in the press of Knights ; thou wert the 
 truest to thy sworn brother of any that buckled on the spur ; 
 and thou wert the faithfulest of any that have loved women ; 
 most courteous wert thou, and gentle of all that sat in hall 
 among dames ; and thou wert the sternest Knight to thy mortal 
 foe that ever laid spear in the rest.'* 
 
 Patience ! It is of the Lone Jack battle I write, but all things 
 must have a beginning. Had there been no Shelby, there would 
 have been no Lone Jack battle. With this commission, there 
 fore, of Gen. Earl Van Dorn in his hands, Shelby waited two 
 brief days on the Missouri border, next door to Arkansas. 
 
 With his brown eyes fixed on the buff sash of a Brigadier, 
 Shelby led Cockrell's advance with a speed that annihilated 
 distance, and gave no time for fatigue. If he slept at all, he 
 slept in the saddle. For food, the men drew as rations ten 
 roasting-ears a day. There was no time to kill or to cook what 
 might be eaten. 
 
 Preceding this march by a dozen summer days, Col. John T. 
 Coffee had come with his irregular cavalry, and news drifted 
 back of broken skirmishes wherein he was worsted. Shooting 
 at long range and not of necessity always, Coffee's scant am- 
 munition had grown scantier, and hemmed in upon the Osage 
 river, he had sent a bold borderer forward praying for help and 
 succor in extiemity. Cockrell was in Johnson county when 
 the messenger came. Coffee was southward still some thirty 
 miles. "The horses are tired, the men are tired, we have little 
 time. Shall we countermarch, Shelby?" "Yes, if it takes the 
 last soldier, and the last horse, and the last cartridge. Fall in ! 
 Trot march!" And the black plume galloped back thirty 
 miles, and the brown eyes had found a battle-light, and the 
 bronzed face smiled only at intervals now. Coffee was not a 
 prudent man always, and whether knee deep or breast deep in 
 danger, Shelby meant to cut him out or die there. 
 
 The rescue, however, cost no gunpowder. The stream, 
 which was at first merely a rivulet, had become to be a river. 
 The tide set strongly in towards the west again, and divided 
 only upon the line of Jackson county Coffee and Cockrell 
 going to Independence, Shelby to Waverly, where a massed 
 regiment of Confederates awaited him. 
 
 And now the work of Shelby in the Lone Jack battle : Cock- 
 
106 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OS 
 
 rell, left to himself and his own resources, would not have 
 countermarched. Coffee, without succor and a swift column to 
 help him, might have perished. There would, consequently, 
 have been no commingling of forces, no aggressive movements 
 on the part of Cockrell's weak detachment, no attack anywhere, 
 and in the end a distant bow to the resolute Federals keeping 
 grim watch and ward upon the Sni hills, and holding Lone Jack 
 and all the country roundabout. 
 
 It was an August day, hot but with some wind. God had 
 blessed the earth ; the harvests were abundant. On the after- 
 noon of the 13th some clouds began to gather about Lone Jack, 
 a small village in the eastern portion of Jackson county. Once 
 a lone black jack tree stood there taller than its companions 
 and larger than any near to it ; from this tree the town took its 
 name. The clouds that were seen gathering there were cav- 
 alrymen. Succoring recruits in every manner possible, and 
 helping them on to rendezvous by roads, or lanes, or water- 
 courses, horsemen acquainted with the country kept riding 
 continually up and down. A company of these, on the evening 
 of the 15th, were in the village of Lone Jack. Cockrell was 
 also in the neighborhood, but not visible. Coffee was there 
 also, and Tracy, Jackman, Hunter and Hays that is to say, 
 within striking distance. 
 
 Major Emory L. Foster, doing active scouting duty in the 
 region round about Lexington, had his headquarters in the 
 town. The capture of Independence had been like a blow 
 upon the cheek ; he would avenge it. He knew how to fight. 
 There was dash about him ; he had enterprise ; he believed in 
 esprit du corps; prairie life had enlarged his vision and he did 
 not see the war like a martinet ; he felt within him the glow of 
 generous ambition ; he loved his uniform for the honor it had ; 
 he would see about that Independence business about that 
 Quantrell living between the two Blues and raiding the west 
 about those gray recruiting folks riding up from the South 
 about the tales of ambuscades that were told eternally of 
 Jackson county, and of the toils spread for unwary Jayhawk- 
 ers. He had heard, too, of the company which halted a 
 moment in Lone Jack as it passed through, and of course it was 
 Quantrell. 
 
 It was six o'clock the hour when the Confederates were 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 107 
 
 there and 8 o'clock when Col. Foster marched in, leading 
 nine hundred and eighty-five cavalry, with two pieces of RabVs 
 Indiana battery a battery much celebrated for tenacious gun- 
 ners and accurate firing. Cockrell knew Foster well ; the other 
 Confederates knew nothing about him. He was there, however, 
 and that was positive proof enough that he wanted a fight. 
 
 Cockrell, Hays, Hunter, Tracy, Coffee and Jackman had 
 between them about nine hundred men. Coffee with two 
 hundred men did not arrive in time to participate in the fight, 
 and this contretemps simplified the situation thus: Seven 
 hundred Confederates armed with shot guns, horse pistols, 
 squirrel rifles, regulation guns, and what not attacked nine 
 hundred and eighty-five Federals in a town for a position, and 
 armed with Spencer rifles and Colt's revolvers, dragoon size. 
 There was also the artillery. Lone Jack sat quietly in the green 
 of its emerald prairies, its orchards in fruit and its harvests 
 goodly. On the west was timber, and in this timber a stream 
 ran musically and peacefully along. To the east the prairies 
 undulated, their grass waves crested with sunshine. On the 
 north there were groves in which birds abounded. In some 
 even the murmuring of doves was heard, and an infinite tremor 
 ran over all the leaves as the winds stirred the languid pulse of 
 summer into fervor. 
 
 In the center of the town a large hotel made a strong fortifi- 
 cation. The house, from being a tavern, had become to be a 
 redoubt. From the top the stars and stripes floated proudly 
 a tri-color that had upon it then more of sunshine than of blood. 
 Later the three colors had become four. 
 
 On the verge of the prairie nearest the town a hedgerow 
 stood as a line of infantry dressed for battle. It was plumed 
 on the sides with tawny grass. The morning broke upon it and 
 upon armed men crouching there, with a strange barred banner 
 and with guns at a trail. Here Bohannon waited, his calm eyes 
 fixed on the stark redoubt of the Cave House and eager for the 
 signal. 
 
 On the north and northwest there were cornfields as well as 
 groves. In the cornfields Hays held his men in the hollow of 
 his two hands that is to say, perfectly under his control. The 
 dew upon his beard glistened. It was not yet five o'clock. In 
 the east the sleepy soul of the sunshine had not yet clothed itself 
 
108 NOTED GUEKBILLAS, OE 
 
 with the sweet, gracious wings of warmth and moisture. The 
 great face of the dawn was unveiled and looked down upon the 
 earth tenderly. It was that sacred hour when the faint, uni- 
 versal stir of awakening life gives glory to God and grandeur to 
 nature. No white dimple stirred among the corn, Hays* men 
 were so still. The low ripple of the leaves had a tremor and a 
 shiver that were ominous. By and by in the east a sunrise-city 
 was open-gated and all unfastened flashed a golden door. The 
 sun would be up in an hour. 
 
 Joining Hays on the left was Cockrell, and the detachments of 
 Cockrell, Hays, Rathburn and Bohannon. Their arms were 
 as varied as their uniforms. It was a duel they were going 
 into and each man had the gun he could handle best. From 
 the hedge-row, from the green-growing corn, from the orchards 
 and the groves the soldiers could not see much, save the flag 
 flying skyward on the redoubt of the Cave House. 
 
 At five o'clock a solitary gunshot alarmed camp and garri- 
 son, and outlying videttes, and all the soldiers face to face with 
 imminent death. No one knew thereafter how the fight com- 
 menced. It was Missourian against Missourian neighbor 
 against neighbor the rival flags waved over each, and the kill- 
 ing went on. This battle has about it a strange fascination. The 
 combatants were not numerous, yet they fought as men seldom 
 fight in detached bodies. The same fury extended to an army 
 would have ended in annihilation. A tree was a fortification. A 
 hillock was an ambush. The corn fields from being green became 
 to be lurid. Dead men were in the groves. The cries of the 
 wounded came up from the apple orchards. All the houses in 
 the town were garrisoned. It was daylight upon the prairies, 
 yet there were lights in the windows the light of musket flashes. 
 The grim redoubt of the Cave House grew hotter and hotter un- 
 til it flared out in a great gust of fire. There was a woman there 
 Mrs. Cave young, beautiful, a mother. She tried to escape, 
 but muskets hemmed her in. Corpses lay in her path upon the 
 right hand and upon the left. There was blood upon her feet, 
 and a great terror in her soft, feminine eyes. She did not even 
 cry out. In one sublime moment the tender young matron had 
 caught a heroism not of this earth. In the next she was dead 
 upon her own doorstep, a bullet through her maternal breast. 
 Oh War! War I 
 
THE WARFAEE OF THE BOEDER 109 
 
 There is not much to say about the fight in the way of de- 
 scription. The Federals were in Lone Jack; the Confederates 
 had to get them out. House fighting and street fighting are 
 always desperate. Cool men allied to walls defy everything 
 except fire. The bullet rain that in an open field would scarcely 
 penetrate, in the angles and protuberances of a street is a tem- 
 pest. Where once were curtains, white or damask trans- 
 figured faces, powder-scorched ; where once were latch-strings 
 gaping muzzles; among the roses dead men; where lovers lin- 
 gered late and trystings were sweet or stolen pitiful pale faces, 
 wan in the light that never was on sea or shore. Smoke came 
 from chimneys marksmen were there ; at the garden gates 
 skirmishers crouched ; upon the street corners companies con- 
 centrated ; the hotel was a hospital, later a holocaust ; the can- 
 noniers stood by their guns and died there ; and over all rose 
 and shone a blessed summer sun, while the airy fingers of the 
 breeze ruffled the oak leaves and tuned the swaying branches 
 to the sound of a psalm. 
 
 The gray coats crept nearer. On the east, west, north or 
 south Hays, Cockrell, Tracy, Jackman, Rathburn, or Hunter 
 gained ground. Farmer lads in their first battle began gawky and 
 ended grenadiers. Old plug hats rose and fell as the red fight 
 ebbed and flowed ; the shotgun's heavy boom made clearer still 
 the rifle's sharper crack; under the powder-pall boyish faces 
 shone in the glare with the bearded ones. An hour passed ; the 
 struggle had lasted since daylight. 
 
 Foster fought his men splendidly. Wounded once, he did 
 not make complaint ; wounded again, he kept his place ; 
 wounded the third time, he stood with his men until courage 
 and endurance only prolonged a sacrifice. Once Haller, com- 
 manding thirty of Quantrell's old men, swept up to the guns and 
 over them, the play of their revolvers being as the play of the 
 lightning in a summer cloud. He could not hold them, brave 
 as he was. Then Jackman rushed at them again and bore them 
 backward twenty paces or more. Counter-charged, they ham- 
 mered his grip loose and drove him down the hill. Then Hays 
 and Hunter with the old plug hats and the wheezy old rifles 
 finished the throttling ; the lions were done roaring. 
 
 Tracy had been wounded, Hunter wounded, Hays wounded, 
 Captains Bryant and Bradley killed, among the Confederates, 
 
110 NOTED aUEKEILLAS, OR 
 
 together with thirty-six others, and one hundred and thirty-four 
 wounded; among the Federals, Foster, the commander, was 
 nigh unto death; his brother, Captain Foster, shot mortally 
 died afterwards ; one hundred and thirty-six dead lay about the 
 streets and houses of the town, and five hundred and fifty 
 wounded made up the aggregate of a fight, numbers considered, 
 as desperate and bloody as any that ever crimsoned the annals 
 of a civil war. A few over two hundred breaking through the 
 Confederate lines on the south, where they were weakest, 
 rushed furiously into Lexington, Haller in pursuit as some 
 beast of prey, leaping upon everything which attempted to 
 make a stand between Lone Jack and Wellington. 
 
 Dies irce! The moan that went up through Poictiers and 
 Aquitaine when at Lussac bridge the lance head of a Breton 
 squire found the life of John Chandos, had counterpart at 
 Kansas City and all the country round about. Again did the 
 little posts run into the big ones. Commanders turned pale. 
 A mighty blow seemed impending, and lest this head or that 
 head felt the trip-hammer, all the heads kept wagging and 
 dodging. Burris got out of Cass county ; Jennison hurried into 
 Kansas; the Guerrillas kept a sort of open house, and the 
 recruits drove after drove and mostly unarmed, hastened 
 southward. Then the Federal wave which had at first receded 
 beyond all former boundaries, flowed back again and inundated 
 Western Missouri. Quantrell's nominal battalion yielding to 
 the pressure of the exodus left him only the old guard as a 
 rallying point. It was necessary again to reorganize. Gregg 
 was made First Lieutenant ; Todd, Second ; Scott, Third ; Blunt, 
 Orderly Sergeant; James Tucker, First Duty Sergeant; 
 Younger, Second ; Hendrix, Third ; Poole, Fourth ; James 
 Little, First Corporal; Dick Burnes, Second; Hicks George, 
 Third, and Hi. George, Fourth. After this re-organization, 
 the Guerrillas stripped themselves for steady fighting. Incidents 
 and personages suited the epoch. Federal troops were every- 
 where ; infantry at the posts, cavalry on the war paths. The 
 sombre defiance mingled with despair did not come until 
 1864 ; in 1862 the Guerrillas laughed as they fought. And they 
 fought by streams and bridges, where roads crossed and forked 
 and where trees or hollows were. They fought from houses 
 and hay -stacks ; on foot and on horseback ; at night, when the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER HI 
 
 weird laughter of the owls could be heard in the thickets ; in 
 daylight, when the birds sang as they found sweet seed. The 
 black flag was being woven, but it had not yet been unfurled. 
 
 Breaking suddenly out of Jackson county, Quantrell raided 
 Shawneetown, Kansas, and captured its garrison of fifty militia. 
 Then at Olathe, Kansas, the next day, the right hand did what 
 the left one finished so well at Shawneetown ; seventy-five Fed- 
 erals surrendered here. Each garrison was paroled and set free 
 e.'ich garrison save seven from Shawneetown ; these were 
 Jennison's Jayhawkers and they had to die. A military execu- 
 tion is where one man kills another ; it is horrible. In battle 
 one does not see death. He is there surely he is in that bat- 
 tery's smoke, on the crest of that hill fringed with the fringe of 
 pallid faces, under the hoofs of the horses, yonder where the 
 blue or the gray line creeps onward trailing ominous guns but 
 his cold, calm eyes look at no single victim. He kills there 
 yes but he does not discriminate. Harold, the dauntless, or 
 Robin, the hunchback what matters a crown or a (frutch to the 
 immortal reaper? 
 
 The seven men rode into Missouri from Shawneetown puz- 
 zled ; when the heavy timber along the Big Blue was reached 
 and a halt had, they were praying. Quantrell sat upon his 
 horse looking at the Kansans. His voice was unmoved, his 
 countenance perfectly indifferent as he ordered : "Bring ropes; 
 four on one tree three on another." All of a sudden death 
 stood in the midst of them, and was recognized. One poor fel- 
 low gave a cry as piercing as the neigh of a frightened horse. 
 Two trembled, and trembling is the first step towards kneeling. 
 They had not talked any save among themselves up to this time, 
 but when they saw Blunt busy with some ropes, one spoke up 
 to Quantrell : "Captain, just a word : the pistol before the rope ; 
 a soldier's before a dog's death. As for me, I'm ready." Of 
 all the seven this was the youngest how brave he was ! 
 
 The prisoners were arranged in a line, the Guerrillas opposite 
 to them. They had confessed to belonging to Jennison, but 
 denied the charge of killing and burning. Quantrell hesitated 
 a moment. His blue eyes searched each face from left to right 
 and back again, and then he ordered: "Take six men, Blunt, 
 and do the work. Shoot the young man and hang the balance." 
 
 Hurry away 1 The oldest man there some white hairs were 
 
112 NOTED GUEBBILLAS, OR 
 
 in his beard prayed audibly. Some embraced. Silence and 
 twilight, as twin ghosts, crept up the river bank together. 
 Blunt made haste, and before Quantrell had ridden far he heard 
 a pistol shot. He did not even look up ; it affected him no 
 more than the tapping of a woodpecker. At daylight the next 
 morning a wood-chopper going early to work, saw six stark 
 figures swaying in the river breeze. At the foot of another 
 tree was a dead man and in his forehead a bullet-hole the old 
 mark. 
 
 When in every hour in every day a man holds his life out in 
 his open hands, he becomes at last to be a fatalist ; and fatal- 
 ism is granite. It stands like a rock. It abides the worst 
 without a tremor. Fernando Scott was one of those men whom 
 revolutions cast up, sometimes to be Titans and sometimes mon- 
 sters. Todd said that he did not know the meaning of the word 
 fear, and of all the men Todd led or rode with, he wept for 
 Scott alone the night they buried him. 
 
 There came one day to Quantrell an old man, probably sixty 
 years of age, who was tremulous and garrulous. . He 'had a boy, 
 he said, just turned of eighteen, who was his main stay and his 
 sole reliance. Trouble had been heavy upon him of late. His 
 wife had died, a daughter had died, the Jayhawkers had driven 
 off his stock, and now the militia had arrested his boy. Would 
 Quantrell help him to get his son back? He was in jail in Inde- 
 pendence ; they were cruel to him ; his old heart was desolate 
 and his old home was without a prop. Quantrell listened coldly. 
 He had no prisoners to exchange for his son, and even if he had, 
 he was not giving soldiers for citizens. Why was not his son in 
 the army? 
 
 It was pitiful to watch the look of hopeless despair which 
 came to the old man's face when QuantrelFs practical reply 
 pierced his fond illusions like some sharp thing that froze^as it 
 cut. He slid down from a sitting posture to a crouching one 
 and began to moan helplessly, tears forcing themselves through 
 his withered fingers as he tried in vain to cover his eyes with his 
 hands. Some of the Guerrillas turned away their heads ; others 
 of them jeered at him. Scott did neither. He went to the old 
 man kindly and lifted him up. " Do not despair/* he said, 
 almost as gently as a saint might have pleaded with a sinner, 
 " and you shall have your boy. Silence, men I Do you not see 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 113 
 
 that the old man is crying?" Quantrell humored his Lieu- 
 tenant. He controlled his desperadoes by seeming not to con- 
 trol them. His discipline was rigid, but iron as it was, it never 
 clanked, or corroded, or hurt one's self-respect. 
 
 Independence was strongly garrisoned again, and a pioqnet 
 station on the Blue Springs road had at the outpost four men, 
 and at the reserve sixteen twenty in all. Five horsemen in the 
 dusk of a summer evening, were riding up from towards the 
 east very quiet for comrades and very watchful for people who 
 seemed to have business there. If a moon had been in the sky, 
 by the light of it one could have recognized the faces of 8<-ott, 
 Will Haller, Cole Younger, Sim Whitsett and David Poole 
 volunteers all in Scott's endeavor to solace the last days of an 
 old man whom he did not even know. Upon the left flank of 
 the road on which were the picquets, they were maneuvering 
 to get between the reserves and the outpost. One thing alone 
 favored them they knew the country. It was a gentle nitjht, 
 all starlight and summer odor. The men might not have to 
 fight no matter, they were there just the same. A little halt 
 was called, and Scott spoke low to the group: "I thank you, 
 men, for coming here. If you asked me why the old man's tale 
 stirred me so, and why the yearning was so strong to do a good 
 act, in perhaps a bad way, I could not tell you for my life. May 
 be it is fate. Do any of you understand what fate is? The 
 other day at Lone Jack, you know, we charged the cannon, 
 under Haller there. About the guns it was hell, wasn't it, Bill? 
 I had four revolvers, and never a shot left. A Federal at the 
 corner of a house, not twenty yards away, fired at me six times 
 and missed me every time, though I did not dodge. That was 
 fate." But the Guerrillas were in no mood to moralize. Poole 
 broke in grimly : u That was d d bad shooting." The poor 
 fellow's consoling castle fell as walnut leaves before a fros H , and 
 he added but this: " They won't give the boy up for less than 
 two, perhaps for less than four. Their militia are not set much 
 store by, even among the commanders of them ; but the pris- 
 oner is a citizen and not a Guerrilla; a Guerrilla is not for ex- 
 change at any price. We must have the outpost intact, if pos- 
 sible." " Hush!" said Younger, in a whisper, his head turned 
 to one side as a stag's head, "I hear horses." Behind them 
 from toward the reserves, the steady tramp of regular feet were 
 8 
 
114 NOTED GUEEEILLASy OE 
 
 audible, the gait being a walk. "It is the relief," spoke up 
 Whitsett, in a moment; and "follow me," was heard from 
 Scott, as he hurried from the road into the brush and drew up 
 again in its heavy shadow, every man peering forward and wait- 
 ing eagerly. * 
 
 One file, eight, twenty, fifty, a hundred instead of a relief 
 picquet going forward to the outpost, it was a marching column 
 of Federal cavalry moving the Guerillas did not know where. 
 "What a noisy column! Some sang from the rear, and others 
 from the front. Jest, and joke, and badinage flew along from 
 squadron to squadron. Quantrell was everything a horse- 
 thief, murderer, scoundrel, villain, man-eater, cannibal, devil- 
 fish. They would roast him, draw him, quarter him, boil him 
 in oil, flay him alive they only wanted to find him and get one 
 fair chance at him. Scott's little band heard all this militia 
 ebullition and laughed in their throats a leather-stocking laugh. 
 Let once a mare whinney, however, or a horse neigh, and then 
 those who laughed best would have to laugh last. 
 
 The rear guard of the marching column was barely out of 
 sight when Scott fell in behind it. As he neared the Independ- 
 ence outpost it did not even halt him ; luck certainly was his 
 to-night. "One each for all of you, none for me," Scott said, 
 a little regretfully, as he was upon the four militia sitting 
 quietly in their saddles, "and now to work, kill only in extrem- 
 ity." There was no need to kill. In an instant Haller had a 
 pistol to one head, Whitsett to another, Younger to a third, and 
 Poole to the fourth ; the excitement of the capture was scarcely 
 enough to add to it interest. The Federals, confident to the 
 end that the Guerrillas were but a portion of the command which 
 had just passed, did not so much as even imagine an enemy 
 until they were powerless. It was best so. Flight could not 
 have saved them, and resistance such as their's must have been, 
 meant simply sheep against the shearers. When disarmed and 
 dismounted, the Federals stood amazed in the presence of their 
 captors. Scott asked who of the five would carry them to Quan- 
 trell. At that name a great fear fell upon the prisoners. One 
 whispered to another, but his excitement made him audible : 
 "My God, Joe, has it come to this at last? Quantrell! Quantrell! 
 Why Quantrell is but another name for death." The leaven was 
 at work. The two trees by the Big Blue had begun to bear other 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER H5 
 
 fruit than the six men the wood-chopper found of a summer 
 morning as he went singing to his work. 
 
 No one would go back ; they had tasted the strange thing of 
 a capture without a fight, and it was bitter to the mouth. 
 "Draw lots," said Scott, "and if it falls upon me, I will go 
 back." Whitselt held the hat, Haller put the paper in. 
 They all drew, and Poole drew the slip with the word guard on 
 it. "Fall in, milish!" he cried out contentedly, as he saw his 
 luck, and away they all marched through the night. He knew 
 what Scott intended to do, but he had drawn. Scott's quick 
 soldier eye saw that with the silent capture of the out-post the 
 reserve was uncovered, and he would beat it up a little. Not 
 satisfied with doing thoroughly what he had but small hopes of 
 doing at all, he must needs go further if he fared worse. Luck 
 still abode with him, he said, and he would press it. Soldiers 
 also have this term in common with gamblers the only differ- 
 ence in the dice being the difference between lead and ivory. 
 
 It was scant five hundred yards between the reserve and the 
 furthest post, and yet between the two a stream ran which 
 had very steep banks but no bridge. In an enemy's country, 
 also, no intermediate sentinels divided up the distance. The 
 out-post if it was not actually cut off from its reserve was 
 almost wholly inaccessible to its succor. Scott saw all this as 
 he rode down and spoke of it: "These militia do nothing 
 right; they do not even know how to kill a gentleman." But 
 they knew how to be on guard. As the four Guerrillas emerged 
 from the darkness into the light, a sergeant with the reserve 
 halted them. "Say nothing," whispered Scott, "do as I do, 
 and when I draw my pistol, charge." Then speaking up to the 
 sergeant, though still advancing, he replied roughly: "Why do 
 you question us? We have just passed through your lines and 
 have been sent back with special dispatches to the Colonel at 
 the post. Give way." He was upon them as he finished and 
 his pistol was out. So close indeed was he that when he shot 
 the sergeant in the middle of the forehead the powder singed 
 nis eyebrows. It looked mightily afterwards like a massacre. 
 But ten of the sixteen pickets were mounted, while those on 
 horseback had scarcely time to fire a gun. No one led. When 
 the sergeant fell there was a stampede a wild, helpless, sudden 
 rending away, no two taking the same direction, and on the 
 
116 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OB 
 
 east the town of Independence was absolutely uncovered. 
 Scott's men were not scratched. Seven dead lay about the 
 bivouac fires, and several wounded hid themselves in the brush. 
 By noon the next day the old man's boy was back again at the 
 homestead, Scolt's four militia buying him out after a lengthy 
 parley. 
 
 Those late summer and early autumn days were busy battle 
 days. Men fought mere than they plowed ; there were more 
 forays than furrows. Todd took thirty men and went down 
 along the Harrisonville and Kansas City road and built him an 
 ambuscade. Getting together forty or fifty picks and forty or 
 fifty shovels he dug a series of trenches along the highway deep 
 enough to shelter a hundred men. From the first one to the 
 last one it was a hundred yards a line of fire that would eat its 
 way furiously through any column. Back of these trenches was 
 the dry bed of .a stream a natural bomb proof for the horses. 
 Todd did things in this way generally ; he had Scipio's eye and. 
 the brawn of Spartacus. 
 
 Working at night and lying by in the day, the birds even 
 knew nothing of the traps and dead-falls this indefatigable 
 hunter was setting and digging for larger game than any that, 
 had ever abounded since on Big Creek tUe buffalo grazed. 
 
 Two hundred cavalry with ten wagons were marching up 
 from IL-nr}^ county to Leavenworth. New at the business, 
 Quantrell's name had only came to them as the name of 
 Jonathan Wild or John A. Murrell. Todd let them pass along 
 until their line lay against his line, and then the rifle-pits became 
 a tornado. All that portion of the column in front of them was 
 torn out as a fier -e wind tears a track through the trees, the 
 two bleeding ends striving helplessly to unite, the wagon train 
 being the ligature. But while Todd was still keeping his holes 
 in the ground a veritable furnace, Scott put torches to the 
 wagons and added to the terrors of the ambuscade the demor- 
 alization of a conflagration. Less the vehicles and seventy 
 wounded and dead men, the stricken remnant of a once dashing 
 column gained the friendly shelter of Kansas City. 
 
 Tae rifle pits remained. For days and days it was silent 
 there, and from the torn earth some grass began to grow. 
 Gregg would see what sort of a footing these gave a Guerrilla 
 who had some scruples about fighting at odds greater 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 117 
 
 than twenty to two. He came one evening late, with Haller 
 and Scott, and prepared to keep a single vigil at least upon the 
 lonesome water-course. There was a young moon. The night, 
 jubilant with singing things, seemed to dwell upon peace in 
 every chirp, or breeze, or song, or monotone. Nature was 
 glad ; its harmonies filled all space and its narcotism all the 
 senses. Even the Guerrillas felt the Katydid's droning opiate, 
 and the water's running lullaby. Some stretched themselves at 
 ease where the shadows were heaviest, and some yielding to 
 the witcheries of the hour let memory re-establish the past 
 and re-people it with faces, and vows, and pieces of rings. 
 All were silent. 
 
 Suddenly a pistol-shot from the south, a scattering volley, 
 and 'then the loud clatter of resounding hoofs transfigured the 
 dreamers ; the lotos leaves had become laurel. 
 
 Gregg had sent George Shepherd south along the road before 
 dismounting, and everything must be safe there. It was Shep- 
 herd's pistol shot that he had heard, and the galloping of 
 Shepherd's horse. Watching with all the eyes he had, and 
 especially alert and vigilant, this choice scout had not seen an 
 infantry line approaching him through the brush, however, nor 
 did he know that beyond a turn in the road three hundred 
 cavalrymen had ridden up, had dismounted, and were even now 
 marching forward to surprise the surprisers ; that the hunted 
 were hunting the hunters. But that he was a man of extraor- 
 dinary coolness and quickness, Shepherd must have fallen without 
 alarming his comrades. Infantry were all around and about him. 
 It looked to him strange afterwards, but he had not even heard 
 the fall of a footstep in the bushes or the breaking of a twig 
 among the undergrowth. All he understood then was the rising 
 up of a tall form close to his right stirrup, the leveling of a 
 gun barrel, and the short, sententious word "Surrender!" As 
 still as the creeping had been, it was yet no match for 
 Shepherd's splendid presence of mind. He threw himself 
 forward on his horse, shot the dismounted trooper in the breast 
 as he turned, took the fire of all who saw that the game was up, 
 and then at a long, swinging gallop rushed away to alarm his 
 comrades. That night saw a fight the whole war failed to 
 surpass with any stubborn combat. Especially to take a hand 
 against Quantreil and help drive him to the wall, Major 
 
118 NOTED GUEREILLAS, OH 
 
 Hubbard, of the Sixth Missouri Federal Cavalry, came up from 
 Clinton county. He was one of the best fighters the militia 
 produced. He was not afraid to charge ; he could stand up 
 square and take and give, man for man ; he saw only the soldier 
 in the Guerrilla ; he meant to get on Quantrell's track and keep 
 on it until he found him. 
 
 As he rode up gaily from the south some one met him north 
 of Harrisonville some one who knew of the rifle pits and de- 
 scribed accurately the whole lay of the land. Cavalry could 
 not operate against them, the spy said, but infantry might. 
 They were now held by about fifty Guerrillas. This was the 
 substance of the report Hubbard heard some few miles from the 
 ambuscade, and he began to make ready at once to carry it by 
 assault. Failing to silence the single picquet on guard in front 
 of him, he dashed ahead, firing fiercely when he reached the 
 range. Gregg did not return it until he was completely en- 
 veloped. Ignorant of the enemy's number, he cared not for 
 further enlightenment. It was first fight, and fight, and fight. 
 When the moon went down the fight was still raging. There 
 could be no maneuvering. Inside the rifle-pits were the Gueril- 
 las ; outside the militia. All were bent on killing. Gregg's 
 men spoke very little ; the Federals scarcely any more. Now 
 and then a fierce yell would usher in a savage rush, and once 
 or twice a bugle sounded. Gregg held on. One charge reached 
 even to his parapets, if such the earth could be called piled in 
 front of the trenches, but it found no lodgment. The beating 
 of a furious revolver rain full in their faces drove the militia 
 back. They seemed not to care for the horses ; if they knew 
 anything about them they did not molest them. Hubbard was 
 also a tenacious fighter, as well as a dashing one. He held on 
 to that wild night's work for three mortal hours, charging every 
 twenty minutes and encouraging his men by voice and example. 
 At last he hauled off and mounted, made a detour around 
 that vengeful spot hidden as a sinister thing in mid highway, 
 and hurried onward to Kansas City, leaving his dead, fifty-two 
 in all, to be buried by the citizens, and his wounded in every 
 house for a dozen miles. Gregg's wounded were only eight, 
 thanks to the excellent cover Todd had provided, and killed, 
 none at all. 
 
 These two blows, together with a sharp skirmish Quantrell 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 
 
 had with Burris further down in Cass county massed the de- 
 tached commands in pursuit of him and united them as a single 
 column for his destruction. Calling in every outlying scout or 
 squad in return and getting well together, Quantrell fell back 
 first to Big Blue, fighting. The chase was a long and a stern 
 one. Giving Todd ten men, Haller ten, Gregg ten, Scott ten, 
 and keeping ten himself, he made the hunt for him one long 
 ambuscade of two hundred miles. Tortuous, but terrible ; at 
 every ford a fight ; in every hollow a barricade ; on every hill- 
 top a volley. From Big Blue to Little Blue they chased this 
 lank, bronzed fox of the foray, bugles blowing all about him, 
 and the wild hallooing of the huntsmen coming ever on and on. 
 Away again from the Little Blue to King's, from King's to Dr. 
 Noland's the five detachments fighting and falling back as the 
 pendulum used to swing to and fro in the ancient clocks. Tired, 
 but still determined, Hubbard spoke up at last toPeabody: 
 "Who is this Quantrell you hunt so hard? man or devil, he 
 fights like a wild beast." "And he is; you found one of his 
 ' lairs, it seems." 
 
 Doubling back on the Little Blue lower down, and leading 
 the pursuing column only by an hour, Quantrell hungry from 
 much fasting and weary at that found twenty-three militia at 
 Crenshaw's bridge to dispute it. Twenty-three ! It was as 
 though a butcher's hand opened all of its bloody fingers at 
 once, fan-fashion, to brush from a slaughtered bullock a bunch 
 of buzzing blue flies. Sim Whitsett and Cole Younger led the 
 advance when the bridge was reached, and they stopped not to 
 count any numbers or any costs. On one side the river was 
 flight and fight; on the other rations and rest. "Altogether, 
 boys," the great voice of Younger roared out, and the bridge 
 shook, and the white splinters flew up from the planks and the 
 timbers there. It is not believed the militia knew their men. 
 The citizens said they seemed appalled at a rush that did not 
 even look up when their volley was fired, and broke for shelter 
 in every direction without reloading. Two escaped, and singu- 
 larly. One, a mere youth, had done Whitsett a good turn once, 
 and Whitsett saved him. The other, known to Cole Younger in 
 past days as a clever neighbor, reminded him of a favor con- 
 ferred the curing of a valuable horse and charging nothing 
 and Younger put upon him the sign of the Passover. 
 
120 NOTED (1UEERILLAS, OR 
 
 Down went the bridge after Quantrell was east of the Blue, 
 and up came that long Federal gallop that would not tire. 
 Food and rest came to hunted and hunters alike, but the race 
 was done. Quantrell left for the Lake Hills slowly the next 
 morning, and the Federals on a raft got over during the day 
 and followed on. The carbines rang the revolvers answered ; 
 they were at it again, fifty against a thousand. From the Lake 
 Hills to Johnson county the drive grew rapid. Now Quantrell, 
 now Haller, now Scott, now Gregg, now Todd if any man fell 
 out of the ranks he was shot out. No rest in Johnson county ; 
 none in Lafayette county. Halted at Warren's for a bit or two 
 of bread and corn, Quantrell was driven away ; at Graves' it 
 was worse ; at Wellington they gave him no rest ; down towards 
 Lexington he hadn't even time to water ; out south from Lex- 
 ington six miles it took all five of the chosen fighters to keep 
 the chase a stern one ; and back again to Wellington and west 
 by a forced night march, he gained some hours for a needed 
 bivouac. 
 
 Day had just broken over a brief bivouac and the men were 
 astir when some friendly citizen brought news to Quantrell of a 
 reconnoitering party occupying Wellington. They were militia 
 but not connected in any manner with the column in pursuit. 
 They might be cut to pieces. To this hour it is not clearly 
 known what business they had in Wellington. Numbering 
 seventy-five, unacquainted with the country, ostensibly aimless 
 and objectless, they poked about the town professing to be after 
 Quantrell, and they found him. He tried to get between them 
 and Lexington, but they were too quick for that. As he 
 reached the main road the rear guard was just disappearing; 
 then came the charge and the rout. One volley only and a 
 great rush. Blood and bottom told in that furious three mile 
 race. Quantrell's own shooting was superb ; six saddles were 
 emptied by him, five by Blunt, four by Haller, four by Younger, 
 three by Poole, three by Fletch Taylor, three by George Shep- 
 herd, and two each by Todd, Gregg, Whitsett, Coger, Hicks 
 George, Scott, and six or eight others who were riding swift, 
 fresh horses. Of the seventy-five ten alone got back unhurt. It 
 was a blow that carried terror and horror with it. People talked 
 of it as they talked of something sent by God some pestilence, 
 or drouth, or famine. Dead men along the road were gathered up 
 
1 HE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 12 J 
 
 for a week, and for years belated travelers have told how, when the 
 night turns, there might be heard again the shots, the shrieks, 
 the infernal din and the swift rush of insatiate horsemen that 
 stopped for no prayer and touched no bridle rein until for the 
 want of fuel the fire had burned itself out. 
 
 Too late either to* pity or save the slaughtered Wellington 
 detachment, the pursuing Federal column might avenge them 
 perhaps and put to the credit side a propitiation or two worthy 
 the comradeship of soldiers. The dust was still heavy upon the 
 garments of the Guerrillas and the foam white upon their horses, 
 when Peabody's pursuit began to thunder again in the rear of 
 Quantrell. It pushed him back again through Wellington; 
 back across the Sni, whose bridge he burned ; back through all 
 the open country beyond, and still backward and backward. 
 For five days and five nights Quantrell had been running and 
 fighting. Out of fifty men, twenty-two had been hurt some 
 badly and some not so badly. They staid, however; they reeled 
 in the saddle every now and then, but they fought. Heroic 
 Scott, with a minie ball through his thigh, from the Wellington 
 rout, kept his squad of ten intact and led them to the end. 
 
 At Pink Hill it was no better. In his front, near the Black- 
 water ford of the Sni, Burris was waiting for Quantrell. Todd 
 dashed at the left flank of this not over-bold command and made 
 it huddle, and then away again southwest for Big Creek, Dave 
 Poole leading the rear and Cole Younger the advance. On the 
 divide, between Big Creek and the Sni, the Guerrillas were 
 hemmed at last. Quick work had to be done. If the two mill- 
 stones were permitted to come together, they would be ground 
 to powder. Quantrell massed his men behind the divide a 
 bold ridge that rose up abruptly from an otherwise comparatively 
 level country, and made them a little speech: "Men/' he said, 
 "you see how it is as plainly as I do. It is my business to get 
 you out of this, and I will get you out. Just over the ridge 
 yonder you can see them from the summit five hundred Fed- 
 erals, your old friends under Burris, are ccming up to hold you 
 in check until Peabody's column arrives. Then, instead of ten 
 to one, there will be thirty to one. We shall strike Burris first, 
 and trust to luck." 
 
 A man of very few words and very few figures of speech, 
 Quantrell arrayed the Guerrillas just as he wanted them, and 
 
122 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 waited behind the ridge. He kept Todd near to him, and in the 
 rear he stationed Haller and Scott. Gregg was to watch the 
 centre of the line, for he meant to charge in line with double- 
 intervals, thus giving free play to the revolvers. 
 
 Burris was probably two hundred yards below the summit of 
 the divide w hen Quantrell crowned its crest at a walk and broke 
 at sight of him into a gallop. The gallop, in an instant, was a 
 fierce run, the whole front of the charging line wrapping itself 
 in a powder cloud from its incessant pistol vollies. Abreast of 
 one another, yet preserving perfect intervals, Quantrell, Gregg, 
 Todd, Younger, Tom Talley, Poole, Hicks George, Sim Whit- 
 sett, Haller, Ki Harrison, and John Coger, struck the Federal 
 line about the same time, and such an onset meant the riving of 
 its ranks as a hurricane rives the timber. Then the strange 
 spectacle was presented of a regiment cut half in two, both 
 ends bloody, and between them something that looked like a 
 lurid wedge driven there by a power the dense smoke made in- 
 visible. 
 
 .But Quantrell did not tarry. Harrison was badly wounded 
 in the charge, Hicks George was wounded, George Shep- 
 herd was shot, Quantrell himself was wounded again, 
 Todd had blood drawn from him twice, Poole was shot and 
 Scriviner was killed. To the rear the nearest prairie was black 
 with pursuing Federals. Night came on, and Burris followed 
 after, but far behind. Reaching the heavy timber of Big Creek 
 with scarcely an unwounded man in his command, Quantrell 
 disbanded for a little rest and medical attention. By twos and 
 threes, in squads, singly, the Guerrillas went their way as phan- 
 toms. There alert, stalwart, armed, soldierly in every move- 
 ment they seemed under the trees and in the uncertain light a 
 host. Look again ! The trees are there, the dark waters flow 
 rapidly under them and away, the watch fires burn low, no forms 
 flit there, the silence is supreme, were they ever real? Had 
 they ever flesh and blood and bone and sinew? Spectres, did 
 they not go back into the unknown ? Illusions, why trouble the 
 imagination with a mirage that may never come again? 
 
 A great roaring laugh awoke the echoes of Big Creek the 
 morning after the night of the disbandment, and Hubbard 
 bantered Peabody : "Here we are, Colonel, without a trail or 
 a track. Has this man Quantrell of yours gone into the earth 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 123 
 
 OP into the water? Where is his hole ; and has he pulled his 
 hole in after him? Our work, it appears to me, is pretty well 
 over." "His old trick,*' replied Peabody, curtly, "he has dis- 
 banded." "And so should we," rejoined Hubbard, in evident 
 disgust at the result of the whole campaign. "Any one 
 thousand men that can't take fifty ain't worth the pipe clay that 
 rubs up their sabre-belts. Your Quantrell is either a myth or 
 a devil which?" "He is both," and Peabody and Hubbard 
 shook hands and parted. 
 
 Ostensibly unorganized, the Guerrillas notwithstanding failed 
 to be quiet. Indeed the wild life they had deliberately 
 chosen made successive days of peace absolutely impossible. 
 In the old fashion hammer and tongs they were at it again 
 in less than forty-eight hours. Todd struck an isolated scout 
 on the main Harrisonville and Warrensburg road and charged 
 it as he always charged. It was a running fight of eight miles, 
 wherein no quarter was given and not much asked. Twenty- 
 two Federals fell along the roadside and the balance of the- 
 detachment, eighteen, reached Harrisonville through sheer hard 
 running. 
 
 Charley or Ki Harrison, a tall, swarthy, extremely silent, 
 uncommunicative man lived in Denver City when the war com- 
 menced, and went South early. Colorado bred a set of grave, 
 inflexible borderers, who whether Federal or Confederate - 
 left their hand writing pretty legibly written whenever or 
 wherever they stood in battle. Harrison practiced that kind of 
 revolver shooting which consisted of instantaneous execution. 
 Between- the act of drawing and the act of firing, if it took 
 longer than two seconds, he argued that no man excelled anoth- 
 er as an expert. For hours and hours he worked at the theory. 
 Erecting at twenty paces the outlines of a human figure, and 
 indicating by smaller divisions the eyes, the mouth, the fore- 
 head, the heart, the bowels, and the lungs, he would labor with 
 something of a monomania to excel all in the rapidity of the 
 process by which he got his revolver from its scabbard, and 
 the accuracy of its fire afterwards. Carroll Wood came into 
 Missouri with Harrison. He too had been both a mountaineer 
 and a plainsman. So, also, did Captain William West, that 
 man called by Richardson, of the mournful McFarland memory, 
 "the swarthy Adonis of the Plains." Each of these men had 
 
124 NOTED aUEBBILLAS, OR 
 
 Cither a stern or tragical beginning. Wood, standing at the 
 back of some friends fighting in the streets of Denver, had re- 
 flected upon him many of the more sombre lights of the quarrel, 
 and felt to lay hands upon him that most monstrous of all 
 organizations of brutality and cowardice, a western Vigilance 
 Committee. It was ten against two hundred. Word went 
 instantly to John C. Moore, then editor, ex-mayor and lawyer, 
 that the toils had closed over Carroll. He neither asked the 
 right nor the wrong of the arrest-^he simply saw the danger ; he 
 did not discuss the philosophy or the morality of the proceeding 
 he only informed himself that they had his friend. As he 
 'hurried he buckled on a revolver. Wood's ten comrades were 
 about him and nearest to him, but the peril was imminent. He 
 was known to be a rebel, "dead game," not over given to take 
 a slight or a taunt, and the Vigilantes hated him ; the hour had 
 come to cast up and count the score and to settle it. "Hang 
 him!" two hundred bass throats roared out that volumned, 
 ferocious roar which has in it the malignity of the faction and 
 the selfishness of the born coward on top through circumstances 
 and numbers. Moore was not a second too soon. The rope 
 was being knotted and noosed. Woo4, just a little pale from 
 the swift blood that flowed so fiercely, lifted up his undaunted 
 eyes to all the hungry faces in front of him and gazed thereon, 
 steadily but superciliously. Splendid scorn might be all that 
 death intended to leave to him at the finish. Moore put himself 
 before the prisoner and the wild beasts showing their teeth and 
 licking their lips, and spoke to them. That he spoke nobly and 
 eloquently it is not necessary to assert. That he spoke practi- 
 cally and adroitly the sequel made more than manifest. Best of 
 all, however, it was the peroration which exhibited the man. 
 "I have now done," he said quietly in conclusion, "what the 
 duty of the advocate required of me ; it is the duty of the friend 
 which I do next." As he finished he came down from the 
 stand and placed himself alongside of Wood, his revolver 
 in readiness and his resolution taken. It is enough to know 
 that there was no hanging. Wood lives to-day, a factor in the 
 great peaceful body of thriving citizens, the past a memory that 
 cannot die, and his acts therein fashioned of soldierly episodes 
 from Lexington, 1861, to Newtonia, 1864. 
 
 West came to Gen. Jeff. Thompson scarred from a bowie-knife 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 125 
 
 duel that had left him little better than dead. On the plains with 
 a gentleman named Tutt, from St. Louis, a dispute commenced 
 between them which ended in a challenge from West. Tutt ac- 
 cepted, choosing bowie-knives. The arena was a circle with a 
 diameter of twenty feet, the combatants stripping to the waist. 
 Each man was an athlete. Tutt cut his antagonist seventeen, 
 times, the last one being the worst one, getting in return only a 
 few slashes that did not go to the hollow. Die, repeated the 
 doctors in indignation at a question so clearly out of order of 
 course West would die. But he didn't. Nay, more, the man 
 got better, and better, and finally rode away southward toward 
 where Jeff. Thompson was writing impossible proclamations and , 
 paddling improbable canoes. Swarthy, splendidly formed, a 
 horseman who rode like a swan swims, long-haired like Absalom, 
 and just as fated, the end came speedily. Tarrying late one 
 afternoon beyond the picquets, and riding homeward under the 
 moon, the soldier who halted him was furiously charged. West 
 went at him in sheer wantonness no doubt, but the sentinal gave 
 him his death wound. As the tide turned, and the night had 
 fallen, a perfect peace came upon the pallid man, lying just this, 
 side the wonderful river. Not a white dimple stirred among the 
 corn ; not a low ripple shivered through the leaves ; flooded with 
 the moonlight, even the cattle slept ; the very air seemed as if 
 it had no breath of earth to stain it. "West!" something 
 called. Moore, who sat beside the dying man, heard no word ; 
 McDowell, who held the weak hand, knew no whisper in the 
 room. "West!" "Here," and the pallid face lit up like a sun^ 
 beam had touched it, and the perfect form lifted itself just a lit- 
 tle: "Who called? Here, Colonel, and ready for duty!" Hush! 
 An angel might have been by the dead soldier. In this world 
 there are touching illusions that perhaps in the other are sub- 
 lime realities, and following the angel call he had gone where 
 the snowy blossoms never wither on the everlasting hills, and 
 the autumn never braids its scarlet fringing through the green of 
 eternal summers. 
 
 Harrison, on a larger scale, meant to try that rigid revolver 
 practice of his. Having forty men of his own, and being rein- 
 forced by twenty men more under Lieutenant William Haller, 
 he rode down in the neighborhood of Sibley, nearly on the line 
 between Jackson and Lafayette counties. Richard Chiles joined 
 
126 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 him with ten men more, brother of that Kit Chiles who had 
 fallen in the front of Quantrell's splendid charge at Independ- 
 ence, and who in surviving his brother had received fate's sim- 
 ple lease to fight a little longer. Either in combat was a lion. 
 Chiles led the assault and was shot down. Two hundred Fed- 
 erals in the houses of the town held their own and more, for 
 they repulsed five separate and distinct attacks, and forced Har- 
 rison at last to forego the ugly job of getting them out. As he 
 fell back he counted the costs. Six men were dead and thirty- 
 seven wounded a forbidding aggregate. Revolver practice 
 against brick walls amounted to naught. It was the old les- 
 son, bought by Harrison for a good round price, that hard fight- 
 ing is not always hard sense. As a Guerrilla, he figured no 
 more in the history of the border, but over his last days there is 
 even yet, as they are recalled, something of the savage light of a 
 massacre. 
 
 Shelby was the great banyan-tree, metaphorically speaking, 
 of the Guerrillas. They sat under the protecting shade of his 
 constantly expanding reputation, and were content. No evil 
 after-things followed them there. No sleuth-hound conscription 
 put its nose upon the track that led to the camp of the Iron 
 Brigade. No department oflacials, or district officials examined 
 into the bloody annals of these migratory people, going South 
 in winter and North when the spring came. In addition, 
 Shelby was their great high priest. They prayed to him, con- 
 fessed to him, remembered him often in wills and testaments, 
 furnished him spies on the eve of operations and scouts in their 
 consummations, helped his flanks in the raiding season, made 
 Missouri familiar to him as Arkansas, and piloted the way to 
 many a crushing overthrow as the pilot-fishes pilot the sharks to 
 many a stricken squadron. 
 
 Captain Harrison believed he could do some excellent service 
 for the Confederacy in Colorado. He believed that he could 
 recruit at least a regiment of Colorado Guerrillas who would in- 
 habit the plains, live like the Indians, destroy supply trains, 
 make the overland routes to California impracticable, eliminate 
 from the military economy of western occupation the frontier 
 post system, enlist the savages to fight against the United States, 
 and break the only link that bound California and the Union 
 together. This was Harrison's plan. It was bold but not feas- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 127 
 
 ible, and Shelby told him so. He pleaded jusl the same, how- 
 ever, to be permitted to try, and Shelby finally prevailed upon 
 Hindman to grant him the authority. That Colorado carte 
 Uanchu was his death warrant. Harrison reached the territory 
 of the Osage Indians with forty-five men and entered it 
 at a rush. His object was to waste no useless time in fighting 
 there, nor anywhere until the hour of opportunity. Assailed in 
 front and rear, hemmed in, overwhelmed, hunted on all sides, 
 driven from position to position, forty-four of the forty-six men 
 died at bay, selling dearly all that was left to each his life. 
 Two alone escaped. One of these, Colonel Warner Lewis, lives 
 to day in Fulton, Callaway county, and the other Clark Hock- 
 ensmith fell fighting like the hero he was over QuantrelPs 
 wounded body in Kentucky. Lewis left Harrison dying as the 
 Indian always dies killing to the last. Behind his dead horse, 
 both legs broken, a jaw shattered, and four fingers of his left hand 
 gone, he shot while a load was left in a single pistol. There 
 came finally a rush and a volley then a great stillness. Harri- 
 son had been the last to go, and it had taken him three-quarters 
 of an hour to die. This side the judgment day no one will ever 
 know what heroic things were done on that last march through 
 fire and savages a border Calvary of fifteen hours. Perhaps 
 some touching talk was had. Husbands were there who were 
 never to see their wives any more. Fathers were there who in 
 the dreams of the past night's bivouac had heard the prattle of 
 blue-eyed children. It was terrible to die so, but they died. 
 Six months later, as a strong Confederate column marched 
 through where they fell, more than twenty bodies, shriveled by 
 wind and weather, claimed even then the last sad rites of com- 
 radeship. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MARCH SOUTH. 
 
 WINTER had come and some snow had fallen. There were 
 no longer any more leaves ; nature had nothing more to 
 do with the ambuscades. Some bitter nights, as a foretaste of 
 bitterer nishts to follow, reminded Quantrell that it was time to 
 migrate. Most of the wounded men were well again. All of the 
 dismounted had found serviceable horses. On the twenty-second 
 of October, 1862, a quiet muster on the banks of the Little 
 Blue revealed at inspection nearly all of the old faces and forms, 
 with a sprinkling here and there of new ones. Some few, too 
 hard hit in that pitiless pursuit to ride so early, were still 
 awaiting the balm of a much bedeviled Gilead. Quantrell 
 counted them two by two as the Guerrillas Pressed up in line, 
 and front rank and rear raak there were just seventy-eight. 
 On the morrow they were moving southward. That old road 
 running between Harrisonville and Warrensburg was always to 
 the Guerrillas a road of fire, and here again on their march 
 toward Arkansas, and eight miles east of Harrisonville, did 
 Todd in the advance strike a Federal scout of thirty militia 
 cavalrymen. They were Missourians and led by a Lieutenant 
 Satterlee. To say Todd is to say charge. To associate him 
 with something that will illustrate him, is to put torch and 
 powder magazine together. It was the old, old story. On one 
 side a furious rush, on the other panic and imbecile flight. 
 Emphatically a four mile race, it ended with this for a score : 
 Todd, killed, six; Boon Schull, five; Fletch. Taylor, three;. 
 George Shepherd, two ; John Coger, one ; Sim. Whitsett, one ; 
 James Little, one; George Maddox, one total, twenty;, 
 wounded, none. Even in leaving, what sinister farewells these 
 Guerrillas were taking 1 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 129 
 
 The second night out Quantrell stopped over beyond Dayton, 
 in Cass county, and ordered a bivouac for the evening. There 
 came to his camp here a good-looking man, clad like a citizen, 
 who had business to transact, and who knew how to state it. 
 He was not fat, he was heavy. He laughed a great deal, and 
 when he laughed he showed a perfect set of faultlessly white 
 teeth. If that smile should by any chance become preter- 
 naturally fixed, the mouth that before it was winning in repose, 
 would certainly become after it forbidding. He was young. 
 An aged man is a thinking ruin; this one did not appear to 
 think he felt and enjoyed. He was tired of dodging about in 
 the brush, he said, and he believed he would fight a little. 
 Here, there and everywhere the Federals had hunted him and 
 shot at him, and he was weary of so much persecution. Would 
 Quantrell let him become a Guerrilla? "Your name?" asked 
 the chief. The recruit winced under the abrupt question just 
 the slightest of an almost imperceptible degree, and Quantrell 
 saw the start. Attracted by something of novelty in the whole 
 performance, a crowd collected. Quantrell, without looking at 
 the new comer, appeared yet to be analyzing him. Suddenly 
 he spoke up: "I have seen you before ; where?" "Nowhere." 
 'Think again. I have seen you in Lawrence, Kansas." The 
 face was a murderer's face now, softened by a woman's blush. 
 There came to it such a look of mingled fear, indignation, and 
 cruel eagerness that Gregg, standing next to him and nearest to 
 him, laid his hand on his revolver. "Stop," said Quantrell, 
 motioning to Gregg, "do not harm him, but disarm him." 
 Two revolvers were taken from his person, and a pocket pistol 
 a derringer. While being searched, the white teeth shone in 
 a smile that was almost placid. "You suspicion me," he said, 
 so calmly that his words sounded as if spoken under the vault 
 of some echoing dome, "but I have never been in Lawrence in 
 my life." 
 
 Quantrell was lost in thought again, with the strange man- 
 standing up smiling in the midst of all the band-- watching him 
 with eyes that were blue at times and grey at times, and always 
 gentle. More wood was put upon the bivouac fire, and the 
 flames grew ruddy. In their vivid light the young man might 
 not be really so young. He had also a thick neck, great 
 broad shoulders, and something of sensuality about the chin. 
 9 
 
130 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 The back of his skull was bulging and prominent. Here and 
 there in his hair were little white streaks. Because there were such 
 bloom and color in his cheeks, one could not remember these. 
 Lacking the consolation of tears, nature had given him perfect 
 health. Quantrell still tried to make out that face, to find a 
 name for that Sphinx in his front, to recall some time or circum- 
 stance, or place that made obscure things clear, and at last the 
 past returned to him in the light of a swift revealment. "I 
 have it all DOW," he said, "and you are a Jayhawker. The 
 name is immaterial. I have seen you at Lawrence ; I have seen 
 you at Lane's headquarters ; I have been a soldier myself with 
 you ; we have done duty together but I mean to hang j^ou this 
 hour, by g d!" Unabashed- the threatened man drew his 
 breath hard and strode a step towards Quantrell. Gregg put 
 a pistol to his head: "Keep back. Can't you talk where you 
 are? Do you mean to say anything?" 
 
 The old smile again ! Could nothing ever drive away that 
 smile nothing ever keep those white teeth from shining? 
 "You ask me if I want to talk, just as if I had anything to 
 talk about. What can I say ? What must I do to prove myself 
 sincere? I tell you that I have been hunted, proscribed, shot 
 at, bedeviled, driven up and down, around and about, until I am 
 tired. I want to kill somebody ; I want to know what sleeping 
 a sound night's sleep means." QnantrelFs grave voice broke 
 calmly in: "Bring a rope I" Blunt brought it. "Make an 
 end fast, Sergeant." The end was made fast to a low-lying 
 limb; in the firelight the noose expanded. "Up with him, 
 men." Four stalwart hands seized him as a vise. He did not 
 even defend himself. His flesh beneath their grip felt soft and 
 rounded. The face, although all the bloom was there, hard- 
 ened viciously like the murderer's face it was. " So you 
 mean to get rid of me in that way? it is like you, Quantrell. I 
 know you, but you do not know me. I have been hunting you 
 for three long years. You killed my brother in Kansas ; you 
 killed others there, your comrades. I did not know, till after- 
 wards, what kind of a devil we had around our very messes a 
 devil who prowled about the camp fires and shot soldiers in the 
 night that broke bread with him in the day. Can you guess 
 what brought me here?" 
 
 The shifting phases of this uncommon episode attracted all ; 
 
THE WABFAItE OF THE BOEDER 131 
 
 even Quantrell himself was interested. The prisoner osten- 
 sible recruit no longer threw off all disguise, and defied those 
 who meant to hang him up. " You did well to disarm me," he 
 said, addressing himself to Gregg, "for I intended to kill your 
 Captain. Everything has been against me, however. At the 
 Tate House he escaped ; at Clark's it was no better ; we had him 
 surrounded at Swearingen's and his men cut him out ; we ran him 
 for two hundred miles and he disappeared devil that he is, or 
 in league with the devil and now, after playing my last card 
 and staking everything upon it, what is left to me? A dog's 
 death and a brother unavenged. No matter ; it's luck. Do 
 your worst." As he finished he folded his arms across his 
 breast and stood stolid as the huge trees overhead. Some pity 
 began visibly to affect the men. Gregg turned away and went 
 out beyond the firelight. Even Quan trail's face softened, but 
 only for a moment. When he spoke again to Blunt, his voice 
 was so changed and harsh that it was scarcely recognized. "He 
 is one of the worst of a band that I failed to make a finish of 
 before the war came, but what escapes to-day is dragged up by 
 the net to-morrow. If I had not recognized him he would have 
 killed me. I do not hang him for that, however. I hang him 
 because the whole race and breed to which he belongs should be 
 exterminated. Sergeant, do your duty." Blunt, by a dexter- 
 ous movement, slipped the noose about the prisoner's neck, and 
 t'.ie four men who had at first disarmed him, tightened it. To 
 the last the bloom abode with his cheeks. He did not pray ; 
 neither did he make plaint nor moan. The fitful firelight flared 
 up once and fixed his outline clear against the shadowy back- 
 ground ; a sudden breeze made the boughs moan a little ; no 
 man spoke a word ; something like a huge pendulum oscillated 
 as though spun by a strong hand, quivered once or twice, and 
 then, swinging to and fro and regularly, stopped forever. Just at 
 this moment, three quick, hot vollies and close together, rolled 
 in from the northern picquet post, and the camp was on its feet. 
 If one had looked then at the dead man's face, something like 
 a smile might have been seen there, fixed and sinister, and be- 
 neath it the white, sharp teeth. James Williams had accepted 
 his fate like a hero. At mortal feud with Quantrell, and living 
 only that he might meet him face to face in battle, he had 
 joined every regiment, volunteered upon every scout, rode fore- 
 
132 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OK 
 
 most in every raid, and fought hardest in every combat. It was 
 not to be. Quantrell was leaving Missouri. A great gulf was 
 about to separate them. One desperate effort novv, and years 
 of toil and peril at a single blow might be well rewarded. He 
 struck it and it cost him his life. To this day the whole tragic 
 episode is sometimes recalled and discussed along the border. 
 
 The bivouac was rudely broken up. Three hundred Federal 
 cavalry, crossing QuantrelPs trail late in the afternoon, had fol- 
 lowed it until the darkness fell, halted an hour for supper, and 
 then again, at a good round trot, rode straight upon Haller 
 holding the rear of the movement southward. He fought at 
 the outpost half an hour. Behind huge trees, he would not fall 
 back until his flanks were in danger. All the balance of the 
 night through he fought them thus, making six splendid 
 charges and holding on to every position until his grasp was 
 broken loose by sheer hammering. At Grand River the pursuit 
 ended, and Quantrell swooped down upon Lamar, in Barton 
 county, where a Federal garrison held the court house and the 
 houses nearest to it. He attacked, but got worsted; he at- 
 tacked again and lost one of his best men ; he attacked the 
 third time and made no better headway. Baffled, finally, and 
 hurt more than was necessary in any aspect of the situation, he 
 abandoned the town and resumed, unmolested, the road to the 
 south. From Jackson county to the Arkansas line the whole 
 country was swarming with militia, and but for the fact that 
 every Guerrilla was clad in Federal clothing, the march would 
 have been an incessant battle. As it was it will never be 
 known how many isolated Federals, mistaking Quantrell' s men 
 for comrades of other regiments not on duty with them, fell 
 into traps that never gave up their victims alive. Near Cass- 
 ville, in Barry county, twenty-two were killed thus. They 
 were coming up from Cassvilie, and were meeting the Guerrillas, 
 who were going south. The order given by Quantrell was a 
 most simple but a most murderous one. By the side of each 
 Federal in the approaching column a Guerrilla was to range 
 himself, engage him in conversation, and then, at a given sig- 
 nal, blow his brains out. Quantrell gave the signal promptly, 
 shooting the militiaman assigned to him through the middle of 
 the forehead, and where upon their horses twenty-two confident 
 men laughed and talked in comrade fashion a second before, 
 
JAMES YOUNGER. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 133 
 
 nothing remained of the unconscious detachment, literally exter- 
 minated, save a few who struggled in agony upon the ground 
 and a mass of terrified anrj plunging horses. Not a Guerrilla 
 missed his mark. It was as though a huge hand had suddenly 
 opened and wiped clean out a column of figures upon a black- 
 board. This minute instinct with joy and life, the next dead, 
 and their faces in the dust. 
 
 Quantrell found Shelby at Cane Hill, Arkansas, and reported 
 to him. Shelby attached the Guerrillas to the regiment com- 
 manded by Colonel David Shanks, and busied himself so much 
 with preparations for the great fight that was to come off at 
 Prairie Grove that he saw them rarely until they left him again. 
 
 Cole Younger remained in Missouri, and with him a formida- 
 ble squad of the old Guerrillas, who were not in a condition to 
 ride when Quantrell moved southward. Younger was ex- 
 ceedingly enterprising. He fought almost daily. He did 
 not seem to be affected by the severity of the weather. 
 At night and on a single blanket he slept often in the snow. 
 While it was too bitter cold for Federal scouting-parties to 
 leave their comfortable cantonments or Federal garrisons to 
 poke their noses be} T ond the snug surroundings of their well 
 furnished barracks, the Guerrillas rode everywhere and waylaid 
 roads, bridges, lines of couriers, and routes of travel. Six mail 
 carriers disappeared in one week between Independence and 
 Kansas City. A load of hay to be safe had to have with it a 
 company of cavalry. A messenger bearing an order required a 
 company as an escort. Quantrell was gone, but Quautrell's 
 mantle had fallen upon one worthy to succeed him. 
 
 In a month after Quantrell' s arrival in Arkansas, George Todd 
 returned to Jackson county, bringing with him Fletch Taylor, 
 Boon Schull, James Little, Andy Walker and James Reed. 
 Todd and Younger came together by that blood-hound instinct 
 which all men have who hunt or are hunted. Todd had 
 scarcely made himself known to the Guerrillas in Jackson 
 county before he hud commenced to kill militia. A foraging 
 party from Independence were gathering corn from a field 
 belonging to Daniel White, a most worthy citizen of the vicin- 
 ity, when Todd and Younger broke in upon it, shot five flown in 
 the field and put the balance to flight. The next day, Novem- 
 ber 30, Younger having with him Joshua and Job McCockle, 
 
134 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 and Thomas Talley, met four of Jentrison's regiment face to 
 face in the neighborhood of the County Poor House. Younger, 
 who had a most extraordinary voice, called out loud enough to be 
 beard a mile: "You are four and we are four; stand until we 
 come up." Instead of standing, however, the Jayhawkers 
 turned about and dashed off as rapidly as possible, followed by 
 Younger and his men. Excellently mounted, the race lasted 
 fully three miles before either party won or lost. At last the 
 Guerrillas gained and kept gaining. Three of the four Jay- 
 hawkers were finally shot from their saddles, while the fourth 
 escaped by superior riding and superior running. 
 
 Younger had now with him George Wigginton, John 
 McCockle, Job McCockle, Tom. Talley, Zach. Traber, Nathan 
 Kerr, John Barker, Dave Hilton, William Hulse, Dr. Hale, Ike 
 Basham, George Clayton, Joseph Hardin and Oath Hinton. 
 Albert Cunningham, another Guerrilla leader of a squad, had a 
 few men William Runnels, Jasper Rodes, John Hays, Noah 
 Webster, Daniel Williams, Edward Hinks and Sam. Constable. 
 Todd, retaining with him those brought up from Arkansas, kept 
 adding to them all who, either from choice or necessity, were 
 forced to take refuge in the brush. He argued that a man who 
 did not want' to fight and was forced to fight, made most gener- 
 ally a desperate fight when he got into it, Whenever he could 
 hear of a citizen being robbed or plundered of property, or 
 insulted in any manner, he always managed to recruit him into 
 his band and make of him in a very short time a most formida- 
 ble Guerrilla. . 
 
 Todd, never happy except on the war path, suggested to 
 Younger and Cunningham a raid into Kansas. West of Little 
 Santa Fe, always debatable if not dangerous ground, thirty 
 Guerrillas met sixty-two Jayhawkers. It was a prairie fight, brief, 
 bloody, but finished at a gallop. Todd's tactics the old yell 
 and the old rush swept everything. A revolver in each hand, 
 the bridle rein in the teeth, the horses at a full run, the indi- 
 vidual rider firing right and left this is the way the Guerrillas 
 charged. Such was their horsemanship, and such the terrible 
 accuracy of their fire that never in all the history of the war did 
 a Federal line, man for man, withstand an onset. Two to one 
 even did not make it much better, and with the exception of the 
 Colorado troops Quantrell scarcely ever hesitated a moment 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 135 
 
 about attacking an enemy who held against him the enormous 
 odds in battle of three and four to one. 
 
 The sixty-two Jayhawkers fought better than most of the 
 militia had been in the habit of fighting, but they would not 
 stand up to the work at revolver range. When Todd charged 
 them furiously as soon as he came in sight of them, they stood 
 a volley at a hundred yards and returned it ; but not a closer 
 grapple. Reinforced after an hour of running and fighting by 
 one hundred and fifty additional Jayhawkers, they in turn be- 
 came the aggressors and drove Todd across a large prairie and 
 into some heavy timber. It was while holding the rear with six 
 men that Cole Younger was attacked by fifty-two and literally 
 run over. Every man among the covering party was wounded 
 but none mortally. In the midst of the melee bullets coming 
 like hailstones in summer weather John McDowell's horse 
 went down, the rider under him and badly hit. He cried out to 
 Younger for help. Hurt himself, and almost overwhelmed, 
 Younger dismounted, however, under fire, rescued McDowell, 
 and brought him safe back from the furious crush, killing as he 
 ran for succor a Federal soldier whose impetuous horse had car- 
 ried him beyond Younger and McDowell struggling in the road 
 together. Afterwards Younger was betrayed and by the man 
 to save whose life he had risked his own. 
 
 Dividing again, and operating in different localities, Todd, 
 Younger, and Cunningham carried the terror of the Guerrilla 
 name through all the border counties of Kansas and Missouri. 
 Every day and sometimes twice a day from December 3d to De- 
 cember 18th, these three fought some scouting party or attacked 
 some picquet post. At the crossing of the Big Blue, on the 
 road to Kansas City the place where the former bridge had 
 been burnt by Quantrell Todd surprised six militia, killed them 
 all, and then hung them up on a long pole, resting at either end 
 upon forks, just as hogs are hung up in the county after slaugh- 
 tering time. In the morning they were frozen hard as iron. So 
 bold, in fact, did they become, and so unsparing, that as bitter 
 as the weather was the Federals at Kansas City began to get 
 ready to drive them away from their lines of communication. 
 Three heavy columns were sent out to scour the country. Sur- 
 prising Cunningham in camp on Big Creek, they killed a splen- 
 did soldier, Will Freeman, and drove the rest of the Guerrillas 
 
136 NOTED GUEEEILLA8, OR 
 
 back into Jackson county after a running fight of twenty-seven 
 miles. 
 
 Todd, joining himself quickly to Younger, ambuscaded the 
 column hunting for him, and in a series of combats between the 
 Little Blue and Kansas City, killed forty-seven of the pursuers 
 and captured five wagons and thirty-three head of horses. 
 There was a lull again in marching and counter-marching, the 
 winter got colder and colder, and some deep snows fell. Christ- 
 mas had come and the Guerrillas would have a Christmas frolic. 
 Nothing bolder and braver exists to-day upon the records of 
 either side in the civil war, than this so-called Christmas frolic. 
 Col. Henry Younger, father of Coleman Younger, was one 
 of the most respected citizens of Western Missouri. A stalwart 
 pioneer of Jackson county, fourteen children were born to him 
 and his noble wife, a true Christian woman and a ver- 
 itable and blessed mother in Israel. A politician of the 
 old school ; practical and incorruptible ; bold in the expres- 
 sion of his opinions and ardent in their support; kind 
 neighbor, liberal citizen, and steadfast friend, Colonel 
 Younger for a number of years was a Judge of the 
 County Court of Jackson county, and for several terms a 
 member of the State Legislature. In 1858, he left Jackson 
 county for Cass, and dealt largely in stock. He was also an ex- 
 tensive farmer, an enterprising merchant, and the keeper of one 
 of the best and most popular livery stables in the West, located 
 in Harrisonville, the county seat of Cass county. His blooded 
 horses were very superior. He had two farms of six hundred 
 acres each, that were in a high state of cultivation, and he gen- 
 erally had on hand for speculating purposes ready money to the 
 amount of from $6,000 to $10,000. 
 
 On one of Jennison's periodical raids, in the fall of 1862, he 
 sacked and burned Harrisonville. Col. Younger, although a 
 staunch Union man and known to be such, was made to lose 
 heavily. Jennison and his officers the officers on all occasions 
 being more rapacious than the privates took from him $4,000 
 worth of buggies, carriages and hacks, and forty head of blooded 
 horses, worth at a low average $500 apiece. Then the balance 
 of his property that was perishable and yet not moveable, was 
 burned. The intention also was to kill Col. Younger, upon the 
 principle that dead men could tell no tales, but he escaped with 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 137 
 
 difficulty and made his way into Independence. Spies were on 
 his track. In that reign of hate and frenzy along the border, 
 men were as often murdered for money as for patriotism. Jen- 
 nison was told that Col. Younger was rich, and that he inva- 
 riably carried with him large sums of money. A plan was 
 formed immediately to kill him. Twenty cut-throats were 
 organized as a band under a Jayhawker named Whalley, and set 
 to watch his every movement. They dogged him to Independ- 
 ence, from Independence to Kansas City, and from Kansas City 
 down again into Cass county. Coming upon him at last in an 
 isolated place, and within a few miles of Harrisonville, they 
 riddled his body, rifled his pockets, and left the corpse, stark 
 and partially stripped, by the roadside. 
 
 The fire and torment of persecution did not end here. The 
 mother and orphan children were driven from Harrisonville. 
 She sought refuge at her farm in Jackson county, but the blood- 
 hounds followed her. There was scarcely a day but what she 
 was robbed of something, until at last there was nothing left. 
 At the muzzles of their pistols, finally, and when all was gone, 
 they forced her to set fire to her own house. She did it for the 
 sake of her children, because she believed that unless it were 
 done her life would be taken, and the homestead to her was 
 nothing in comparison to the comfort that would still be left to 
 her if her life was spared to watch over her little ones. There 
 was a deep snow on the ground when they turned her adrift, 
 penniless, well nigh garmentless, and certainly homeless and 
 shelterless. In a miserable shanty in Lafayette county she 
 took up her abode. Only God and his good angels know how 
 she stood up under it all and suffered. No respite came in any 
 way. She was followed to Lafayette county, her house sur- 
 rounded, and a younger son, John, shot at and driven to the 
 brush. He was but fourteen years of age and the sole male 
 support of the family. From Lafayette county she was driven 
 to Clay county, suffering privation and want in a Christian-like 
 and uncomplaining manner. 
 
 The war closed, and in the last stages of consumption, she 
 dragged her poor emaciated body back to Jackson county to 
 die. Her boys came home, went to work, and tried as best 
 they could to forget the past and look solely to the future. 
 Her cup of misery was not yet full, and one night a mob 
 
138 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 attacked the house, broke in the doors and windows, and rushed 
 upon the dying woman with drawn revolvers, demanding to 
 know, upon her life, where James and Coleman were. Among the 
 mob she recognized some whose hands had been covered with 
 her husband's blood. Furious at not finding James and Cole- 
 man, after having searched for them everywhere and stolen 
 whatever about the scantily furnished house tempted their beg- 
 garly greed, they laid hands upon John, the youngest brother, 
 carried him to the barn, put a rope about his neck, threw one 
 end over a joist, and told him to say his prayers, for he had but 
 a little time to live unless he declared instantly where his broth- 
 ers were. He defied them to do their worst. Three times they 
 strung him up and three times he refused to breathe a word 
 that would reveal the whereabouts of James or Coleman. The 
 fourth time he was left for dead. Respiration had perceptibly 
 ceased. The rope had cut through the skin of the neck and 
 had buried itself in the flesh. It was half an hour and more 
 before he recovered. Not yet done with him, the mob wounded 
 him with sticks, beat him across the shoulders with the butts of 
 their muskets, tormented him as only devils could, and finally 
 released him, half dead, to return to his agonized and broken- 
 hearted mother. Soon afterwards Mrs. Younger died. 
 
 But this is a digression that does not belong properly to this 
 history. Over the cold body of his murdered father, Cole 
 Younger registered a vow before God to be revenged upon the 
 cowards who assassinated him, and how sternly he kept to its 
 fulfillment the annals of the border all too well can tell. 
 
 Eight hundred Federals held Kansas City, and on every road 
 was a strong picquet post. The streets were patrolled constantly, 
 and ready always for any emergency, horses, saddled and 
 bridled, stood in their stalls. Early on the morning of 
 December 25th, 1862, Todd asked Younger if he wouldn't like 
 to have a little fun. "What kind of fun?" was the enquiry, in 
 reply. U A portion of the command who murdered your father 
 are in Kansas City, and if you say so we will go into the place 
 and kill a few of them. Younger caught eagerly at the propo- 
 sition and commenced at once to get ready for the enterprise. 
 Six were to compose the adventurous party Todd, Younger, 
 Ab Cunningham, Fletch Taylor, Zach Tracer, and George 
 Clayton. Clothed in the uniform of the Federal cavalry, but 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 139 
 
 carrying instead of one pistol four, they arrived about dusk at 
 the picquet post on the Westport and Kansas City road. They 
 were not even halted. The uniform was the passport ; to get in 
 did not require a countersign. A little south of where the 
 residence of Col. Milt. HcGee now stands, the six Guerrillas 
 dismounted and left their horses in charge of Traber, bidding 
 him to do the best he could if the worst came to the worst. 
 The city was royal with revelers. All the saloons were 
 crowded ; in many places there was music ; the patrols had been 
 doubled and were active and vigilant ; comrade clinked glasses 
 with comrade, and Jayhawker drank fortune to Jayhawker. 
 
 The five Guerrillas, with their heavy cavalry overcoats but- 
 toned loosely about them, boldly walked down Main street and 
 into the thick of the Christmas revelry. Visiting this saloon and 
 that saloon they sat knee to knee with some of Jennison's most 
 bloodthirsty troopers, and drank confusion over and over again 
 to the cut-throat Quantrell and his bushwhacking crew. Imper- 
 ceptibly the night had waned. Todd knew several of the gang who 
 had waylaid and slain Col. Henry Younger, but hunt how he would 
 he could not find a single one. Entering near to midnight an 
 ordinary drinking place facing the public square, six soldiers 
 were discovered who sat at two tables playing cards two at one 
 table and four at another. A man and a boy were behind the 
 bar. Todd, as he entered, spoke low to Younger: "Run to 
 cover at last. Five of the six men before you were in Walley's 
 crowd that murdered your father. How does your pulse beat?" 
 u Like an iron man's. I feel that I could kill the whole six 
 myself." They went up to the bar, called for whisky, and 
 invited the card-players to join them. If it was agreeable the 
 boy might bring them their whisky and the game could go on. 
 "Certainly," said Todd, with the purring of a tiger cat ready 
 for a spring, "that's what the boy is here for." 
 
 Over their whisky the Guerrillas whispered. Todd planned 
 the killing as good now as accomplished. Cunningham and 
 Clayton were to saunter carelessly up to the table where the 
 two players sat, and Todd, Younger and Taylor up to the table 
 of the four. The signal to get ready was: "Come, boys, 
 another drink," and the signal to fire was: "Who said drink?" 
 Cole Younger was to give the first signal in his deep, resonant 
 voice, and Todd the last one. After the first each Guerrilla 
 
140 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 was to draw a pistol and hold it under the cape of his cavalry 
 overcoat, and after the last he was to fire. Younger as a 
 special privilege was accorded the right to shoot the sixth man. 
 
 As curious people frequently do in saloons that keep card 
 tables, Cunningham and Clayton walked leisurely along to where 
 the two Jayhawkers were, and took each a position to the right 
 and rear of the players. Todd, Younger and Taylor did the same 
 with three of the other four. In firing they had looked to the 
 danger of hitting one another and in order to avoid it, they had 
 made a right oblique. In the end, however, the fatality would 
 be the same, instead of the back of the head for the muzzle of 
 the pistol it would be the side. 
 
 How quiet the room appeared! Every tick of the clock was 
 plainly audible. The bar-keeper leant his head upon his two 
 hands and rested ; the boy was asleep. Even the shuffling and 
 dealing of the cards seemed subdued ; the necessary conversa- 
 tions of the game were brief and unemphatic. 
 
 Cole Younger 's deep voice broke suddenly in, filling all the 
 room and sounding so jolly aad clear: "Co??ie, boys, another 
 drink!" It was an unctuous voice, full of Christmas and 
 brimming glasses. The card players gave heed to it and stayed 
 long enough the tide of the game to assent most graciously. 
 
 There was a little pause. Expectant, the bar-keeper lifted up 
 his head ; aroused, the sleepy boy forced apart his heavy 
 eyelids. The clock was upon the stroke of twelve. No one 
 had moved. Was the invitation, so evidently apropos, to be 
 forgotten? Not if Todd could help it. Neither so loud nor so 
 caressing in intonation as Younger, yet his voice sharp, dis- 
 tinct and penetrating prolonged as it were the previous propo- 
 sition and gave it emphasis: " Who said drink!' 9 
 
 A thunder clap, a single pistol shot, and then a total dark- 
 ness. The bar-keeper, dumb in the presence of death so 
 instantaneous, shivered and stood still. The boy grovelled 
 at his feet. Todd, cool as the winter night without, extin- 
 guished every light and stepped upon the street. "Steady!" 
 he said to his men, "and do not make haste." So sudden had 
 been the massacre, and so prompt the movements of the Guer- 
 rillas, that the patrols were groping for a clue and stumbling in 
 their eagerness to 'find it. At every street corner an alarm was 
 beaten. Harsh and high, an ominous of danger imminent, the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER \\ 
 
 long roll sent its clangor through the town. Soldie rs poured 
 out from every dance house, rushed from every saloon. 
 "Guerrilla!" "Guerrilla!" was the cry; "the Guerrillas are 
 among us in Federal clothing and killing the Kansas men!" 
 Mixing fearlessly with the crowd, and swaying to and fro as it 
 swayed, Todd asked and answered questions as he pressed ever 
 on steadily yet surely towards his horses. None suspected him 
 so far, and the worst was over. Presently a tremendous yell 
 was heard a yell plaintive yet full of fury, menacing, wrathful, 
 accusing ; the bar-keeper had found his voice at last, and had 
 rushed upon the street, shouting, "Murder!" "Murder!" 
 "Murder!" Seized instantly by armed patrols, and shaken 
 into continuity of speech, he understood tolerably well the 
 monosyllable "Where!" "Come with me and see." They 
 went with him, and a great crowd followed. God help them 
 all! Not a man breathed in the mass upon the floor. From 
 the tables to the stove, from the stove to the bar, and from the 
 bar to the door blood had trickled and trickled, and flowed and 
 flowed. One laid upon another. In the hands of two the cards 
 were gripped as in a vice. Another, looking up to the ceiling, 
 seemed to be asleep, his face was so soft and placid. Every 
 bullet had brought sudden death, and in this the Guerrillas 
 were merciful. In and out all night the crowd ebbed and 
 flowed, and still the dead men lay as they fell. Day dawned, 
 and the sun came up, and some beams like a benediction fell 
 upon the upturned faces and the pallid lips. Was it absolution? 
 Who knows? Blessed are the dead who die in their uniforms! 
 Past the press in the streets, past the glare and the glitter of 
 the thicker lights, past patrol after patrol, Todd had won well 
 his way to his horses when a black bar thrust itself suddenly 
 across his path and changed itself instantly into a line of soldiers. 
 Some paces forward a spokesman advanced and called a halt. 
 "What do you want?" said Todd. "The countersign." "We 
 have no countersign. Out for a lark, it's only a square or two 
 further that we desire to go." "No matter if it's only an inch 
 or two. Orders are orders." "Fire! and charge, men!" and 
 the black line across the streets as a barricade shrivelled up and 
 shrunk away. Four did not move, however, nor would they 
 move ever again until, feet foremost, their comrades bore them 
 to the burial place. But the hunt was hot. Mounted men 
 
142 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 were abroad, and hurrying feet could be heard in all directions. 
 Rallying beyond range and reinforced, the remnant of the patrol 
 were advancing and opening fire. Born scout and educated 
 Guerrilla, Traber judging from the shots and the shouts 
 knew what was best for all and dashed up to his hard pressed 
 comrades with their horses. Thereafter the flight was a frolic. 
 The picquet on the Independence road was ridden over and 
 through, and the brush gained beyond without an effort, and 
 the hospitable house of Reuben Harris, where a roaring fire was 
 blazing and a hearty welcome extended to all. 
 
 In a week or less, it began snowing. The hillsides were 
 white with it ; the hollows were choked ; the briddle-paths oblit- 
 erated, and the broad highways made smooth as the surface of 
 a frozen stream. After the snow had ceased to fall, there came 
 a rain, and then a furious north wind, which covered the earth 
 with a sheet of ice. Travel stopped, foraging parties staid at 
 home, the bivouacs were pitiless, and the wild beasts hunting 
 one another along the border went hungry rather than stir. 
 It really was the first dead calm the West had known since 1856. 
 
 Todd established his camp near Red Crenshaw's ; Younger 
 eight miles south of Independence, near the farm of Martin O. 
 Jones ; and Cunningham near the place of Dr. Thornton, on the 
 east fork of the Little Blue River. Save to get forage for their 
 horses and food for themselves, the Guerrillas made no more 
 exertion than the boughs of the ice-bound trees over their 
 heads ; they asked only to hide themselves and to be let alone. 
 John McDowell was in Younger's camp, and once upon a time 
 Cole Younger had saved John McDowell's life at the imminent 
 risk of his own. Certainly he would not make an excuse to see 
 a sick wife, to get into Independence, to talk to Penick long 
 and privately, and to bite hard at the hand which had succored 
 him. John McDowell knew too much of the holy meaning of 
 gratitude for that. 
 
 The ice crust, because of successive frosts, got brittle at last 
 and added another misery to the miseries of traveling. In order 
 to get out at all, Younger dug a road out with pick and shovel. 
 The nearest corn to him was on the John Kerr place, where 
 Mrs. Rucker lived, and to this corn the improvised road was 
 made to run. To hide it from the Federals, and to keep the 
 strangest of its features from the too curious eyes of isolated 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 143 
 
 passers by, Mrs. Rucker had her stock fed upon the trail. In 
 twenty-four hours afterwards the rooting of the hogs, the 
 trampling of the cattle, and the pawing of the horses, had 
 made of the Guerrilla road a feeding place. 
 
 The nights were long, the days were bitter, and the snow did 
 not melt. On the 10th day of February, 1863, John McDowell 
 reported his wife sick and asked of Younger permission to visit 
 her. It was granted, the proviso attached to it being the order 
 to report again at 3 o'clock. The illness of the man's wife was a 
 sham. Instead of going home, or even in the direction of 
 home, he hastened immediately into Independence and made the 
 commander there, Col. Penick, thoroughly acquainted with 
 Younger's camp and all of its surroundings. Penick was a St. 
 Joseph, Missouri, man, commanding a regiment of militia. The 
 Guerrillas regarded him as an officer who would fight under any 
 and all circumstances, and as one who, operated upon by better 
 fortunes, might have made considerable military reputation. 
 With the men he had, try how he would, the stream never could 
 be made to rise higher than its source. Not homogeneous, pos- 
 sessed of neither esprit du corps nor soldierly ambition, nature 
 in forcing them to be born under the contraband flag of inferi- 
 ority, made it also obligatory that they should join the pirates. 
 
 The echoes of the desperate adventure of Younger and Todd 
 in Kansas City, had long ago reached the ears of Col. Penick, 
 and he seconded the traitor's story with an energy worthy the 
 game to be hunted. Eighty cavalrymen, under a resolute officer, 
 was ordered instantly out, and McDowell, suspicioned and 
 closely guarded, was put at their head as a pilot. 
 
 Younger had two houses dug in the ground, with a ridge pole 
 to each and rafters. Upon the rafters were boards, and upon 
 the boards straw and earth. At one end was a fire-place, at the 
 other a door. Architecture was nothing ; comfort everything. 
 
 The Federal officer dismounted his men two hundred yards 
 from Younger's huts and divided them, sending forty to the 
 south and forty to the north ; the attack was to be from two 
 directions and simultaneously. No picquets were out; no 
 guards kept watch about the premises. Even the doors were 
 closed ; fate at last, it seemed, had cut off the fair locks of this 
 intrepid Sampson and was about to deliver him over, helpless 
 and impotent, into the hands of the Philistines. 
 
144 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 The Federals on the south had approached to within twenty 
 yards of Younger's cabins when a horse snorted fiercely, and 
 Younger came to the door of one of them. He saw the 
 approaching column on foot and mistaking it for a friendly 
 column, called out: "Is that you, Todd?" Perceiving in a 
 moment, however, his mistake, he fired and killed the lieutenant 
 in command of the attacking party and then aroused the houses. 
 Out of each the occupants poured, armed, desperate, meaning 
 to fight but never to surrender. It was hot work despite the 
 bitter weather. The Federals on the north were well up to time 
 and fired a deadly volley, killing Ike Basham and Dr. Hale. 
 Younger had four dragoon pistols belted about him, but he 
 husbanded his loads and fired only to do execution. Turning 
 westward as the Federals from the north and south came 
 together, for two hundred yards Penick's men and Younger's 
 men were mixed inextricably, shooting and shouting. Then 
 the Guerrillas began to emerge from the press and to gain a little 
 on their pursuers. Encumbered by heavy cavalry overcoats, 
 heavy boots, spurs and carbines, the militia could not make 
 the speed the Guerrillas did, but they kept pressing forward for 
 all that and shooting incessantly. Younger's devotion that day 
 was simply heroic. In front, guiding his men, because he knew 
 every foot of ground in the neighborhood, he heard Joe Har- 
 din's voice call out to "him: "Wait for me, Cole ; they have nearly 
 got me." In a moment he was back to his comrade and 
 covering him with his pistol. As he ran down the ranks toward 
 Hardin, he ordered the men to pull off their overcoats and 
 boots, and trust more to running than to fighting. While Har- 
 din was working at his boots and trying to get them off, Younger 
 killed two of the boldest of the pursuers and took the rear him- 
 self, the last of all in the desperate race. Twenty yards further 
 Hardin was shot dead, and Oath Hinton needed succor. He 
 was down tugging at his boots and unable to get them off. 
 Younger halted behind a tree and fought fifteen Federals for 
 several moments, killed another who rushed upon him, rescued 
 Hinton and strode away after his comrades, untouched and 
 undaunted. Fifty yards further Tom Talley was in trouble. 
 He had one boot off and one foot in the leg of the other, but 
 try how he would he could neither get it on nor off. He could 
 not run, situated as he was, and he had no knife to cut the 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BORDE3 145 
 
 leather. He too called out to Younger to wait for him and 
 to stand by him until he could do something to extricate him- 
 self. Without hurry, and in the teeth of a rattling fusillade, 
 Younger stooped to Talley's assistance, tearing literally from 
 his foot by the exercise of immense strength the well-nigh fatal 
 boot, and encouraging him to make the best haste he could and 
 hold to his pistols. Braver man than Thomas Talley never 
 lived, nor cooler. As he jumped up in his stocking feet, the 
 Federals were in twenty yards, firing as they advanced, and 
 loading their breech-loading guns as they ran. He took their 
 fire at a range like that and snapped every barrel of his revolver 
 in their faces. Not a cylinder exploded ; wet by the snow, he 
 held in his hand a useless pistol. About thirty of the enemy had 
 by this time outrun the balance and were forcing the fighting. 
 Younger called to his men to take to trees and drive them back, 
 or stand and die together. The Guerrillas barefooted, hatless, 
 some of them, and coatless, rallied instantly and held their 
 own. Younger killed two more of the pursuers here five since 
 the fight began and Bad Wigginton, like a lion at bay, fought 
 without cover and with deadly effect. Here Job McCorkle was 
 badly wounded, together with James Morris, John Coger, and 
 five others. George Talley, fighting splendidly, was shot dead, 
 and Younger himself, encouraging his men by voice and 
 example, got a bullet through the left shoulder. The Federal 
 advance fell back to the main body and the main body fell back 
 to their horses. Sick of a pursuit on foot which had cost them 
 seventeen killed and wounded, they desired to mount and try it 
 further on horseback. Instantly ordering a retreat in turn, 
 Younger made a dash for the Harrisonville and Independence 
 road, the men loading their pistols as they ran, and making 
 excellent time at that. The snow, fourteen inches deep, was 
 everywhere. Not four of the Guerrillas had on shoes or boots. 
 The big road, cut into blocks and spears of ice, was like a high- 
 way paved with cutting and piercing things. Halting just a 
 moment, Younger said: "Boys, if we can muster up courage 
 enough to run down this road two hundred yards, on our naked 
 feet and over its icicles, worse than Indian arrow-heads, the 
 chances to get away will be splendid. Otherwise, say your 
 prayers." They did dash down the road as though it were car- 
 peted, and kept down it a quarter of a mUe to a field in the rear 
 10 
 
146 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 of Mrs. Fristoe's house, where a bridge was, and where to one 
 side of the bridge a hog trail ran. Leaping from this bridge 
 and one at a time into the hog path, the Guerrillas followed it 
 west three hundred yards, and then southwest through the snow 
 a mile, Younger leading and requiring each one of his men to 
 put their feet into the tracks his own feet had made. Baffled, 
 but by no means beaten, the Federals got quickly to horse and 
 dashed on after the retreating Guerrillas. The big road gave 
 no sign, the hog path at the bridge gave no sign, and only a 
 single footstep could be discovered leading off to the southwest 
 from the trail which continued on to the west. Dividing, how- 
 ever, into detachments of ten each, and keeping within due 
 succoring distance, the cavalry began to scour the entire neigh- 
 borhood. Wherefore? Younger's grim tenacity, woodcraft, 
 and stubborn fighting saved all who had not been killed in open 
 battle. Three miles from the Fristoe house a bluff ran east and 
 west for the distance of several miles, perfectly impracticable 
 for horsemen, and difficult even for footmen who did not know 
 the easy descending places. Thither Younger led his little 
 band, showing them how by the help of trees and bushes they 
 might get down, and leaping himself, wounded as he was, 
 into the top of a contiguous oak by the way of illustration. 
 The sun was sinking in the west, and the night was near when 
 the last wounded Guerrilla, dragging his hurt body along with 
 difficulty, reached the base of the bluff in safety. "Thank 
 God!" cried Younger in exultation, and looking away to the 
 west where some red clouds beamed as with the lurid bene- 
 diction of the sun, "we'll see to-morrow another sunset." 
 Overhead and firing down upon him some Federal cavalry 
 appeared, as if to prove his boasting vain, but they hit no one 
 and could not descend. There was not time to flank the bluff 
 at either end ; the pursuit was ended ; the Guerrillas were safe. 
 True to those instincts, however, which make plunderers of 
 battle-fields and robbers of the dead, the returning militia put 
 fire to the houses of Mrs. Rucker and Mrs. Fristoe, and to every- 
 thing else about their premises that would burn. Mrs. Fristoe 
 was Younger's grandmother, a most intelligent woman of great 
 Christian piety, who had been a widow for twenty 
 years. Her husband had' been a lieutenant under Gen. Jackson 
 at the battle of New Orleans, and stood noted in the community 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 147 
 
 in which he lived for sterling integrity and incorruptible man- 
 hoo(J. Vandalism deals generally with such victims ; cowardice 
 is never so happy as when gray heads are made to bow. 
 
 With feet torn and lacerated, and their wounded barely able to 
 hobble along, the Guerrillas reached the house of Old Johnny 
 Moore, as he was familiarly called by them, and after the dark- 
 ness set in. Mrs. Josephine Moore, a Southern heroine of 
 Mary's trust and faith, dressed tenderly all the hurts and 
 emptied her house of whatever the men could wear. To one 
 she gave a coat, to one a hat, to one a pair of shoes or boots, 
 and to all a welcome worth thrice the balance. 
 
 The winter of 1862 was a memorable one. The deep snow 
 stayed deep to the last. Military operations were generally sus- 
 pended throughout the entire country, and especially did the 
 spring make haste slowly up the border way. Todd, as terrible 
 as the roads were, and as pitiless as was the weather, left a com- 
 fortable cantoment at the instance of his unfortunate comrades 
 and found for them rapidly horses, accoutrements, boots and 
 clothing. Presently the report began to circulate that Younger 
 was slain. As proof of the fact the Federals exhibited in In- 
 dependence his coat and hat, and a pair of gloves which had 
 upon them, "Presented to Lieutenant Coleman Younger by 
 Miss M. E. Sanders." Above everything else lost by him, 
 Younger regretted most of all the gloves. Some talismauic 
 message, perhaps, had made them precious. 
 
 Wild as the weather was, and as harsh the aspect of every- 
 thing, John Jarrette arrived one day from the South, bringing 
 with him Richard Kenney, Richard Berry, George Shepherd, 
 and John Jackson. Younger joined these with John McCorkle 
 and John Coger, and altogether they worked their way down 
 into Lafayette county, where Poole lived, and where he intended 
 to recruit a company. Richard Berry, a soldier by intuition, 
 and a Guerrilla because of the daring life connected with the 
 service, saw where some choice young spirits might be gathered 
 up, and he had come to enroll them. Afterwards no more for- 
 midable band than his and David Poole's fought in the West. 
 
 In Lafayette as in Jackson, the weather was simply impossi- 
 ble. Berry found shelter speedily and disappeared. Others 
 did the same ; and Jarrette, Younger, McCorkle, and Coger 
 countermarched towards the Sni hills for the same purpose. En, 
 
148 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OR 
 
 route and while on the Georgetown and Lexington road, they 
 surprised and captured Colonel King, Major Biggers, and seven 
 private soldiers. At this time the black flag was generally re- 
 cognized as the flag under which the militia fought. In no 
 single instance lately had the life of a captured Guerrilla been 
 spared, while step by step and rapidly that period was ap- 
 proaching when all disguise would be thrown off and the com- 
 batants, understanding one another thoroughly, would seek only 
 to exterminate. Not one of the nine Federals, however, was 
 hurt. Jarrette was a Free Mason and so were Colonel King 
 and Major Biggers. A vote was taken and much depended 
 upon Younger. McCorkle and Coger had good reason to pro- 
 nounce for the death penalty. Two men oftener shot at and 
 oftener wounded did not live. Younger bore nothing love that 
 wore the blue, but singular as it seems, in this instance he voted 
 on the side of mercy, and many times thereafter. Acquainted 
 well with a Mrs. Bales, an aunt of King, and regarding her 
 emphatically in the light of a friend, he ranged himself with 
 Jarrette. To break the tie and gain over Coger was not diffi- 
 cult; the Federals were released and paroled. Thus were 
 men's lives played with in those cruel days, and thus upon 
 such slender things did human action depend. Unquestionably, 
 however, it was the influence of Free Masonry working upon 
 Jarrette which first formed the channel for the flowing of the 
 other good impulses, and committed to the cause of mercy, two 
 of the most savage men in the ranks of the Guerrillas Jar- 
 rette and Coger. 
 
 For a few days towards the latter part of February a south 
 wind blew and some little thawing was observable about the 
 sunny places. Tempted by it, and by the prospect of some fur- 
 ther open weather, Colonel Penick sent Captain Johnson 
 out from Independence on a scouting expedition. Not long 
 in finding a fresh Guerrilla trail, he followed it eagerly. Todd, 
 Jarrette and Younger, according to a special agreement, were 
 to dine with Rodney Hines at the Will Howard place, the very 
 day Johnson's expedition got under way. Preceding these 
 three men to Mines' by several hours were William Hulse, Boon 
 Schull and Fletch Taylor. Hulse was a swarthy fighter who had 
 no superior for dead game and bull-dog tenacity. Black eyed, 
 clean limbed, cool always, not much of a sleeper, born to a 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDEE 149 
 
 horse, and skilled in all manly exercises, as he rode he rested, 
 and when he fought he killed. 
 
 Boon Schull, destined to give up a dauntless young life early 
 for the cause he loved best, won the respect of all by a gener- 
 osity unstained of selfishness and the exercise of a courage that 
 in either extreme of victory or disaster remained perfect in 
 attribute and exhibition. None were more gentle than he ; none 
 more courteous, calm and kindly. When he fell, liberty never 
 required upon its altar as a sacrifice a purer victim. 
 
 Fletch Taylor was a low, massive Hercules, who, when he 
 had one arm shot off, made the other all the more powerful. 
 Built like a quarter-horse, knowing nature well, seeing equally 
 in darkness and light, rapacious for exercise, having an 
 anatomy like a steam engine, impervious to fatigue like a 
 Cossack, and to hunger like an Apache, he always hunted a 
 fight and always fought for a funeral. 
 
 These three men, having passed on carelessly through the 
 snow to the rendezvous at Hines' left a good, broad trail which 
 Johnson especially commissioned to look after bushwhackers 
 was not slow in following. Surrounded, but in no manner 
 demoralized, two Federals were already upon the front porch 
 when Hulse, discovering them, fired through a side window and 
 shot down the foremost. The other ran, and Johnson, on foot, 
 began to close up. Hurrying from the front of the house to the 
 rear, and then through an ell and a kitchen, the Guerrillas, 
 gained their horses, hitched to the inner side of an orchard fence, 
 and essayed to mount under a distressing fire. The horses were 
 inexperienced and untried, and struggled so violently to break 
 loose that the men could neither control nor mount them. 
 Fletch Taylor drew a knife and cut the halter of his horse, got 
 into the saddle and opened a furious fire upon the nearest Fed- 
 erals a pitsol in each hand and the bridle rein in his teeth. 
 Somewhat protected by a diversion so gallantly made, Schull and 
 Hulse got mounted finally, joined in the combat with Taylor, and 
 drove to cover the enemy immediately in front of them. Re- 
 inforced, the Federals came on with loud cheers as if they were 
 charging a regular line of battle, but the three horsemen gal- 
 lantly waving their hats to the ladies of the house where they 
 had expected to dine cleared the orchard fence at a bound and 
 rode rapidly away. Johnson could not pursue for some time. 
 
150 NOTED GUEEEILLASy OK 
 
 He had dismounted two companies that three Guerrillas might 
 .be captured, and when he needed them most he had not at his 
 command even so much as a single mounted trooper. In hearing 
 of the guns, and rushing down to help his comrades, Younger 
 arrived too late to participate ; but laying off and on in sailor 
 fashion, he hung about t'ie Howard premises and watched the 
 Independence road for half the night, thinking Johnson might 
 return. Afraid to fire upon him where he was in bivouac, lest 
 in revenge he should kill Hines and burn the house from over 
 the heads of his family, and seeing no indications of a move in 
 any quarter, Younger marched at midnight in the direction of 
 Blue Springs, breakfasting the next morning with Joel Basham. 
 Beyond Basham lived William Hopkins, and there Younger 
 found Todd and his men well mounted and in splendid fighting 
 fix. Fortune also favored Johnson. Jarrette, Gregg and David 
 Hilton, having remained the previous night at the house of 
 Baby Saunders, started for Hilton's early in the morning to 
 meet with Todd, and it was the trail made by them that John- 
 son found and followed up with considerable energy. As he 
 rode he threatened ; wherever he stopped, or whenever he had 
 occasion to question a citizen, he promised invariably in leav- 
 ing to catch the Guerrillas in front of him and hang them after- 
 wards. Man proposes and God disposes. 
 
 Todd, in command of all the united squads by virtue of his 
 rank, and well informed of Johnson's approach, had everything 
 in readiness to receive him. It was going to be a most remark- 
 able fight. Todd, forming the Guerrillas in an open field in the 
 vicinity of the Hopkins house, had on the left of this field a 
 steep bluff, and on the right of it a heavy fence. By this fence 
 a road ran, and through the field to the house, which was upon 
 the bluff, and on past the house and over the bluff into a bottom 
 beyond. An exact count showed thirty Guerrillas and sixty- 
 four militia ; on the one side Captain Johnson commanded, on 
 the other, Captain Todd. The prairie wolf was about to 
 encounter the tiger. 
 
 Johnson marched up from the bottom to the crest of the 
 bluff, halted his detachment near the Hopkins house, and rode 
 forward himself towards where Todd's line was formed in the 
 field. Todd, Jarrette, and Younger advanced to meet him, and 
 quite a dialogue ensued at the distance of thirty paces: 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 151 
 
 "Who are you?" asked Johnson. "Kansas troops," replied 
 Todd. "What command?" " Jennison's." "What are you 
 doing here?" "Hunting for Guerrillas." " Excellent employ- 
 ment, but your line looks light ; where is the balance of your 
 men?" "What you see are all." "Impossible!" "Come 
 and judge for yourself." Evidently Johnson had discovered 
 enough to convince him of the character of the organization 
 before him, and he wheeled suddenly and put spurs to his 
 horse. As quick as he was, the Guerrillas were quicker. Todd, 
 Jarrette and Younger fired each at him three shots in rapid suc- 
 cession, but splendid shots that they were, they missed him 
 clear. The charge that followed was one of the most furious 
 of all the furious ones of Todd's tempestuous career. Before 
 the Federals could well about face, the Guerrillas were upon 
 them and among them. Coherency was gone in a second. 
 Well dressed ranks fell apart as a house made of cards. The 
 retreat was a panic, the panic insanity. As a tornado the storm 
 of steeds and steel swept to the southwest corner of the field, 
 blue rider and gray side by side and shouting in each other's 
 faces. The road was abandoned. In every direction through 
 the woods the Federals rushed, shooting, each man as he ran, 
 " Hold up !" " Hold up !" but never a halt or a rally. 
 
 It had rained lately, some snow had melted, and Little Blue 
 was bankfull. From the corner of the fence on the southwest 
 to the river, it was an hundred yards, and nearer still to the river 
 was a ditch. Into this ditch Johnson, leading his troopers, leaped 
 fearlessly, and from the ditch into the swimming river. Hot 
 upon their track and seeing before them an enemy helpless 
 because paralyzed, the Guerrillas jumped from their horses and 
 lined the east bank of the Blue, attempting to fire upon them 
 with their shotguns. Not a barrel exploded. Wet with the 
 rain of the previous morning, these never to be depended upon 
 weapons failed them utterly. Every revolver had been dis- 
 charged in the race, the gun barrels would not go off, the Fed- 
 erals at their mercy were struggling and swimming in the river, 
 and yet there was nothing to suoot them with. 
 
 Beaten back from the opposite bank by the force of the 
 current, and beaten down some one hundred and fifty to two 
 hundred yards, Johnson landed again on the eastern side of the 
 river and dashed away into Blue Springs, beating the Guerrillas 
 
152 NOTED aUERBILLAS, OB 
 
 who had halted long enough to load their revolvers, and who 
 came into the road some little distance behind them. Then 
 there was another charge and another panic. Side by side, and 
 leading, Todd and Younger rode together. Near to the rear, 
 with pistol in hand and in the act of firing, Todd's horse fell 
 headlong across the road, and Younger' s, swerved aside by its 
 powerful rider lest his comrade should be hurt, lost his stride 
 and his pace, and his position at the front. Close behind them 
 and thundering on, Boon Schull leaped his horse over Todd and 
 his crippled steed, followed by James Little, who spoke not nor 
 touched rein until ranging up along side of the rearmost Fed- 
 eral he shot him from the saddle. Schull dismounted instantly 
 over the dead man and appropriated his carbine and his pistols. 
 Todd mounted his horse and hurried away in pursuit. The 
 next victim was the famous Jim Lane. House-burner, high- 
 wayman, spy, something of a scout, theatrical in hair and 
 toggery, claiming to be brave, notorious for evil deeds, and 
 known somewhat by his boasts to the Guerrillas, he had taken the 
 name of Jim Lane as an honor, and swore to set it above the 
 name of the real one for devilment done to the border ruffians. 
 Little fired at him and missed ; Schull's pistol snapped ; but 
 Younger, dashing by at full speed, shot him square through the 
 temples. Jim Lane, junior or inferior, had burnt his last house 
 and robbed his last Missourian. To keep to the road in front 
 of a pursuit as swift and merciless as the pursuit of the Guerril- 
 las, was simple madness, and the road was abandoned by the 
 larger portion of the Federals as if swayed by some mysterious 
 yet instantaneous impulse. Nothing in the semblance of an 
 array was preserved ; it was every man for himself and God's 
 mercy for the hindmost. Taylor, followed by twenty others, 
 poured through the timber on their trail and killed whenever he 
 came to one. Jarre tte and George Wigginton were the last to 
 leave the heels of the flying foe, killing two beyond the bridge 
 between Blue Springs and Independence, and wounding 
 another badly under the very range of a sheltering picquet post. 
 As trooper after trooper galloped into Independence, or limped 
 in wearily on foot, forlorn, bedraggled, scared well nigh to 
 speechlessness, Penick, without doubt, developed a clear case 
 of hydrophobia. Succeeding every report there was a spasm. 
 Jerking off his coat in the agony of an uncontrollable paroxysm, 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 153 
 
 he went about the streets assaulting and knocking down each 
 man encountered who was looked upon as a Southern man or in 
 sympathy with the Guerrillas. One especially, Tobias Owens, 
 should receive a more degrading punishment. Seeking him 
 out and finding him finally, he went into his room with a raw- 
 hide in his hand and locked the door. Owens stood ten, maybe 
 twenty, good, keen cuts, but human nature rose up against 
 and mastered prudence at last, and he in turn became the 
 aggressor. Wrenching the rawhide from Penick's grasp he 
 gave back blow for blow most vigorously, and only ceased from 
 his punishment when the excitement of the assault and the 
 violent exercise completely exhausted him. Before he could be 
 assassinated for an exhibition of manhood justified even in the 
 eyes of a militia garrison, he escaped. Thirty-two Federals per- 
 ished in this ill-starred and wretchedly handled expedition, and 
 nine severely shot, died afterwards. Not so much as a single 
 Guerrilla was wounded. The militia could not or did not fight. 
 They fired more or less, but always with that unsteadiness 
 which comes from a want of nerve. Johnson himself lost his 
 head. The officers had no men, and the men had no officers. 
 If the shot guns of the Guerrillas had gone off on the banks 
 of the Blue, not a soldier due at Independence would ever have 
 returned there. Penick hurried out the next day two hundred 
 cavalry and three pieces of artillery for purposes of display 
 alone, and to hide his regiment's grievous hurt. He shelled 
 the timber on both sides of the road from Independence to 
 Hopkins' house, but the Guerrillas, eating dinner ten miles 
 away, laughed over their plates at the sound of the cannon and 
 told one to another the pleasant story of the Blue Springs 
 races. 
 
 A man now by the name of Emmet Goss was beginning to 
 have it whispered of him that he was a tiger. He would fight, 
 the Guerrillas said, and when in those savage days one went 
 upon the war path so endorsed, be sure it meant all that it was 
 intended to mean. Goss lived in Jackson county. He owned a 
 farm near Hickman'sMill, and up to the fall of 1861, had worked 
 it soberly and industriously. When he concluded to quit 
 farming and go to fighting, he joined the Jayhawkers. Jenni- 
 son commanded the 15th Kansas Cavalry, and Goss a company 
 in this regiment. From a peaceful, thrifty citizen, he became 
 
154 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 suddenly a terror to the border. He seemed to have a mania 
 for killing. Twenty old and unoffending citizens probably died 
 by his hands. When Ewing's famous General Order No. 11 
 was issued that order which required the wholesale depopula- 
 tion of Cass, Bates, Vernon and Jackson counties Goss went 
 about as a destroying angel, with a torch in one hand and a 
 revolver in the other. He boasted of having kindled the flames 
 in fifty-two houses, of having made fifty-two families homeless 
 and shelterless, and of having killed, as he declared, until he wag 
 tired of killing. Death was to come to him at last by the hand 
 of Jesse James, but not yet. He had sworn to capture or kill 
 Cole Younger, and went to the house of Younger' s mother on 
 Big Creek, for the purpose. She was living in a double-log 
 cabin built by her husband before his death, for a tenant, and 
 Cole was at home. It was about eight o'clock, and quite dark. 
 Cole sat talking with his mother, two little sisters and a boy 
 brother. No one was on watch. Goss, with forty men, dis- 
 mounted back from the yard, fastened their horses securely, 
 moved up quietly and surrounded the house. Between the two 
 rooms of the cabin there was an open passage way, and the Jay- 
 hawkers had occupied this before the alarm was given. Desir- 
 ing to go from one of the rooms to the other, a Miss Younger 
 found the porch full of armed men. Instantly springing back 
 and closing the door, she shouted Cole's name involuntarily. 
 An old negro woman a former slave, but more of a confidant 
 than a slave with extraordinary presence of mind blew out the 
 light, snatched a coverlet from a bed, and threw it over her 
 head and shoulders. " Get behind me, Marse Cole, quick!" 
 she said in a whisper, and Cole in a second, with a pistol in each 
 hand, stood up close to the old woman, the bed spread covering 
 them both. Then throwing wide the door, and receiving in her 
 face the gaping muzzles of a dozen guns, she queruously cried 
 out: " Don't shoot a poor old nigger, massa sogers. It's 
 nobody but me gwine to see what's de matter. Ole Missus is 
 nearly skeered to death." Slowly then, so slowly that it seemed 
 an age to Cole, she strode through the crowd of Jayhawkers 
 blocking up the portico, and out into the darkness and the night. 
 Swarming about the two rooms and rummaging everywhere, a 
 portion of the Jayhawkers kept looking for Younger, and swear- 
 ing brutally at their ill-success, while another portion, watching 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 155 
 
 the movements of the old negress, saw her throw away the bed 
 spread, clap her hands excitingly and shout: "Run, Marse 
 Cole! run for your life! de debbil can't cotch you this time!" 
 Giving and taking a volley which harmed no one, Cole made 
 his escape without a struggle. As for the old negro woman, 
 Goss debated sometime with himself whether he should shoot 
 her or hang her. Unquestionably a rebel negro, she was perse- 
 cuted often and often for her opinion's sake, and hung up 
 twice by militia to make her tell of the whereabouts of Guer- 
 rillas. True to her people and her cause, she died at last in 
 the odor of devotion. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 QUANTRELL VISITS RICHMOND. 
 
 /^vUANTRELL tarried but a little while with the army in 
 V^ Arkansas. Guerrilla, as he was, and hated and pro- 
 scribed as he was, and savage as he had the reputation of being, 
 the man yet dreamed dreams of empire, and had vivid glimpses 
 or revealments of the future of the war. Taking with him two 
 of his men, Blunt and Higbee, and protected by the necessary 
 passports from department headquarters, Quantrell started 
 directly for Richmond. The old company was left with Gregg 
 until January, 1862, who, turning over the command to Scott, 
 made his way into Missouri with ten Guerrillas. Scott remained 
 until Quantrell returned from Richmond, performing every regu- 
 lar duty with alacrity and giving evidence of the possession of 
 all the inherent qualities of a brilliant soldier. Before the last 
 of the snows had melted, and ere yet the trees had begun to 
 awaken to an idea of verdure and the spring, Quantrell was 
 back again in Jackson county, marshalling his Guerrillas and 
 closing up his ranks. 
 
 His interview at Richmond with the Confederate Secretary of 
 War was a memorable one. Gen. Louis T. Wigfall, then a 
 Senator from Texas, was present and described it afterwards in 
 his rapid, vivid, picturesque way. Quantrell asked to be com- 
 missioned as a Colonel under the Partisan Ranger Act, and to 
 be so recognized by the Department as to have accorded to him 
 whatever protection the Confederate government might be in a 
 condition to exercise. Never mind the question of men, he 
 would have the complement required in a month after he 
 reached Western Missouri. The warfare was desperate, he 
 knew, the service desperate, everything connected with it was 
 desperate ; but the Southern people to succeed had to fight a 
 desperate fight. The Secretary suggested that war had its 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 157 
 
 amenities and its refinements, and that in the nineteenth century 
 it was simple barbarism to talk of a black flag. 
 
 " Barbarism,!" and Quantrell's blue eyes blazed, and his 
 whole manner and attitude underwent a transformation, "bar- 
 barism, Mr. Secretary, means war and war means barbarism. 
 Since you have touched upon this subject, let us discuss it a 
 little. Times have their crimes as well as men. For twenty 
 years this cloud has been gathering ; for twenty years inch by 
 inch and little by little those people called the Abolitionists 
 have been on the track of slavery ; for twenty years the people 
 of the South have been robbed, here of a negro and there of a 
 negro ; for twenty years hates have been engendered and wrath- 
 ful things laid up against the day of wrath. The cloud has 
 burst. Do not condemn the thunderbolt." 
 
 The War Secretary bowed his head. Quantrell, leaving his 
 own seat, and standing over him as it were and above him, 
 went on. 
 
 "Who are these people you call Confederates? Rebels, unless 
 they succeed ; outcasts, traitors, food for hemp and gunpowder. 
 There were no great statesmen in the South, or this war would 
 have happened ten years ago; no inspired men, or it would 
 have happened fifteen years ago. To-day the odds are desper- 
 ate. The world hates slavery ; the world is fighting you. The 
 ocean belongs to the Union navy. There is a recruiting officer 
 in every foreign port. I have captured and killed many who 
 did not know the English tongue. Mile by mile the cordon is 
 being drawn about the granaries of the South, Missouri will go 
 first, next Kentucky, next Tennessee, by and by Mississippi 
 and Arkansas, and then what? That we must put gloves on our 
 hands, and honey in our mouths, and fight this war as Christ 
 fought the wickedness of the world?" 
 
 The War Secretary did not speak. Quantrell, perhaps, did 
 not desire that he should. "You ask an impossible thing, Mr. 
 Secretary. This secession, or revolution, or whatever you call 
 it cannot conquer without violence, nor can those who hate it 
 and hope to stifle it, resist without vindictiveness. Every strug- 
 gle has its philosophy, but this is not the hour for philosophers. 
 Your young Confederacy wants victory, and champions who 
 are not judges. Men must be killed. To impel the people 
 to passion there must be some slight illusion mingled with the 
 
158 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 truth ; to arouse them to enthusiasm something out of nature 
 must occur. That illusion should be a crusade in the name of 
 conquest, and that something out of nature should be the black 
 flag. Woe be unto all of you if the Federals come with an oath 
 of loyalty in one hand and a torch in the other. I have seen 
 Missouri bound hand and foot by this Christless thing called 
 Conservatism, and where to-day she should have two hundred 
 thousand heroes fighting for liberty, beneath her banners there 
 are scarcely twenty thousand." 
 
 "What would you do, Captain Quantrell, were your's the 
 power and the opportunity?" 
 
 "Do, Mr. Secretary? Why I would wage such a war and 
 have such a war waged by land and sea as to make surrender 
 forever impossible. I would cover the armies of the Confed- 
 eracy all over with blood. I would invade. I would reward 
 audacity. I would exterminate. I would break up foreign 
 enlistments by indiscriminate massacre. I would win the inde- 
 pendence of my people or I would find them graves." 
 
 "And our prisoners, what of them?" 
 
 "Nothing of them ; there would be no prisoners. Do they 
 take any prisoners from me? Surrounded, I do not surrender; 
 surprised, I do not give way to panic ; outnumbered, I rely upon 
 common sense and stubborn fighting; proscribed, I answer 
 proclamation with proclamation ; outlawed, I feel through it 
 my power ; hunted, I hunt my hunters in turn ; hated and made 
 blacker than a dozen devils, I add to my hoofs the swiftness of 
 a horse, and to my horns the terrors of a savage following. 
 Kansas should be laid waste at once. Meet the torch with the 
 torch, pillage with pillage, slaughter with slaughter, subjugation 
 with extermination. You have my ideas of war, Mr. Secre- 
 tary, and I am sorry they do not accord with your own, nor 
 the ideas of the government you have the honor to represent so 
 well." And Qu,antrell, without his commission as a Partisan 
 Ranker, or without any authorization to raise a regiment of 
 Partisan Rangers, bowed himself away from the presence of the 
 Secretary and away from Richmond. 
 
 From Arkansas to the Missouri river the journey in detail 
 would read like a romance. The whole band, numbering 
 thirty, were clad in Federal uniform, Quantrell wearing that of 
 a captain. Whenever questioned the answer was: "A Federal 
 
THE WARFABE OF THE BOEDER 159 
 
 scout on special service." Such had been the severity of the 
 winter, and such the almost dea'd calm in military quarters, 
 that all ordinary vigilance seemed to have disappeared, and even 
 ordinary prudence forgotten. South of Spring river a day's 
 inarch, ten militia came into Quantrell's camp and invited them- 
 selves to supper. They were fed, but they were killed. Quan- 
 treli himself was the host. He poured out the coffee, supplied 
 attentively every little want, insisted that those whose appetites 
 were first appeased should eat longer, and then shot at his own 
 table the two nearest to him, and saw the others fall beneath 
 the revolvers of his men with scarcely so much as a change 
 of color. 
 
 North of Spring river there was a dramatic episode. Perhaps 
 in those days every county had its tyrant. Most generally 
 revolutions breed monsters, and in the fathomless depths of the 
 unknown horrible things stir and crawl about that otherwise 
 would devour one another and die if the sweep of the war 
 storm did not invade their depths and cast them, clothed with 
 something of the semblance of humanity, into the fields where 
 the red reapers are. 
 
 Obadiah Smith, at first a peacable man, and at last a terrible 
 one, operated along Spring river as a base, and ranged at will 
 and when there was game afoot, to the north and the south of it. 
 He would take no chances in open battle. He was not brave. 
 Cunning, of immense energy, having the gift of penetration, 
 and much of the philosophy of individual control, he soon estab- 
 lished a local reputation for enterprise, and soon enlisted about 
 him a company of desperate thieves and cut- throats. Terror 
 ensued. Houses were robbed and burnt, some old men killed, 
 much stock was driven off, and outrage and oppression dealt 
 out with no unsparing hand. Quantrell, through the exercise 
 of a little strategy, got Smith into his possession. Passing one 
 afternoon late by a house at which he frequently visited, a mes- 
 sage was left to the effect that the commander of a Federal 
 scout, going north on important business, desired to especially 
 confer with him, and that his camp might be found five miles 
 further upon the road. Smith received the message in due time 
 and reported accordingly. He had much talk with Quantrell. 
 He told him of all the devilment he had done, and all he pro- 
 posed to do. The winter had been hard, and the traveling 
 
160 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 light but he thought the spring would soon revive business and 
 give mto the nets spread for the unwary many a goodly haul. 
 The next morning, as the Guerrillas broke camp and rode away 
 to the north, one might have seen, if ha had been at all curious 
 about such things, an aged oak of many limbs, and on the 
 lowest of these limbs a swaying body. 
 
 That day, about ten o'clock, three militia came to the column 
 and were killed. A mile from where dinner was procured, five 
 more. These also. were killed. In the dusk of the evening two 
 more killed; and where they bivouaced, one killed. The 
 day's work counted elevep as its aggregate, and nothing of an 
 exertion made at that to find a single soldier. Evil tidings 
 were abroad, however evil tidings that took wings and flew as 
 a bird. Some said from the first that QuantrelPs men were not 
 Union men, and some swore that no matter the kind of clothing 
 those inside of said clothing were wolves. Shot evenly that is 
 to say by experienced hands in the head the corpses of the 
 first discovered ten awakened from their lethargic sleep the gar- 
 risons along Spring river. Smith's executions stirred them to 
 aggression, and the groups of dead militia crossed continually 
 upon the roadside, horrified while it enraged every cantonment 
 or camp. Two hundred cavalrymen got quickly to horse and 
 poured up from the rear after Quantrell. It was not difficult to 
 keep upon his track. Here a corpse and there a corpse, here a 
 heap and there a heap blue always, and blue continually 
 what manner of a wild beast had been sent out from the 
 unknown of Arkansas to prey upon the militia? 
 
 At the Osage river the Federal pursuit, gathering volume and 
 intensity as it advanced, struck Quantrell hard and brought 
 him to an engagement south of the river. Too much haste, 
 however, cost them dearly. The advance, being the smaller, 
 had out-ridden the main body and was unsupported and 
 isolated when it attacked. Quantrell turned upon it savagely 
 and crushed it at a blow. Out of sixty-six troopers he killed 
 twenty ; in those days there were no wounded. Before the 
 main body came up he was over the Osage and away, and 
 riding fast to encompass the immense prairie between the river 
 and Johnstown. Scarcely over it a flanking column made a dash 
 at him coming from the west, killed Blunt's horse, wounded three 
 of the Guerrillas, and drove Quantrell into the timber. Night 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 161 
 
 fell and he rode out of sight and out of hearing. When he 
 drew rein again it was at the farm of Judge Russell Hicks, on the 
 Sni, in Jackson county. The next morning at David George's 
 he disbanded for ten days, sending messengers out in all direc- 
 tions to announce his arrival and make known the rendezvous. 
 Todd went to the Six Mile country to recruit ; Scott, to Lee's 
 Summit; Cole Younger, to Big Creek, in Cass county; Poole, 
 to Lafayette county; Gregg and Quantrell remained on the 
 Sni, and Jarrette and Berry ran at large from the Kansas line to 
 Saline county, Missouri. The Federals felt the stir of these 
 rejuvenated Cossacks as the trees the stir of the reawakened 
 sap. They clutched at the Missouri river and held it between 
 Lexington and Waverly as fast as the ice had. Poole, Gregg, 
 Younger, Scott, John Ross, William Greenwood, Jarrette and a 
 few others captured the steamer Sam Gaty, while Jarrette, Rey- 
 nolds, and three other Guerrillas pounced upon another steamer 
 at Waverly. John Ross and William Greenwood were Guer- 
 rillas of splendid dash and intrepidity. In all the war Green- 
 wood was never known to be without a smile upon his face or a 
 load in his revolver. Ross was a boy who grew up in battle 
 and when he became a man he was also a veteran. Either was 
 fit to fight for a crown. 
 
 Capt. John G. McCloy commanded the Sam Gaty a brave, 
 fearless, true-hearted sailor, handy with a pistol himself, and 
 no more afraid of a Guerrilla than a sand-bar. He landed his 
 boat at a wood-yard just below Sibley, but scarcely were the 
 stage planks run out on the shore when Jarrette, Younger, 
 Clifton, Henry Hockensmith, William Greenwood, John Poole, 
 Cole Younger and a dozen others rushed upon the deck. 
 Twenty-two negroes were on board in Federal uniform, togeth- 
 er with twelve white soldiers. Capt. McCloy was not on watch 
 at the time, but he hurried from his room half dressed and man- 
 fully faced the Guerrillas. Some wanted to kill the negroes. 
 Cole Younger swore they should not be harmed, and Cole 
 Younger' s word was law even with the most desperate among 
 the band. Among the white soldiers six belonged to Penick's 
 command and six to McFaren's. Only the six Penick men 
 were killed, and these because Penick had ordered all who 
 belonged to his regiment to never take a bushwacker alive. 
 Capt. McCloy also held out stubbornly against taking human 
 11 
 
162 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 life. His cool courage won the respect of the most cruel 
 among the Guerrillas, and his indomitable firmness saved his 
 boat from being burned. Fifteen hundred sacks of flour were 
 thrown into the river, a large number of government wagons, 
 much harness, and vast quantities of military supplies generally. 
 When this was done the boat was permitted to go on its way. 
 
 The ten days allotted by Quantrell for concentration purposes 
 had not yet expired, but many of the reckless spirits, rapacious 
 for air and exercise, could not be kept still. Poole, Ross and 
 Greenwood made a dash into the German settlement of Lafay- 
 ette county, and left some marks there that are not yet obliter- 
 ated. Albert Cunningham, glorying in the prowess of a splendid 
 physical manhood, and victor in a dozen combats against 
 desperate odds, fell before the spring came in an insignificant 
 skirmish OH the Harrisonville and Pleasant Hill road. Sooner 
 or later the most of them were to fall these savage Guerrillas, 
 fighting a never ending and hopeless battle ; gay, going ever 
 forward with a light on their bronzed faces, and crying out even 
 as the gladiators did: "Morituri te salutant." Cunningham 
 loved the land that he died for. A shade of melancholy 
 covered his features. It may be that it was only the fixed and 
 overcast look of one who was destined to die young. His 
 piercing eyes and the flexibility of his features revealed a tem- 
 perament impressionable to all beautiful and noble things, and 
 .with whom everything is grave, even heroism. If he had a 
 crime it was the pitiless patriotism of his conscience. Fate 
 favored him in this that he was shot dead. When they buried 
 him he had, if beyond the river he knew of it, a priceless funeral 
 service the Guerrillas wept for him. 
 
 In the lull of military movements in Jackson county, Cass 
 was to see the inauguration of the heavy Guerrilla work of 
 1863. Three miles west of Pleasant Hill, and near the house of 
 Pouncy Smith, Younger and his comrades struck a blow that 
 had the vigor of the old days in it. The garrison at Pleasant 
 Hill numbered three hundred, and from the garrison Lieutenant 
 Jefferson took thirty-two cavalrymen and advanced three miles 
 toward Smith's, on a scouting expedition. Will Hulse and Noah 
 Webster, two Guerrillas who seemed never to sleep, and to be 
 hanging eternally about the flanks of the Federals, discovered 
 Jefferson and reported his movements to the main body 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 163 
 
 encamped at Parson Webster's. Taking with him eight men Joe 
 Lee hurried to cut Jefferson off from Pleasant Hill ; Younger, 
 with eight more, was to close up from the west. Lee had with 
 him John Webster, Noah Webster, Sterling Kennedy, David 
 Kennedy, William Hays, Perry Hays, Henry McAninch, 
 James Marshall, Edward Marshall, and Edward Hink. 
 He was to gain the east end of the lane and halt 
 there until Younger came up at its western extremity. 
 Jefferson discovered Lee, however, and formed a line of battle 
 in front of Smith's, throwing some skirmishers forward and get- 
 ting ready apparently for a fight, although afterwards it was 
 reported that Lee's men were mistaken for a portion of the gar- 
 rison left behind at Pleasant Hill. Younger had further to go 
 than he at first supposed, but was making all the haste possible 
 when Lee, carried away by the uncontrollable impulse of his 
 men, charged down the lane from the east, at a furious rate. 
 Jefferson held his troopers fair to their line, until the Guerrillas 
 reached a carbine range, but held them no longer. A volley and 
 a stampede, and the wild race was on again. About a length 
 ahead and splendidly mounted, William Hays led the Guerrillas. 
 Shot dead, his horse fell under him and crushed his senses out 
 for half an hour. John Webster and Noah Webster took Hays' 
 place through sheer superiority of horse flesh and forced the 
 fighting, John killing three of the enemy as he ran and Noah 
 four. Noah's pistols were empty, but as he dashed alongside of 
 the rearmost trooper he knocked him from the saddle with the 
 butt of one of them, and seizing another by the collar of his 
 coat, dragged him to the ground. Both were dispatched. Too 
 late to block the western mouth of the lane, Younger joined in 
 the swift pursuit as it passed him to the left, and added much to 
 the certainty of the killing. Of the thirty-two, four alone 
 escaped, and Jefferson was not among them. Hulse shot him 
 running at a distance of fifty yards, and before he got to him he 
 was dead. Pleasant Hill was instantly evacuated. Not a Fed- 
 eral garrison remained in Cass, outside of Harrisonville, and the 
 garrison there was as effectually imprisoned as if surrounded by 
 the walls of a fortress. The Guerrillas rode at ease in every 
 direction. Younger and Lon Railey hung about the town for a 
 week killing its picquets and destroying its foraging parties. 
 Other bands, in other directions, gathered up valuable horses 
 
164 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 for future service and helped onward to the Southern army 
 troops of recruits who needed only pilots and protection to the 
 Osage river. 
 
 Like Cunningham, the man who had fought as a lion in twenty 
 desperate combats, was destined to fall in a sudden and un- 
 noted skirmish. Returning northward in the rear of Quantrell, 
 Lieutenant William Haller was attacked at sunset and fought 
 till dark. He triumphed, but he fell. His comrades buried 
 him, and wept for him, and left him : Impetuous alike in attack 
 or resistance, the resolution that always accompanied his actions 
 gave to his young face that rigid cast which otherwise would 
 only have belonged to maturer age. Romantic in his attach- 
 ment to the South, and tinged somewhat with the fatalism of a 
 military dreamer, he took no more heed of his life than of the 
 wind which blew out the long locks of his hair no more 
 Ithought of the future than if God were liberty, and death but a 
 going to God. As a soldier under fire, his conscience told him 
 that it was his duty to die at any time, and he died. His fea- 
 tures when he fell had upon them that strongest expression of 
 his soul enthusiasm. If he ever thought he was possessed of 
 faults, he would have gone to battle as to a sanctuary to con- 
 fess them, and to expiate them if need be by the sacrifice of 
 his blood. Just, chivalrous, gentle as a woman yet terrible in 
 combat, staunch to comrade and true to honor's laws, when he 
 fell Quantrell lost an arm and his country a hero. 
 
 The battle year of 1863 had commenced; formidable men 
 were coming to the surface in every direction. Here and there 
 sudden Guerrilla fires leaped up from hidden places about the 
 State and burned as if fed by oil until everything in their reach 
 had been consumed. It was a year of savsige fighting and kill- 
 ing ; it was the year of the torch and the black flag ; it was 
 the year when the invisible reaper reaped sorest in the ranks of 
 the Guerrillas and gathered into harvest sheaves the bravest of 
 the brave. 
 
 Anderson, newly above the horizon, was flashing across the 
 military heavens as a war comet. Left to himself and permitted 
 to pursue his placid ways in peace, probably the amiable neigh- 
 bor and working man would never have been developed into a 
 tiger. But see how he was wrought upon. One day late in 
 1862 a body of Federal soldiers, especially enrolled and 
 
WILLIAM ANDERSON. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 155 
 
 uniformed to persecute women and prey upon non-combatants, 
 gathered up in a half day's raid a number of demonstrative 
 Southern girls whose only sin had been extravagant talk and 
 pro-Confederacy cheering. They were taken to Kansas City 
 and imprisoned in a dilapidated tenement close upon a steep 
 place. Food was flung to them at intervals, and brutal guards 
 sang ribald songs and talked indecent talk in their presence. 
 With these women tenderly nurtured and reared were two of 
 William Anderson's sisters. Working industriously in Kansas 
 with his father, Anderson knew nothing of the real struggle of 
 the war and nothing of the incarceration of his sisters. A quiet, 
 courteous, fair-minded man, and one who took more delight in 
 a book than in a crowd, he had a most excellant name in Ran- 
 dolph county, Missouri, where he was born, and in Johnson 
 county, Kansas, where he was living in 1862. Destiny had to 
 deal with him, however. The old rickety ramshackled building, 
 within which were the huddled women, did not fall down fast 
 enough for the brutes who bellowed about it. At night and in 
 the darkness it was undermined, and when in the morning a 
 little wind blew upon it and it was shaken, it fell with a crash. 
 Cover up the fair faces disfigured, and the limp, lifeless bodies 
 past all pain ! Dead to touch, or kiss, or passionate entreaty 
 Anderson's eldest sister was taken from the wreck a corpse. 
 The younger, injured badly in the spine, with one leg broken, 
 and her face bruised and cut pitifully, lived to tell the terrible 
 story of it all to a gentle, patient brother kneeling at her bed- 
 side and looking up above to see if a God were there. 
 
 Soon a stir came along the border. A name new to the strife 
 was beginning to pass from band to band ancj have about the 
 camp fires a respectful hearing. u Anderson?" "Anderson?" 
 "Who is this Anderson?" the Guerrillas asked one of another. 
 "He kills them all. Quantrell spares, now and then, and Poole, 
 and Blunt, and Yager, and Haller, and Jarrette, and Younger, 
 and Gregg, and Todd, and Shepherd, and Cunningham, and all 
 the balance ; but Anderson never. Is he a devil in uni- 
 form?" 
 
 What he was fate made him. Horsemanship and prowess 
 seemed as natural to the Missourian as aristocracy and the sea 
 were to Venice. Dowered thus, Anderson gathered about him 
 a band of Centaurs, and rode at a gallop into terrible notoriety. 
 
166 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Long-haired and lithe as a gray-hound, as he galloped he could 
 swing himself to the earth and pick up a pistol. His forehead 
 was broad, clear, and arched over the eyes as the forehead of a 
 man who can brood and suffer. His nose, slightly aquiline and 
 thin about the nostrils, betokened much of sensitiveness and 
 more of determination. His eyes were variable in their color, 
 gray seemingly in repose, and absolutely black and expanded in 
 battle. The chin, neither square nor massive, was yet a firm 
 chin and hidden with a waving beard. All that was cruel about 
 his face was the mouth a smiling, handsome, ferocious mouth 
 drawn a little about the corners, and having as cruel attributes 
 lips that were thin, and regular teeth, white and wide apart. 
 Anderson, with his men, was immensely popular. His soldiers 
 adored him. His rigorous discipline was relaxed at the proper 
 moment; under his asperity he concealed genuine bonhommie. 
 Possessed of a natural eloquence, and manners at once free and 
 martial, he had only to be firm and his desperadoes were as 
 heated wax in his hands. Such ascendency, unless based upon 
 other qualities than personal accomplishment or individual tact, 
 could never have endured the fierce strains of savage Guerrilla 
 warfare ; but wherever danger was blackest, from the midst of 
 it Anderson's cheering voice was heard ; and wherever the 
 wreck of ranks and the tearing asunder of battle lines were 
 thickest and deadliest, there, leading the press and raging as a 
 wild beast, Anderson fought as a man possessed of a devil. 
 And he kept a list of his victims. One other Guerrilla alone 
 surpassed him Archie Clemmens, a boy soldier, blue-eyed and 
 beardless. Each had a silken cord knotted, and every knot 
 stood for a life. What a ghastly memorandum it was ! The 
 knots increased. All through the wild war weather of 1863 and 
 1864 the silken cords came often from their buckskin pouches, 
 and the knots, skillfully tied with deft, deadly fingers, grew and 
 grew. At last on Anderson's there were fifty-three and on 
 Clemmens' fifty-four the terrible aggregate one hundred and 
 seven. Thereafter Anderson never tied another. In the rear 
 of the raid Price made in 18fi4 a raid tinged as it were and 
 made splendid with some of the sunset glories of the war in the 
 trans-Mississippi Department Anderson struck a brigade of 
 Federal infantry across the road he proposed to travel. He was 
 a man who rode over things in preference to riding round them. 
 
THE WAKFAXE OF THE BOEDER 167 
 
 He ordered a charge as soon as he struck the skirmishers, and 
 dashed ahead as he always did, the foremost rider in a band that 
 had devils for riders. Hampered by the recruits he was taking 
 to Price, and making no allowance for the timidity of unarmed 
 and undrilled men, he charged, but he charged alone. A minie 
 ball found his heart. Life, tliank God, was gone when a rope 
 was put about his neck and his body was dragged as the body 
 of a deer slain in the woods. Many a picture was taken of the 
 dead lion, with his great mane of a beard, and that indescrib- 
 able pallor of death on his bronzed face. 
 
 Jesse and Frank James had emerged now from the awkward- 
 ness of youth and become giants in a night. Jesse was scarcely 
 sixteen years of age. Frank a couple of years older. The war 
 made them Guerrillas. Jesse was at home with his step-father, 
 Dr. Reuben Samuels, of Clay county. He knew nothing of the 
 strife save the echoes of it that now and then reached his moth- 
 er's isolated farm. One day a company of militia visited this 
 farm, hung Dr. Samuels to a tree until he was left for dead, and 
 seized upon Jesse, a mere boy plowing in the field. With a rope 
 about his neck, the soldiers abused him harshly, pricked him 
 with sabres, and finally threatened him with certain death if it 
 was ever reported to them again that he had given aid or infor- 
 mation to Guerrillas. The same week his mother and sister 
 were arrested, carried to St. Joseph, and thrown into a filthy 
 prison. The hardships they endured were dreadful. Often with- 
 out adequate food, insulted by sentinels who neither understood 
 nor cared to learn the first lesson of a soldier courtesy to women 
 cut off from all communication with the world, the sister was 
 brought near to death's door" from a fever which followed the 
 punishment, and the mother a high spirited and courageous 
 matron was released only after suffering and emaciation had 
 made her aged in her prime. Before Mrs. James returned to 
 her home, Jesse had joined Frank in the camp of Quantrell, 
 who had preceded him a few months, and who had already, not- 
 withstanding the briefness of the service, made a name for 
 supreme and conspicuous daring. Jesse James had a face as 
 smooth and as innocent as the face of a school girl. The blue 
 eyes very clear and penetrating were never at rest. His 
 form tall and finely moulded was capable of great effort and 
 great endurance. On his lips there was always a smile, and for 
 
168 NOTED GUERRILLA^ OR 
 
 every comrade a pleasant word or a compliment. Looking at 
 the small, white hands with their long, tapering fingers, it was 
 not then written or recorded that they were to become with a 
 revolver among the quickest and deadliest hands in the West. 
 Frank was a little older and taller than Jesse. Jesse's face was 
 something of an oval ; Frank's was long, wide about the fore- 
 head, square and massive about the jaws and chin, and set 
 always in a look of fixed repose. Jesse laughed at many things ; 
 Frank laughed not at all. Jesse was light hearted, reckless, 
 devil-may-care; Frank was sober, sedate, a splendid man always 
 for ambush or scouting parties. Both were undaunted. 
 
 Spring had put leaves upon all the trees and birds upon all 
 their branches. The Guerrilla sang as he rode, and blessed in 
 his heart the good God who was also the God of beneficent 
 nature. It was the time for ambushments and obscurations ; the 
 time to take hold of roads and strangle the travel upon them ; 
 the time to ally with the fastnesses by day and make the night 
 spectral with colossal horsemen ; the time to kill in the under- 
 growth and devour along the highway ; the time to put more 
 fuel on the fire beneath the cauldron and stir it until hideous 
 things came to the surface and made parts and parcels of the 
 strife. 
 
 Scott, back long from the South and eager for action, crossed 
 the Missouri river at Sibley the 20th day of May, 1863, taking 
 with him twelve men. Frank James and James Little led the 
 advance. Beyond the river thirteen miles and at the house of 
 Moses McCoy, the Guerrillas camped, concocting a plan 
 whereby the Federal garrison at Richfield, numbering thirty, 
 might be got at and worsted. Captain Sessions was in. com- 
 mand at Richfield, and his grave was already being dug. Scott 
 found a friendly citizen named Peter Mahoney who volunteered 
 to do the 'decoy work. He loaded up a wagon with wood, 
 clothed himself in the roughest and raggedest clothes he had, 
 and rumbled away behind as scrawny and fidgety a yoke of 
 oxen as ever felt a north wind in the winter bite their bones or 
 deceptive buckeye in the spring swell their bellies. 
 
 "Mr. Mahoney, what is the news?" This was the greeting 
 he got. "No news; I have wood for sale. Yes, but there is 
 some news, too; I like to have forgot. Eight or ten of 
 those Quantrell men are prowling about my way, the infernal 
 
FRANK JAMES. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 169 
 
 scoundrels, and I hope they may be hunted out of the 
 county." 
 
 Mahoney did well, but Scott did better. He secreted his 
 men three miles from Richfield and near the crossing of a 
 bridge. If an enemy came the bridge was a sentinel; its 
 resounding planks the explosion of a musket. Scott, with 
 eight men, dismounted and lay close along the road. Gregg, 
 with Fletch Taylor, James Little and Joe Hart, mounted and 
 ready to charge, kept still and expectant fifty yards in the rear 
 of the ambush. Presently at the crossing a dull booming was 
 heard, and the Guerrillas knew that Sessions had bit at the bait 
 Mahoney offered. A sudden clicking along the line the eight 
 uere in a hurry. "Be still," said Scott; "you cock too soon. 
 I had rather have two cool men than ten impatient ones." The 
 Federals came right onward ; they rode along gaily in front of 
 the ambuscade ; they had no skirmishers out ; and they were 
 doomed. The leading files were abreast of Scott on the right 
 when he ordered a volley, and Captain Sessions, Lieut. Graffen- 
 stien and seven privates fell dead. What was left of the Fed- 
 eral array turned itself into a rout ; Gregg, Taylor, Little and 
 Hart thundered down to the charge. Scott mounted again, and 
 altogether and away at a rush, pursuers and pursued dashed 
 into Richfield. Short rally there, and briefer fighting. The 
 remnant of the wreck surrendered, and Scott more merciful 
 than many among whom he soldiered spared the prisoners 
 and paroled them. 
 
 To Mat. McGinnis* it was twenty miles a hard ride after a 
 morning's combat but Scott made it by sunset, and sent Fletch 
 Taylor and Frank James out to scour the country and learn the 
 situation. The situation was exceedingly simple. Startled by 
 the sinister sweep of the Guerrilla pinions, always so dark and 
 threatening, the militia doves about the dove-cotes had begun to 
 mass themselves for protection and to make ready for destroying 
 the intruders. Clay county was not yet used to such riders and 
 raiders ; it was part of a border patrimony that had not yet 
 been operated upon by the Guerrillas, and it should not be. Mrs. 
 James gave her son also the further information that the great 
 bulk of the militia from Plattsburg, Clinton county, had been 
 ordered out to hunt for Scott, and that Plattsburg itself and at 
 that very time was at the mercy of any band of heroes. Taylor 
 
170 NOTED GUEKEILLAS, OK 
 
 and James got quick to Scott with the valuable information, and 
 Scott got quick to horse. In the beginning of the second night 
 since the Richfield battle, the march was begun for Plattsburg, 
 Taylor and James leading the advance. Two o'clock in the 
 morning found the Guerrillas on Smith's fork of Grand river, 
 and four miles from the objective point. TherefVas a halt here 
 and a sleep until daylight. , Again thrown forward to develop 
 the situation, Taylor, Gregg, Little and James learned speedily 
 that most of the garrison had gone out under Captain Rodgers 
 to capture Scott, and was at least twenty miles -from abandoned 
 Plattsburg. 
 
 Feeding and resting up to three in the afternoon, Scott at 
 that hour saddled for the attack. In the advance rode Taylor, 
 Gregg, Little and Jackson. They took the main road at a 
 walk ; ostensibly they were militia. Three hundred yards from 
 the square the Guerrillas formed fours and dashed ahead. It was 
 hot work. Not by forty-six had the garrison gone on the hunt 
 under Rodgers, and there in the well fortified court house, held 
 their own without a waver. The square was the hot place. 
 All the loopholes of the court house bore upon it ; the windows 
 commanded it ; the angles were swept by the embrasures cut 
 especially for musketry. Scott dashed into this square, raked 
 and rained upon by minie balls, and so did Taylor, John 
 Jackson, Little, Gregg, and Frank James. Flying swift for 
 succor, and shouting to his men as he ran to open for him, 
 Frank James cut off the Colonel commanding the post from his 
 bomb-proof and turned him over to Scott. "Captain," he said, 
 as he halted under a pitiless fire and delivered over the agitated 
 officer, "kill this man unless he delivers up the court house." 
 "That I will, by g d," and Scott swore a great oath and put 
 his hand upon his pistol. But the need to kill him never came. 
 The garrison, affected by the appeals of its commanding officer, 
 capitulated without a further fight, forty-six surrendering to 
 twelve. Two hundred muskets were broken to pieces, $10,000 
 in Missouri defence bonds were appropriated, while the militia 
 were paroled and made to promise better treatment of non- 
 combatants and Southern citizens in the future. Taking supper 
 publicly at the hotel, and having as his guest the commander of 
 the post, Scott played the hospitable soldier courteously, settled 
 his score like a prince, and rode out at dark and rapidly towards 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 171 
 
 
 
 the Missouri river. Knowing almost every foot of the country, 
 Scott commissioned Frank James especially to guide the column 
 and conduct it, if that were possible, to a ferry the enemy was 
 not guarding. His mother's house being on the direct line of 
 his march, and knowing how keenly observant and how 
 unusually well informed of military movements she always was, 
 he halted long enough to hear her story. It was not by any 
 means a flattering one. At every point on the river from 
 Kansas City to Lexington where a skiff had ever been, or a 
 boat, or a ferry, or a canoe, Federal soldiers were stationed. 
 Scott had aroused and alarmed four counties, and the deter- 
 mination was either to kill him or to capture him, and the terms 
 were synonymous. Scott would see, however. That night he 
 camped on Fishing river, and the next morning early he sent 
 Taylor, Little and Hart down to the Missouri to beat about the 
 crossings and take a real look at the facts. He would remain 
 in camp himself until they returned or until he was forced to 
 get out of it. He was forced to get out, and that speedily. 
 Captains Younger and Garth struck it about ten o'clock and 
 poured into it a rattling volley. One hundred and fifty strong, 
 what else could the ten Guerrillas do but get up and get away 
 as fast as possible. The pursuit lasted eight miles, Scott fighting 
 every chance he got and holding on to difficult places and cross- 
 ings until he was either flanked or about to become enveloped. 
 Ahead of pursuit sufficiently at Blue Mills to look to his crossing 
 somewhat, Scott made a rickety raft for the saddles and blankets 
 and for the men who could not swim, and got over safely. On 
 the Jackson side the quicksand laid hold of the horses of Scott, 
 Jackson and James, and inch by inch and struggle by struggle 
 drew them down. It was a pitiful sight. The poor steeds had 
 on their faces a look of human agony. Every effort at rescue 
 only hastened the engulfment. The sand had been fair to look 
 upon ; some leaves were upon it as a cover ; it reached to the 
 higher ground, smooth as a satin band and springing to the 
 feet of the innocent horses. Take care ! First to the fetlock, 
 next to the knees, and the bottom is gone, and the sentient 
 thing, tawny about the muzzle and creeping as a worm, crawls 
 ever and ever and covers as it crawls. When the Guerrillas 
 left their horses the Federals were on the northern side of the 
 river firing futilely across, and the treacherous quicksand 
 
172 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 unflecked by a hoof-mark spread itself out again under the 
 warm sun and waited, watching. The dismounted men had 
 need to mount themselves rapidly ; it was battle everywhere. 
 James Combs especially gave Frank James a horse destined 
 soon to become famous. Wherever he was, there was his rider, 
 and wherever the rider, there tempest and dead men. 
 
 Four miles from Independence, and back a little from the road 
 leading to Kansas City, a house stood occupied by several 
 women light of love. Thither regularly went Federal soldiers 
 from the Independence garrison, and the drinking was deep and 
 the orgies shameful. Gregg set a trap to catch a few of the 
 comers and goers. Within the lines of the enemy, much cir- 
 cumspection was required to make an envelopment of the house 
 successful. He chose Jesse James from among a number of 
 volunteers and sent him forward to reconnoitre the premises. 
 Jesse, arrayed in coquettish female apparel, with his smooth face, 
 blue eyes, and blooming cheeks, looked the image of a bashful 
 country girl, not yet acquainted with vice, though half eager 
 and half reluctant to walk a step nearer to the edge of its peril- 
 ous precipice. As he mounted, woman fashion, upon a fiery 
 horse, the wind blew all about his peach colored face the pink 
 ribbons of a garish bonnet, and lifted the tell-tale riding habit 
 just enough to reveal instead of laced shoes or gaiters, the 
 muddy boots of a born cavalryman. Gregg, taking ten men, 
 followed in the rear of James to within half a mile of the near- 
 est picquet post, and hid himself in the woods until word could 
 be brought from the bagnio ahead. If by a certain hour the 
 disguised Guerrilla did not return to his comrades, the picquets 
 .were to be driven in, the house surrounded, and the inmates 
 forced to give such information as they possessed, of his where- 
 abouts. Successful, and Gregg neither by word nor deed, was 
 to alarm the outpost or furnish indication in any manner that 
 Guerrillas were in the neighborhood. 
 
 Jesse Jarneg, having pointed out to him with tolerable accu- 
 racy the direction of the house, left the road, skirted the timber 
 rapidly, leaped several ugly ravines, floundered over a few 
 marshy places, and finally reached his destination without meet- 
 ing a citizen or encountering an enemy. He would not dis- 
 mount, but sat upon his horse at the fence and asked that the 
 mistress of the establishment might come out to him. Little by 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 173 
 
 little, and with many a gawky protest and many a bashful 
 simper, he told a, plausible story of parental espoinage and fam- 
 ily discipline. He, ostensibly a she, could not have beaux, 
 could not go with the soldiers, could not sit with them late, nor 
 ride with them, nor romp with them ; she was tired of it all and 
 wanted a little fun. Would the mistress let her come occasion- 
 ally to her and bring with her three or four neighbor girls, 
 who were in the same predicament? The mistress laughed and 
 was glad. New faces to her were like new coin, and she put 
 forth a hand and patted the merchantable thing upon the knee, 
 and ogled her smiling mouth and girlish features gleefully. As 
 she-wolf and venturesome lamb separated, the assignation was 
 assured. That night the amorous country girl, accompanied by 
 three of her young female companions, was to return, and the 
 mistress confident in her ability to provide them lovers was 
 to make known among the soldiers the attractive acquisition. 
 
 It lacked an hour of sunset when Jesse James got back to 
 Gregg ; an hour after sunset the Guerrillas, following hard upon 
 the track made by the boy spy, rode rapidly on to keep the tryst- 
 ing. The house was gracious with lights, and jubilant with 
 laughter. Drink abounded, and under cover of the clinking 
 glasses, the men kissed the women. Anticipating an orgy of 
 unusual attractions, twelve Federals had been lured out from the 
 garrison and made to believe that bare-footed maidens ran wild 
 in the woods, and buxom lasses hid for the hunting. No guards 
 were out ; no sentinels were posted. Jesse James crept close to 
 a window and peered in. The night was chill and a large wood 
 fire blazed upon a large hearth. All the company was in one 
 room, five women and a dozen men. Scattered about yet ready 
 for the grasping, the cavalry carbines were in easy reach, and 
 the revolvers handy about the person. Sampson trusting every- 
 thing to Delilah, might not have trusted so much if under the 
 old dispensation there had been anything of bushwhacking. 
 
 Gregg loved everybody who ever wore the gray, and what ex- 
 ercised him most was the question just now of attack. Should 
 he demand a surrender? Jesse James, the boy, said no to the 
 veteran. Twelve men inside of a house, and the house inside 
 of their own lines where reinforcements might be hurried quickly 
 to them, would surely hold their own against eleven outside, if 
 indeed they did not make it worse. The best thing to do was 
 
174 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 to fire through the windows and kill what could be killed by a 
 carbine volley, then rush in through the door and finish under 
 the cover of the smoke, the horror and the panic what sur- 
 vived the broadside. 
 
 Luckily, the women sat in a corner to themselves, and close 
 to a large bed fixed against the wall and to the right of the fire- 
 place. On the side of the house the bed was on, two broad 
 windows opened low upon the ground, and between the win- 
 dows there was a door, not ajar but not fastened, Gregg, with 
 five men, went to the upper window, and Taylor, with four, 
 took position at the lower. The women were out of immediate 
 range. The house shook; the glass shivered; the door was 
 hurled backward ; there was a hot, stifling crash of revolvers ; 
 and on the dresses of the women and the white coverlet of the 
 bed great blood splotches. Eight out of the twelve fell dead 
 or wounded the first fire ; after the last fire all were dead. It 
 was a spectacle ghastly beyond any ever yet witnessed by the 
 Guerrillas, because so circumscribed. Piled two deep the dead 
 Hien lay, cne with a glass grasped tightly in his stiffened 
 fingers, and one in his shut hand the picture of a woman 
 scarcely clad. How they wept, the poor, painted things, for 
 the slain soldiers, and how they blasphemed ; but Gregg tarried 
 not, neither did he make atonement. As they lay heaped where 
 they fell and piled together, so they lay still when he mounted 
 and rode away. 
 
 There was riding and mustering in and about the country of the 
 Hudspeths. Every Guerrilla in Missouri knew personally or had 
 heard of the Hudspeths. Owning well nigh a whole neighbor- 
 hood in the eastern portion of Jackson county, there were four 
 brothers who, when they were not fighting for the Southern 
 Confederacy, were feeding the soldiers. Lane robbed them, 
 Jennison robbed them, Anthony robbed them, militiaman and 
 Jayhawker alike robbed them ; they were burnt out and plun- 
 dered ; shot at and waylaid ; hunted here, driven there, and 
 persecuted everywhere, but they could not be reduced in either 
 purse or spirit. They still gave and fought. They scouted for 
 Quantrell and killed with Todd; they furnished guides for 
 Anderson and ambuscaded with Gregg. Their land could not 
 be taken from them, that they knew; but if like their other 
 property it had been moveable, the land too would have gone 
 
JESSE W. JAMES, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER ^5 
 
 without a murmur. Patriotism was the standard by which they 
 judged every man, and those who were not patriotic were untrue. 
 No matter the iron emergencies that were sometimes upon 
 the country ; no matter what blood-thirsty orders sought to kill 
 comradeship and obliterate sympathy; no matter how all the 
 highways were guarded and all the garrisoned places overgrown 
 with soldiers, the Hudspeths kept the faith and fought the good 
 fight to the end. 
 
 It was, therefore, in the Hudspeth neighborhood that a mus- 
 tering was being had. Todd had sent a message to Scott, and 
 Scott to John Jarrette, and John Jarrette to Gregg, and Gregg 
 to Yager, and Yager to Anderson, and Anderson to Poole, 
 and Poole to Maddox, and so the tidings went from chief 
 to chief until the border was aflame. At the rendezvous 
 each leader hastily arrived bringing in the aggregate about 
 seventy Guerrillas. It was the intention to strike a blow 
 somewhere, but as yet no direction had been agreed upon 
 nor any place designated. A war council fixed upon Kansas 
 City ; to such men the impossible was possible. Todd was 
 put in command of the expedition, and -made subsidiary to him 
 were Scott, Anderson, Yager, Gregg, Maddox and Jarrette. 
 On the evening of the 16th of June, 1863, Todd formed the 
 Guerrillas in line and laid down the law to them: "It has been 
 settled that we attack Kansas City. The venture is a desperate 
 one ; you can only promise yourselves hard fighting and hard 
 riding ; the most of us may be killed. If any among you 
 desire to remain behind move two paces to the front." Not a 
 horse stirred ; rear rank and front rank the seventy men were 
 as adamant. 
 
 It was not to be, however this attack upon Kansas City. As 
 Todd reached the undulating and expanding prairie close to the 
 residence of Col. Upton Hays, he saw on the road leading from 
 Westport to Little Santa Fe a column of Federals numbering 
 two hundred. They were en route from Kansas to Westport, 
 and from Westport of course right on into Kansas City. 
 "These people," Todd said, laconically, "had better be fought 
 outside of brick walls than inside of them, and here we must 
 fight." To cut them off from Westport and bring them to a 
 stand in the open ground, a distance of eight miles had to be 
 traversed while the Federals were marching five. It was done 
 
176 NOTED GUEBBILLAS, OH 
 
 at a gallop, Todd reached Brush creek in front of the advanc- 
 ing column, formed his men behind an eminence, and rode for- 
 ward alone to reconnoitre. His signal to advance was the lift- 
 ing of his hat. If he did this the Guerrillas were to ride slowly 
 to the crest of the ridge ; if he did not do this, they were to file 
 to the left and let the Kansas column go by. Clear-cut yet 
 standing massive against the blue sky beyond, Todd silently sat 
 his horse in front of his line for a few minutes and gazed upon 
 the advancing enemy. If they saw him, they made no sign. If 
 he counted them, their numbers did not deter him, for he lifted 
 his hat once as he turned to his men, and drew from his hips to 
 his front the pistols of his belt. The combat was certain now. 
 Boon Schull, Frank James, Geo. Todd and Fletch Taylor led on 
 the right just a little, while further down the line Anderson, Ya- 
 ger, Gregg, Jarre tte, Jesse James, Geo. Maddox and Dick Mad- 
 dox were slightly in advance of the centre and left. The Fede- 
 rals were a portion of the 9th Kansas Cavalry, and were com- 
 manded by Capt. Thatcher. The dust was intolerable. It 
 arose as a vast cloud and hid the combatants. Friend fired at 
 friend, and foe rode side by side with foe afraid to shoot. Boon 
 Schnll had killed four of the enemy, and in the gloom was still 
 ahead and killing when he was shot dead from the saddle by a 
 Federal trooper. Mistaking him for a comrade and galloping 
 past in pursuit, the Kansas man fired into his back and finished 
 one of the chosen ones of a chosen band. Frank James, close 
 behind him, saw the flash of the Federal's pistol in the yellow 
 cloud of the dust and killed the Federal as he sat. Another fell 
 out from the ranks of the Guerrillas in the same manner, Al. 
 Wyatt, fighting as he always fought, far in the front. Thatcher 
 could not make headway against men who were ambi-dextered, 
 whose pistols seemed always to be loaded, who fired and dashed 
 ahead, and who seemed always to be firing and dashing ahead. 
 Anderson raged as a tiger unloosed. Todd fought as he always 
 did C0 ol, smiling, deadly. Taylor with five loads emptied five 
 saddles ; Jarrette, hemmed in on a flank by three troopers, all 
 of whom were shooting at him at the same time, killed them all, 
 and Jesse James boy that he was won from Anderson the 
 remarkable compliment: "Not to have any beard, he is the 
 keenest and cleanest fighter in the command." Gregg, his 
 grave face fixed as it was always fixed in absolute repose, added 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 177 
 
 three to his already long list, and Scott as if conscious that he 
 was fighting his last battle multiplied his energy and his prow- 
 ess. Eighty Federals had already fallen, and the wild rout was 
 already thundering away across the prairies into Kansas, pur- 
 sued by devils who killed and spared not, when a solid regiment 
 of infantry emerged at the double quick from a line of sheltering 
 timber and formed in front of it for succor. What to the desert- 
 parched and scorched are green things and running water, that 
 to the remnant of the riven Ninth was the sheltering infantry. 
 They ran through it, and behind it, and formed in the lee and 
 the rear of it ; but they did not come out again to see the last 
 of the wild beasts retreating, baffled from a barrier they could 
 not break. Todd, knowing in an instant the folly of further 
 fighting, checked his men and rearranged his ranks. At long 
 range almost a mile Scott, while calmly watching the enemy, 
 was shot ; an Enfield rifle ball had found his heart. It was over 
 this man that Todd wept when they buried him. Perhaps both 
 by nature and temperament no man was better fitted for the life 
 of a Guerrilla than Fernando Scott. Of a highly nervous and 
 sensitive disposition, he slept little ; it was not believed that he 
 ever experienced an emotion of physical fear; under fire no 
 soldier could be cooler ; he won the love of his men first later, 
 their adoration ; thinking a great deal, he did not talk much ; 
 gentle, he scarcely ever spoke harshly; tender-hearted, he very 
 rarely ever killed save in open battle. Above everything else 
 he was true. Nothing deterred him in the line of his duty, and 
 if he had been ordered to blow up a powder-magazine he would 
 have blown it up and himself with it. 
 
 Boon Schull was a Missouri Murat, fighting obscurely and 
 under a black flag. If to ride always in the advance, if to fight 
 single-handed or against any odds, if to dash at anything and 
 grapple with anything, if to attract twice once by his boyish- 
 ness and once by his desperation made him in any manner to 
 approximate the great cavalry Frenchman, then was Schull a 
 border Murat, unforgotten of history, but a splendid type of that 
 race of Southern soldiers who, man to man, could have whipped 
 the world. 
 
 Todd brought back tenderly the bodies of Scott, Schull and 
 Wyatt, detailing to guard them Richard BelTy, Fletch Taylor, 
 James Little, Frank James, John Ross, and Oath Hinton, six 
 12 
 
178 NOTED GUERBILLAS, OK 
 
 comrades who, like the dead ones, knew no fear and shrank 
 from no duty. Schull's body was taken to -the house of Mrs. 
 Younger, and his relatives, the Wallaces, informed of h ; s death. 
 Todd performed the last sad rites for Scott the night of the day 
 of the battle. As his brief lifetime had been stormy, so was his 
 burial. The night was tempestuous. The wrathful wind smote 
 the trees with the wings of a great darkness. All the sky was a 
 void ; nothing was there but the unknown. The rain, articulate 
 almost in its beating, fell upon the pallid face of the sleeping 
 man, uncovered for the last time, and murmured, it may be, a 
 benediction. The swirling torches, few and far apart, peopled 
 with spectres the shadows they disturbed. No prayer was said ; 
 the good God knew best of all what had been writ in the 
 everlasting book touching the dead Guerrilla, and struck the 
 balance to the side whereon was written courage, manhood, 
 truth. 
 
 At the grave of Schull it was not permitted to his comrades 
 to gather about and say any word that would serve to make the 
 long journey shorter or the long sleep lighter in eternity. 
 Federal troops were camped all about the house, and upon all 
 the roads leading to it. At night as the mournful escort bore 
 the young soldier back from the last of his fields, it passed a 
 Federal bivouac twenty paces from the road. The cortege, 
 however, was not halted, and the grave was dug almost within 
 sight of the camp-fires. 
 
 The operations of the Guerrillas now became really formida- 
 ble. Scouting parties of the enemy were cut to pieces, picquet 
 posts exterminated, guards convoying foraging trains slain 
 among their wagons, marching columns ambuscaded, and heavy 
 war bodies fired upon continually and always at a disadvantage. 
 Jesse James headed one squad and lay in wait a whole day long 
 watching for a fishing party They did not come the first day, 
 nor the second till about noon, but James waited rationless and 
 got a point blank volley into them before he left, killing six out 
 of eight, one of the killed being a Lieutenant. 
 
 Frank James, Fletch Taylor, John Ross, Hinton, Little, 
 George Shepherd, Poole, and Cole Younger came suddenly 
 upon a foraging party of eight in a large field in the middle of 
 which there was a barn. Pressed to the girth the Federals took 
 refuge in this and began to make a good fight for their lives. 
 
JOHN JAKRETTE. 
 
 PEYTON LONG. 
 
 ALLEN FARMER. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 179 
 
 Taylor and James, covered by the fire of their comrades, made 
 a desperate rush on the building, put a lighted match to some 
 convenient hay, and soon the whole structure was in flames. 
 As the enemy ran out, every one of the eight was killed, two 
 falling back in the barn and being charced there beyond recog- 
 nition. 
 
 Jarrette and Gregg, taking five men apiece, crossed over into 
 Kansas on the west of Westport, and hid themselves until the 
 darkness came. Their operations were confined principally to 
 the main road between Leavenworth and Kansas City, and their 
 first victims were a sergeant and four men carrying dispatches. 
 The whole party were killed, and the dispatches read and 
 destroyed. 
 
 The next thing to come along in the way of game was an 
 ambulance containing a Nebraska sutler, the sutler's clerk, 
 two artillerymen from some fort on the plains, and a negro 
 driver. The sutler was drunk, the sutler's clerk was noisy, and 
 the two artillerymen were asleep. Jarrette called to the driver 
 to halt, but the driver, suspecting danger, whipped up his 
 horses. The drunken sutler fired upon Jarrette, with his pistol 
 almost touching him, and the sutler's clerk shouted "Murder!" 
 "Murder!" at the top of his voice. Gregg, galloping ahead 
 and killing the lead horse in the traces, had the ill- 
 assorted ambulance load completely at his mercy. The sutler 
 and the sutler's clerk were killed with scarcely anything of 
 ceremony, and the black driver also for his contrariness, but the 
 artillerymen were regulars and Irish regulars at that, and 
 Jarrette, guarding them until daylight, released them without 
 a pledge. 
 
 Scarcely half a mile further upon the road there was a house 
 that in the old-fashioned parlance might be called a tavern. 
 * 'Entertainment for man and beast," were the words painted 
 upon a board that was nailed to a tree. u Hello!" cried Gregg, 
 in advance with John Ross and Sim Whitsett, "who keeps 
 house?" The landlord came, a rubicund man, all affability and 
 belly. "I keep house, gentlemen," he said, "but you must be 
 light upon me to-night, for I am full." And so he was. Two 
 men remained outside to care for the horses, and ten took a 
 stroll over the premises. In the stable three Federals were 
 dragged out from a lot of straw, in the kitchen the third one was 
 
180 NOTED GUEEEILLAS, OH 
 
 cornered, and in five beds in various parts of the tavern proper^ 
 the Guerrillas came upon five more, big with sleep when 
 awakened, and helpless in proportion as they were destitute of 
 clothing. Poor creatures ! they were shivering as much from the 
 cold as from their fright w.hen Jarrette shot them all. The land- 
 lord went next, killed over a horse he was trying to save, and 
 then the tavern. Burning the tavern, however, was a serious 
 mistake. The flames aroused a cavalry camp three quarters of a 
 mile to the left of the road in some timber, and soon four com- 
 panies came swarming out to solve the problem of the burning. 
 Jarrette was gone, but the road was alive with soldiers, who 
 hunted all through the night and until late the next morning for 
 something that would tell of the invisible devils who for seventeen 
 miles had strewn it with corpses. 
 
 Todd, with ten men, went back to his old intrenchments on 
 the Harrisonville and Kansas City road and hid himself for two 
 days and nights completely. He let couriers go by, scouts go 
 by, detachments of various sizes go by, and here and there a 
 wagon, and once a piece of artillery. He did not fire a single 
 pistol shot. He scarcely allowed a man upon the road. 
 What had come over Todd? this one whispered and that one 
 whispered; didn't he mean to fight? this one asked and that 
 one asked. Somewhere about ten o'clock on the morning of the 
 third day, eighteen Kansas Red Legs, en route to Independence 
 to join a battalion there, rode past the trenches singing and 
 swearing. Out of eighteen, three got alive into Independence. 
 Todd, informed before hand of the marching of this detach- 
 ment, waited thus grimly for its arrival, letting slip through his 
 fingers considerable other game not near so valuable in the esti- 
 mation of this merciless fighter, par excellence, of the border. 
 
 Poole also took a turn down towards the Lafayette county 
 line. West of Napoleon three miles there was a spring at 
 which troops marching to and fro along the river road gen- 
 erally stopped to drink. This spring broke out from the bluff s- 
 foot, was conveyed through some open box work across the little 
 stretch of level land between the bluff and the road, and made 
 to fall in a huge tank just at the upper verge of the dusty high- 
 way. Poole knew it well, a grateful oasis for thirsty cavalry- 
 men. Above the tank was the bluff, and above the bluff exceed- 
 ingly heavy timber. Ambushed, Poole waited all one night and 
 
DAVE POOLE. 
 
 E. P. DE HART. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 181 
 
 until noon the next day, for what fortune might send to the 
 cooling water. He had thirty good men at his beck and call, 
 and he had the timber. No picquets were out at either end of 
 the road, and none were necessary. It had never happened 
 before that the spring was ambuscaded. Huston's regiment 
 held Lexington, a regiment of regular militia with fair reputa- 
 tion for fighting, and soins attainments as soldiers in battle. 
 Eighty-four, commanded by a Captain, stopped at the spring to 
 drink themselves and let their horses drink. From the trees, 
 behind which Poole and his men were hiding to the tank upon 
 the roadside, it was probably fifty paces, the plunging fire the 
 Guerrillas were possessed of, making if anything this distance 
 shorter and deadlier. As the Federals approached the watering- 
 place they broke ranks without an order and hurried forward 
 altogether and crowded. The men were thirsty and the beasts 
 were thirsty. Forty of the eighty horses had their heads 
 together in the tank, while their riders, busy at the trough above, 
 were stooping and drinking leisurely. The woods blazed, the 
 water was bloody, the oasis became a graveyard. After the 
 carbines had commenced the work, the revolvers finished it. 
 Twenty-seven lay dead where they had dismounted, six more 
 perished in the pursuit, and eleven, badly wounded, were spared 
 by Poole because of the regiment's name for fairness and toler- 
 ant behavior. 
 
 All these blows, coming so thick, and so fast, and so close 
 together, bred something like a cry of wrath along the border. 
 Gen. Thomas Ewing was in command, and he swore a great 
 Democratic oath that until the prairies were made red with the 
 blood of the bushwhackers he would keep daily in the saddle a 
 thousand horsemen. To the threat Quantrell replied by a con- 
 centration. Jarrette, Younger, Yager, and Kailey were on Big 
 Creek, in Cass county. Todd was in Jackson. Tom Talley, 
 Cole Younger, and Ed Hink were the messengers chosen to 
 speed the time and place of rendezvous. Jarrette, before 
 further operations commenced, reorganized his company. Cole- 
 man Younger was elected First Lieutenant ; Joseph Lee, Sec- 
 ond ; Lon Railey, Third, and John Webster, Orderly Sergeant, 
 The roll was called and eighty men answered to their names. 
 Todd, at the house of William Hopkins, on Little Blue, also 
 
182 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 reorganized. Fletcher Taylor was elected First Lieutenant, 
 James Little, Second; William Anderson, Third, and Isaac 
 Berry, Orderly Sergeant. Anderson, be it remembered, com- 
 menced under Todd thai career which was to horrify the country. 
 Capt. Richard Yager marshalled his men on Big Blue at the farm 
 of his father, and on the night of July 14th, 1863, Yager, Jar- 
 rette and Todd met Quantrell at the Edmond Coward farm, a 
 famous Guerrilla mustering-place. The Cowards were all patri- 
 ots and all soldiers. They belonged to that indomitable class of 
 citizens in Jackson county whom no terror could affright nor 
 persecution intimidate. Volunteers for the war, the war might 
 lake goods, houses, shelter, substance, everything; but never 
 the faith that failed not to the end. 
 
 From Coward's Quantrell marched to meet Poole, Blunt and 
 McGrew at David George's, another favorite mustering-place, 
 and then due east for an hour or two. He was hunting for 
 Borne of E wing's one thousand horsemen, perhaps for all of 
 them. As he approached the Blue Springs and Pleasant Hill 
 road a long line to the left told him quickly that there was 
 work to be done. Quantrell sent Todd and Little forward at 
 once to uncover the line. Two Federals rode out to meet 
 them promptly and halted at a distance of fifty yards. 
 Quoth Todd: "Who are you?" "It is Major Ransom, with 
 four hundred men and two pieces of artillery." "Your busi- 
 eness?" "Looking for that d d scoundrel Quantrell, and 
 QuantrelPs cut- throats and thieves." "Well you can find 
 them, I reckon ; but you express yourself too freely. You are 
 not polite." At Todd's order, Little then rode rapidly to 
 Quantrell, reporting the exact condition of affairs and asking 
 for twenty men to skirmish with the enemy. Quantrell sent 
 him the desired number under Lieutenant Coleman Younger, 
 who took with him Jesse and Frank James, George and Richard 
 Maddox, George Wigginton, Sim Whitsett, Tom Talley, and 
 other spirits just as choice and dashing. Todd, seeing at his 
 back so many of those who had followed him in fifty desperate 
 combats, ordered a charge immediately and led it furiously. 
 The Federals advanced, astonished at the unexpected audacity 
 of the rush, were cut to pieces and scattered. Before they 
 could get safely to the shelter of the covering column fifteen 
 had been killed and a dozen wounded. In the race Sim 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 183 
 
 Whitsett was seen to shoot three, and the two Jameses three 
 each. Todd, being better mounted than any of his company, 
 killed four. Ransom unlimbered his artillery, notwithstanding 
 the heavy odds he held against Quantrell, and opened upon 
 the twenty Guerrillas Todd held in front of him. Quantrell 
 retreated, and Ransom followed slowly. Step by step Quantrell 
 led him on to the Sni, past the old rendezvous-ground at 
 David George's, and past the camp of the day before. Cou- 
 riers, sent early to Poole, Blunt and Gregg, had ordered them to 
 take position at a crossing upon the Sni, to hide themselves, and 
 hold it. Todd fought and fell back ; Quantrell relieved Todd 
 and fought and fell back ; Ransom crept on leisurely, feeling 
 his way as he crept and firing his cannon from every hill-top 
 and valley. Finally Ransom halted for dinner, and Quantrell 
 halted in watching distance. The next step was to the ford, 
 and Quantrell passed on through, halting on the ground beyond 
 and forming line of battle. Ransom followed, slow but dogged. 
 The Sni was full, many had crossed over and were waiting for 
 those behind to close up, the thither bank was blue with uni- 
 forms when Poole poured out from his ambuscade a terrible 
 fire, and Quantrell charged down upon the demoralized and 
 disorded mass. The fight was brief but bloody. Ransom tried 
 to keep hold upon the timber and rally his men about the 
 artillery, but they broke away from his grasp and forced him 
 to fall back rapidly towards 'Independence, Todd taking the 
 advance again and driving everything before him. Quantrell 
 pursued until Ransom, under the shelter of his fortified post, 
 saw his roughly handled troops drop from their horses utterly 
 used up and exhausted. His loss he afterwards admitted to be 
 fifty-eight ; the Guerrillas figured it up to seventy-three. After 
 this fight Quantrell took position in the neighborhood of Pink 
 Hill and called a council of his officers as to the advisability of 
 attacking Lexington. The vote upon the proposition was a tie 
 Jarrette, Younger, and Todd voting against the attack, and 
 Anderson, Poole, and Gregg in favor of it. Poole and Ander- 
 son especially urged the attack, Poole pledging himself to lead 
 the advance and deliver his first volley in front of the city hotel. 
 He was overruled. Lexington was a fortified place, held by a 
 large garrison, and an assault upon it was a risk that the cooler 
 heads among the Guerrillas were not willing to take ; the con- 
 
184 NOTED GUEKBILLAS, OR 
 
 centrated command, therefore, separated again, or rather dis- 
 banded for fifteen days. Lee went to Saline county, attacked 
 Brownsville, captured its garrison of twenty militia, and 
 operated successfully in its vicinity for nearly a week. Captain 
 Joseph A. Lee, one of the most dashing and successful soldiers 
 the war produced, was a young man as modest as he was brave. 
 He made military honor his guiding star, and fought always as 
 a knight whose lineage was high and whose escutcheon was spot- 
 less. Surrounded by desperate circumstances, and called upon 
 oftentimes to do desperate things, he had wisdom allied to valor, 
 and he knew how equally to struggle, to submit, to rise again 
 from prostration refreshed like a giant, and to manifest that 
 species of heroic endurance which, whenever everything else 
 fails, always knows how to die. Poole went to Lafayette 
 county, Jarrette to the Sni Hills, Younger to Big Creek, Todd 
 and Quantrell to Jackson county, Gregg to the Little Blue, 
 Yager to the neighborhood of Westport, and Anderson into 
 Kansas. The old savage work of isolation and ambuscade com- 
 menced again. Dead men were everywhere. The militia and 
 the Jayhawkers preyed upon the citizens and the non-combat- 
 ,'ants, and the Guerrillas preyed upon the militia and the Jay- 
 hawkers. To the sword the torch had been added. Two hun- 
 dred houses in Jackson county had been burnt ; Vernon county 
 was a desert ; a day's ride in Bates brought no sight of a habita- 
 tion; Cass was well nigh ruined; a black swathe had been 
 mowed through Lafayette ; Butler was in ashes ; Harrisonville 
 was in ashes ; armed men met in the woods, by the streams, 
 along the highways ; there were musket-shots, pistol-shots, cries, 
 the shouts of struggling men, smoke by day and flames by 
 night ; the soldiers hated one another ; there was no quarter ; 
 hogs fed upon human flesh ; Ewing's one thousand cavalrymen 
 were in the saddle ; the black flag had been lifted ; the face 
 of the good God seemed to be turned away from the border ; 
 the Lawrence Massacre was making head. 
 
 Anderson, taking with him twenty men, made a dash into 
 Kansas, circled Olathe, and came upon a skeleton camp of in- 
 fantry numbering thirty- eight. He charged the camp and 
 slaughtered every human male thing about it. He fired the 
 tents and the wagons, appropriated the horses, let the loose 
 women go free, and hurried out after a foraging party which 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 185 
 
 had been gone from the camp an hour. It was found in a barn- 
 lot loading six wagons with oats and corn. To each wagon there 
 were four men, who had not even brought their arms with them, 
 and they tried to surrender. No use! Back safe from the jaws 
 of a famishing tiger might rather the stricken deer hope to come 
 than any Kansas man from the hands of Bill Anderson. He killed 
 the soldiers first, next the teamsters, and then the farmer who 
 owned the corn, and two of his sons who were at home from 
 the army on furlough. The country was up and after him. It 
 was sixty miles to shelter, and upon every mile of that distance 
 Anderson stood and fought, escaping finally after inflicting 
 serious loss upon his pursuers and losing himself in killed seven 
 of his bravest men. 
 
 At Blue Mills ferry Captain Parker crossed into Clay county 
 with ten men, rode rapidly to Liberty and charged the town. 
 Captain Henry Hubbard commanded the post, its garrison con- 
 sisting of twenty-five men. Hubbard was badly wounded, and 
 an old negro by the name of Washington Dale hid him securely 
 under some hay in the loft of a livery stable. With Parker was 
 a young soldier, Harvey Turner, who was surrounded the next 
 day at the house of a Mrs. Carroll by sixty militia, a portion of 
 Penick's regiment. All along the line in those days the watch- 
 word was: "No surrender," and Turner rushed from the house 
 to his horse, firing right and left as he ran. Sixty Federals 
 shot at him from every conceivable direction, but he killed one, 
 wounded another, and escaped, joining Parker the next day 
 without even the smell of fire upon his garments. The Liberty 
 militia were not killed, as they had nothing in common with 
 those across the river; but two of them Wash Huffaker and 
 D. Hubbard were taken into Jackson county and investigated. 
 Charges touching their behavior towards certain r.on-combat- 
 ants had been freely circulated, but not being substantiated 
 upon investigation, Parker paroled them later and released 
 them. 
 
 Parker next, in company with Cole Younger, Joe Lee, Joe 
 Hall, Richard Kenney and Charles Sanders, made a dash into 
 Wellington where ten Federals were robbing a store. Parker 
 was killed in the attack upon the town, but his comrades 
 avenged him. Not a man of the ten escaped, and the Guerril- 
 las remained during the day and until late at night, compli- 
 
186 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 mented by the citizens and feasted as well. The road west 
 from Wellington runs between the bluff and the river, and as 
 the Guerrillas rode along under the stars, glad from so much 
 social relaxation and pleasure, five stalwart forms rose up 
 behind them in the road and fired a signal volley. Instantly 
 the bank next to the river was alive with Federals, and the air 
 thick with bullets. Seventy men had ambushed five, such at 
 that time was the terror of Quantrell's name, and left at the 
 same time an open space for them to get out at. Not slow 
 to avail themselves of an opportunity so considerately made, 
 the Guerrillas dashed ahead like the wind, taking the fire of the 
 whole line as they ran past it, and taking it without a scratch. 
 Later, a solitary militiaman rode into their ranks, made himself 
 known, and was shot dead by Kinney for his confidence. 
 
 The fifteen days of disbandment were on the eve of expiration. 
 A supply of ammunition ample for all purposes had been pro- 
 cured, and cartridges enough made for a week of constant 
 fighting. An expedition of an extraordinary character was 
 about to be inaugurated. The Guerrillas were beginning to 
 concentrate. The strife in Jackson county had been particularly 
 savage of late. Many inoffensive citizens had been killed. Mr. 
 Laws, an old resident, for feeding a squad of Federals disguised 
 as Guerrillas, was shot by the order of Major W. C. Ransom, a 
 Kansas Federal. Capt. Hoyt, another Kansas officer, rode into 
 Westport one day, took Philip Bucher from his wife and chil- 
 dren, marched him out on the commons, made him kneel down 
 and shot him. Henry Rout, another quiet citizen, was hung. 
 Another Kansas officer, while out on a scouting expedition, 
 wounded and captured an old man who was hunting stock. 
 Lest he should suffer some from his wounds, this considerate 
 officer finished him with a pistol bullet. A detachment of 
 Kansas soldiers were sent out on the Big Blue to arrest three 
 men. The men were not at home, but their wives were. 
 These arrested and forced to walk into Kansas City, a distance 
 of thirteen miles were put into a brick building with a door 
 which was locked upon the outside. That night the building, 
 undermined, fell, and the next day the mangled bodies of the 
 innocent women were boxed up and sent back to their homes in 
 an old ox wagon. Just look at the list: A son of Henry 
 Morris, only fourteen years old, was killed by Penick's troops 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 187 
 
 in Independence. Henry Morris lived five miles north of 
 Lone Jack. Big Jim Cummins was killed, and little Jim 
 Cummins. Little Jim Cummins had been wounded at Lone 
 Jack, but had recovered. John Phillips was hung. James 
 Saunders and Jeptha Crawford were taken from Blue Springs 
 and shot. Their houses were also burned. One of Penick's 
 men, calling himself Jim Lane, killed Dr. Triggs for his money. 
 Kimberlin was arrested, carried to Independence, sent back 
 home under a guard and hung in his barn. Moses Carr was 
 also arrested, carried to Independence, sent back again towards 
 his home, but before reaching it he was tied to a tree in Blue 
 Bottom and shot to pieces. Sam Jones was hung, an old man 
 named Doty was hung, George Tyler was shot, as were Hedrick 
 and Somers of Cass county, Samuels of Bates, Peters, Monroe, 
 Farwell and Lowers, of Vernon, and Givens, Manches ter, Boi- 
 ling, Newton, Beamish, Parker and Rails, of Jackson. Over 
 two hundred more were killed in the three months preceding 
 the Lawrence Massacre. In mid-winter houses were burned by 
 the hundred and whole neighborhoods devastated and laid 
 waste. Aroused as he never had been before, Quantrell med- 
 itated a terrible vengeance. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LAWRENCE. 
 
 ON Blackwater, in Johnson county, and at the house of Cap- 
 tain Purdee, Quantrell called the Guerrillas together for the 
 Lawrence Massacre. Todd, Jarrette, Blunt, Gregg, Anderson, 
 Yager, Younger, Estis and Holt, all were there, and when the 
 roll was called three hundred and ten answered promptly to 
 their names. Up to the mustering hour Quantrell had probably 
 not let his left hand know what his right hand had intended. 
 Secrecy necessarily was to be the salvation of the expedition, 
 if indeed there was any salvation for it. The rendezvous night 
 was an August night a blessed, balmy, mid-summer night 
 just such a night as would be chosen to give force to reflections 
 and permit the secrets of the soul to escape. The sultry sum- 
 mer day had lain swarthy in the sun and panting ; the sultry 
 summer winds had whispered nothing of the shadowy woods, 
 nothing of the babble of unseen brooks. Birds spoke good-bye 
 to birds in the tree-tops, and the foliage was filled with the 
 twilight. Grouped about him, Quantrell sat grave and calm 
 in the midst of his chieftains. Further away where the shadows 
 were, the men massed themselves in silent companies or spoke 
 low to one another and briefly. Something of a foreboding, 
 occult though it was and indefinable, made itself manifest. The 
 shadow of a great tragedy was impending. 
 
 Without in the least degree increasing or decreasing the diffi- 
 culties of the undertaking, Quantrell laid before his officers his 
 plan for attacking Lawrence. For a week a man of the com- 
 mand a cool, bold, plausible, desperate man had been in 
 the city through it, over it, about it, and around it and he 
 was here in the midst of them to report. Would they listen to 
 him? "Let him speak/' said Todd, sententiously. Lieuten- 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 189 
 
 ant Fletcher Taylor came out from the shadow, bowed gravely 
 to the group, and with the brevity of -a soldier who knew better 
 how to fight than to talk, laid bare the situation. Disguised as 
 a stock trader, or, rather assuming the role of a speculating 
 man, he had boldly entered Lawrence. Liberal, bountifully 
 supplied with money, keeping open rooms at the Eldridge 
 House, and agreeable in every way and upon every occasion, he 
 had seen all that it was necessary to see, and learned all that 
 could be of any possible advantage to the Guerrillas. The city 
 proper was but weakly garrisoned ; the camp beyond the river 
 was not strong ; the idea of a raid by Quantrell was honestly 
 derided ; supineness next to unbelief was the most predominant 
 madness of the people ; the streets were broad and good for 
 charging horsemen, and the hour for the venture was near 
 at hand. 
 
 "You have heard the report," Quantrell's deep voice broke 
 in, "but before you decide it is proper that you should know it 
 all. The march to Lawrence is a long one ; in every little town 
 there are soldiers; we leave soldiers behind us; we march 
 through soldiers ; we attack the town garrisoned by soldiers ; 
 we retreat through soldiers ; and when we would rest and refit 
 after the exhaustive expedition, we have to do the best we can 
 in the midst of a multitude of soldiers. Come, speak out, 
 somebody. What is it, Anderson?" "Lawrence or hell, but 
 with one proviso, that we kill every male thing." "Todd?" 
 "Lawrence, if I knew that not a man would get back alive." 
 "Gregg?" "Lawrence; it is the home of Jim Lane; the 
 foster mother of the Red Legs ; the nurse of the Jayhawkers." 
 "Shepherd?" "Lawrence ; I know it of old ; niggers and white 
 people are just the same there; it's a Boston colony and it 
 should be wiped- out." "Jarrette?" "Lawrence, by all 
 means. I've had my eye upon it for a year. The head devil of 
 all this killing and burning in Jackson county, I vote to fight it 
 with fire to burn it before we leave it." "Dick Maddox?" 
 "Lawrence ; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ; God 
 understands better than we do the equilibrium of civil war." 
 "Holt?" "Lawrence; and quick about it." "Yager?" 
 "Where my house once stood there is a heap of ashes. I 
 haven't a neighbor that's got a house Lawrence and the torch." 
 "Blunt?" "Count me in whenever there's killing. Lawrence 
 
190 NOTED GUEBBILLAS, OE 
 
 first, and then some other Kansas town; the name is nothing.' 5 
 4 'Have you all voted?'* "All." "Then Lawrence it is; saddle 
 up, men!" Thus was the Lawrence Massacre inaugurated. 
 
 Was it justifiable? Is there much of anything that is justifi- 
 able in civil war: Two civilizations struggled for mastery, with 
 only that imaginary thing, a state line, between thejn. On 
 either side the soldiers were not as soldiers who fight for a king, 
 for a crown, for a country, for an idea, for glory. At the bot- 
 tom of every combat was an intense hatred. Little by little 
 there became prominent that feature of savage atrocity which 
 slew the wounded, slaughtered the prisoners, and sometimes 
 mutilated the dead. Originally, the Jayhawkers in Kansas had 
 been very poor. They coveted the goods of their Missouri 
 neighbors, made wealthy or well-to-do by prosperous years of 
 peace and African slavery. Before they became soldiers they 
 had been brigands, and before they destroyed houses in the 
 name of retaliation they had plundered them at the instance of 
 individual greed. The first Federal officers operating in Kansas 
 -T-tbat is to say, those who belonged to the State were land 
 pirates or pilferers. Lane was a wholesale plunderer; Jennison, 
 in the scaly gradation, stood next to Lane; Anthony next to 
 Jennison; Montgomery next to Anthony; Ransom next to 
 Montgomery ; and so on down and down until it reached to the 
 turn of the captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, and pri- 
 vates. Stock in herds, flocks, droves, and multitudes were 
 driven from Missouri into Kansas. Houses gave up their furni- 
 ure ; women their jewelry ; children their wearing apparel ; 
 store-rooms their contents ; the land its crops ; the banks their 
 deposits. To robbery was added murder, to murder arson, and 
 to arson depopulation. Is it any wonder, then, that the Mis- 
 sourian whose father was killed should kill in return? Whose 
 house was burnt should burn in return? Whose property was 
 plundered, should pillage in return? Whose life was made 
 miserable, should hunt as a wild beast and rend accordingly? 
 Many such were in Quantrell's command many whose lives 
 were blighted ; who in a night were* made orphans and paupers ; 
 who saw the labor and accumulation of years swept away in an 
 hour of wanton destruction ; who for no reason on earth save 
 that they were Missourians, were hunted from hiding-place to 
 hiding-place ; who were preyed upon while a single cow remained 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 191 
 
 or a single shock of grain ; who were shot at, outlawed, bedev- 
 iled and proscribed, and who, no matter whether Union or 
 Disunion, were permitted to have neither a flag nor a country. 
 
 Yes ; there was a flag left to them. The Guerrillas, eager to 
 shake off something of a feeling of oppression that had come 
 unaccountably to some of the command, got rapidly to horse 
 and formed as rapidly into column. Then for the first time the 
 black banner was unfurled. In the centre of it, and neatly 
 worked with red silk was the single word "Quantrell." As its 
 ' outlines in the night could be imperfectly seen, and as the men 
 caught the meaning of the sombre banner, waving in the night 
 wind as something spectral and alive, a cheer broke forth 
 impetuously from every Guerrilla. The wish was interpreted, 
 which all felt to be righteous, but which none had ever before 
 uttered even in a whisper. It had voice and utterance now. 
 The border had not only found a chief, but it also had found a 
 banner. Thereafter, if when going into battle Quantrell unfurled 
 this flag, nothing lived that fell into the hands of the Guerrillas ; 
 if it were not unfurled, the fight took its chances, and the vic- 
 tims their chances with it. 
 
 It was the summer night of August 16th, 1863, that the Guer- 
 rilla column, having at its head this ominous banner, marched 
 west from Purdee's place on Blackwater. With it as simple sol- 
 diers, or, rather volunteers for the expedition, were Colonels 
 Joseph Holt and Boaz Boberts. Officers of the regular Confed- 
 erate army, they were in Missouri on recruiting service when 
 the ra'arch began, and fell into line as much from habit as from 
 inclination. 
 
 The first camp made was upon a stream midway between 
 Pleasant Hill and Lone Jack, where the water was good and the 
 hiding place excellent. All day Quantrell concealed himself 
 here, getting to saddle just at dark and ordering Tood up from 
 the rear to the advance. Passing Pleasant Hill to the north and 
 marching on rapidly fifteen miles, the second camp was at Har- 
 relson's, twenty-five miles from the place of starting. At three 
 o'clock on the afternoon of the second day, the route was 
 resumed and followed due west to the Aubrey, a pleasant Kan- 
 sas stream, abounding in grass and timber. Here Quantrell 
 halted until the darkness set in, feeding the horses well and per- 
 mitting the men to cook and eat heartily. At eight o'clock the 
 
192 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 march commenced again and continued on throughout the 
 night, in the direction of Lawrence. Three pilots were pressed 
 into service, carried with the command as far as they knew 
 aught of the road or the country, and then shot down remorse- 
 lessly in the nearest timber. 
 
 On the morning of the twenty-first, Lawrence was in siht. 
 An old man, a short distance upon the right of the road, was 
 feeding his hogs in the gray dawn, the first person seen to stir 
 about the doomed place. Quantrell sent Cole Younger over to 
 the hog-pen to catechize the industrious old farmer and learn 
 from him what changes had taken place in the situation since 
 Taylor had so thoroughly accomplished his mission. Younger, 
 dressed as a Federal Lieutenant, exhausted speedily the old 
 man's limited stock. Really but little change had taken place. 
 Across the Kansas river there were probably four hundred sol- 
 diers in camp, and on the Lawrence side about seventy-five. As 
 for the rebels, he didn't suppose there was one nearer than Mis- 
 souri ; certainly none within striking distance of Lawrence. 
 
 It was a lovely morning. The green of the fields and the 
 blue of the sky were glad together. Birds sang everywhere. 
 The footsteps of autumn had not yet been heard in the land. 
 Nowhere through the nights had any one seen the creeping of 
 its stealthy vanguard, stiffening the grass blades, making mute- 
 the melodies of the streams, and putting a pallor as of death 
 over all the landscape. The dawn of the delicious morning 
 stirred the blood like wine. .Everything was in harmony the 
 lowing of the cattle, the crowing of the cocks, the smoke curl- 
 ing up as incense offered to propitious nature, the haze in the 
 east, the earth which smelt sweet, the rippling of the South 
 wind, the placid city asleep in the balm of its verdure and the 
 blessings of its trees. 
 
 4 'Form fours!" The column agitated itself as though stirred 
 by an electrical impulse, galloped a little to the right and left, 
 reined up and dressed up, and looked as though a massive wedge 
 had 'fallen there with the blunt point turned towards Lawrence. 
 
 ^Near Mount Orlad, which rises in beauty up from the lower 
 country at the southwestern edge of the city, a lady and 
 gentleman rode leisurely along to enjoy the morning breeze 
 and view the splendors of the rising sun. As they rode they 
 laughed long and lightsomely. Into the blood of each also- 
 
THE WAEFABE OF THE BOEDER 193 
 
 some wine of the morning dawn had gone, and the woman's 
 face was flushed and the man's expectant. What between the 
 two had been said there, only the blue sky knew overhead and 
 the singing birds singing around. 
 
 "Look!" and the bloom had fled from the woman's face and 
 the tenderness from her eyes as she pointed to the southwest, 
 and to the blunt wedge there, and to the black flag waving in 
 the summer wind. The man looked and saw the wedge trans- 
 form itself into a column, and the column dash at the town. 
 Then he heard shots, shrieks, the rush of horsemen, the roar of 
 revolver vollies, and then bidden by the brave young girl to- 
 do so this man dashed away into the open country, pursued 
 by two of Quantrell's worst Guerrillas. Run out of two corn- 
 fields, across a dozen fences, and from hiding-place to hiding- 
 place, he finally baffled his pursuers and survived the slaughter. 
 His name was John Donnelly, and he lives to-day as an illustra- 
 tion of what trivial circumstances go sometimes to make up the; 
 warp and woof of human life. 
 
 u The camp first!" was the cry which ran through the ranks, 
 and Todd, leading Quantrell's old company, dashed down upon 
 it yelling and shooting. Scarcely any resistance was made. 
 Surprised, ridden over, shot in their blankets, paralyzed, some 
 of them, with terror, and running frantically about, what could 
 they do against the quickest and deadliest pistol shots along the 
 border? Bill Anderson claimed as his share of the killing, and 
 in the count afterwards the number was allowed to him r 
 fourteen soldiers and citizens. Todd, Jarrette, Anderson,. 
 Little, Andy McGuire, Peyton Long, William McGuire r 
 Richard Kinney, Allen Farmer, Jesse James, Frank James, 
 Archie Clements, Shepherd, Oath Hinton, Blunt and the- 
 balance of the old men did the most of the killing. They went 
 for revenge and they took it. Some plundered these men 
 killed. They all burned. The Federals on the opposite side 
 of the river made scarcely any attempt to cross to the rescue of 
 their butchered comrades ; a few skirmishers held them in 
 check. It was a day of darkness and woe. Distracted women 
 ran about the streets. Fathers were killed with infants 
 in their arms. Husbands in the embrace of their wives were 
 shot down. One man, shot seven times and not yet dead, 
 raised a little upon one elbow and begged for his life in an 
 13 
 
194 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 agony so -piteous that it haunted the after dreams of men ; the 
 eighth shot finished him. None who saw that dying expression 
 upon his face ever forgot it. Killing ran riot ; the torch was 
 applied to every residence; the air was filled with cries for 
 mercy; on every breeze came the wailing of women and the 
 screams of children. Dead men lay in cellars, upon the streets, 
 in parlors where costly furniture was ; on velvet carpets ; in 
 hovels, lowly and squalid; by fountains where azure water 
 played ; in hidden places everywhere. The sun came up and 
 flooded all the sky with its radiance, and yet the devil's work 
 was not done. Still the smoke ascended, and yet could be 
 heard the shots, the crackling of blazing rafters, and the crash 
 of falling walls. 
 
 The true story of the day's terrible work will never be told. 
 Nobody knows it. It is a story of episodes, tragic but isolated ; 
 a story full of colossal horrors and unexpected deliverances. 
 Sometimes a pleasant word saved a life, at other times a 
 witticism or a repartee. The heroic devotion of the women 
 shone out amid the black wreck of things a star. Many a 
 husband was saved by his wife ; many a lover by his sweetheart. 
 Something about most of the Guerrillas was human, if the way 
 to reach that something was only hit upon. The girls who were 
 the prettiest had the most influence. Attracted by the boy- 
 ishness of his face and a look in his blue eyes that seemed so 
 innocent, a young girl came to Jesse James just as he was in 
 the act of shooting a soldier in uniform who had been smoked 
 out of a cellar. His pistol was against the Federal's head when 
 an exceedingly soft and penetrating voice called out to him: 
 4 'Don't kill him, for my sake. He has eight children who have 
 no mother." James looked and saw a beautiful girl, probably 
 just turned of sixteen, blushing at her boldness and trembling 
 before him. In the presence of so much grace and loveliness 
 he was a disarmed man. He remembered his own happy youth, 
 his sister not older than the girl beside him, his mother who 
 had always instilled into his mind lessons of mercy and charity, 
 and he put up his pistol and spoke to the pleader: "Take 
 him, he is yours. I would not harm a hair in his head for the 
 State of Kansas." 
 
 In the northwestern portion of the town there was a boarding- 
 house occupied by four young married couples. The men of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 195 
 
 the party were G. W. Baker, J. C. Trask, editor of the State 
 Journal, S. M. Thorp, State Senator, and Dr. Griswold. Trask 
 and Griswold were killed instantly. Thorp and Baker were 
 wounded badly, but lay quiet as if dead. Another squad of 
 Guerrillas passed along in a short time and stopped to examine 
 the bodies. Finding Thorp and Baker still alive, they shot 
 them again. Thorp died, but Baker finally recovered, having 
 been shot through the neck, through one arm and through 
 the lungs. 
 
 The lady who in the morning was riding out so early, and 
 who, with her companion, were the first to discover the move- 
 ments of the Guerrillas, was a Miss Sallie Young, a member of 
 the family of Ex-Governor WHson Shannon. Separated from 
 her escort, who was riding the best he could to save his life, 
 Miss Young dashed back herself to Lawrence to give the alarm. 
 Frank James politely arrested her and as politely required her 
 to report to Quantrell. During all the long, terrible hours of 
 the burning and killing, this heroic girl gallantly treated by the 
 worst among the raiders, and exercising over them a mysterious 
 influence did everything possible to save life and property. 
 Personally interceding for numbers of her friends and acquain- 
 tances sometimes with smiles and sometimes with tears she 
 was everywhere amid the bullets of infuriated men and the 
 flames of consuming buildings. But succeeding to the fright 
 of the pillage there came a frenzy, and this veritable angel of 
 mercy was arrested by her own people as a Confederate spy and 
 sent to Fort Leavenworth for trial. Innocent of course, her 
 good deeds had only caused in the wild ness of the reaction a 
 suspicion of her loyalty. How without collusion she could have 
 influence with any of Quantrell's men was a problem those who 
 had suffered most and were the most bereft did not attempt to 
 solve. Youth, beauty, splendid courage, and admirable self- 
 possession could soften nothing from Missouri, devils that they 
 were, and butchers, but these were all the arts she had and they 
 did their work. 
 
 The Mayor of the city, Collamore, took refuge in a well upon 
 his own premises, and perished there. His wife had seen him 
 enter, and close to it and about it all the terrible forenoon she 
 prayed and hovered afraid to call out to her husband and 
 afraid to go away from the vicinity. At last the Guerrillas 
 
196 NOTED GUEBKILLAS, OE 
 
 were gone, and she rushed wildly to the well's mouth and called 
 aloud for her husband. No answer. Then she called again 
 with a voice pitiful in its agony and its hopelessness. No answer, 
 nor would there ever be answer more this side the river that 
 runs beyond the valley called the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death. The wretched woman cowered down in her desolate 
 woe and prayed for some one to help her husband. There 
 might be hope yet ; life might be lingering yet ; silent, perhaps 
 he did not know that the danger was over and the soldiers gone. 
 Melted by her entreaties, a man by the name of Lowe descended 
 into the fatal well. They called him also, but he did not 
 answer. Instead of bringing up one corpse from the bottom, 
 there were two. 
 
 Judge Carpenter was killed in the yard of H. S. Clarke, and 
 Col. Holt, one of the Confederate officers with the expedition, 
 saved Clarke. Holt saved others there besides Clarke. He 
 had been a Union man doing business in Vernon county, Mis- 
 souri, as a merchant. Jennison raided the neighborhood in 
 which he lived, plundered him of his goods, burnt his property, 
 insulted his family, and Holt joined the Confederate army. S. 
 A. Riggs was saved by his heroic wife. Peyton Long, one of 
 the best pistol shots in the command, had him covered with a 
 heavy dragoon. Mrs. Riggs seized the horse of the Guerrilla 
 by the bridle and caused him, a high-spirited animal, to rear up 
 suddenly. A woman could do anything with Long, and he 
 relented when Mrs. Riggs explained why, to save her husband, 
 she had caused his horse to disconcert his aim. Cole Younger 
 saved at least a dozen lives this day. Indeed, he killed none 
 save in open and manly battle. At one house he captured five 
 citizens over whom he put a guard, and at another three whom 
 he defended and protected. The notorious General James H. 
 Lane, to get whom Quantrell would gladly have left and sacri- 
 ficed all the balance of the victims, made his escape through a 
 corn-field, hotly pursued but too splendidly mounted to be 
 captured. Ex-Governor Shannon and Judge George W. Smith, 
 were absent from the city; their houses escaped destruction. 
 Some were saved through the mysteries of the Masonic Order, 
 notably Gen. C. W. Babcock. 
 
 There were two camps in Lawrence at the time of the attack, 
 one the camp of the negro troops being located at the s^outh- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 197 
 
 ern end of Massachusetts street, and the other a camp of white 
 soldiers, nearer to the heart of the city. In this latter camp 
 were twenty-one infantry, eighteen of whom were killed in the 
 first wild charge, and three escaped by running and hiding 
 themselves. All belonged to the city, and had enlisted from its 
 offices, stores, and workshops. They were without arms and 
 fell before the deadly revolvers as unresisting as sheep. The 
 editor of the Kansas Tribune, John Speer, lost two sons, one 
 shot dead, whose body was found, and the other killed, but 
 whose body was supposed to have been consumed in a printing 
 office, together with the body of a young apprentice named 
 Purington. Mrs. Bromley, from Wisconsin, now Mrs. Will- 
 iam Warner, of Kansas City, entertained Bill Anderson and did 
 it handsomely. George Todd, Coleman Younger, Gregg, 
 Blunt, Jesse and Frank James, John Coger, and George Mad- 
 dox, took dinner with William L. Bullene. Quantrell's head- 
 quarters were at the City Hotel. Gregg saved the house of 
 Frederick Reed from destruction, and in saving it saved Reed's 
 life, for he was concealed in the garret. It would be long to tell 
 of all the strange, the grotesque, and the horrible sights that 
 were seen that day ; all the puerile, the strong, the generous, 
 the heroic deeds that were done. Quantrell during the entire 
 occupation did not fire his pistol. He saw everything, directed 
 everything, was the one iron man, watchful and vigilant through 
 everything; but he did not kill. He saved many. He had 
 lived once in Lawrence, and some people had been kind to him 
 there. These he spared, for whatever else was said of Quan- 
 trell, no one ever said truthfully that he was an ingrate. 
 
 Cole Younger had dragged from his hiding place in a closet a 
 very large man who had the asthma. What with his fright and 
 what with his hurry, the poor fellow could not articulate. 
 Younger's pistol was against his heart when his old wife cried 
 out: *' For God's sake do not shoot him ; he hasn't slept in a 
 bed for nine years 1" This appeal and the asthma together, 
 made Younger roar out: " I never intended to harm a hair in 
 his head." Jarre tte, not given overmuch to tenderness or com- 
 passion when Kansas men were to be killed, yielded sufficiently 
 to the requirements of his order to save five prisoners, who gave 
 him the Masonic sign of recognition, and James Little took a 
 wounded man away from a Guerrilla, who was proceeding to 
 
198 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 dispatch him, because the wounded man, in pleading for his- 
 life, had the accent of a Southerner. Blunt, because a young 
 girl gave him a cup of excellent coffee, saved her father, and 
 George Shepherd rescued a wounded man and two children 
 from a burning house because one of the children had given him 
 a rose. 
 
 The Eldridge House was on fire, and Todd and Jarrette, 
 while roaming through it in search of adventure, came upon 
 a door that was locked. Todd knocked and cried out to its 
 occupants that the building was in flames ; it was time to get 
 away. "Let it burn and bed d," a deep voice answered, and 
 then the tones of three men were heard in conversation. 
 Jarrette threw his whole weight against the door, bursting it 
 from his fastenings, and as he did so Todd fired, killing one of 
 the three who were hiding there, Jarrette another, and Todd 
 the third. They were soldiers who had escaped from the morn- 
 ing's massacre, and who did not even make an effort to defend 
 themselves. Bewildered by the smoke and almost suffocated, 
 Todd and Jarrette gained the open air with difficulty. Tom 
 Maupin and Pat O'Donnell, operating together throughout the 
 day as two savage comrades in arms, surrounded a house in 
 which six men had taken refuge. Maupin dismounted, entered 
 the house with a pistol in each hand and forced out its occupants 
 one by one. As each one stepped beyond the door-sill 
 O'Donnell shot him dead ; where the pile lay when the butchery 
 was done, a blanket might have covered them all. 
 
 Perhaps the number killed will never be accurately known. 
 One account puts it at one hundred and forty-three, one at 
 one hundred and eighty-seven, and a third at two hundred and 
 sixteen. It is probable that some were killed and burned and 
 never found. The loss of property was estimated at the enor- 
 mous sum of $1,500,000, the total aggregate of buildings con- 
 sumed footing up one hundred and eighty-nine. In the city 
 proper Quantrell had one man killed and two wounded. The 
 man who lost his life was drunk when the fight began, got 
 drunker as it continued, and finally in his helplessness gave his 
 life away. His name was Larkin Skaggs, and his fighting in 
 Lawrence was the first he had ever done as a Guerrilla. After 
 being shot the body was cast in the flames of a partially con- 
 sumed house and roasted beyond all recognition. Then a rope 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 199 
 
 was put about the neck of the corpse and some negroes dragged 
 it up and down the streets, with yells of infernal exultation; 
 afterwards dry wood wag piled upon it until it was entirely 
 consumed. 
 
 Fate favored Quantrell from the time he left Missouri until 
 he returned to Missouri. A man from Johnson county, 
 Kansas, started by an Indian trail to inform the people of 
 Lawrence of his coming. He rode too carelessly ; his horse fell 
 and so injured him that he died. A full company of soldiers 
 were stationed at Oxford, but they seemed more anxious to keep 
 out of harm's way than to protect the citizens. Colonel Plumb 
 came up in the rear and did not force the fighting. Lane was 
 afraid, as he always was, and Ewing came on just in time to see 
 the rear guard of the Guerrillas entering Missouri at a walk and 
 defiantly. There was some heavy fighting, however, before all 
 was over. Lieut. J. L. Bledsoe was shot while skirmishing with 
 the Federals across the river. The wound was the wound of a 
 minie ball, and he could not ride. Hicks and Hi George, twa 
 brothers noted for supreme daring, came to his assistance when 
 the retreat began and took from under the fire of the enemy a 
 comfortable carriage, put Bledsoe into it, and carried him out 
 of Lawrence. These two Georges had never been known to 
 desert a friend in extremity or give up a crippled comrade, no 
 matter what the danger was nor how imminent it pressed upon 
 them. Their father had been murdered, the home of their 
 mother burned three times, each of them had been wounded, 
 a brother had been killed, and they lived solely to fight and to 
 have revenge. It is probable that they will never give in detail 
 the story of each life, nor tell of the unmarked graves they 
 know of between the Blue and the Arkansas. It is not neces- 
 sary now that they should ; the dead past has buried its dead. 
 
 Bledsoe 's later fate had over it the sombre light of some 
 mediaeval tragedy. His Lawrence wound healed slowly. Deep 
 in the recesses of a stretch of heavy timber in Lafayette county, 
 his comrades placed him and left him. At intervals a physician 
 stole to his hiding-place and dressed his hurts. Women also 
 found him out and fed him. He was convalescing just a little 
 when a Federal cavalry scout, numbering twenty-five, came 
 unawares upon the maimed Guerrilla and began to fire. It was 
 a combat a I'&utrance one against twenty- five. Bledsoe had 
 
200 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 kept with him to the end his three dragoon revolvers, and these 
 he laid beside him when he first heard the feet of the approach- 
 ing horses crashing through the underbrush. He spoke not a 
 word during all the battle ; scarcely able to lift up a hand before 
 the final mercy stroke, he did not ask for quarter by a sign. 
 Shot in the right shoulder, he fired with his left hand. Shot in 
 the left arm, he reinforced it with his wounded right and kept 
 up the unequal combat. Two of the enemy were killed, and 
 three wounded. Crippled as he was, and weak from an old 
 hurt, they dared not grapple with him. Dismounted and pro- 
 tected by trees, they took a quarter of an hour to shoot him to 
 death. At last a bullet found his brain, and he fell from his 
 knees to his face, dead. But two chambers remained loaded of 
 his three revolvers ; he had literally fought to the death. 
 
 As Quantrell retreated from Lawrence he sent upon the right 
 hand William Gregg, with twenty men, and upon the left 
 Bill Anderson with twenty more. Gregg took with him Jesse 
 and Frank James, Arch Clements, Little, Morrow, and others 
 of the most desperate of the command, and Anderson took 
 Henry Hockensmith, Long, McGuire, Farmer, Hicks and Hi 
 George, Doc Campbell, and others equally desperate. Each 
 was ordered to burn a swathe as he marched back parallel with 
 the main body, and to kill in proportion as he burnt. Soon on 
 every hand columns of black smoke began to arise, and there 
 was heard the incessant rattle of firearms as running from their 
 consuming houses the old farmers round about were shot down 
 as a holiday frolic. This unforgiving farewell lasted for twelve 
 miles, or until pressed heavily in the rear Quantrell was forced 
 to recall his detachments and look to the safety of the aggre- 
 gated column: 
 
 Missouriward from Kansas ten miles the Guerrillas halted to 
 rest a little and feed a little. The day's savage work had been 
 exhausting as it had been bloody. Wrought up during all the 
 forenoon to the keenest intensity, the relaxation of the after- 
 noon was beginning to tell upon the men. Before either men 
 or horses had finished eating, the picquets were driven in and 
 the rear pressed to the girth. Todd and Jarrette held it as two 
 lions that had not broken their fast. Step by step, and fighting 
 at every one, they kept pursuit at arm's length for ten miles 
 further. The Federals would not charge. Overwhelming in 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 201 
 
 numbers and capable of enveloping at any moment everything 
 of opposition, they contented themselves with firing at long 
 range and keeping always at about a deadly distance from the 
 rear. The Guerrillas, retying principally upon dash and the re- 
 volver, felt the need of a charge to get rid of the incessant buzz- 
 ing of the minie balls which now and then stung them grievously. 
 Todd spoke to Quantrell of the annoyance of the tireless, 
 tenacious pursuit, and Quantrell halted the whole column for a 
 charge. The detachments on either flank had sometime since 
 been gathered up, and the men brought face to face with urgent 
 need turned about quick and dressed up in line handsomely. 
 As Todd came trotting up with the rear guard, he fell in upon 
 the left and Quantrell gave the word. The Federal pursuit had 
 barely time to fire a volley before it was rent into shreds and 
 scattered upon the prairie. The unerring revolver at short 
 range did its work so well that for several hours thereafter the 
 pursuit was more respectful by far and considerably less galling 
 to the Guerrillas. That single volley, however fired in the 
 very midst of the gallop wounded Noah Webster, Geo. Maddox, 
 Gregg, Peyton Long, Hi George and Allen Farmer, and killed 
 the horses of Todd, Jarrette, Jesse James and Bill Anderson. 
 Jarrette laid hold upon a mustang pony some comrade was 
 leading and tried to saddle it for twenty minutes. Serene 
 under the fire of quite a regiment, and determined to succeed 
 in mastering the stubborn animal if he was shot for it, Jarrette 
 lingered and lingered. In addition, he had in the pockets of 
 his McClellan saddle over $8,000 in greenbacks, taken from a 
 Lawrence bank, which he was bringing to Missouri for distribu- 
 tion among the widows and orphans of the war. Try how he 
 would, however, the mustang was more than a match for the 
 Guerrilla. He could neither bridle him, saddle him, nor mount 
 him bareback. The Federals were within pistol-shot and the 
 bullets were everywhere. Jarrette, until then unconscious of 
 his danger, or indifferent to it, began to cast his eyes about him 
 for escape. Across the prairie to Quantrell it was at least a 
 mile. Arch Clements had carried Jesse James back, Hicks 
 George had done the same for Todd, and Frank James had 
 taken up Anderson behind him. Jarrette would not abandon 
 the pony for anybody's help, and there he was alone and well 
 nigh succorless. Aware from the reports of those who had 
 
202 NOTED GUERBILLAS, 03 
 
 gone forward of Jarrette's desperate extremity, Cole Younger, 
 at the imminent risk of his own life, dashed back to the rescue, 
 took Jarrette up under a distressing fire and regained the 
 column with him, followed by two hundred well mounted 
 cavalry to within pistol range of the rear guard, formed to give 
 him a breathing chance. 
 
 From behind every hill top, at the crossing of each creek, 
 from the midst of every belt of timber, Quantrell fought the 
 /pursuit, falling back in splendid order and forming again as the 
 country favored, without haste or confusion. At three o'clock 
 in the afternoon Younger and Anderson relieved Todd and 
 Jarrette, fighting equally as well and holding everything in the 
 hands of stubbornness and defiance. 
 
 Massing northeast of Paola and halting a short time on. Bull 
 Creek unmolested, Quantrell crossed into Missouri near 
 Aubrey, and pushed on at a great pace to Grand River, in 
 Cass county. The morning of his arrival there four hundred 
 Federals were in his front, and before he could find either food 
 or shelter he had to fight again. Wolfish somewhat from long 
 fasting and marching, the Guerrillas went at the enemy in the 
 old fashion charging as a huge stone shot from a catapult. 
 They drove them, eight miles furiously, killing twenty-eight of 
 those who were poorly mounted and clearing out the country 
 for several miles round about. In the pursuit a gallant Federal, 
 pressed to a stand still by Jesse James, who was a light rider 
 and finely mounted, turned at bay and cried out to the young 
 Guerrilla to fight him fair and give him a chance man to man. 
 The spirit of the proposition suited James. It accorded so- 
 much with his own adventurous nature, and agreed so thor- 
 oughly with what he would himself have done if similarly 
 situated, that he asked Fletch Taylor, close by his side, to halt 
 and let him finish alone with the Jayhawker. Taylor halted 
 and James dashed at the Federal, firing as he rode. The third- 
 shot he knocked him dead from the saddle, but not until the 
 undaunted trooper had fired at him four times deliberately and 
 missed him as often. Seeking afterwards something that would 
 serve to identify the dead man, James found upon his person a 
 memorandum book containing only the name of a woman 
 Isabel Sherman and a lock of dark brown hair. His own 
 name was not in the book. Among entries of things bought, 
 
GEO. W. MADDOX. 
 
 DICK MADDOX. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 203- 
 
 money received, and scenes and incidents described, there was 
 this single verse of Tennyson's Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 
 writen in a hand- writing different from the balance of the 
 writing in the book : 
 
 " Lady Clara Vere de Vere, 
 
 You put strange memories in my head, 
 Not thrice your branching limes have blown 
 
 Since I beheld young Lawrence dead. 
 Oh! your sweet eyes, your low replies; 
 
 A great enchantress you may be; 
 But there was that across his throat 
 Which you had hardly cared to see." 
 
 The dead man was scarcely thirty. His features were refined, 
 very small, and showed some traces of suffering. W hat his life 
 had been, or what his sins or sorrows, no one knew. It was 
 impossible even to learn his natqe. The Guerrillas buried him 
 the first time and probably the last the right of sepulchre was 
 ever extended to a foeman. 
 
 Asked afterward to name those who fought bravest and best 
 on the retreat from Lawrence, QuantrelPs answer was: "They 
 all fought. No one ever had men to exhibit more coolness and 
 daring." When pressed further to single out a few, he named 
 Tuck Hill, Woot Hill, Will Hulse, James Hinds, Albert Lee, 
 Ben Broomfield, John and Tom Maupin, Allen Farmer, Cave 
 Wyatt, Arch Clements, Gregg, Anderson, Todd, Jarrette, Dick 
 and George Maddox, Dick Yager, Ike and Dick Berry, Payne 
 Jones, Andy Blunt, Peyton Long, Toler, George and Frank 
 Shepherd, Dick Kinney, John Jackson, John Hill, Jesse and 
 Frank James, Oil Johnson, Cole Younger, William and Henry 
 Nolan, Tom Hill, Dick Burnes, Ben Morrow, John Ross, Har- 
 rison Trow, Col. John Holt, James Wilkinson, Col. Boaz Roberts, 
 Sid. Creek, William and Andy McGuire, H. and L. Privin, 
 Henry Noland, Richard Hotie, George Webb, Ab. Haller, Wade 
 Morton, William Basham, Dave Hilton, Andy Walker, William 
 Woodward, Mike Parr, William Chiles, Ike Flannery, Fletch 
 Taylor, James Little, John Coger, Sim Whitsett, Wm. Green- 
 wood, Pres Webb, Dan Vaughn, John Poole, and a score of 
 others who formed what might be called the Old Guard. James 
 Hinds was but a boy of seventeen, just a few months younger 
 than Jesse James, and these two sought out as if in boyish wan- 
 tonness the hottest and most dangerous places it was possible 
 
204 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 to find, laughing always and always where the killing was. 
 During the retreat the word also passed from file to file that 
 in case the worst came to the worst the wounded were to be 
 killed by their own comrades. As long as there was a hope or 
 a chance to bring them out safe from the pursuit the detail, 
 especially charged to guard them and help them forward, was to 
 do its whole duty. If neither a hope nor a chance remained in 
 the end, and it was hard riding and running for the best in the 
 band, then was the detail to surrender to the pursuit nothing 
 that was left alive. It was horrible, this alternative, but it was 
 Guerrilla war. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A COUNTER-BLOW. 
 
 days after his safe arrival in Missouri from the Law- 
 -L rence Massacre, Quantrell disbanded the Guerrillas. Fully 
 six thousand Federals were on his track. The savageness of 
 the blow struck there had appalled and infuriated the country. 
 The journalistic pulses of the North rose to fever heat and beat 
 as though to their raging fever there had been added raving 
 insanity. In the delirium of the governing powers impossible 
 things were demanded. Quantrell was to be hunted to the 
 death ; he was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered ; his band 
 was to be annihilated; he was to be fought with fire, proscrip- 
 tion, depopulation, and wholesale destruction. At the height 
 of the very worst of these terrible paroxysms, Ewing's famous 
 General Order No. 11 was issued. It required every citizen of 
 Jackson, Cass, Bates, and a portion of Vernon counties to abandon 
 their houses and come either into the lines of designated places 
 that were fortified, or within the jurisdiction of said lines. If 
 neither was done, and said citizens remained outside beyond the 
 time specified for such removal, they were to be regarded aa 
 outlaws and punished accordingly. Innocent and guilty alike 
 felt the rigors of this unprecedented proscription. For the 
 Union man there was the same line of demarkation that was 
 drawn for the secessionist. Age had no immunity ; sex was not 
 regarded. The rights of property vanished; predatory bands 
 preyed at will ; nothing could be sold ; everything had to be 
 abandoned ; it was the obliteration of prosperity by counties j 
 it was the depopulation of miles upon miles of fertile territory 
 in a night. 
 
 General Ewing has been unjustly censured for the promulga- 
 tion of such an order, and held responsible in many ways for 
 its execution. The genius of a celebrated painter, Capt. George 
 
206 NOTED GUEEEILLASy OE 
 
 C. Bingham, of Missouri, has been evoked to give infamy to the 
 vandalism of the deed and voice to the indignation of history 
 over its consummation. Bingham' s picture of burning and 
 plundered houses, of a sky made awful with mingled flame and 
 smoke, of a long train of helpless fugitives going away they 
 knew not whither, of appealing women and gray- haired non- 
 combatants, of skeleton chimneys rising like wrathful and 
 accusing things from the wreck of pillaged homesteads, of uni- 
 formed things called officers rummaging in trunks and drawers, 
 of colonels loaded with plunder, and captains gaudy with stolen 
 jewelry, will live longer than the memories of the strife, and 
 keep alive after Guerrilla and Jayhawker are well forgotten 
 manhood's stubborn hatred of the thief and the honest soldier's 
 righteous horror over battle flags borne aloft to petty larceny or 
 pitiful picking and stealing. 
 
 Ewing, however, was a soldier. General Order No. 11 came 
 from district headquarters at St. Louis where Schofield com- 
 manded, and through Schofield from Washington City direct. 
 Ewing had neither choice nor discretion in the matter. He was 
 a brave, conscientious, hard-fighting officer who did his duty as it 
 came to his hands to do. He could not have made, if he had 
 tried, one hair of the head of the infamous Order white or black. 
 It was a portion of the inexorable order of things, and Ewing 
 occupied towards it scarcely the attitude of an instrument. He 
 promulgated it but he did not originate it ; he gave it voice but 
 he did not give it form and substance ; his name has been linked 
 to it as to something that should justly cause shame and re- 
 proach, but history in the end will separate the soldier from the 
 man and render unto the garb of the civilian what it has failed to 
 concede to the uniform of the commander. As a citizen of the 
 republic he deplored the cruelty of an enactment which he knew 
 to be monstrous ; but as a soldier in the line of his duty the 
 necessities of the situation could not justify a moment's argu- 
 ment. He had but to obey and to execute, and he did both 
 and mercifully. 
 
 For nearly three weeks, Jackson county was a Pandemonium, 
 together with the counties of Cass, Bates, Vernon, Clay, and 
 Lafayette. Six thousand Federals were in the saddle, but 
 Quantrell held his grip upon these counties in despite of every- 
 thing. Depopulation was going on in a two-fold sense once by 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 207 
 
 -emigration or exodus, and once by the killing of perpetual am- 
 bushments and lyings-in-wait. In detachments of ten, the Guer- 
 rillas divided up and f jught everywhere. Scattered, they came 
 together as if by instinct. Driven away from the flank of one 
 column, they appeared in the rear of another. They had voices 
 that were as the voices of night birds. Mysterious horsemen 
 appeared upon all the roads. Not a single Federal scouting or 
 exploring party escaped paying toll. Sometimes the aggregate 
 of the day's dead was simply enormous. Frequently the 
 assailants were never seen. Of a sudden, and rising, as it were, 
 out of the ground, thoy delivered a deadly volley and rode 
 away into the darkness invisible. All nature was in league 
 with them. The trees sheltered them, the leaves hid them, the 
 blind paths conducted them from danger, the fords over streams 
 enabled them to check pursuit, the night enveloped them, the 
 ravines were forts, the country furnished them guides, the 
 broken ways were watched, they killed always and they kept 
 at work. 
 
 Up to the Lawrence Massacre there had been no scalping 
 done; after it a good deal. Ab. Haller, brother of Lieutenant 
 William Haller, and a Guerrilla of great courage and prowess, 
 was hiding wounded in some timber near Texas Prairie, at the 
 extreme eastern edge of Ja'ckson county. As did "Bledsoe, so 
 did he, selling his life as dearly as he could. Alone, he faced 
 seventy-two, killing and wounding five of the attacking party. 
 When he fell he had been struck eleven times, but he did not 
 suffer. The last bullet hit him fair in the left breast and pene- 
 trated the heart; when they rushed in upon him not a single 
 load remained in either of his revolvers. Infuriated at a resist- 
 ance as deadly as it was unexpected, his slayers scalped him 
 and cut off his ears. In an hour afterwards, probably, Andy 
 Blunt came upon the body, multilated as it was, and pointed 
 out the marks of the knife to his companions. "We had some- 
 thing to learn yet, boys," he said, "and we have learned it. 
 Scalp for scalp hereafter!" 
 
 The next day Blunt, Peyton Long, Arch Clements, Bill Ander- 
 son and William McGuire captured four militia from a regiment 
 belonging to North Missouri and shot them after they surren- 
 dered. Blunt scalped each of the four, leaving, however, the 
 ears intact, because, he said, he had no use for the ears. 
 
208 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 The killing went on. William Gregg, Fletcher Taylor, James 
 Noland, James Little and Frank James captured between Fire 
 Prairie and Napoleon, six of Penick's militia, and held over 
 them a kind of grotesque court martial. It was on a lazy, 
 lingering summer afternoon that James, as the judge advocate, 
 opened the case for the prosecution, and Gregg, as counsel for 
 the accused, replied to him. Taylor was the president of the 
 court, and when the vote was taken upon the question of life 
 or death, all of the five had voted death. These were not 
 scalped. 
 
 The next day Richard Kinney, John Jarrette, Jesse James 
 nnd Sim Whitsett attacked a picquet post of eight men a mile 
 from Wellington and annihilated it. Cutting them off from the 
 town and running them in a contrary direction, not a man 
 escaped. The last one to be overtaken was an old soldier from 
 Iowa, probably sixty years of age. Jesse James reached him 
 first as he ran and shot him to the left of the spine and high up 
 in the shoulder. He abandoned his horse and took position 
 behind a large tree on the roadside, keeping hold upon his gun 
 and waiting to use it accurately. James dashed up to the tree, 
 pointed his pistol round it and fired down in the top of the old 
 man's head. He sank down all of a heap and murmured once 
 or twice' audibly : "My time had cbme! my time had come!" 
 
 Two days afterwards Ben Morrow, Pat O'Donnell and Frank 
 James ambushed an entire Federal company between Salem 
 Church, on the Lexington road, and the Widow Chiles'. These 
 three men, hidden in some dense undergrowth where there were 
 numerous large trees, fought eighty men for nearly an hour, kill- 
 ing seven and wounding thirteen. O'Donnell was wounded three 
 times, and James and Morrow once each and slightly. Todd, 
 gathering together thirty of his old men, and getting a volunteer 
 guide who knew every hog path in the country round about, 
 rode past Kansas City boldly and took position at dusk on the 
 Shawneetown road, looking for a train of wagons bringing 
 infantry into Kansas City. It was midnight before the small 
 cavalry advance in front of the train gave token of its near 
 approach, although the Guerrillas had been waiting for it for 
 several hours. There were twenty wagons with twenty soldiers 
 to the wagon, besides the driver. No order had been preserved 
 in the line of march. Save the cavalry in front, nothing else 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 275 
 
 the enemy's one hundred and eighty killed and two hundred 
 wounded. 
 
 Captain Lea had already established his base of operations at 
 Floyd, Carroll parish, Louisiana, and thither he hurried from 
 Wilson's Point burdened with one hundred wagons, five hundred 
 head of horses and mules, one piece of artillery, many small 
 arms, much ammunition, and over one hundred wounded pris- 
 oners. Reinforced by half a regiment of negro cavalry, the 
 marines landed a second time and followed Lea to Bayou 
 Macon, where he turned about suddenly and drove back the 
 pursuing cavalry with heavy loss to the river. The blow struck 
 had been a resounding one. As the swoop of a huge hawk into 
 a barnyard well filled with chickens, so had been the desperate 
 rush of this intrepid soldier who loved his country and who 
 sought only how he best might serve her. Wagons, half loaded 
 with contraband cotton, were abandoned by their guards. The 
 worst among the cattle thieves took to the swamps. The desert- 
 ers fled the country or joined the most convenient military organ- 
 nization. Between the fleet and the shore the smugglings and 
 the traffic-kings were few and far between. A superhuman 
 blade had leaped as it were from -its scabbard and could be 
 heard hewing away among the bayous and the plantations. 
 
 Lea, equally with Van Tromp, might have carried a broom at 
 the head of his column as Van Tromp carried a broom at his 
 foremast. He would sweep away abuses, outrages, wrongs, the 
 tyranny of scoundrels banded together, and the government of 
 thieves in league with authority. 
 
 Fighting much during the winter of 1863, and recruiting, 
 drilling, and providing thoroughly for his men, Lea com- 
 menced active operations on the 21st of March, 1864, 
 and moved into Tensas parish, on the Mississippi river. Capt. 
 Stevenson, an accomplished young officer of great bravery and 
 intelligence, led the advance and came upon the outposts of the 
 enemy at four o'clock in the morning. Lea had two hundred 
 men and the Federals four hundred. The fight lasted two 
 hours. Having the advantage of position, of numbers, and of 
 long range guns, it was only after some stubborn fighting that 
 he drove the enemy from their first obstructions and finally from 
 their second, which were composed of many negro cabins par- 
 tially dismantled and great piles of logs thrown promiscuously 
 18 
 
274 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 together. Here they held on tenaciously. Stevenson was sent 
 to the left, Capt. Middleton to the right, while Lea and Captain 
 Lusk charged with the center. Stevenson broke through on 
 the left desperately, swept on into the rear and began to enfilade 
 the sharpshooters holding the log heaps and the abandoned 
 cabins. As they turned to crush him with their whole force, 
 Lea, Lusk and Middleton came on at a run and finished the 
 encounter. One hundred and ten dead Federals were left upon 
 the field, and as many as one hundred wounded were given up 
 to the marines under a flag of truce. Sixty prisoners remained 
 in the hands of the Confederates, the balance of the command 
 saving themselves by a helter skelter flight to the river where 
 the gunboats received them and saved them from destruction. 
 
 Close to the scene of this second battle, and within canister 
 range of the guns of the fleet, there had been erected a large 
 building filled from basement to garret with everything fit to sell 
 to a needy people or trade for a pound of cotton. Everything 
 contraband was in this store powder, lead, percussion caps, 
 new revolvers, whisky, medicines, surgical instruments, cloth- 
 ing, groceries of all kinds, and dress goods of the latest styles 
 and patterns. Lea held on to this house until every valuable 
 thing in it was carried to a place of safety and delivered into 
 the hands of a responsible agent of the Confederate govern- 
 ment. For three days and nights he fought a grim, dogged, 
 desperate fight over this building and these goods. Five times 
 shells from the gunboats fired it, and five times he extin- 
 guished the flames. Twice large bodies of marines landed from 
 the fleet and sought to retake it by assault, and twice he drove 
 them back with ruinous loss. The bombardment went on and 
 so did the removal of the stores. In the fight seventy-five huge 
 army wagons had been captured with mules and running gear 
 intact, and these were first loaded with supplies and medicines. 
 Then every wagon in the country round about was made to be 
 available. What ordinarily might have been considered freight 
 trains were now come to be called caravansaries. The road to 
 the rear was filled with every sort and kind of vehicle government 
 wagon, log sled, cotton cart, ox team, and family carriage Lea 
 held on like a bulldog and fought every hour until with the 
 building torn and battered about him, with ten of his dead 
 unburied who had fought to save the stores, and thirty of his 
 
THE 'W&RFAEE OF THE BOEDER 275 
 
 wounded needing care and succor, he surrendered the shell of a 
 house wrecked and gutted to whoever cared to patch it up or 
 inhabit it, and fell back with his immense booty unmolested. 
 Estimated to be worth to the Confederacy $600,000, from all 
 this heap of spoils Captain Lea would not permit to his men the 
 appropriation of a single pound of tobacco or a single bottle of 
 brand} 7 . "If what we have taken," he said in justification, and 
 when remonstrated with for his firmness by some of his officers, 
 "if what we have taken belongs to us we are robbers ; if it 
 belongs to the Confederate government and we take so much as 
 the worth of a sixpence we are thieves. Let us by our example 
 deserve the name of neither." 
 
 If the first blow struck by this intrepid and indefatigable 
 man had produced consternation, the second was succeeded by 
 rage, mortification, and despair. Unless he was speedily got 
 out of the country, the end of the cotton trade was the one 
 sure thing, however uncertain the balance. Rumors first went 
 to Smith, and then runners, and then protests, misrepresenta- 
 tions, and appeals. It is difficult to understand what charges 
 were brought against Lea, or how any respectable officer found 
 sufficient audacity to honestly ask for his removal ; but about 
 the first of June, 1864, Gen. Smith began to manifest signs of 
 displeasure at his subordinate's enterprisinig boldness, and on 
 the twenty-fifth he recalled him to Shreveport. Lea reported 
 instantly and with all of his men. Shelby was there, to stand 
 by his brilliant captain, and Crisp was there to second Shelby. 
 Governor Henry W. Allen, of Louisiana, himself a disabled 
 soldier of conspicuous valor and spotless patriotism, allied with 
 Shelby, Lea and Crisp in every effort made to checkmate the 
 enemies of good administration and military supremacy. In 
 the end the right triumphed. After a thorough examination of 
 the whole situation Gen. Smith became satisfied that Lea was 
 the right man in the right place, and ordered him to return at 
 once and assume command of all the country east of the 
 Ouachita river. Thereafter the sky began to brighten from 
 zenith to horizon. 
 
 Several swift, hot skirmishes succeeded to Lea's arrival at 
 Floyd, where busy with the complicated affairs of a necessary 
 civil and internal administration he spent several important 
 weeks in giving protection to the planter and peace to the people 
 
276 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 generally. Banditti no longer lurked in the swamps. Bands 
 of predatory soldiers were broken up. Cotton buyers no longer 
 abounded. Many traps baited for bad men caught spies. 
 Industry revived ; women were safe from assault ; the roads 
 were no longer dangerous for travelers ; the marines lost their 
 amphibious habits; moneyed men with permits found their occu- 
 pation gone; demoralized Confederates returned to then- 
 duty ; recruits flocked to the standard of the Missourian, and 
 on every hand and upon every plantation there were signs of 
 abundant thrift and many future possibilities. 
 
 On the tenth of September, Capt. Lea took the field again. 
 By the fifteenth he was in front of a Federal force stationed at 
 a point on the Mississippi river known as the Horse Shoe. At 
 the toe of this shoe, which rested upon the river, there was a 
 fortification. Above and below it gunboats kept watch and 
 ward. Lea with Stevenson leading the advance struck the 
 left or upper heel of this horseshoe and charged the covering 
 ditches savagely. He was repulsed with loss. He charged 
 again and was again repulsed. Infuriated, he charged for the 
 third time, and for the third time he was driven back. Two 
 gunboats stood on either flank of the fortification and added 
 their deep roar to the sharper and clearer rattle of the musketry. 
 If it was impossible to get the enemy out by a charge, then it 
 was impossible to get him out at all. No other way existed. 
 Lea charged a fourth time and gained a ditch. This he held 
 desperately, despite the fury with which he was counter-charged 
 and the storm of shells bursting upon him from the fleet. A 
 second ditch was next gained, and then a third, until broken 
 and driven away from their last resource, the routed enemy fled 
 to the fleet for immediate shelter. In the last savage combat 
 Stevenson fell at the head of his men, conspicuous for his 
 splendid bearing, as did Rankin Chandler, another young officer 
 of great worth and heroism. Both were buried in the same 
 grave on a bank of the Tensas river. John Barker, an old 
 Quantrell Guerrilla, especially distinguished himself in this 
 fight, as did James Tucker, another Missouri Guerrilla, S. A. 
 Lusk of Louisiana, Charles Moore of New Orleans, and the two 
 Truselow brothers, Pet and Douglass, A. G. Belding, William 
 Dickinson, and Henry Senter. Lusk and Dickinson were 
 especially noted as scouts and guides. If Lusk knew one road 
 
THE WAP, FAME OF THE BORDER 277 
 
 across a swamp as he knew his alphabet, Dickinson knew 
 another. The bayous were as books to them for the reading. 
 As they piloted Younger, Jarrette and Poole, so they piloted Lea 
 always to victory. Each had a company which, when the 
 scouting was done, was led always into the thickest of the fight. 
 The country they sought so diligently to free from banditti and 
 birds of prey was a country fair to look upon and fertile as an 
 island in the sea. They loved it with a love that was also a 
 religion. Their patriotism was a holy thing, and their warfare 
 to exemplify and to illustrate it the warfare of Christian men 
 joined to the antique. 
 
 In the fight at the Horse Shoe the Federal loss was one hun- 
 dred and ninety-five killed, seventy-two wounded, and sixty- 
 three captured. Lea lost eighty killed and wounded, and 
 returned across Bayou Mason on the sixteenth of September, 
 with his prisoners and two hundred stands of valuable arms. 
 On the eighteenth he was at the Lum place, situated upon Will 
 Ba}^ou, in Madison Parish. About the Lum place swamps 
 abounded. The road that ran by it ran also through several 
 almost impenetrable stretches of cane and cypress, miry bot- 
 toms and extended surfaces of shallow water. At least one 
 hundred and fifty bad whites, skulking deserters, and semi-bar- 
 baric negroes infested these swamps, hid themselves in these 
 jungles, splashed about, depraved and half naked among these 
 lagoons, and came often and often to the road on the higher and 
 dryer land at the Lum place and preyed savagely upon the 
 passers by. Many of these had been killed, many robbed, some 
 wounded and left for dead, and not a few fcaken into the fast- 
 nesses and held for ransom under terrible threats of mutilation 
 or torture. It was difficult to get at these outlaws guarded by 
 brake and bramble, morass and stagnant water. Horses could 
 not penetrate to the hiding-places. Footmen could not find 
 them in a two days' tramp. Hounds could not trail them a fur- 
 long from the shore. Lea, through a stratagem, surprised and 
 obliterated the band. Dressing Lusk and Dickinson in Federal 
 clothing, and sending them forward with sixty picked men, simi- 
 larly habilitated, he followed hard upon their rear, not close, it is 
 true, but close enough for succoring distance. The day of the 
 fight saw at the Lum place th^ most of the banditti. Dickinson 
 and Lusk rode boldly up and asked the leader for news of Con- 
 
278 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 federate cavalry. This leader was a colossal black, with ebony 
 skin, ivory teeth, a skull like a bird, a fist like a trip hammer, a 
 liver like a hog, the form of Goliah of Gath, the strength of a 
 buffalo, and the endurance of an alligator. He was especially 
 delighted to see so many Federals, he said, for since that devil 
 of a Lea had been operating in the country their visits inland 
 had been few and far between. Would they stay long? Rebels 
 were here, there, and everywhere ; but just at this time he knew 
 of no particular force in any particular place. The example set 
 by the leader was soon followed by the men, and in a moment 
 or two friends and foes were communicative alike and equally 
 voluble. Presently Lea with the main body was seen approach- 
 ing. "Who comes there?" the negro leader asked of Lusk, 
 his great white eyes a shining. "More Federals," the Confed- 
 erate coolly answered him. "More devils!" he yelled, snatch- 
 ing a double-barrelled shot-gun from the hand of a white outlaw 
 and leaping away from the road towards the nearest swamp. 
 " We are betrayed ! We are betrayed! Follow me, men, and 
 fight hard and fast as you follow." No braver animal ever got 
 from God a voice that filled all the air for a mile. It was heard 
 loud and clear and high above cries and shots, and furious 
 yells, and the thunder of flying feet. The melee was a savage 
 tearing to pieces. Lea reached the combat in time to make the 
 bloody work thorough and instantaneous. From the high land 
 about the Lum place to the nearest swamp it was scarcely a 
 mile, but by the time a dozen fugitives had reached it, the bal- 
 ance of the band had been destroj'ed. Turned fairly and hero- 
 ically to bay, James Tucker closed in upon the negro leader and 
 shot him six times without knocking him from his feet. He 
 fired at Tucker three times and hit him once. Another soldier, 
 Carroll, shot him four times, when he ran a dozen yards, fell, 
 struggled to his feet, ran fifty or sixty yards further and fell 
 again. This time he did not get up. The ten pistol balls in his 
 body would have killed an elephant. Of the original organiza- 
 tion of one hundred and fifty men, probably not more than 
 twenty survived the reckoning, and these were never heard of 
 again in the country. The roads infested by these desperate 
 marauders became safe again, and the plantations contiguous to- 
 their hiding-places as free from imposition as a great fear could 
 make them. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 279 
 
 
 Capt. Lea, indeed, had but little more to do in this portion 
 
 of the State. He had broken up the contraband cotton trade, 
 driven away deserters, made it unprofitable for speculators to 
 go further inland than a gunboat could throw a canister-shot, 
 caused the cottonwood trees to bear spies, given peace to 
 neighborhoods terrorized over by bad men, protected industry, 
 destroyed a dozen robber bands, fought and worsted several 
 Federal detachments sent to crush him, organized the citizens 
 into home guard companies, armed them with excellent guns 
 taken from the enemy, won the respect- of the planters, the 
 adoration of his soldiers, the thanks of the commander-in-chief, 
 and if he would still find employment for his restless energy 
 and his indomitable courage he would have to seek it in 
 Southern Louisiana. 
 
 The Achafalaya country had of late been much infested with 
 light armed mosquito boats penetrating the bayous and water 
 courses and trafficking for cotton in every direction. The same 
 demoralization and desertion which attended this traffic on the 
 Mississippi river, in no manner abandoned it when it was trans- 
 ferred to the great lakes and navigable bayous of the South. 
 Lea was ordered there to operate as he had been operating for 
 the past six months, and began the march for his new depart- 
 ment on November 28th, 1864. At Black river an immense 
 herd of cattle from Texas was encountered en route to the Con- 
 federate armies of the East. Here for two weeks he rendered 
 immense and valuable services. Especially charged to keep 
 every hostile thing away from the herd, he fought fourteen fights 
 in fourteen days, holding his ground to the last, though always 
 outnumbered and constantly overmatched. 
 
 The Achafalaya county, however, was not reached. Informa- 
 tion received at the Shreveport headquarters between the time 
 Lea was ordered to occupy it and return from it made it 
 necessary for Gen. Smith to send Gen. Buckner into the ter- 
 ritory in question with a heavy force of both -infantry and 
 cavalry. Lea's orders of recall overtook him a three days* 
 march from his destination, and he turned short about for the 
 mouth of Red river, crossed that stream, halted a day or two 
 there, and then hurried on to the Mississippi river, and struck 
 it at a point opposite Natchez. Camped on Tensas Lake was a 
 regiment of Wisconsin cavalry, veterans all and seasoned to 
 
280 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OB 
 
 battle. Lea commanded four hundred men and the Wisconsin 
 regiment numbered five hundred. He attacked on three sides 
 simultaneously, Lusk commanding one detachment, Middleton 
 one and Lea the third. It was a bloody combat and a desperate 
 one. Charges and counter-charges followed one another 
 rapidly. The Wisconsin people were finally driven from the 
 field Nvith a loss of seventy-five killed and one hundred and ten 
 wounded, while Lea lost thirty-two in killed and sixty-five in 
 wounded, capturing the camp equipage,, the horses, many of the 
 arms, and all of the stores and supplies of the regiment. Those 
 who survived the fight survived it through the succor and the 
 shelter of the river and the gunboats. 
 
 It was here that John Barker, a born scout and sleepless 
 Guerrilla, brought word to Lea that a detachment of cavalry, 
 numbering sixty, was convoying seven pieces of heavy artillery 
 from one point to another on the river, from a fort called 
 McPherson to a fort called Halleck. He determined to see 
 about these horsemen and these cannon. He set forth under 
 cover of night with a mounted force sixty strong. For a da}' 
 he lurked with his band in an immense swamp. In this 
 desolate region there was no lack of guides. On the next 
 night the detachment guarding the guns had halted for 
 the evening at an open and pleasant place four miles from 
 where Lea was crouching. So secure did the officers and 
 men believe themselves that their horses had been turned 
 loose to graze and their sentinels even were asleep. The sur- 
 prise was complete. Some sprang to their arms and made an 
 attempt to resist, but in vain ; about twenty fell ; forty were 
 captured. None fled it appeared as if they did not know how 
 to fly. A huge pile was made of the wagons and pieces of 
 cannon. Every gun was stuffed with powder and fixed with its 
 mouth in the ground. Then great piles of dry cord-wood were 
 brought and piled about them. A torch was put to the whole, 
 and then there came a great explosion and a great destruction. 
 In every way the blow struck had been complete and over- 
 whelming. 
 
 At times in Mississippi, at times in Louisiana, and then again 
 in Kentucky, Lea continued to operate with marked ability and 
 success until the end of the war. He was a Guerrilla in the 
 sense and to the extent of fighting in every guise and fashion 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 281 
 
 known to modern warfare. Any weapon fitted his hand that 
 gave promise of success. Ambuscade, stratagem, charge, 
 decoy, feigned retreat, savage fighting either was easy of 
 employment if profitable, all might be tried in a single battle if 
 without them all the victory were impossible. 
 
 When forced to come out from Louisiana and quit operations 
 there, Jarrette and Younger went to Collin county, Texas, 
 where a Confederate officer named George Jackson, was recruit- 
 ing a battalion for service on th plains. They took service 
 with him, eager for any work, however desperate. Encamped 
 at San Saba, the battalion was quite ready to march, when Gen- 
 eral* Smith ordered Jackson to forego the expedition and report 
 with his men for immediate duty in Texas. The two Guerrillas 
 did not report. Instead, indeed, of going to Shreveport, the 
 headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department, they rode 
 rapidly to Presidio del Norte on the Rio Grande, and sought to 
 form a junction with Captain Skillman, operating in that neigh- 
 borhood. Four days before their arrival, Skillman and thirty 
 of his men had been surrounded by two hundred Lipan Indians, 
 deserters, and highwaymen, but he fought desperately and until 
 the whole detachment were killed. In no manner daunted, 
 Younger and Jarrette, with twenty followers, crossed into Mexico 
 and waited. By and by Colonels Roberts and Kennedy came to 
 their camp, en route to California. Commissioned by the Con- 
 federate Secretary of War to recruit a regiment of Calitbrnians, 
 they. requested the Guerrillas to accompany them. Eager for 
 any perilous enterprise, Jarrette, with ten men, broke through 
 the blockade into the State, and Younger, with ten more, 
 marched through Arizona, fought seven desperate fights with 
 Apache Indians, and finally gained the rendezvous at Las 
 Angeles, finding there the balance of the party. A regiment 
 was soon organized, armed, and equipped, and just as it got 
 ready for active operations, Lee surrendered at Appomattox 
 Court House. Where the surrender found Cole Younger, there 
 it left him for a year, trying as best he could to earn a liveli- 
 hood and live at peace with all the world. 
 
 The character of this man to many has been a curious study, 
 but to those who knew him well there is nothing about it of 
 mystery or many sidedness. An awful provocation drove him- 
 into the army. He was never a blood-thirsty or a merciless 
 
282 NOTED GUERRILLAS OR, 
 
 man. He was brave to recklessness, desperate to rashness, 
 remarkable for terrible prowess in battle ; but he was never 
 known to kill a prisoner. On the contrary, there are alive 
 to-day fully two hundred Federal soldiers who owe their lives to 
 Cole Younger, a man whose father had been brutally murdered, 
 whose mother had been hounded to her death, whose family 
 had been made to endure the torment of a ferocious persecu- 
 tion, and whose kith and kin even to most remote degrees were 
 plundered and imprisoned. At Lawrence he was known to save 
 a score of lives, in twenty other desperate combats he took 
 prisoners and released them ; when the steamer Sam Gaty was 
 captured, he stood there as a protecting presence between* the 
 would-be slayers and their victims ; at Independence he saved 
 more lives ; and in Louisiana probably fifty Federals escaped 
 certain death through Younger's firmness and generosity. His 
 brother James did not go into the war until 1864, and was a 
 brave, dauntless, high-spirited boy who never killed a soldier in 
 his life save in fair and $pen battle. Cole was a fair-haired, 
 amiable, generous man, devoted in his friendships, and true to 
 his word and to comradeship. In intrepidity he was never 
 surpassed. In battle he never had those to go where he would 
 not follow, aye, where he would not gladly lead. On his body 
 to-day there are the scars of thirty-six wounds. He was a 
 Guerrilla, and a giant among a band of Guerrillas, but he was 
 one among five hundred who only killed in open and honorable 
 battle. As great as had been his provocation, he never mur- 
 dered ; as brutal as had been the treatment of every one near 
 and dear to him, he refused always to take vengeance on those 
 who were innocent of the wrongs, and who had taken no part 
 in the deeds which drove him, a boy, into the ranks of the 
 Guerrillas, but he fought as a soldier who fights for a cause, a 
 creed, an idea, or for glory. He was a hero, and he was 
 merciful. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PREPARING FOR PRICE'S RAID. 
 
 Ql OMETIME in August, 1864, after General Smith had resolved 
 O upon the Missouri campaign, and had chusen Gen. Sterling 
 Price to conduct it, this latter commander sent an exceedingly 
 bold and enterprising man, Capt. John Chestnut, into the State 
 with a communication for the Guerrillas. It was directed to 
 Todd, then operating with Quantrell's old company, and it 
 contained an order requiring him to gather together as many 
 Guerrillas as possible and make North Missouri as hot as he 
 could for the militia. Gen. Price reckoned upon keeping the 
 secrets of his expedition tolerably well covered up, and cal- 
 culated with reasonable certainty upon such a concentration of 
 Federal troops north of the river as would leave the garrisons 
 and the field forces on the south side, if not insigniiicant, at 
 least not actively aggressive. 
 
 Chestnut reached Jackson county the seventh of September, 
 1864, and found Todd's camp at Judge Gray's, near Bone Hill, 
 on the morning of the eighth. At that time Todd's men were 
 all disbanded but six, those remaining with him being Ben 
 Morrow, Harrison Trow, Jesse and Frank James, Allen Parmer 
 and James Wilkinson. Thanks to the untiring nursing of Mrs. 
 Rudd, and to the indomitable courage of the boy himself, Jesse 
 James had grown better in three weeks of his terrible wound, 
 left the hands of his physician despite her most earnest protests, 
 crossed the Missouri river on a raft, and joined his old com- 
 mander in Jackson county more like a ghost than a Guerrilla. 
 Todd was a 'man of prodigious activity. He would do some- 
 times in an hour what other men would scarcely do in a week. 
 With him the flash and the report were inseparably blended ; 
 you saw the lightning and you felt the thunderbolt. "Riding 
 
284 NOTED GUEREILLAS, OB 
 
 will do you good," he said to Jesse James, within twenty 
 minutes after the arrival of Chestnut, "and I desire you and 
 your brother Frank to hasten fast to Poole in Lafayette order 
 him to gather up his men instantly, cross the Missouri river at 
 or near Hill's Landing, and be somewhere in Howard county by 
 the twentieth. When you have executed your orders return to 
 me as fast as you went." 
 
 In a day the musterings became active and energetic. Poole 
 soon had fifty-two men well in hand, and Todd, at the Bone Hill 
 rendezvous, fifty-six. Lieut. George Shepherd, on the day of 
 the 12th, was given eleven men and ordered to cross over into 
 Clay county and begin the work Gen. Price required of the 
 Guerrillas. He chose for the enterprise: Frank and Jesse 
 James, Oil Shepherd, Allen Farmer, James Wilkinson, William 
 Gaw, Richard Johnson, Harrison Trow, James Johnson, and the 
 two brothers Nolan, but try how he would, not a skiff, not a 
 make-believe of a boat of any kind, not a raft or a canoe could 
 be found anywhere at Sibley, the point of crossing, or above or 
 below it either way for miles and miles. Failing in everything 
 else, he fell at last upon a horse trough and launched it boldly 
 upon the stream. Wilkinson and Oil Shepherd were the oars- 
 men and made a trial trip alone, exploring the further shore 
 with great minuteness and making by their intelligent examina- 
 tion a sudden ambuscade impossible. Well across afterwards in 
 an hour, Shepherd pushed rapidly on into the very heart of the 
 militia country, halting for breakfast at Judge Level's, a mile 
 from Centreville, now Kearney. It is probable that the nature 
 of the work performed by the Southern women during the war 
 will never be understood fully nor to its most important extent. 
 Without their aid, Guerrilla warfare would have been heavily 
 handicapped. Born spies, they listened well, saw a great deal, 
 and reported exactly. Infinite in resource, quick at ruse or 
 stratagem, and bold as the best of any band that fought for 
 freedom, they carried information at any hour, and faced any 
 peril or held their own against any extremity if something prac- 
 tical could be suggested to an enterprising soldier, or something 
 tangible done to make a blow decisive. Of this class of. women 
 fearless in danger and intensely Southern in the midst of an 
 iron occupation were Mrs. Level and her two daughters, 
 Louise and Georgie, Mrs. Minerva Fox, and her two daughters, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 285 
 
 Georgie and Cassic, Miss Mollie King and Miss Kate Burnes. 
 Couriers or scouts, nurses or physicians, under the ban or free 
 to come and go, they established, in conjunction with other 
 ladies, a tolerably accurate system of signals, and found hiding 
 places and healing for several score of crippled Guerrillas who 
 could neither walk nor ride. 
 
 After breakfast Lieutenant Shepherd marched into Centre- 
 ville, had all of the unshod horses shod, and sent an old citizen 
 of Southern proclivities, into Liberty, fifteen miles distant, with 
 information to the effect that the bushwhackers from Jackson 
 were swarming in Clay. Todd crossed the Missouri on the 13th 
 where Shepherd had on the 12th, and in the same manner, 
 Richard Burnes, one of his soldiers, performing the difficult feat 
 of swimming his horse from bank to bank, sitting himself erect 
 in the saddle, four heavy dragoon revolvers buckled about him, 
 together with the necessary ammunition. On the 14th Todd 
 joined his lieutenant and planned an ambushment for Captain 
 William Garth, who commanded the jpost at Liberty. Garth, 
 duly informed of Shepherd's appearance in Centreville, picked 
 sixt} 7 " of his best men and started upon his trail. Todd, mean- 
 while, had withdrawn to some timber near the residence of Mr. 
 Andrew Means, a sturdy old Southern patriot whom no threats 
 could intimidate nor dangers deter. In front of this timber 
 there was a level meadow three hundred yards across. If Garth 
 once entered upon this meadow and marched over it to the 
 timber where Todd watched, waiting in the saddle, no power 
 this side heaven could save him from destruction. And it 
 seemed at one time as if he might do so. He came within a 
 mile of the ambushment, drove in the Guerrilla picquets, 
 followed them up vigorously as if meaning business, when a 
 professed Southern man named Swinney halted Garth in the 
 midst of his advance, made plain to him the nature of the trap, 
 told what kind of devils Todd led in battle, and then bade him 
 go forward if he felt like it. Garth countermarched instead 
 and hastened back to Liberty. 
 
 On the sixteenth, now well advanced into Ray, a citizen 
 informed Todd that a company of forty-five militia were 
 stationed at Shaw's blacksmith shop, in the northeastern portion 
 of the count} 7 . Todd, selecting ten men as an advance, put in 
 command of them a new comer named John Thrailkill. He was 
 
286 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 a Missourian turned Apache. He slept little ; he could trail a 
 column in the starlight; his only home was on horseback, 
 and who had had already mixed with the warp and the woof of his 
 young life the savage agony of tears. Thrailkill, when the war 
 began, was a young painter in Northwest Missouri, as gentle as 
 he was industrious. Loving a beautiful girl, and loved ardently 
 in return, he left her one evening to be absent a week. At its 
 expiration they were to be married. Generally the woman who 
 is loved is safe, but this one was in peril. Her father, an inva- 
 lid of fifty, was set upon by some militia and slain, and the 
 daughter, bereft of her reason at the sight of gray hairs 
 dabbled in blood, went from paroxysm to paroxysm, until she 
 too was a corpse. The wildest of her ravings were mingled with 
 the name of her lover. It was the last articulate thing her lips 
 lingered over or uttered. He came back as a man in a dream. 
 He kissed the dead reverently. He went to the grave as one 
 walks in his sleep. It was bitter cold, and some one remarked 
 it to him. u ls it?" he said. " I had not felt it." Another 
 friend tried to fashion something of solacement. The savage 
 intensity of the answer shocked him: " Blood for blood ; every 
 hair in her head shall have a sacrifice ! ' ' The next day John 
 Thrailkill began to kill. He killed all over Northwest Missouri. 
 Of the twenty militia who were concerned in the murder of his 
 sweetheart's father, and, indirectly in the murder of his sweet- 
 heart, he killed eighteen. The remaining two returned to Ohio 
 where they lived originally and lost themselves in the midst of 
 an Eastern army corps. Getting closer and closer to Todd, of 
 course as he was forced to fall back, fighting, he finally took 
 service in his immediate ranks and became as the balance a des- 
 perate Guerrilla not afraid to die. 
 
 Thrailkill's'advance, composed of Dick Kinney, John Jackson, 
 Andy Walker, Dan Vaughn, Andy McGuire, Frank and Jesse 
 James, Sim Whitsett, Oil Shepherd, Ben Morrow, Hence Privin, 
 Harrison Trow and Si Gordon, took the road at a trot. It was 
 to make seven miles an hour, keep one-half mile ahead of the 
 main body, charge everything dressed in blue, and halt within 
 a mile of the blacksmith shop. In two hours fourteen miles 
 had been made ; to the enemy's position it was just a mile further. 
 Camped in a black oak grove, the militia haft on one side a 
 large corn field, on the other a meadow. In the midst of them 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 287 
 
 a broad lane ran, fit almost for a column to ride through, com- 
 pany front. As the Guerrillas emerged into the open and 
 entered the lane at a walk, they were mistaken for friends and 
 permitted to advance unchallenged to within two hundred yards 
 of the camp. Then a wild yell was heard, and then came that 
 peculiar rush so terrible in its gathering strength and so resist- 
 less. Todd, Walker, Thrailkill, Trow, Jackson and Kinney 
 rode abreast in the front rank ; Whitsett, George, Oil and 
 Frank Shepherd, and Ben Morrow in the second ; Hudspeth, 
 Coger, and McGuire in the third, and behind them Hendrix, 
 Gregg, Gordon, the Jameses, the Archie brothers, and William 
 Hulse, all striving furiously to be the first in at the death. Ten 
 of the militia were slaughtered helplessly in camp, and the 
 balance scattered to the corn field, some without guns .and some 
 without pistols. Instead of a battle there was a battue. The 
 Guerrillas hunted them as wild game is hunted, laughing loud 
 when one jumped up from his hiding-place here or there and 
 was shot down. John Jackson, Kinney, and the two Jameses 
 were together when they flushed four from a single covert, 
 killing them, as they imagined, and passing on. One, however, 
 was not only not dead, but he was wicked and unhurt. He 
 rose up in the rear of these four Guerrillas who in the eager- 
 ness of the hunt had not taken time to gather together the arms 
 of the slain and shot Jackson in the back with a Belgian musket 
 carrying an ounce ball. Almost before he had touched the 
 ground Jesse James avenged him, firing twice into the head of 
 the militiaman as he stood over him with his horse. Thirty- 
 eight of the forty-five Federals were killed, and forty horses 
 were captured, together with considerable camp equipage and 
 commissary stores. Todd lost but one man, Jackson, who was 
 mortally wounded. Tenderly cared for by James Hendrix and 
 John Coger, he was driven for fifteen miles as gently as possible 
 in a buggy and placed in a safe spot on Wakenda river. On the 
 fifteenth he died calmly, and his comrades buried him. One 
 by one the old guard was going. John Jackson, a hero in fifty 
 desperate combats, died as he had lived, one of the bravest 
 men who ever buckled on a pistol. 
 
 A little before dawn, on the morning of the 16th, Todd was 
 in front of Keytesville, Chariton county. Eighty militia held 
 the town, occupying the large brick court house there, a really 
 
288 NOTED GUEMEILLAS, OR 
 
 formidable fortification, capable easily of resisting the onset A 
 a thousand men. Todd, unchallenged, surrounded this bu id- 
 ing and demanded an unconditional surrender. So secure 
 had the garrison felt in the possession of their fort, and so 
 unused had they been to the sudden surprises and rougher 
 realities of war, that no guards were out about the court house, 
 nor any picquets upon t&e streets. The militia commander 
 parleyed awhile, but to no purpose. Todd promised simply to 
 spare the lives of his men, if a capitulation came in five 
 minutes ; if not, then war to the vanquished. Up went the 
 white flag, and out marched eighty militiamen, furious when it 
 was too late at being trapped and taken by scarcely sixty 
 Guerrillas. With the militia there were also taken four hundred 
 muskets, three hundred shot-guns, one hundred army revolvers, 
 two pieces of artillery and forty-four splendid horses. The 
 muskets, shot-guns and the cannon were all piled together in 
 the court house and the court house burnt. The prisoners were 
 paroled the first and the last time in his career that Todd ever 
 had been known to be merciful. His honor, however, had been 
 pledged, and if any desperate man among his following had spilled 
 even so much as one drop of any militiaman's blood, there, per- 
 sonally, and pistol to pistol, would Todd have exacted of him 
 accountability. Later on, and while doing picquet duty outside 
 of the town, Oil Shepherd caught and killed the sheriff of Chari- 
 ton, a most obnoxious Radical, but he was not included in the 
 terms of capitulation nor was he connected in any military 
 manner with the garrison. Among the horses appropriated were 
 three elegent race mares, the admiration of the entire command. 
 These, in the distribution, fell to Jesse James, Chat Rennick 
 and Harrison Trow. 
 
 On the march out Andy McGuire and Frank James caught 
 and killed two militia who fired on them from a corn-field as 
 they rode by, lagging somewhat in the rear of the column. 
 James Younger, scarcely old enough to do service of any kind, 
 had yet joined Todd as a boy and had already made a name for 
 himself in a command where personal prowess alone brought 
 laurels. 
 
 Todd entered Roanoke and occupied it for a short time just 
 long: enough to let all North Missouri know that he was on the 
 war-path and then cut the telegraph wires for some distance 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 289 
 
 and tore up the posts. In the extreme eastern part of Howard 
 on the 17th, Todd halted all the day of the 18th on the Roche- 
 port and Sturgeon road, and rested both men and horses. 
 About three o'clock, however, fifteen hundred Federals march- 
 ing down towards Rocheport forced Todd away from the road 
 four miles and into some heavy timber, where he rested. Oil 
 Shepherd, Frank Shepherd, Richard Kinney, Dan Vaughn, 
 Press Webb and Jacob Mead, having been sent out earlier on a 
 scout, returned to camp in time to be furiously attacked and 
 furiously followed for several miles, fighting as they ran. The 
 chase ended, however, as all such chases always ended to the 
 Federals, in a loss altogether disproportionate to the numbers 
 engaged. Out of fifty pursuers eight were killed and seven 
 wounded. Kinney lost his horse, and Oil Shepherd took him 
 up behind him under a rattling fire and bore him safely away. 
 This was the only casualty. 
 
 Day dawned on the 19th, cold and raw. At intervals an east 
 wind brought ruin in torrents. Nevertheless, it was to be a day 
 of murder. Todd moved camp only a few miles, when the 
 muddy roads and the inhospitable weather drove him into it 
 again. Lioutenant Shepherd, taking with him Kinney, Andy 
 McGuire, Harrison Trow, Lafe Privin, Jesse and Frank James, 
 went scouting along the Sturgeon road until one hundred and 
 fifty Federals were met seventy-five infantry and seventy-five 
 cavalry escorting seventeen wagons. The column was ap- 
 proaching Rocheport, with forty cavalry in advance, the infantry 
 divided up among the wagons, and in the rear the balance of 
 the horsemen. It was probable that one of Todd's charges 
 would make of the march a massacre. He was four miles to the 
 left of the enemy's line of travel when Jesse James carried to 
 him swiftly the news of the situation, but by the rapid move- 
 ment of half an hour he threw himself across the main road and 
 dashed at the cavalry in front with the old yell and the old 
 result. Todd killed the first Federal in the fight, a handsome 
 young captain well ahead of his men and striving to hold them 
 for a grapple. Then the on-going tide inundated everything. 
 Those first to the wagons, after breaking through the covering 
 cavalry as though it had been tissue paper i notched across a 
 race-course, were Todd, raging like a lion, TiiraiJkill, the two 
 Jameses, Gordon, McGuire, Hulse, Oil Shepherd, William and 
 19 
 
290 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Hugh Archie, Mead, Kinney, Tom Todd, Privin, Glasscock, De 
 Hart, and Vaughn. Death came to men so quickly there that some- 
 thing superhuman seemed to be inflicting it. Corduroyed with 
 corpses, the muddy road in a measure became firm. Inextri- 
 cably entangled, men and mules fell together. Past the infantry, 
 or rather the remains of it, dashed the two Jameses, De Hart, 
 Kinney, Hulse, Mead, and Vaughn, Jesse James killing as he 
 galloped a Federal lieutenant two hundred yards from the road. 
 This shot was a most remarkable one, and for some time was 
 the talk of the command. The lieutenant was in the act of 
 firing, having just lifted a carbine to his face, when James put a 
 dragoon pistol ball into his head. The rout, if, indeed, it were 
 not better called a butchery, lasted until dark. Ninety-two 
 cavalry and infantry had been killed. All the wagons were 
 burnt, together with fifty-four Ballard rifles, abandoned by the 
 enemy in their frantic efforts to escape. Each of the seventeen 
 wagons had six splendid mules to it, but every mule was killed. 
 In burning the wagons three negro drivers were burned up with 
 them, the Guerrillas not taking the trouble to drag them out 
 from the flames. Driving another wagon was a well known 
 Southern citizen who had been pressed into service and forced 
 to accompany the expedition. Before he could either explain 
 the surroundings or make himself known to the Guerrillas, he 
 was shot dead. The wagons were loaded with ammunition and 
 clothing, and Todd, ordering each of his fifty-three men to help 
 himself to a suit, the line looked as blue after the metamor- 
 phosis as any Federal line in Missouri. He had but one man 
 hurt in the fight, Bart Lewis, of Platte county, and he only 
 slightly in the leg. Dick Glasscock had a horse killed. Tom 
 Todd had two men wounded, Jo Davis, of Randolph county, 
 who afterwards died of his wound, and John M. Taylor. The 
 Federals did not fight. After the first volley, a volley fired at 
 long range and with scarcely the semblance of steadiness, every- 
 thing was flight or panic. Ere the infantry knew the nature of 
 the attack they were overridden. The cavalry in the rear ran 
 away while their comrades in the front were being butchered. 
 The scene after the conflict was sickening. Charred human 
 remains stuck out from the mouldering wagon heaps. Death, 
 in all forms and shapes of agony made itself visible. Limbs 
 were kneaded into the deep mud of the roadway, and faces, 
 
WILL HULSE. 
 
 LEE McMURTRY. 
 
 T. F. MAUPIN. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 291 
 
 under the iron feet of the horses, crushed into shapelessness. 
 
 A long night march and a dark one succeeded to the evening 
 of the fight, but by sunrise the next morning Todd had formed 
 a junction with Quantrell, Poole, Anderson, Perkins, and 
 Thomas Todd, these two last being Confederate officers. 
 Aggregated, the force numbered two hundred and seventy- 
 seven rank and file, not a formidable force to do effectively the 
 important work Gen. Price required of it. Poole commanded 
 fifty-two men, George Todd fifty-three, Anderson sixty-seven, 
 Quantrell sixteen, Thomas Todd forty- two, and Perkins forty- 
 seven. All eyes were now turned towards Fayette, the county 
 seat of Howard county, eleven miles north of the rendezvous, 
 where four hundred Federal soldiers did garrison duty, strongly 
 fortified and capable of stout resistance. The command was 
 first offered to Quantrell, but he refused it ; next to Anderson, 
 who accepted. Quantrell argued in the counsel against attack- 
 ing Fayette, and voted against it as a piece of military folly. 
 So did George Todd ; but the balance overbore them and 
 decided to make the venture. 
 
 On the morning of September 20th, 1864, the March towards 
 Fayette began. Anderson moved first, Poole next, Stuart next, 
 and Quantrell fourth. In the rear were George Todd, Perkins, 
 and Thomas Todd. Fayette had a strong stockade on the north as 
 a defensive work, and in the town itself, both the court house 
 and a female academy were stoutly fortified. Anderson, Poole, 
 and Quantrell were to charge through Fayette and invest the 
 stockade, while the two Todds and Perkins were to look after 
 the buildings inside the corporation. Tom Todd led the ad- 
 vance in the attack on the town, as Fayette was his home. 
 
 Fayette was reached about eleven o'clock and attacked 
 furiously. Anderson, Poole, and Quantrell dashed through the 
 square, losing some of their best men, and the two Todds and 
 Perkins faced the two fortified buildings and did what was 
 possible to be done, bare breasts against brick and mortar. 
 Sergeant McMurtry, of George Todd's company, fell first and 
 close to the court house fence. Oil Thompson was mortally 
 wounded ; Perkins lost ten men in as many minutes, Tom Todd 
 seven, and Poole eight. Anderson lost in killed, Garrett, Cra- 
 vens, Agen, Grosvenor, and Newman Wade, and in wounded, 
 Thomas Maupin, Silas King, William Stone and Lawrence Wilcox. 
 
292 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Lieut. Little, one of the oldest of Quantrell's veterans, was badly 
 wounded. Every attack was repulsed, both upon the court 
 house and the stockade, and the Guerrillas retreated finally but 
 unpursued, with a loss of eighteen killed and forty-two wound- 
 ed. Richard Kinney and Jesse James volunteered to bring 
 McMurtry out from under the guns of the enemy, and they 
 dashed in afoot and succeeded safely amid a shower of balls. 
 Quan trell, infuriated at the loss of so many splendid fellows, 
 fought with a recklessness unusual with him. Leading in person 
 three desperate assaults upon the stockade, and wounded 
 severely in the second assault, he would have com- 
 manded a fourth if Poole and Anderson, convinced at last of 
 the uselessness qf the sacrifice, had not shown the insanity of 
 the effort and argued him out of his reckless purpose. Many 
 feats of individual and heroic daring were performed. Thomas 
 Todd, his long red beard waving in the wind, and his black 
 plume floating free where the fight was hottest, dashed up once 
 to the main gate of the court house and emptied six chambers 
 of a revolver into a door from which twenty muskets were pro- 
 truding. Peyton Long, losing his horse early in the fight, 
 rushed desperately into a corral under cover of the stockade, 
 coolly chose the horse which suited him best, mounted him 
 bareback and galloped away unhurt into his own ranks again* 
 Harrison Trow, procuring from a citizen an excellent shot- 
 gun, crept to a sheltered place close to the Academy and 
 silenced one window of it by the accuracy and the rapidity of 
 his fire. He was so cool and so calm always in danger that his 
 comrades called him "Iceberg." The night of the retreat 
 Oliver Johnson died. Only twenty-five years of age, he was 
 six feet two in height and large in proportion. Of immense 
 physical strength, in a charge or a close hand to hand fight, he 
 was simply resistless. Wounded six times, the seventh wound 
 killed him. To find one to fill his place who could be braver, 
 more deadly, or more constantly in the saddle was to hunt for 
 gold dust in a straw pile. There were none such. E. P. De 
 Hart took Johnson's place, and was sent to the rear to hold it 
 with John McCorkle, John Barker, Frank Lester, Jack Will, 
 James Clayton, John Rains and Pate Crew, where he did some 
 splendid fighting. 
 On the twenty-second, Huntsville, in Randolph county, was 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BORDER 
 
 surrounded and ordered to capitulate, but its garrison of three 
 hundred militia refused to surrender upon any terms, and Ander- 
 son remembering the sore lesson of Fayette did not even 
 attempt an assault. On the twenty-third, after the track of the 
 North Missouri Railroad had been torn up for several miles and 
 the telegraph lines interfered with, Quantrell separated himself 
 and his sixteen men from the main body of Guerrillas and 
 returned into Howard. In Audrain county on the twenty- 
 fourth, in Monroe on the twenty-fifth, and back again in Audrain 
 on the twenty-sixth, Anderson, still in command, killed unfortu- 
 nate militia upon every hand, broke up communication with the 
 various posts, spread terror in every direction, and caused 
 above everything else that concentration of Federal troops so 
 much desired by the Confederate authorities. 
 
 From his camp at Singleton's barn, four miles upon the south- 
 east, Anderson moved into Centralia early on the morning of 
 the twenty-seventh. He had with him his own company, Poole, 
 and ten of Poole's men. Todd did not accompany him to the 
 town, nor did John Thrailkill, who had joined him after the 
 Fayette fight with fifty new Guerrillas. These two chieftains, 
 together with Thomas Todd, remained upon their arms, awaiting 
 developments. 
 
 The eleven o'clock train from St. Louis would not be due for 
 an hour, and Anderson employed the interval in levying contri- 
 butions upon the citizens and taking from the stores such things 
 as were needed by his soldiers. By and by a keen whistle was 
 heard, and the dull thunder of advancing cars. The train, 
 halting at the depot, had Federals upon it, some with and some 
 without guns. Some were going up the road on duty, and 
 some to their homes on furlough. When Anderson charged the 
 <sars, those who had muskets crowded to the windows and upon 
 the platforms and fired briskly at the Guerrillas. Such resist- 
 ance, however, was mere child's play. Probably none would 
 have been spared, even though there had been an unconditional 
 surrender, but there was no earthly hope surely after the shoot- 
 ing of a single musket. In all probability the soldiers on the 
 train were frightened beyond discretion. Before the cars had 
 scarcely stopped, one of them put his head from a window and 
 cried out: "Lord! Lord! there is Bill Anderson! Boys, go 
 to praying!" "Pray, hell!" swore a huge Iowa sergeant, 
 
2'J4 SOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 thrusting a musket out and firing as he spoke, " it is the hour 
 of battle. The devil and all his angels are here!" The fight 
 should not be called a fight. A few shots from the Guerrillas at 
 close range cleared the platforms and the windows. White 
 handkerchiefs were waved in every direction, and a formal sur- 
 render had in a very short time. It would have been better for 
 the Federals to have fought to the death after they had thought 
 it best to fight at all. All who were on the train were formed in 
 line, and then the work of winnowing began. Among the citi- 
 zens was the Hon. James S. Rollins, of Boone county. Some- 
 times he relates his experience of this terrible event, and if in 
 some places the narrative is but the story of a bloody tragedy, 
 in others the humor is quaint and picturesque. Who was he? 
 Anderson asked. "Oh!" replied Rollins, as mild and as bland 
 as a wind which had just left the lilacs, "I am Mr. Richard 
 Robinson" or whatever the name was that just then came 
 uppermost in his mind "and I live only a few miles back. 
 You must know where I live. It is a house that has a large 
 grove on the north, and two white chimneys, and some fruit trees 
 in the front yard, and is a popular place for the boys. They 
 stop there often," and here the Major looked into the cold, hard 
 eyes of Anderson and winked. That wink made him a Guer- 
 rilla. Certainly Anderson knew the house. But for fear he 
 might forget it, Rollins took him familiarly by the coat and led 
 him to where an unobstructed view might be had of the great 
 stretch of prairie southward from the town. The house was 
 again pointed out, its surroundings minutely described, and 
 again the confidential assurance given that it was "a great place 
 for the boys." The welcome was so hospitable there. Anderson 
 was satisfied, but by and by the Major felt the need of a super- 
 human effort. He carried with him everywhere a little hand 
 valise which might contain one thing or another thing. At any 
 rate a curious Guerrilla would see for himself. He snatched the 
 satchel from Rollins' hand and tore it open. There were 
 clothes there socks, handkerchiefs, collars, drawers, towels; 
 but oh ! horror of horrors, there upon all the balance of the 
 heap was an immaculate white shirt bearing in bold and black 
 relief the name of Jam*- s S. Rollins! His heart stood still. He 
 saw first what might soon become to be a deaUi warrant because 
 he knew it was there, and he laughingly laid a hand upon the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 295 
 
 shirt and as laughingly spoke to the Guerrilla: "My friend, I 
 have only one shirt left and I have to return to St. Louis to- 
 night. Of what use is a white shirt to you? It can not be 
 washed. Soldiers on a raid do not wash things. It gets soiled 
 in a day. It does not become you. It is not military." The 
 Guerrilla did not understand what Rollins understood, nor 
 did he know what Rollins knew. As he grasped the shirt he 
 grasped it firmly just over the tell-tale name, now seeming to 
 get blacker and blacker, and to enlarge and grow out from 
 under his extended palm. The Guerrilla hesitated. " Come, 
 come," pleaded the Major, "it's a little thing for you to do 
 me. I've been feeding bushwhackers ever since the war began 
 and I have yet the first cent to take from a single one of them 
 in pay for anything. Give me my shirt." The Guerrilla yi2lded 
 and the Major crushed the hateful thing back as if it had been 
 a spy and human. Anderson declared afterwards, however, that 
 even if Major Rollins had been identified he should not have 
 been harmed. He had not proscribed Southern people, he had 
 been merciful to women and children, and the Guerrillas re- 
 spected him not a little. 
 
 It was a ghastly line which at last separated the citizens from 
 the soldiers. Twenty-four of the latter and one citizen who 
 wore a soldier's blouse, fell upon that side of the line where 
 death, yet invisible, waited grimly in ambush for its prey. In 
 twenty minutes more all were killed. The train was next set on 
 fire, and the engine, with a full head of steam on, dashed away 
 like the wind towards Sturgeon. Then the depot felt the torch, and 
 finally a gravel train, following close behind the passenger train, 
 was taken possession of and destroyed. After indeed killing 
 everything in and about the town that looked, talked or acted 
 like a Federal soldier, and after destroying completely all those 
 things which he thought might be of the least use to the military 
 authorities of Missouri, Anderson led his men back to Single- 
 ton's pasture and reported to Todd the nature of the morning's 
 work. Afterwards, and later on in the day, it was decided to 
 put George Todd in command of the entire force and await 
 further developments. These, bloody beyond all precedent, 
 were not long in coming. 
 
 At Paris, in Monroe county, there had been a Federal 
 garrison under the command of a Major Johnson, three hundred 
 
296 NOTED GUEEEILLAS, OK 
 
 strong. These soldiers, on the watch for Anderson, bad been 
 busy in scouting expeditions, and had come down as near Cen- 
 tralia as Sturgeon. After Anderson had done all the devilment 
 his hands could find to do in Centralia, and had retired again to 
 the Singleton camp, Major Johnson came into the pillaged town, 
 swearing all kinds of frightful and fearful things. At the head 
 of his column a black flag was carried. So also was there one 
 at the head of Todd's column. In Johnson's ranks the stars 
 and stripes for this day had been forbidden ; in the ranks of the 
 Guerrillas the stars and bars flew fair and free, as if to the des- 
 peration of the sable banner there had been an intention to add 
 the gracefulness and abandon of legitimate war. 
 
 The Union citizens of Centralia, knowing only Anderson in 
 the transaction, besought Johnson to beware of him. He was 
 no match for Anderson. It was useless to sacrifice both himself 
 and his men. Anderson had not retreated ; he was in ambush 
 somewhere about the prairie ; he would swoop down like an eagle ; 
 he would smite and spare not. Johnson was as brave as the 
 best of them, but he did not know what he was doing. Ho had 
 never in his life fought Guerrillas such Guerrillas as were now 
 near unto him. He listened patiently to the warnings that were 
 well meant and he put away firmly the hands that were lifted to 
 stay his horse. He pointed gleefully to his black flag, and 
 boasted that quarter should neither be given nor asked. He 
 had come to carry back with him the body of Bill Anderson, 
 and that body he would have, dead or alive. Very well, said 
 the citizens then, -go and get it. Fate, however, had not yet 
 entirely turned away its face from the Federal officer. As he 
 rode out from the town at the head of his column, a young 
 Union girl, described as very fair and beautiful, rushed up to 
 Major Johnson and halted him. She spoke as one inspired. 
 She declared that a presentiment had come to her, and that if 
 he led his men that day against Bill Anderson she knew and 
 felt that but few of them would return alive. The girl almost 
 knelt in the dust as she besought the leader. Of no avail. 
 Johnson's blood was all on fire, and he would march and fight, 
 no matter whether death waited for him one mile off, or one 
 hundred. He not only carried a black flag himself, and swore 
 to give no quarter, but he declared on his return that he would 
 devastate the country and leave of the habitations of the South- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 297 
 
 era men, not one stone upon another. He was greatly enraged 
 towards the last. He cursed the people as "damned secesh," 
 and swore that they were in league with the murderers and rob- 
 bers. Extermination, in fact, was what they all needed, and il 
 fortune favored him in the fight, it was extermination that they 
 should all have. It did not favor him. 
 
 Johnson rode east of south, probably three miles. The 
 scouts who went to Singleton's barn, where Anderson camped, 
 came back to say that the Guerrillas had been there, had fed 
 there, had rested there, and had gone down into the timber 
 beyond to hide themselves. It was now about four o'clock in 
 the afternoon. Back from the barn, a long, high ridge lifted 
 itself up from the undulations of the more regular country, 
 and broke the vision southward. Beyond this ridge, a wide, 
 smooth prairie stretched itself out, and still beyond this 
 prairie, and further to the south, was the timber in which the 
 scouts said Bill Anderson was hiding himself. 
 
 As Johnson rode towards the ridge, still distant from it some 
 mile or more, ten men anticipated him by coming up fair 
 to view, and in skirmishing order. The leader of this little 
 band, Capt. John Thrailkill, had picked for the occasion David 
 and John Poole, Frank and Jesse James, Tuck Hill, Peyton 
 Long, Ben Morrow, James Younger, E. P. DeHart, Ed Green- 
 wood and Harrison Trow. Next to Thrailkill rode Jesse James, 
 and next to Jesse, Frank. Johnson had need to beware of 
 what might be before him in the unknown when such giants as 
 these began to show themselves. 
 
 The Guerrillas numbered, all told, exactly two hundred and 
 sixty-two. In Anderson's company there were sixty-one men, 
 in George Todd's forty-eight, in Poole' s forty-nine, in Thomas 
 Todd's fifty-four, and in Thrailkill's fifty two hundred and 
 sixty-two against three hundred. 
 
 As Thrailkill went forward to skirmish with the advancing 
 enemy, Tcdd came out of the timber where he had been hiding, 
 and formed a line of battle in an old field in front of it. Still 
 further to the front a sloping hill, half a mile away, arose 
 between Johnson and the Guerrillas. Todd rode to the crest of 
 this, pushing Thrailkill well forward into the prairie beyond, 
 and took his position there. When he- lifted his hat and waved 
 it the whole force was to move rapidly up. Anderson held the 
 
298 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OE 
 
 right, George Todd joined to Anderson, Poole to George Todd, 
 Thomas Todd to Poole, and Thrailkill to Thomos Todd and 
 thus were the ranks arra} 7 ed. 
 
 The ten skirmishers quickly surmounted the hill and disap- 
 peared. Todd, as a carved statue, sat his horse upon its 
 summit. Johnson moved right onward. Some shots at long 
 range were fired, and some bullets from the muskets of the 
 Federals reached to and beyond the ridge where Todd watched, 
 Peyton Long by his side. From a column of fours Johnson's 
 men galloped at once into line of battle, right in front, and 
 marched so, pressing up well and calmly. The advanced Guer- 
 rillas opened fire briskly at last, and the skirmishing grew 
 suddenly hot. Thrailkill, however, knew his business too well 
 to tarry long at such work, and fell back towards the ridge. As 
 this movement was being executed, Johnson's men raised a shout 
 and dashed forward altogether and in a compact mass, order, 
 formation, ranks all gone. This looked bad. Such sudden 
 exultation over a skirmish wherein none were killed exhibited 
 nervousness such a spontaneous giving way of a body, that 
 beyond the will of their commander, should have manifested 
 neither surprise nor delight looked ominous for discipline, 
 and for the defence that needed to be the defence of iron men 
 if it wrought any alive out from the unknown. 
 
 Titrailkill formed again when he reached Todd's line of battle, 
 and Johnson rearranged his ranks and went towards the slope 
 at a brisk walk. Some upon the right broke into a trot, but 
 he halted them, cursed them, and bade them look better to their 
 line. Up to the hill's crest, however, a column of men suddenly 
 rode into view, halted, dismounted, and seemed to be busy or 
 confused about something. Inexperienced, Johnson is declared 
 to hive said to his adjutant: "They will fight on foot what 
 does that mean?" It meant that the men were tightening their 
 saddle-girths, putting fresh caps on their revolvers, looking well 
 to bridle reins and bridle bits, and preparing for a charge that 
 would have about it the fury of the whirlwind. By and by 
 the Guerrillas were mounted again. From a column they trans- 
 formed themselves into a line two deep, and with a double 
 interval between all the files. At a slow walk they moved over 
 the crest towards Major Johnson, now advancing at a walk that 
 was oxisker. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 299 
 
 Perhaps it was now five o'clock. The September sun was 
 low in the west, not red nor angry, but an Indian Summer sun, 
 full yet of generous warmth and grateful beaming. The crisp 
 grass crinkled under foot. From afar the murmur of lapsing 
 streams came softly through the hushed air, and now and then 
 the notes of a bird not musical, but far apart. An interval of 
 five hundred yards separated the two lines. Not a shot had 
 been fired. Todd showed a naked front, bare of skirmishers 
 and stripped for the fight that he knew would be murderous to 
 the Federals. And why should they not stand? The black flag 
 waved alike over each, and from the lips of the leaders of each 
 there had been all the day only threats of extermination and 
 death. 
 
 Johnson halted his men and rode along his front speaking a 
 few calm and collected words. They could not be heard in 
 Todd's ranks, but they might have been divined. Most 
 battle speeches are the same. They abound fti good advice. 
 They are generally epigrammatic, and full of sentences like 
 these: "Aim low," "keep coo], " "fire when you get loaded," 
 "let the wounded lie till the struggle is over." But could it be 
 possible that Johnson meant to receive the charge of the Guer- 
 rillas at a halt ! What cavalry books had he read ? Who had 
 taught him such ruinous and suicidal tactics? And yet mon- 
 strous as the resolution was in a military sense, it had actually 
 been taken, and Johnson called out loud enough to be heard 
 from opposing force to opposing force : "Come on, we are ready 
 for the fight!" 
 
 The challenge was accepted. The Guerrillas gathered them- 
 selves up altogether as if by a sudden impulse, and took the 
 bridle-reins between their teeth. In the hands of each man 
 there was a deadly revolver. There were carbines also, and yet 
 they never had been unslung. The sun was not high, and there 
 was great need to finish quickly whatever had need to be begun. 
 Riding the best and fastest horses in Missouri, George Shep- 
 herd, Oil Shepherd, Frank Shepherd, Frank Gregg, Morrow, 
 Trow, McGuire, Allen Farmer, Hence and Lafe Privin, James 
 Younger, Press Webb, Babe Hudspeth, Dick Burnes, Ambrose 
 and Thomas Maxwell, Richard Kinney, Si and Ike Flannery, 
 Jesse and Frank James, David Poole, John Poole, Ed Green- 
 wood, Al Scott, Frank Gray, George Maddox, Dick Maddox, De 
 
300 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Hart, Jeff Emery, Bill Anderson, Tuck Hill, James Cummings, 
 John Rupe, Silas King, Jas. Corum, Moses Hnffaker, Ben Broom- 
 field, Peyton Long, Jack Southerland, Wm. Reynolds, Wra. and 
 Chas. Stewart, Bud Pence, Nat Tigue, Gooly Robertson, Hiram 
 Guess, Buster Parr, William Gaw, Chat Rennick, Henry Porter, 
 Arch and Henry Clements, Jesse Hamlet, John Thrailkill, Si 
 Gordon, George Todd, Thomas Todd, William and Hugh 
 Archie, Plunk Murray, Ling Litten, Joshua Esters, Sam Wade, 
 Creth Creek, Theo. Castle, John Chatman, and three score more 
 of other unnamed heroes struck first the Federal ranks as if the 
 rush was a rush of tigers. Jesse James, riding a splendid race 
 mare, led by half a length, then Arch Clements, then Frank 
 James, then Peyton Long, and then Oil Shepherd. There was 
 neither trot nor gallop; the Guerrillas simply dashed from a 
 walk into a full run. The attack was a hurricane. Johnson's 
 command fired one volley and not a gun thereafter. It scarcely 
 stood until the interval of five hundred yards was passed over. 
 Johnson cried out to his men to fight to the death, but they did 
 not wait even to hear him through. Some broke ranks as soon 
 as they had fired, and fled. Others were attempting to reload 
 their muskets when the Guerrillas, firing right and left, hurled 
 themselves upon them. Johnson fell among the first. Mounted 
 us described, Jesse James singled out the leader of the Federals. 
 He did not know him then. No words were spoken between the 
 two. When James had reached to within five feet of Johnson's 
 position, he put out a pistol suddenly and sent a bullet through 
 his brain. Johnson threw out his hands as if trying to reach 
 something above his head and pitched forward heavily, a corpse. 
 There was no quarter. Many begged for mercy on their knees. 
 The Guerrillas heeded the prayer as a wolf might the bleating 
 of a lamb. The wild rout broke away towards Sturgeon, the 
 implacable pursuit, vengeful as hate, thundering in the rear. 
 Death did its work in twos, in threes, in squads singly. 
 Beyond the first volley not a single Guerrilla was hurt, but in 
 this volley Frank Shepherd, Hank Williams, and young Peyton 
 were killed, and Richard Kinney mortally wounded. Thomas 
 Maxwell and Harrison Carter were also slightly wounded by the 
 same volley, and two horses killed one under Dave Poole and 
 one under Chat Rennick. Shepherd, a giant in size and as 
 brave as the best in a command where all were brave, had 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 301 
 
 fought the good fight and died in the harness. Hank Williams, 
 only a short time before, had deserted from the Federals and 
 joined Poole, giving rare evidences, in his brief Guerrilla service, 
 of great enterprise and consummate daring. Peyton was but a 
 beardless boy from Howard county, who in his first battle after 
 becoming a Guerrilla was shot dead. 
 
 Probably sixty of Johnson's command gained their horses 
 before the fierce wave of the charge broke over them, and these 
 were pursued by five Guerrillas by Jesse James, Frank James, 
 Peyton Long, Arch Clements and Oil Shepherd for six miles 
 at the dead run. Of the sixty, fifty-two were killed on the road 
 from Centralia to Sturgeon. Todd drew up his command and 
 watched the chase go on. For three miles nothing obstructed 
 the vision. Side by side over the level prairie the five stretched 
 away like the wind, gaining step by step and bound by bound, 
 upon the rearmost riders. Then little puffs of smoke arose. 
 No sounds could be heard, but dashing ahead from the white 
 spurts terrified steeds ran riderless. Night and Sturgeon ended 
 the killing. Five men had shot down fifty-two. Arch Clem- 
 ents, in the apportionment made afterwards, had credited to 
 him fourteen, OH Shepherd ten, Peyton Long nine, Frank James 
 eight, and Jesse James, besides killing Major Johnson and 
 others in the charge upon the dismounted troopers, killed in the 
 chase an additional eight. Johnson's loss was two hundred and 
 eighty-two, or out of three hundred only eighteen escaped. 
 History has chosen to call the ferocious killing at Centralia a 
 butchery. In civil war encounters are not called butcheries 
 where the combatants are man to man and where over either 
 rank there waves a black flag. Johnson's overthrow, probably, 
 was a decree of fate. He rushed upon it as if impelled by a 
 power stronger than himself. He did not know how to com- 
 mand, and his men did not know how to fight. He had, by the 
 sheer force of circumstances, been brought face to face with two 
 hundred and sixty-two of the most terrible revolver fighters the 
 American war or any other war ever produced, and he deliber- 
 ately tied his hands by the act of dismounting, and stood in the 
 shambles until he was shot down. Abject and pitiful cowardice 
 matched itself against reckless and profligate desperation, and 
 the end could only be just what the end was. The Guerrillas 
 did unto the militia just exactly what the militia would have 
 
302 NOTED GUEBRILLAS, OH 
 
 done unto them if fate had reversed its decision and given to 
 Johnson what it permitted to Todd. 
 
 Before either Quantrell, Todd, Anderson or Poole began to 
 do bloody work in Howard or any of its contiguous counties, 
 other desperate men had been busy with the enemy. Capt. 
 James Cason, a farmer Guerrilla, had also been operating in 
 Howard county at various times and brilliantly. He was an 
 intrepid man, full of enthusiasm and enterprise. Whenever the 
 enemy came upon him they had to fight him. Unostentatious, 
 clear-headed, vigilant, and thoroughly in earnest, he always got 
 close enough before he fired to hurt somebody. His first 
 encounter was with Major Hunt, of Merrill's Horse, in the 
 Boonslick hills, near Lisbon, on the Missouri river. Hunt was 
 on a horse-pressing expedition of a bright summer day. Cason 
 had with him H. A. Ballew, John A. Cason, John G. Ballew, 
 John M. Taylor, old Tom Childres and his son young Tom 
 Childres, Lt. B. H. Shipp, E. P. De Hart, and Calvin Sartain. 
 These men formed an ambuscade, fired five volleys into Hunt's 
 detachment, killing nine, wounding twenty-two and scattering 
 the balance of the sixty in every direction. De Hart was 
 almost a boy fair-faced, courageous, and giving great promise 
 even in this his first skirmish of the Guerrilla stuff that was 
 in him. 
 
 Capt. Cason 's second fight was with eight hundred Federals 
 having two pieces of artillery. This column he ambushed for 
 nearly an entire day, killing thirty-five and wounding fifty-two. 
 He had with him only John A. Cason, Calvin Sartain who was 
 captured and shot afterwards Green Wisdom, Tom Childres, 
 Jr., Lt. Ben Shipp, Wat Shiflett, Ab and James Bobett, E. P. 
 De Hart, John and Martin Ballew, Ed and Crat Wilson, John 
 M. Taylor, John Wills, and Harrison Burton. Very soon after 
 this summer day's fight against enormous odds, Capt. Cason 
 went South, taking with him the most of his men. 
 
 On the seventeenth of August, 1861, Capt. Cason had word 
 brought to him that two steamboats loaded with troops were 
 coming down the river, en route to St. Louis. An ambuscade 
 was immediately formed on the Howard county side and almost 
 immediately opposite Saline City. Here the current of the river 
 sweeps very near to the shore, which would of necessity bring 
 them within perfect rifle range of the concealed Guerrillas. 
 
WABFARE OF THE BOEDER 303 
 
 Unsuspicious of danger and crowded with a human freight that 
 seemed too confiding to be taken so unawares and so murder- 
 ously, the boats the White Cloud and the McDowell swept 
 swiftly along. A sudden flame leaped out from the bushes a* 
 though some hidden fire was there, and then on the crowded 
 decks there were terror, confusion, bleeding men and dead men. 
 For nearly an hour Cason fought the boats thus, making of 
 every embankment an earthwork, and of every tree a fortress. 
 Finally a landing was effected and two pieces of cannon hurried 
 ashore and used for shelling the timber which concealed the 
 Guerrillas. Cason held on. As the infantry advanced, he fell 
 back ; as the infantry retired, he advanced. They could not 
 shake loose his grip. Night alone ended the savage duel, the 
 Federal loss being sixty-two killed and nearly a hundred 
 wounded. 
 
 Other Guerrillas also had their way in this portion of Missouri 
 before Quantrell, Todd, and Anderson began to operate there 
 notably the Hoitzclaw family. Capt. Clifton Holtzclaw led the 
 first Guerrillas Howard county produced. Capt. William 
 Holtzclaw raised one of the first companies that was raised for 
 Price's army in the State. His brother Clifton was a lieutenant 
 in the company, and his other brothers, James, Benjamin and 
 John were privates. William was killed at Corinth, John 
 and Benjamin at Vicksburg, while James and Clifton survived 
 the war. Here were five brothers who were brave alike, who 
 fought side by side, who were renowned for personal prowess 
 and personal courage, and who sacrificed everything they pos- 
 sessed for the cause and the Confederacy. A tragic circum- 
 stance called Capt. Clifton Holtzclaw back to Missouri. His 
 aged father and mother, together with three sisters, had been 
 robbed of everything they possessed, horses, household effects, 
 clothing, even bread. Yet the old patriarch's spirit remained 
 all unsubdued and undaunted. As far advanced as he was in 
 life, and as little fitted for warlike operations, he nevertheless 
 secreted several kegs of powder against a day when they might 
 be worth their weight in gold. Some of this powder becoming 
 damp, old Mr. Holtzclaw attempted to dry it before a fire. 
 There was a terrible explosion, one sister was killed and the two 
 others dreadfully burnt. To care for and protect these, and his 
 two aged parents, Capt. Cliff Holtzclaw hurried home after the 
 
304 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 Corinth battle, where a gallant brother had been killed, and 
 sought to be at peace and to rest in quiet. Such things in those 
 savage days were impossible things. Several efforts were made 
 to capture and kill him. Four or five scouting parties went to 
 his house, insulted his parents, abused his sisters, and made all 
 sorts and kinds of terrible threats against his own life. In self- 
 defense he organized speedily a splendid company and fought a 
 desperate Guerrilla fight all through the summer of 1863 and 
 1864. But did he not have terrible provocation? In the sum- 
 mer of 1863, Lieutenant Jo Strett of Guitar's regiment, a cruel 
 militia officer who tied Southern men to trees and sabred or shot 
 them, went to Capt. Holtzclaw's house, took the aged father 
 from the arms of his aged wife and remorselessly killed him. 
 The son avenged him. He fought thereafter as some sav- 
 age wild beast. He killed b}^ day and by night. He 
 never took a prisoner. As desperate as Anderson, as unforgiv- 
 ing as Todd, as untiring as Taylor or Jesse James, the timber 
 sent him forth as a scourge and received him back again as 
 though he was a part of its solitude. 
 
 In the spring of 1863, Col. S. D. Jackman also came into 
 Howard county from the Confederate army on a recruiting 
 expedition, and rode about as he pleased, and as the bold, cool, 
 dauntless man he was. Indignant, the Federals sent out a 
 detachment under Capt. Samuel Steinmetz, from Glasgow, to 
 look after Jackman. Steinmetz found him near New Franidin, 
 opposite Boonville. With Jackman was Major Rucker, Lieut. 
 Drury Pulliam, Polk Witt, E. P. Do. Hart and ten other choice 
 spirits. The Guerrillas took up a strong position in a ravine, 
 poured a single deadly fire into Steinmetz's ranks, and scattered 
 them in every direction, no single Federal halting in his race 
 until he reached Fayette. Major Rives Leonard, of Guitar's 
 regiment, aroused at the signal failure of Steinmetz to break up 
 Jackman 's recruiting camp, hurried out himself at the head of 
 sixty picked troopers. A bloody combat ensued brief, 
 savage, exterminating. Jackman and Leonard met face to face 
 and fought a single-handed fight. Leonard was hit once in the 
 head and twice in the side, and Jackman was wounded severely 
 in the leg. When Leonard fell his men shamefully abandoned 
 him and dashed away, as Steinmetz's men had done, without 
 drawing rein, until they too reached Fayette, panic-stricken 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 305 
 
 and exhausted. Leonard and two of his wounded soldiers, fell 
 alive into Jackman's hands, who treated them with marked 
 consideration, releasing them finally, and permitting them to 
 be carried to their homes. Several severe skirmishes followed 
 this bloody little fight, in all of which Jackman was victorious, 
 and for several weeks he was left comparatively undisturbed 
 until July. At this time a very plausible man came to 
 Jackman's camp who sought in every manner to gain his confi- 
 dence and to ingratiate himself in his good opinions. 
 Frequently he solicited Jackman to ride with him, and once he 
 insisted that Jackman should go to a certain designated spot 
 where he said a lot of recruits were waiting to join him. This 
 last request aroused Jackman's suspicions. He agreed, how- 
 ever, to go, but before setting out sent ahead ten trusty Guer- 
 rillas especially charged to develop the ambush if ambush there 
 was. It was soon done. Fifteen ambushed Federals were found 
 completely hidden in the brush and awaiting anxiously the 
 arrival of the intended victim. Eight of these were killed and 
 the balance routed. As the sun set that afternoon its last 
 beams fell upon the pallid face and the destorted features of a 
 man swinging to a huge oak with a rope about his neck. The 
 spy's death had been a dog's death. 
 
 Jackman now began to get ready to return again to the South 
 with something like half a regiment of recruits splendid young 
 Missourians, eager for service and anxious to put on the gray. 
 Before he left, however, he did a daring deed. Gen. Thomas 
 J. Bartholow was a soldier of scars and honors. He had made 
 a name in Mexico first, and latter a name in Missouri. He was 
 a brave, generous, dashing, vigorous man, who fought well, 
 who was humane, enterprising, fond of a battle, and a rough 
 rider on a war-path. He commanded the military district in 
 which Glasgow was located, and had a residence on an outskirt 
 of the town. At night he generally slept there. Duly informed 
 in regard to the General's habits, Jackman resolved to capture 
 him. He chose for the adventure Major Rucker, Drury Pulliain, 
 Polk Witt, E. P. De Hart, Ben Shipp, and four other stalwart 
 Guerrillas, who were cool and who were not afraid to die. Gen. 
 John B. Clark, Jr., now a member of Congress from Missouri, 
 was at home on a leave of absence and accompanied Jackman. 
 One hundred and fifty Federals held Glasgow, picqueting all the 
 20 
 
306 NOTED GUERKILLAS OK, 
 
 roads and exercising generally a vigilant watch. Past midnight 
 probably between one and two o'clock in the morning Col. 
 Jackman, avoiding the picquets on the Glasgow and Boonville 
 road, entered the city. Ben Shipp was the guide ; he knew every 
 foot of the ground to be travelled over, every rough or dangerous 
 place. He also knew the best way to Gen. Bartholow's house. 
 When this was reached without an accident or an encounter, 
 Jackman secreted his men and sent Major Rucker to the front 
 door, who rang the bell coolly and calmly. Gen. Bartholow 
 answered it in person, a revolver in his hand and a look of 
 questioning on his resolute face. Seeing only a single man 
 there, he bade him enter. Rucker went quietly into the house, 
 and as the two sat face to face, the Confederate slowly stated 
 his business. "I am from Macon City, General," the would-be 
 courier declared, "and I have a dispatch for you." And he 
 had, written by Jackman himself, stating that the Guerrillas 
 were between Roanoke and Huntsville, and that the devil was 
 to pay. Bartholow read it calmly, folded it up, and laid it 
 aside, saying bursquely as he did so, "There is no answer." 
 Rucker rose to go, and Bartholow followed him to the front 
 door to see him depart. As he stepped outside of it he was 
 laid hold of by Rucker, Jackman, Pulliam, and Shipp, who had 
 gained the house unperceived while Rucker was conferring with 
 the General, and completely mastered him. Pistols were 
 against every portion of his body, while in whispers the men 
 bade him keep quiet for his life. Surprised, but in no manner 
 intimidated, Gen. Bartholow's wonderful nerve remained unruf- 
 fled. He saw the hopeless nature of a struggle, and he sub- 
 mitted without a struggle. Born soldier and educated com- 
 mander, he saw in the episode only one phase in a war that had 
 a thousand phases, and he faced fortune with the same equa- 
 nimity that he would have faced a line of battle. Skirting the 
 the town rapidly and regaining the horses unperceived, Jackman 
 furnished an excellent steed for Bartholow to ride and kept by 
 his side himself all through the night, putting by daylight a 
 distance of twenty miles between Glasgow and his halting place 
 in the Boonslick hills. Preceding the capture, Gen. Bartholow 
 had issued certain proclamations containing rewards for 
 Jackman's arrest or death, but these were promised to be with- 
 drawn when brought to his attention by Jackman, and when on 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 307 
 
 the following day Bartholow was released, he scrupulously kept 
 his word. Meanwhile the story of their General's capture had 
 aroused the soldiers of Glasglow as some unlocked for natural 
 convulsion might. A great surprise came at first, and then a 
 great fury. Capt. John Tillman, more of a cut- throat than a 
 soldier, swore he would kill every Southern sympathizer in town 
 if Gen. Bartholow did not return inside of twenty-four hours. 
 Five or six of these kind of people were seized and held ready 
 for the sacrifice. Every point of egress was carefully guarded. 
 Tillman himself, at the head of a strong column, sallied forth 
 to scour the country, but returned late in the day and unsuc- 
 cessful only to find Gen. Bartholow back at his headquarters, 
 safe, and full of a jolly good humor. Jackman had treated 
 him as one gallant soldier always treats another, and Bartholow 
 on his return after he had narrated the episode fully, and laughed 
 over it until he was tired restored peace to the distracted city 
 of Glasgow, released the victims marked upon the brow by 
 Tillman, and assured the citizens of every political faith that 
 they should neither be persecuted nor murdered. 
 
 Guerrilla fighting began again in good earnest in many direc- 
 tions. Capt. William Jackson, a son of Governor C. F. Jackson, 
 met this same Capt. John Tillman in Richland bottom, opposite 
 Saline City, and whipped him badly. Jackson had five men and 
 Tillman sixteen. When the fight was done, Jackson had four 
 men and Tillman eight. The balance might have been found 
 among the dead. 
 
 In, 1864, a Kansas Red Leg Captain named Truman, passed 
 through Howard like a scourge, cutting, slashing, hanging and 
 shooting. In Boonslick township he killed Sashel Carson, 
 Oliver Rose, Tazeweli Jones, John Stepp, John T. Marshall, 
 and John Cooper, all worthy and peaceful citizens. Others were 
 killed in various parts of the county, and the Guerrillas grew in 
 proportion as the people were preyed upon. 
 
 As already stated, QuantrelFs object in going to Howard 
 county was not so much to fight as to rest, not so much to hide 
 himself as to be at peace. He was sick, wounded, barely able 
 to ride, and worn from long pain and exposure. He arrived 
 about the 10th of July, 1864, and spent the first few weeks with 
 his old refugee friends from Jackson county, Evan Hall, Reuben 
 Harris, and Samuel Sanders. De Hart and several other How- 
 
308 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 ard county Guerrillas joined him. When Anderson began to 
 operate in the county, Quantrell sent to find him Little, Barker, 
 Thomas Harris, John McCorkle, Logan Tooley, and E. P. De 
 Hart, who,, after several severe skirmishes and no little stubborn 
 fighting, found him near Boonesboro, with nineteen men. 
 George Todd was still further away in the Perche hills of Boone 
 county. 
 
 Anderson had already been busy with the enemy. Encoun- 
 tering Jackrnan's old antagonist, Major Leonard, at the head of 
 two hundred and eighty men, he fought him a bushwhacking 
 fight for several hours, killing thirteen of his command and 
 wounding eleven. 
 
 Captain William Stuart, with seven men and about the same 
 time, encountered a detachment of the 17th Illinois, near 
 Boonesboro, numbering eighty. Stuart wa - hunting for Anderson, 
 but he found these Illinois people traveling briskly along from 
 Glasgow towards Boonville. The fight was near Squire Kivett's, 
 the Guerrillas beginning with a charge, continuing with a charge 
 and ending with a charge. The 17th fought badly, and 
 finally ran away without sufficient pressure. Stuart was 
 wounded severely in the left wrist, but Squire Kivett dressed 
 his wound, and he rode forward with his arm in a sling. Of a 
 race that needed to be exterminated to be subdued, what mat- 
 tered a pin prick more or less, or a bullet or two here and there 
 that reached no vital spot? At Allen, Anderson fought again, 
 and won, killing twenty-two militiamen and wounding as many 
 more. After the fight at Allen, Capt. James Jackson made a 
 dash at Jacksonville, twelve miles below Macon City, on the 
 North Missouri railroad, and charged the depot on horseback 
 and furiously. He killed men on the platform ; he killed them 
 in box cars ; he killed them on the right hand and the left, 
 but the eighty militia in the depot building proper he could not 
 get out. Among those who distinguished themselves in this 
 desperate little fight with Jackson were Lieutenant Hines, George 
 Heberling, Scott Hackley, Robert Cravens, and William and 
 Charles Landrum. Charles Landrum was shot square through 
 the breast, but he would not die. He rode with his column as 
 it fell back, and rode a dozen and more miles to a safe hiding 
 place before he would dismount or have his wound dressed. 
 Not very long afterwards William Landrum, a splendid soldier r 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BORDER 309 
 
 and a cool, desperate fighter, was killed leading a hopeless 
 charge. Robert Cravens was killed at the Fayette fight, superb 
 in the recklessness of a daring which astonished even his daring 
 comrades. 
 
 But not all the killing was on one side. One day Anderson 
 lost nine of his best men. At the house of a widow lady named 
 Turner, six were surrounded and shot. They fought to the death, 
 but they died. Six more at the house of Capt. Sebree were also 
 surrounded, three of whom were killed. Three escaped, 
 Hamp. Watts, a fifteen year old boy from Fayette, Anderson 
 Baby and Joe Holt. They cut their way out from the environ- 
 ment, shooting right and left. Leonard's troops did the killing 
 at these two houses. 
 
 Little, to get cured of the severe wound received at Fayette, 
 was carried to the Boonslick hills and hidden securely away. 
 Devoted men and women could be found everywhere to succor 
 and shield the wounded or unfortunate Guerrillas. For patri- 
 otic devotion and unremitting care, none surpassed Mrs. 
 William Wills, Mrs. Charles Scripture, Mr. Ivin Hall, Reuben 
 Harris, old Billy Grady and old Major James Simms. Two 
 prominent physicians, as brave as they were patriotic, also 
 deserve especial mention J. W. Hawkins, of Boonesboro, and 
 Thomas Staples, of Saline. These men killed in battle and 
 cured in hospitals. They were soldiers and they were Samar- 
 itans. They ennobled their profession twice once by their 
 heroism and once by their devotion. No danger deterred 
 them, no difficulties baffled them, no proscription caused them 
 to relax their efforts, no adverse circumstances made them neg- 
 ligent they were noble men and they were Missourians. 
 
 Once Anderson entered Glasgow and took Col. B. W. Lewis 
 from his residence, intending no doubt to kill him. Indeed he 
 had sworn some time before to kill him if he ever laid hands 
 upon him. Mrs. James S. Thompson and another lady, both 
 extremely Southern, saved Col. Lewis and rescued him from the 
 grasp of this desperate Guerrilla. 
 
 While Quantrell remained in Howard county after the Cen- 
 tralia fight, waiting for Little's wounds to heal, he encountered 
 and killed two Federal soldiers, a Capt. Kimsey and a Robert 
 Montgomery. These two men were out on a little pillaging 
 expedition. They had robbed several citizens of money, and 
 
310 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 had behaved scandalously at the house of Mr. John L. De Hart. 
 Quantrell, in company with one of his men, Thomas Harris, 
 met these Jayhawkers and ordered them to surrender. They 
 began to draw their pistols, when as instantaneous as the light- 
 ning's flash, the skilled Guerrilla shot them both dead from 
 their saddles. The evening of the same day he killed another 
 Federal by the name of John West, at Lisbon. Not long after 
 he had killed West some Putnam county militia came into 
 Glasgow, stealing, shooting and burning. Lisbon was con- 
 sumed. Capt. James Cason's house was given to the torch. 
 Quantrell was encountered and driven furiously into his camp, 
 having barely time to take James Little up behind him and fall 
 back behind John Barker and five others of his old men, who 
 ran and fought and held their own for fourteen miles. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 AFTER CENTRALIA. 
 
 FROM the battle-field about Centralia, the Guerrillas moved 
 into Callaway county. There Richard Kinney died. 
 Trained first by Shelby and later by Todd, he went about as 
 some mediaeval knight, fighting single-handed and against 
 desperate odds. He and Frank James were comrades in arms 
 and inseparable. If one charged the head of a pursuing column, 
 the other was by his side. If one fell in the desperate press of a 
 rush or a raeZee, the other stood over him in rescue or fought 
 against any numbers while he found another horse. Kinney, 
 although one of the bravest of the brave, had the modesty of a 
 women. He never boasted. Indeed, he did not even talk 
 much. After a combat in which his prowess or his intrepidity 
 had been conspicuous, he listened delightedly to others who 
 recited, to others who told of the day. Such was his skill with 
 a revolver that when an exceedingly difficult or an unusually 
 long shot had to be made, the Guerrillas nearest said one to 
 another: "Where is Dick Kinney? Let Dick Kinney try his 
 hand at that d d blue coat." At his death the notches on 
 a single pistol butt numbered forty-eight, and for each notch a 
 life had been taken. To-day Frank James possesses this pistol 
 a tragedy thing of wood and iron. 
 
 It might be thought that the wild license of Guerrilla life, the 
 freedom from restraint, the constant acting face to face with 
 death, would breed desperate quarrels by the score and make 
 those who in days of concentration preyed upon the enemy, 
 prey upon themselves in hours of disbandment and relaxation. 
 The contrary was the case. But one rencontre can be recorded 
 in all the long four years of terrible fighting and killing. In 
 September, 1864, a difficulty occurred between Joel Chiles and 
 William Ridings. Chiles was a Missourian, and Ridings a 
 
312 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OR 
 
 young Texan, just seventeen years of age, and the only Texan 
 belonging to the Guerrillas. Chiles shot Ridings dead, and 
 wounded at the same time Fletch Taylor and William Basham. 
 Instantly Basham killed Chiles, and that was the first and the 
 last internal difficulty the Guerrillas ever experienced. 
 
 Gathering together hastily with something of a shiver and 
 more of a start, the Federal garrisons throughout Northeast 
 Missouri massed a column of one thousand cavalry, accompanied 
 by a six gun battery, and sent it out hurriedly on the track of 
 the retreating Guerrillas. Its first dash at the rear was rather 
 spirited. Plunk Murray had an arm broken and a minie ball 
 sent into his left side, and Richard Ellington escaped barely 
 with his life, a bullet in one shoulder and one leg. Todd picked 
 thirty men instantly, armed them with Spencer rifles, and put 
 them under Arch Clements to hold the rear. It was a royal 
 rear guard, and it was composed of David and John Poole, 
 Tuck, Tom and Woot Hill, three Guerrilla brothers, Jesse and 
 Frank James, Peyton Long, Ben Broomfield, Zack Southerland, 
 Ben Morrow, Harrison Trow, Richard Burnes, Geo. Maddox, 
 Frank Gregg, the two Noland brothers, Ed Greenwood, George 
 Shepherd, Oil Shepherd, John Thrailkill, John Chestnut, Captain 
 Downing, Ling Litten, Silas King, James Commons, William 
 Hulse, William Stuart, Jeff Emery and Andy McGuire. For 
 twenty-five miles this rear guard fought as only such men could 
 fight. A tree was an ambuscade ; a hill-top was a cover ; hazel- 
 brush hid half a score of riflemen ; at every open there was a 
 charge ; at every creek-crossing a grip that only the artillery 
 could unloose. Thirty-seven Federals were killed in the pursuit 
 and eighty-eight wounded more or less severely. Thrailkill, 
 Greenwood, Maddox and William Hulse were wounded on the 
 part of the Guerrillas, and Clements, Tuck Hill, Poole, and 
 Frank James had their horses killed. Never a single time was 
 this rear guard worsted in a grapple or made to fall back faster 
 than in a walk. After fighting the pursuing militia until dark 
 and providing places of safety for the wounded, Todd dis- 
 banded his forces October 5th, 1864. Poole, with twenty-five 
 men, struck a German settlement on his way to Lafayette 
 county, and killed twenty-two home guards, while Todd, taking 
 with him Jesse and Frank James, William and Henry Nolan, 
 Harrison Trow, Ben Morrow, John House and John Hope, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 313 
 
 went into Howard to hunt for Quantrell. He could not or did 
 not find him anywhere within the county, and so sent in his 
 own name Frank James, the Nolans, Morrow, Trow and 
 House into Jackson county to arouse the Guerrillas still there 
 with the news of Price's advance into Missouri, while he, with 
 Jesse James and John Hope, returned to Anderson, camped yet 
 in the eastern edge of Howard. After a brief conference, 
 Anderson and Thomas Todd, commanding between them three 
 hundred men, moved instantly to meet Price, while Poole and 
 George Todd crossed to the south side of the Missouri river and 
 marched up into Cooper county, killing fifteen home guards 
 eight miles south of Boonville. Syracuse fell next with twenty 
 militia, who were killed. The depot was burned, the railroad 
 track torn up, and the telegraph line destroyed into and 
 up to the railroad bridge across the Lamine river. This 
 also was destroyed. Peyton Long killed a courier here 
 disguised as a mule driver. When searched he had, in 
 addition to his dispatches, two human ears recently cut 
 from some victim's head. Long scalped this man and 
 cut off his ears also, nailing them to the first Union man's 
 gate post he passed on the road. Otterville fell next, its gar- 
 rison of twenty-two militia being cut to pieces and its depot 
 burned. From Otterville to Brownsville, in Saline county, Todd 
 and Poole killed probably a hundred militia, and from Browns- 
 ville through Lafayette county to the Missouri river, fifty more. 
 On the morning of October 9th a raid from their camp at 
 Blackwater was determined upon. Poole taking with him as 
 an advance John Poole, Al Scott, Frank Gregg, Jesse James, 
 Ed Greenwood, Andy McGuire, James Younger, Lafe Privin, 
 James Commons and Peyton Long rode ahead with his ten 
 men, the front of a Guerrilla column one hundred and sixty- 
 three strong. The object of the raid was to break up a German 
 military organization somewhat unfavorably known locally in 
 Lafayette county. The militia were by no means asleep. 
 Forewarned of Todd's coming, they attended speedily to the 
 forearming part. An ambuscade of one hundred men was 
 formed in some hazel brush close to the road, and fourteen cav- 
 alry sent down to meet the head of the Guerrilla column, fire 
 upon it, and fall back the old style of stratagem, and yet one 
 which had never grown old. Two miles from the camp upon 
 
314 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OE 
 
 Blackwater, Poole, well ahead of Todd, met the fourteen 
 Federals and charged them with a yell, driving what were not 
 ridden over and killed through the ambuscade and beyond it at 
 a terrific pace. Todd, hearing only the firing in front, followed 
 it at a gallop and came, caring naught for what might be on 
 either hand, full into the jaws of the trap. The close volley that 
 spurted out in the very faces of his men astonished but did not 
 demoralize him. It was as a flea-bite to a bloodhound. 
 Hiram Masterson, Presley Jobson, Thomas Sorrels, William 
 Toothman and Archibald Smoot fell dead from their horses, and 
 Levi Potts and Ves Atchison were wounded ; but Todd dashed 
 furiously into the brush and broke up the ambuscade as a 
 whirlwind breaks up an oak tree. Ordinarily such an ambush- 
 ment would have held well against a column no greater in its 
 superiority than Todd's to the Federal, but instead of a man to 
 combat there was a lion. The scene of silent killing in the 
 tangled undergrowth was sickening. Of the hundred hiding 
 there twenty-two in all escaped, and these because the con- 
 tinued firing in the front admonished Todd of duty pressing 
 otherwheres and urgent. 
 
 Meanwhile Poole had killed ten of the fourteen decoy cavalry- 
 men, while hard and fast on the track of the remainder there 
 rushed Jesse James, John Poole, Andy McGuire, and Ed Green- 
 wood. Two of the last four had just fallen, and the other two 
 were well nigh spent and hopeless, when full tilt, pursuers and 
 pursued ran furiously into the advance of a Federal column, 
 two hundred strong. It was touch and go all around. As fast 
 as they had followed a flying foe, so in turn were they followed, 
 shot at and hallooed to at every jump. Finally, Jesse James* 
 splendid race mare, which had carried him so superbly at Cen- 
 tralia, fell, killed, beneath him. John Poole and McGuire had 
 fired their last cartridge. They could neither help themselves 
 nor their comrade. Ed Greenwood turned savagely at bay, 
 however, and fought as though he were fighting for his own life. 
 Presently his horse fell beneath him, and then side by side and 
 afoot these two desperate Guerrillas gathered themselves 
 together for the worst. If the Federals had clashed up to them 
 at the first, both inevitably must have perished. Shot in the 
 left arm and side, James fell to his knees, caught himself, and 
 arose again. Greenwood, hit hard in the right leg, slopped 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 315 
 
 firing, sat down calmly in a rain of bullets, and tied above the 
 wound tightly a cravat borrowed from his comrade. Content 
 to fire at long range, the Federals by and by came closer and 
 closer. The end was at hand. James, sheltered behind his 
 dead horse, had already shot down five of the nearest, and 
 Greenwood three, when a yell was heard in the rear and Poole 
 and Todd, just in time, and altogether, dashed furiously up to 
 the rescue. The work that followed was similar to the work 
 done by Todd at the ambuscade. The day's deeds closed with 
 the killing of one hundred and seventeen German militia, and 
 the buriiin^ of thirty-five houses throughout their settlement. 
 A citizen also was killed this day by the name of Prigmore, who 
 was mistaken for his brother, and who was a kindly, inoffensive 
 man. Andy McGuire, hung after the war at Richmond, Ray 
 county, or, rather, murdered, killed eleven in the two series of 
 engagements, Peyton Long six, Jesse James, wounded twice, 
 ten, Dick Burnes five, William Hulse eight, Frank Gregg 
 three, Bud Pence three, Poole five, Frank Gray five, Todd ten, 
 John Chestnut four, Si Gordon three, John Poole seven, Al 
 Scott four, Jack Rupe three, George Shepherd ten, John Thrail- 
 kill five, Oil Shepherd five, and several others one apiece. 
 After the fight Todd again disbanded to meet on the 22d at 
 Bone Hill, in Jackson county. 
 
 Gen. Sterling Price had entered Missouri from the direction 
 of Pocahontas, Arkansas, and had leisurely advanced into the 
 State. He fought at Pilot Knob and was worsted, but his various 
 divisions afterwards were fighting successfully over a large extent 
 of territory and creating as much as possible that diversion so 
 much needed by Joseph E. Johnston, and for which the expedi- 
 tion into the State had been created. He avoided St. Louis, 
 invested Jefferson City, occupied Boonville, captured Glas- 
 gow, drove Lane out of Lexington, and was in camp on Fire 
 Prairie, in Lafayette county, when Todd, having gathered 
 together the bulk of his Guerrillas, reported to Gen. Shelby on 
 the morning of the 23d. Shelby's advance had been led 
 valiantly by Capt. Arthur McCoy, and he associated Todd with 
 him and bade them fight together. McCoy had never been a 
 Guerrilla. He had nothing in common with the Guerrillas 
 except their desperation. He was a tinner working in St. Louis 
 when the war commenced. At the first tap of the recruiting 
 
316 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 drum, impetuous as a boy and as eager, lie espoused the cause 
 of the South and joined the 1st Missouri Confederate Infantry, 
 Bowen's immortal yet decimated regiment that regiment 
 which Beauregard lifted his hat to as it was marching past or, 
 rather, to what was left of it after Shiloh, and exclaimed: "I 
 salute the 1st Missouri. I uncover to courage that has never 
 yet been surpassed." 
 
 In the infantry, however, McCoy would have dwindled into a 
 consumptive for his chest was weak, and he had that hectic 
 flush, and that dry, short, rasping cough that were ominous. 
 He needed the air and the exercise of a Comanche. He had to 
 breath where there were no canvas houses, no shelter, no 
 covering save a blanket, and no habitation save the leaves on 
 the trees. 
 
 After Shiloh, the name and fame of Shelby were beginning to 
 fill the West, and there came to him, attracted by the unexam- 
 pled enterpise and heroism of the man, quite a large number of 
 daring spirits who asked only esprit du corps and a leader that 
 would fight every hour in every day for a year and a day. 
 Among them was Arthur McCoy, one of Bowen's best and 
 bravest one whom he trusted and loved but one whom he 
 knew had to go the long journey very soon if held in the 
 poisonous camps of an army, inactive and at rest. A tall, 
 gaunt man was Arthur McCoy, six feet and over, a little stooped 
 about the shoulders, very long in the arms, having a stride like 
 a race-horse, and a nervous energy that was expending itself 
 even while he slept. All the lower face was massive the lower 
 jaw especially square cut and huge. The eyes were of that 
 cold, glittering, penetrating blue that might be cruel as a ser- 
 pent's, soft and tender as the eyes of confidence or trust. When 
 the battle was dubious or desperate, or when the wreck was 
 darkest and thickest, and the dead lay rank and plentiful, the 
 eyes seemed to transform themselves and become absolutely 
 scintillant. About the man's whole nature, too, there was an 
 element of grotesqueness impossible to analyze. He sang little 
 snatches of song in battle ; he rode out in advance of his own 
 skirmish line and challenged Federal skirmishers to single 
 combat ; he would get down on his knees under fire the most 
 pitiless, uncover himself, and pray fervently beside some comrade 
 mortally wounded ; he seemed never to have known w hat the mean- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 317 
 
 ing of fear was ; he begged incessantly to be sent upon forlorn and 
 desperate service; he was a spy without a peer in either army; 
 he was a scout that seemed to have leagued with the devil and 
 received from his majesty invaluable protection papers; he 
 charged picquets for pastime, and rode yelling and shooting 
 through Federal outposts, at the head of fifty or sixty followers, 
 at all hours and in any weather. Shelby's division gave him the 
 soubriquet of the ' w Wild Irishman," and yet for cold, calm, 
 penetrating soldier-sense for acuteness, military logic and 
 undoubted strategy, McCoy had the head of a Vidocq and the 
 nerve of d'Artagnan. Seven times during the war through 
 the Federal lines, and past scouts, patrols, cantonments, and 
 militia and predatory bands McCoy came into St. Louis with a 
 thousand letters at a time, and departed hence with as many 
 more. 
 
 Once, on his many trips into St. Louis, and in company with 
 Captain John Howard, also of the same city, a man in no man- 
 ner inferior to McCoy m dash and heroism, he visited a house 
 at which there were two Federal officers and several ladies. 
 McCoy had with him an elegant cavalry uniform for a Confed- 
 erate colonel, and as he was just on the eve of his departure, he 
 concluded to take his farewell in the following manner: He 
 requested one of the ladies to play Dixie, and she politely con- 
 sented. The Federal officers looked annoyed, but remained 
 quiet. As the tune began to fill the room and the music to ex- 
 pand the blood as it were and put fire into the eyes, McCoy sud- 
 denly sprang to his feet, covered the Federal major with his 
 unerring revolver, and bade him get up and dance. The officer 
 refused. McCoy still insisted more sternly, and declared that 
 he should not only dance, but that he should put on a rebel uni- 
 form for once in his life, lift his hat at the mention of the name 
 of Jefferson Davis, and dance to the tune of Dixie. Seeing 
 murder in McCoy's cold blue eyes, the Federal major complied 
 with each order strictly, and actually in the full uniform of a 
 Confederate colonel did dance to the music of Dixie, his com- 
 panion, a lieutenant of the Eighth Missouri Federal infantry, 
 looking on and applauding vociferously. 
 
 As McCoy rode out from St. Louis, in the cold gray of the 
 following morning, the devil still seemed to have possession of 
 him. As he passed Benton Barracks a sentinel stood by the 
 
318 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 roadside with his gun at a right shoulder shift. McCoy rode up 
 to him and halted: "I am a Confederate officer. I represent 
 the Confederate President if you should present arms to me I 
 should consider that you had presented them to Mr. Jefferson 
 Davis. Present arms!" The sentinel thought the man was 
 evidently mad. It was still early morning. No soldiers were 
 astir anywhere about the barracks. McCoy's revolver was at 
 the soldier's breast before he could take his musket from his 
 shoulder. ' You will not present arms to me ?" " Not to save 
 your life." "But you see I have the drop on you! Do you 
 want me to kill you?" Still thinking McCoy was one of his own 
 uniform, and being drunk or mischievous, was trying to play a 
 prank on him, the sentinel replied, " shoot and be d d!" 
 
 McCoy's face darkened instantly, and he cocked his pistol. 
 " I will not shoot you so," he said, " nor will I shoot you at all 
 without giving 3^011 a chance for j^our life. Listen, I shall ride 
 back fifty paces, turn my horse, and charge you. As I come 
 by I shall fire at you once. You have but one shot and I 
 who have eighteen will take but one also. Get ready." 
 
 The sentinel, as he saw McCoy deliberately countermarch and 
 wheel about to charge, began, at last, to have his suspicions 
 aroused. He took his musket from his shoulder and cocked it 
 and waited. McCoy dashed furiously down upon the sentinel, 
 and the sentinel, when he was within about ten paces of him, 
 fired at point blank range and missed. As McCoy passed him, 
 he put out his pistol suddenly and shot him down where he 
 stood, the garrison turning out in force, and hurriedly saddled, 
 cavalry coming on in rapid pursuit. The sentinel, however, 
 although badly wounded, finally recovered, and McCoy, scarcely 
 quickening his pace, rode on southward unmolested. 
 
 Once the Federals had him a prisoner. His escape was, in 
 every way, characteristic of the man. He had been on a scout 
 with eight men towards the Mississippi river. Seventy-three 
 Federals started him in a cane brake and never stopped pursu- 
 ing him for eleven miles. Finally they killed his horse and lit- 
 erally rode over and crushed him. He was carried to De VaPs 
 Bluff previous to being conveyed to St. Louis for trial as a spy 
 and desperado. Shelby was at Clarendon, twelve miles below, 
 on White river, and when the night came a very dark 
 and gloomy night McCoy broke suddenly away from his 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 319 
 
 guards and leaped he ad -fore most into the river. The 
 waves were rough and the wind was blowing. Two hun- 
 dred shots were fired at him in the darkness, and innumer- 
 able yawls put out from the steamers and gunboats in search of 
 the desperate Irishman. He was a fine swimmer, and without 
 using his arms in any manner, he drifted down under the stern 
 of the gunboat Tyler, and hid himself there for over an hour, or 
 until all pursuit was abandoned. Then letting go his hold, the 
 current carried him on past all danger and safe into the lines of 
 his old brigade. 
 
 Later, in 1864, a deed was done by McCoy which attracted 
 the attention and won the admiration of two opposing forces. 
 General John B. Clark was attacking Glasgow from one side of 
 the river, in 1864, and General Shelby from the other. Between 
 the two lines drawn about the doomed town were the Federal 
 forts and garrison commanded by General Chester Harding. A 
 large steamboat lay at the wharf and Shelby desired to know if 
 it were serviceable; if it were, he intended to man it and ferry 
 over his command, and to attack from the north side. He did 
 not want to sacrifice over one man in the perilous undertaking, 
 and he did not desire to order any soldier to perform the 
 desperate duty. Volunteers were called for, and while fifty 
 came to the front, McCoy was chosen because he knew more 
 than any of them about steamboats and their machinery, and 
 because he pleaded so hard to be permitted to take the risk. 
 He started in a skiff as slight as a pasteboard. Having to pull 
 himself, his back was necessarily to the town, thus depriving 
 him of whatever advantage he might have attained by watching 
 the operations of the enemy. Glasgow is built upon a hill, and 
 from the foot of the bluff to the river there is probably a stretch 
 of bottom land a dozen paces across. Closely engaged from 
 the south, the Federal skirmishers did not descend from the hill 
 tops, where, half hidden and partially intrenched, they fired 
 closely and vigorously upon McCoy. He kept right onward. 
 As he left the shelter of his own lines, the bullets thickened in 
 the water about him and fairly plowed up the surface of the 
 river with lead. Collins, with two guns of his memorable bat- 
 tery, succored him all that was possible and threw canister 
 rapidly into the skirmishers. Once when the fire was desper- 
 ately hot, McCoy turned around upon his seat, ceased rowing, 
 
320 NOTED GUEKKILLAS, OR 
 
 and lifted his hat to the Federal sharpshooters. Both sides 
 cheered spontaneously. How he escaped is a matter yet unex- 
 plained. Probably two hundred men fired at him, each man 
 firing five shots, or one thousand shots in all. Blood was not 
 drawn once from his body, miraculous to relate. One bullet 
 cut off a lock of his hair, another knocked his cap into the 
 river, which he deliberately stopped to pick up, seven balls 
 struck 'the skiff in various parts, four more went through his 
 clothes, and one cut almost in two at the oar-lock the left hand 
 oar. In despite of everything, however, McCoy gained the 
 northern bank, landed the boat, obtained what information he 
 desired, and actually returned as he had crossed under a 
 tremendous volley of small arms. 
 
 Once he fought a duel a duel to the death but not one of 
 his own seeking. In the Western army there were many Con- 
 federate Indians, and in a Choctaw regiment there was a young 
 half-breed captain who had a pony sensible enough to have been 
 a circus pony. It would dance, talk with its head, fire off a 
 pistol, and do other and numerous tricks at the bidding of its 
 master. McCoy owned a savage stallion, a favorite, however, 
 because of its fleetness and strength. The pony and the 
 stallion got together one night, and the next morning the 
 Choctaw had no pony McCoy's horse having literally devoured 
 him. The Indian was furious. He would have revenge. He 
 would kill the horse that killed his horse. He started to 
 execute his threat. McCoy stood across his path with a drawn 
 sabre in his hand, and said to the Choctaw: "Arm yourself. 
 Shall it be sword or pistol? You want satisfaction and shall 
 have it. My horse's hide is more precious than my own, there- 
 fore not one hair upon it shall be ruffled." The Indian chose 
 a sabre also, a ring was formed, seconds appointed, and proba- 
 bly half a brigade gathered to see the desperate work. McCoy 
 fenced warily ; the Indian, quick and savage. Both were 
 wounded. McCoy had an ugly cut on his right temple and 
 another on his left hip. The Indian had been slashed twice 
 severely, and once across the sabre arm. Each was getting 
 weak. Finally McCoy made a feint as if he would deliver the 
 right cut, shortened his sword arm, and ran the Indian squarely 
 through the body. Thus ended the fight and the life of the 
 Choctaw as well. He died before midnight. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 321 
 
 Curtis' heavy division, retreating before General Price all the 
 way from Lexington to Independence, held the western bank of 
 the Little Blue, and some heavy stone walls and fences beyond. 
 Marmaduke and Shelby broke his hold loose from these, and 
 pressed him rapidly back to and through Independence, the two 
 Colorado regiments covering his rear stubbornly and well. 
 Side by side McCoy and Todd had made several brilliant 
 charges during the morning, and had driven before them with 
 great spirit and dash every Colorado squadron halted to resist 
 the continual marching forward of the Confederate cavalry. 
 Ere the pursuit ended for the day, half of the 2d Colorado 
 regiment drew up on the crest of a bold hill and made a gallant 
 fight. Their Major, Smith, a brave and dashing officer, was 
 killed here, and here Todd fell. Gen. Shelby, as was his wont, 
 was well up with the advance, and leading recklessly the two 
 companies of Todd and McCoy. Next to Shelby's right rode 
 Todd, and upon his left was McCoy. Close to these and near 
 to the front files were Col. Nichols, Thrailkill, Ben Morrow, 
 Ike Flannery and Jesse James. The trot had deepened into a 
 gallop, and all the cloud of skirmishers covering the head of the 
 rushing column were at it, fierce and hot, when the 2d Colorado 
 swept the road with a furious volley, broke away from the 
 strong position held by them, and hurried on through the streets 
 of Independence followed by the untiring McCoy, as lank as a 
 fox-hound and as eager. 
 
 That volley killed Todd. A Spencer rifle ball entered his 
 neck in front, passed through and out near the spine, and par- 
 alyzed him. Dying as he fell, he was yet tenderly taken up 
 and carried to the house of Mrs. Burns, in Independence. 
 Articulating with great difficulty and leaving now and then 
 almost incoherent messages to favorite comrade or friend, he 
 lingered for two hours insensible to pain, and died at last 
 as a Roman. 
 
 George Todd was a Scotchman born, his father holding an 
 honorable position in the British navy. Destined also for the 
 sea, it was the misfortune of the son to become engaged in a 
 personal difficulty in his eighteenth year and kill the man with 
 whom he quarreled. He fled to Canada, and from Canada to 
 the United States. His father soon after resigned and followed 
 him, and when the war began both were railroad contractors in 
 21 
 
322 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 North Missouri, standing well with everybody for business 
 energy, capacity and integrity. 
 
 Todd made a name by exceeding desperation. His features 
 presented nothing especial which could attract attention. There 
 was no sign in visible characters of the power that was in him. 
 They were very calm always, and in repose a little stern ; but if 
 anything that indicated a "look of destiny" was sought for, it 
 was not to be found about the face of George Todd. His nature 
 was simple and confiding, and a circumspect regard for his 
 word made him a very true but sometimes also a ve ry blunt 
 man. In his eyes the fittest person to command Gue rrillas was 
 he who inspired the enemy with the most dread, and he had not 
 been long in the brush before people began to say: "That man 
 George Todd is a tiger. He fights always. He is not happy 
 unless he is fighting. He will either be kille d soon or he will do 
 a great amount of killing." It has just been seen that he was not 
 killed until October, 1864 a three } ;r ears' lease of life that for 
 desperate Guerrilla work never had a counterpart. By and by 
 the Guerrillas themselves felt confidence in such a name, reliance 
 in such an arm, favor for such a face. It was sufficient for 
 Todd to order a march to be implicitly followed, to plan an 
 expedition to have it immediately carried out, to indicate a spot 
 on which to assemble to cause an organization sometimes 
 widely scattered or dispersed to come together as the jaws of 
 a steel-trap. Nature gave him the restlessness of a born cav- 
 alryman, and the exterior and the power of voice necessary to 
 a leader of desperate men. Coolness, intrepidity, and immense 
 activity were his main attributes as a commander. Always 
 more ready to strike than to speak, if he talked at all it was 
 only after a combat had been had, and then modestly. His 
 conviction was the part he played, and he sustained with 
 unflinching courage and unflagging consistency that which he 
 had set down for his hands to do. A splendid pistol shot, fear- 
 less as a horseman, knowing human nature well enough to choose 
 desperate men and ambitious men, reticent, heroic beyond the 
 conception of most conservative people, and covered with blood 
 as he was to his brow, his fall was yet majestic because it was 
 accompanied by patriotism. 
 
 Before the evacuation of Independence, Todd was buried by 
 his men in the cemetery there, and Poole succeeded to the com- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 323 
 
 mand of his company, leading it splendidly. The night they 
 buried Todd, Ike Flannery, Dick Burnes, Andy McGuire, Ben 
 Morrow, Press Webb, Harrison Trow, Lafe Privin, George 
 Shepherd, George Maddox, Allen Parmer, Dan Vaughn, Jesse 
 and Frank James and John Ross took a solemn oath by the 
 open grave of the dead man to avenge his death, and for the 
 following three days of incessant battle it was remarked how 
 desperately they fought and how long. 
 
 Until Gen. Price started Southward from Mine creek in full 
 retreat, the Guerrillas under Poole remained with him, scouting 
 and picqeuting, and fighting with the advance. After Mine 
 creek they returned to Bone Hill, in Jackson county, some 
 going afterwards to Kentucky with Quantrell, and some to Texas 
 with George Shepherd. 
 
 Henceforward the history of the Guerrillas of Missouri must 
 be the history of detachments and isolated squads, fighting 
 always but fighting without coherency or other desire than to 
 kill. Anderson had joined Price at Boonville and the meeting 
 was a memorable one. The bridles of the horses the men rode 
 were adorned with scalps. One huge, red-bearded Guerrilla 
 six feet and over, and girdled about the waist with an armory of 
 revolvers had dangling from every conceivable angle a profuse 
 array of these ghastly trophies. Gen. Price was shocked at 
 such evidences of a warfare so utterly repugnant to a com- 
 mander of his known generosity and forbearance, and he ordered 
 sternly that they be thrown away at once. He questioned 
 Anderson long of Missouri ; of the forces in the State ; of the 
 temper of the people ; of the nature of Guerrilla warfare ; of its 
 relative advantages and disadvantages, and then when he had 
 heard all he blessed the Guerrillas probably with about as much 
 unction as Balaam blessed Israel. Gen. Price was a merciful 
 man. Equable in every relation of life, conservative by nature 
 and largely tolerant through his earlier political training, 
 thousands living to-day live solely because none of the harsher 
 and crueler indulgencies of the civil war were permitted to the 
 troops commanded by this conscientious officer. Finally, how- 
 ever, he ordered Anderson back into North Missouri, and he 
 crossed at Boonville upon his last career of leave-taking, 
 desperation, and death. Tired of tearing up railroad tracks, 
 cutting down telegraph-poles, destroying miles and miles of 
 
324 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 wire, burning depots, and picking up and killing isolated militia, 
 terrified at the uprising in favor of Price, Anderson dashed into 
 Danville, Montgomery county, where sixty Federals were 
 stationed in houses and other strong places. He had but fifty- 
 seven men, and the fight was close and hot. Gooly Robinson, 
 one of his best soldiers, was mortally wounded, while exposing 
 himself in a most reckless manner. It was difficult to get the 
 enemy out of the houses. Snatching up torches, and braving 
 the guns of the entrenched Federals, Dick and Ike Berry put fire 
 to one house, Arch Clements and Dick West to another, Theo. 
 Castle, John Maupin, and Mose Huffaker to a third, and Ben 
 Broomfield, Tuck, Tom, and Woot Hill to the fourth. It was a 
 night of terror and agony. As the militia ran out they were 
 shot down by the Guerrillas in the shadow. Some, wounded, 
 burnt to death; and others, stifled by the heat and smoke, 
 rushed, gasping and blackened into the air, to be riddled with 
 bullets. Eight barely of the garrison of sixty escaped the 
 holocaust, and Anderson turned west towards Kansas City, 
 expecting to overtake Gen. Price there. En route he killed as 
 he rode. Scarcely an hour of all the long march was barren of 
 a victim. Union men, militia, Federal soldiers, home guards, 
 Germans on general principles no matter what the class or the 
 organization if they were pro-United States they were killed. 
 On the 25th of October, while well advanced in Ray county, 
 he received the first news of the death of Todd and the retreat 
 of Price. By this time, however, he had recruited his own 
 command to several hundred, and had joined it to a detachment 
 of regular Confederates, guiding and guarding to the South a 
 motley aggregation of recruits, old and young. Halting one 
 day to rest, and to prepare for a passage across the Missouri 
 river, Anderson moved on the morning of the 27th towards the 
 spot selected for the crossing an out of the way place in the 
 bottom above Camden. Barring his passage to it, and having 
 every advantage of position and numbers, Anderson found one 
 thousand Federals eight hundred infantry and two hundred 
 cavalry. He made haste to attack them. His young Lieuten- 
 ant, Arch Clements, advised him urgently against a fight, as did 
 Capt. A. E. Asbury, a young and gallant Confederate officer, 
 who was in company with him, commanding fifty recruits. 
 Others of his associates did the same, notably Col. John Holt, a 
 
WOOT HILL. 
 
 TUCK HILL. 
 
THE W Alt FARE OF THE BORDER 325 
 
 Confedrate officer, and Col. James H. R. Cundiff. Captain 
 Asbury was a cool, brave, wary man, who had had large expe- 
 rience in border fighting, and who knew that for a desperate 
 charge raw recruits could not be depended upon. Anderson 
 would not be held back. Ordering a charge, he led it himself 
 furiously, and was fifty feet ahead of every follower when he 
 was killed. Next to him was William Smith, a veteran Guer- 
 rilla of four years' service. Five balls struck him, and three 
 struck Anderson. Next to Smith was John Maupin, who was 
 wounded twice, and next to Maupin, Cundiff, who was also hit, 
 and next to Cundiff, Asbury, who got four bullets through his 
 clothes. John Holt, Jim Crow Chiles, and Peyton Long had 
 horses killed. The three Hill brothers, Dick West, and ten 
 others of Anderson's old company fought their way up to 
 Anderson's body, and sought to bring it out. Tuck Hill was 
 shot, his brother Woot, and West. Their wounds were severe 
 but not mortal. Once they succeeded in placing it upon a 
 horse ; the horse was killed and fell upon the corpse and held it 
 to the ground. Still struggling heroically over the body of 
 their idolized commander, Hank Patterson fell dead, not a foot 
 from the dead Guerrilla. Next, Simonds was killed, and then 
 Anson Tolliver, and then Paul Debenhorst, and then Smith 
 Jobson, and then Luckett, then John Mcllvaine, and finally 
 Jasper Moody and William Tarkington. Nothing could live 
 before the fire of the concealed infantry and the Spencer car- 
 bines of the cavalry. A single blanket might have covered the 
 terrible heap of dead and wounded who fought to recover all 
 that remained of that tiger of the jungle. John Pringle, the 
 red-headed giant of the Boonville scalps, far ahead of his com-, 
 pany, was the last man killed, struggling even to the death to 
 bear back the corpse. He was a captain of a company, and a 
 veteran of the Mexican war, but he did what he would not 
 order his men to do, he rushed up to the co^se heap and 
 fastened about the leg of Anderson a lariat that he might drag 
 the body away. The Federals killed his horse. Shot once, he 
 tugged at the rope himself, bleeding pitifully. Shot again, he 
 fell, struggled up to his feet, fired every barrel of three revolvers 
 into the enemy, and received as a counter-blow two more 
 bullets. This time he did not rise again, nor stir, nor make 
 moan. All the wild boar blood in his veins had been poured 
 
326 XOTED GUEHfilLLAS, OK 
 
 out, and the bronzed face from being rigid had become to be 
 august. Joseph and Arch Nicholson, William James, dell 
 Miller, and John Warren, all young recruits in their first battle, 
 fought savagely in the meZee, and all were wounded. Miller, 
 among those who strove to rescue the corpse of Anderson, was 
 shot, and Warren, wounded four times, crawled back from the 
 slaughter-pen with difficulty. 
 
 William Anderson was a strange man. If the waves of the 
 civil war had not cast him up as the avenger of one sister assas- 
 sinated and another maimed, he would have lived through it 
 peacefully, the devil that existed within him sleeping on, and 
 the terrible powers latent there remaining unaroused. It is 
 probable that he did not know his own nature. He certainly 
 could not have anticipated the almost miraculous transfiguration 
 that came to him on the eve of his first engagement that sort 
 of a transfiguration which found him a stripling and left him a 
 giant. 
 
 He was a pensive, brooding, silent man. He rarely made mani- 
 fest any especial individuality in dealing either with the citizens, 
 or with his own soldiers. If he said yes or no, it was as though 
 a pyramid had uttered it the resolution was unalterable. He 
 went to war to kill, and when this self-declared proposition was 
 once well impressed upon his followers, he referred to the sub- 
 ject no more. Generally those who fought him were worsted; 
 in a majority of instances annihilated. He was a devil incarnate 
 in battle, but had been heard over and over again to say: "If 
 I cared for my life I would have lost it long ago ; wanting to 
 lose it, I cannot throw it away." And it would appear from 
 the history of his career up to the time of his death that what in 
 most men might have been regarded as fatalism was but the 
 inspiration of a palpable destiny. Mortal bullets avoided him. 
 At desperate odds, fortune never deserted him. Surrounded, 
 he could not be captured. Outnumbered, he could not be 
 crushed. Surprised, it was impossible to demoralize him. Baf- 
 fled by adversity, or crippled and wrought upon often by the 
 elements, he wearied no more than a plough that oxen pull, or 
 despaired never so much as the granite mass the storms beat 
 upon and the lightnings strike. Shot dead from his saddle at 
 last in a charge reckless beyond all reason, none triumphed over 
 him a captive before the work was done of the fetters and the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 327 
 
 rope. His body, however, remained in the hands of the enemy, 
 who dragged it for some distance as two mules might drag a 
 saw log, and finally propped it up in a picture gallery in Rich- 
 mond and had pictures taken of the wan drawn face of the dead 
 lion and his great mane of a beard that was full of the dead 
 leaves and the dust of the highway. 
 
 Lieutenant Arch Clements, just turned of eighteen, succeeded 
 to the command of Anderson's old company, and moved with it 
 after the fight directly to Brunswick, in Chariton county, where 
 he crossed the Missouri river and proceeded to the South. 
 Cool-headed, wary, vigilant, and created especially for a soldier, 
 Clements had long before given ample evidence of the skill and 
 the dash that were pre-eminently a part of his military char- 
 acter. He wore in all the fullness of its old unsparing propor- 
 tions the mantle of Anderson, and killed just as thoroughly and 
 as remorselessly. South from Brunswick some three days* 
 march, Clements overtook Capt. Grooms, of Shelby's brigade, 
 who was hastening forward with fifty-four recruits. Clements 
 proposed to join forces with Grooms and travel South together, 
 the one command mutually strengthening and giving support to 
 the other. The Confederates refused to have anything to do 
 with the Guerrillas, and as a consequence Grooms and his entire 
 detachment were overwhelmed arid cut to pieces. They fought 
 to the last man, but they fought a hopeless battle. Not a sol- 
 dier of the fifty-four escaped. Clements kept accurately the 
 number of Federals killed on this trip, and an account of the way 
 they were killed. It was a singular and a sanguinary diary, and 
 read about as follows: "Shot, one hundred and fifty-two; 
 throats cut, twenty ; hung, seventy-six ; shot and scalped, thir- 
 ty-three ; shot and mutilated, eleven. Grand total two hun- 
 dred and ninety- two." Every Federal killed, save and alone 
 those killed in open fight, was made acquainted with the reason 
 why he was slain after he had surrendered. Good or bad, the 
 reason was the same ; true or untrue, it made none of the vic- 
 tims more content to die. In Anderson's command there were 
 probably fifty men who had formed what was known as the 
 Brotherhood of Death. To become a member of it one had to 
 swear that he would avenge the killing of a brother no matter 
 how killed, or when, or where. Each member had also a com- 
 panion-in-arms upon whom the pact became especially binding, 
 
328 NOTED GUEBBILLAS, OB 
 
 and who could, because of the direct obligation thus imposed, 
 make the law that much the more certain of enforcement. To 
 avenge the killing of Anderson these two hundred and ninety- 
 ,.wo Federal soldiers were slain in all forms and fashions from 
 $he Missouri river to Red river, and it was to give them a good 
 reason for cutting their throats or blowing out their brains that 
 Clements caused to be related to each of them the history of 
 the Brotherhood and the obligations of ' its organization. 
 
 In a personal altercation concerning a hog, while the 
 Guerrillas were in camp on White river, Arkansas, Dick West 
 shot Creth Creek in the mouth, inflicting a severe yet not fatal 
 wound. Creek recovered, and the difficulty would have been 
 renewed, if the collapse of the revolution and the downfall of 
 the Confederacy had not taught the great mass of the Southern 
 combatants that it was no time to think of men, or their per- 
 sonal grievances. In winter quarters at Sherman, Texas, Clem- 
 ents rested from the bloody work of 1864, and waited impa- 
 tiently for the spring of another year. 
 
 Todd's death fell upon the spirits of his men as a sudden 
 bereavement upon the hearts of a happy and devoted family. 
 Those who mourned for him mourned all the more tenderly 
 because they could not weep. Nature, having denied to them 
 the consolation of tears, left them the infinite intercourse, and 
 remembrances of comradeship and soldierly affection. The old 
 bands, however, were breaking up. Lieut. George Shepherd, 
 taking with him Matt Way man, John Maupin, Theo. Castle, Jack 
 Kupe, Silas King, James and Alfred Corum, Bud Story, Perry 
 Smith, Jack Williams, Jesse James, James and Arthur Devers, 
 Press Webb, John Norfolk and others to the number of twenty- 
 six, started South to Texas on the 13th of November, 1864. 
 With Shepherd also were William Gregg and wife, Richard Mad- 
 dox and wife, and James Hendrix and wife these ladies were just 
 as brave, and just as devoted, and just as intrepid in peril or 
 extremity as the men who marched with them to guard them, 
 and, if needs be, to die for them. Jesse James and Frank 
 James separated here, Frank to go to Kentucky with Quantrell, 
 and Jesse to follow the remnant of Todd's still organized 
 veterans into Texas. 
 
 Besides killing isolated squads of Federals, and making way 
 with every individual militiaman who supposed that the roads 
 
 * 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 329 
 
 were absolutely safe for travelers because Gen. Price and his 
 army had long been gone, Shepherd's fighting for several days 
 was only fun. On the 22d, however, Capt. Emmet Goss, an 
 old acquaintance of the loth Kansas Cavalry, Jennison's, was 
 encountered, commanding thirty-two Jayhawkers. Of late 
 Goss had been varying his orgies somewhat. He would drink 
 to excess, and lavish his plunder and money on ill-featured 
 mistresses, who were sometimes Indians, sometimes negresses, 
 and but rarely pure white. Returning northward one day from 
 Cane Hill, in Arkansas, he rode gaily along at the head of 
 thirty-two men rank and file. He was about thirty-five years 
 old, square built, had broad shoulders, a swaggering gait, stood 
 six feet when at himself and erect, had red hair and a bad eye, 
 and a face that meant fight when cornered and desperate fight 
 at that. November 22d, 1864, was an autumn day, full of sun- 
 shine and falling leaves. Riding southward from Missouri 
 Lieut. Shepherd met Capt. Goss riding northward from Cane 
 Hill. Shepherd had twenty-six men rank and file. It was an 
 accidental meeting one of those sudden, forlorn, isolated, 
 murderous meetings not rare during the war a meeting of 
 outlying detachments that asked no quarter and gave none. It 
 took place on Cabin Creek, in the Cherokee Nation. Each 
 rank arrayed itself speedily. There were twenty-six men 
 against thirty-two. The odds were not great indeed they 
 never had been considered at all. There came a charge and a 
 sudden and terrible storm of revolver bullets. Nothing so 
 weak as the Kansas detachment could possibly live before the 
 deadly prowess and pistol practice of the Missourians. Of the 
 thirty-two, twenty-nine were killed. One, riding a magnificent 
 race horse, escaped on the wings of the wind one, a negro 
 barber, was taken along to wait upon the Guerrillas, and the 
 third, a poor, emaciated skeleton, as good as dead of con- 
 sumption, was permitted to ride still away northward, bearing 
 the story of the thunderbolt. Among the Missourians four 
 were killed. In the mdee Jesse James encountered Goss and 
 singled him out from all the press. As James bore down upon 
 him, he found that his horse, an extremely high-spirited and 
 powerful one, had taken the bit in its teeth and was perfectly 
 unmanageable. Besides, his left arm being yet weak from a 
 scarcely healed wound, it was impossible for him to control his 
 
330 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 horse, or even to guide him. Pistol balls were as plentiful 
 as the leaves that were pattering down. James had, however, 
 to put up his revolver as he rode, and rely upon his right hand 
 to reinforce his left. Before he could turn his horse and break 
 its hold upon the bit, Goss had fired upon him four times. 
 Close upon him at last James shot him through and through. 
 Goss swayed heavily in his saddle, but held on. ''Will you 
 surrender?" Jesse asked, recocking his pistol and presenting it 
 again. "Never!" was the stern reply, Goss still reeling in the 
 saddle and bleeding deathfully. When the blue-white smoke 
 curled up again there was a riderless steed among the trees and 
 a guilty spirit somewhere out in the darkness of the unknown. 
 It took two dragoon revolver bullets to finish this one, and yet 
 James was not satisfied with his work. There was a preacher 
 along who also had sat himself steadfast in his saddle, and had 
 fought as the best of them did. James rode straight at him 
 after he had finished Goss. The parson's heart failed him 
 at last, however, and he started to run. James gained upon 
 him at every step. When close enough for a shot, he called 
 out to him: "Turn about like a man, that I may not shoot 
 you in the back." The Jayhawker turned, and his face was 
 white and his tongue was voluble. "Don't shoot me," he 
 pleaded; "I am the chaplain of the Thirteenth Kansas; my 
 name is U. P. Gardner ; I have killed no man, but have prayed 
 for many ; spare me." James did not answer. Perhaps he turned 
 away his head a little as he threw out his pistol. When the 
 smoke lifted, Gardner was dead upon the crisp, sere grass with 
 a bullet through his brain. Maddox in this fight killed three of 
 Goss' men, Gregg five, Press Webb three, Wayman four, 
 Hendrix three, and others one or two each. 
 
 The march through the Indian country was one long stretch 
 of ambushments and skirmishes. Way man stirred up a hornet's 
 nest late one afternoon, and though stung himself twice quite 
 severely, he killed four Indians in single couibat and wounded 
 the fifth who escaped. Press Webb, hunting the same day for a 
 horse, was ambushed by three Pins and wounded slightly in the 
 arm. He charged single-handed into the brush and was shot 
 again before he got out of it, but he killed the three Indians and 
 captured three excellent ponies, a veritable God-send to all. 
 The next day about noon the rear-guard, composed of Jesse 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 331 
 
 James, Bud Story, Harrison Trow, and Jack Rupe was savagely 
 attacked by seventy-five Federal Cherokees and driven back 
 upon the main body rapidly. Shepherd, one of the quickest and 
 keenest soldiers the war produced, had formed every man of the 
 command in the rear of an open field through which the enemy 
 must advance and over which in return a telling charge could 
 be made. The three heroic women, mounted on excellent 
 horses and given shelter in some timber still further to the rear 
 of the Guerrilla line, bade their husbands as they kissed them 
 fight to the death or conquer. The Indians bore down as if 
 they meant to ride down a regiment. Firing their pistols into 
 their very faces with deadly effect, the rear guard had not suc- 
 ceeded in stopping them a single second ; but when in the 
 counter-charge Shepherd dashed at the on-coming line, it melted 
 away as snow in a thaw. Shepherd, Maddox, Gregg, the two 
 Corums, Rupe, Story, James, Hendrix, Webb, Smith, Com- 
 mons, Castle, Way man, and King fought like men who wanted 
 to make a clean sweep and a merciless one. John Maupin, not 
 yet well from the two ugly wounds received the day Anderson 
 was killed, insisted on riding in the charge, and was shot the 
 third time by an Indian whom he had put two balls into, and 
 whose horse he rushed up to secure. Jesse James had his horse 
 killed, and a pistol shot from his hand. Several other Guer- 
 rillas were wounded, but none killed, and Williams, James 
 Corum, and Maddox lost horses. Of the sixty-five Indians fifty- 
 two were counted, killed, while some, known to be wounded, 
 dragged themselves off into the mountain and escaped. 
 
 At Sherman, Texas, which was reached on the second 
 of December, Lieutenant Shepherd disbanded his men, taking a 
 portion of them into Western Texas, while Jesse Jamee, John 
 Maupin, Theo. Castle, Jack Rupe, Bud Story, Silas King, Perry 
 Smith, and James Commons remained to take service with Clem- 
 ents and the remainder of Anderson's Guerrillas. While romp- 
 ing one day in the camp near Sherman, Silas King's pistol was 
 accidentally discharged, killing Perry Smith, a splendid young 
 soldier who had gone through unharmed the crisis of many a 
 stubborn combat. Such deep grief came to King, however, 
 and such had been his love for the young Guerrilla, that a 
 mortal sickness fell upon him, and he died of a fever in two 
 weeks afterwards. King was from Clay county, Missouri, 
 
332 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 and was buried by Adam Yocum, of Fannin county, Texas. 
 On the first of March, 1875, Captain Clements having been 
 reinforced by ten men under the command of Captain David 
 p 00 l e marched from Sherman to Mt. Pleasant, Titus county ; 
 and from Mt. Pleasant, on the fourteenth of April, the march 
 began once more and for the last time into Missouri. The spring 
 of 1865 was known as the spring of the rain storms. Water was 
 everywhere. The lowlands were lakes ; the high lands a swamp. 
 In all directions rivers overflowed. Military expeditions, ready 
 for service since the breaking up of winter, could not move 
 because they were not amphibious. Where the Guerrillas could 
 not find dry land, they waded ; where they could not find shal- 
 low water they swam. At the crossing of the Sulphur river, 
 near Clarksville, Texas, Charles Hammons, from Lexington, 
 Missouri, a brave young soldier, was drowned. At Clarksville a 
 soldier named Jackson, who belonged to Shelby's brigade, and 
 who had been imprisoned for killing a Texas militiaman, was 
 rescued by Poole, Press Webb, and Jesse James, and sent to his 
 command, well mounted and armed. On the sixteenth of 
 April, a reorganization was had. One company of eighty men 
 elected Arch Clements captain, James Anderson brother of the 
 famous Guerrilla first lieutenant, and James Sanders, orderly 
 sergeant. The other company, likewise eighty strong, elected 
 David Poole captain, Wm. Greenwood first lieutenant, and Lon 
 Railey orderly sergeant. The first game consisted of three 
 Indians who fired on the advance just after it had emerged from 
 the swimming waters of the Arkansas river, were ridden over by 
 James and Clements and killed. Forming an advance of David 
 Poole, John Poole, John Maupin, Jack Bishop, Theo. Castle, 
 Jesse Ja,mes and Press Webb, Clements pushed on rapidly, killing 
 five militia in one squad, ten in another, here and there a single 
 one, and now and then as many together as twenty. In Benton 
 county, Missouri, a Federal militiaman was captured named 
 Harkness who had killed a brother of Clements and burnt the 
 house of his mother. James, Maupin, and Castle held Hark- 
 ness tightly while Clements cut his throat and afterwards scalped 
 him. At Kingsville, in Johnson county, something of a skir- 
 mish was had, and ten Federals were killed. A militiaman 
 named Duncan was also captured at the same time who had a 
 bad name locally, and who was described as being a highwayman 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 333 
 
 and a house burner. Fifty-five years of age and gray-headed, 
 neither one nor the other saved him. But before the old man 
 surrendered he fought a desperate fight. Knowing instinctively 
 what his fate would be if he fell alive into the hands of any hos- 
 tile organization, much less a Guerrilla organization, he took a 
 stand behind a plank fence, armed with a Spencer rifle and two 
 revolvers, and faced the enemy, now close upon him. Arch 
 Clements, Jesse James, and Jack Bishop dashed at Duncan. 
 The first shot killed Bishop's horse, and in falling the horse fell 
 upon the rider. At the second fire Clements' horse was also 
 killed, but James stopped neither for the deadly aim of the old 
 man nor for the help of his comrades who were coming up as 
 fast as they could on foot. He shot him three times before he 
 knocked him from his feet to his knees, but the fourth shot 
 striking him fair in the middle of the forehead finished the old 
 man and all of his sins together. 
 
 On the fourteenth a council was held among the Guerrillas to 
 discuss the pros and cons of a surrender. Virtually the war was 
 over. Everywhere the regular Confederate armies had surren- 
 dered and disbanded, and in no direction could any evidences be 
 discovered of that Guerrilla warfare which many predicted would 
 succeed to the war of the regular army and the general order. 
 All decided to do as the rest of the Southern forces had done, 
 except Clements, Anderson, John and Thomas Maupin, Jack 
 Bishop, Jesse James, Theo. Castle, John Chatman, Capt. Kelly, 
 Joshua Esters, and Samuel Wade. These would go to Mexico 
 with Shelby and espouse either Juarez or Maximilian, but they 
 would never surrender. Anxious, however, to give to those of 
 the command who preferred a contrary course the dignity and 
 the formality of official authority, Captain Clements entered 
 Lexington on the fifteenth with Jesse James, Jesse Hamlet, Jack 
 Rupe, Willis King, and John Vanmeter, and bearing a flag of 
 truce. The provost marshal of Lexington, Major J. B. Rodgers, 
 was a liberal officer of the old regime, who understood in its full- 
 est and broadest sense that the war was over, and that however 
 cruel or desperate certain organizations or certain bodies of 
 men had been in the past, all proscription of them ceased with 
 their surrender. 
 
 As Clements marched back from Lexington, Jesse James, still 
 riding at the head of the column with the white flag, eight Fed- 
 
334 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 eral soldiers were met who were drunk, and who, either did not 
 see the truce flag or did not regard it. They fired point blank 
 at the Guerrillas, and were charged in turn and routed with the 
 loss of four killed and two wounded. These eight, however, 
 were but the advance of a larger party of sixty, thirty Johnson 
 county militia, and thirty of the 2d Wisconsin Cavalry. These, 
 in the counter attack, drove back the Guerrillas and followed 
 them fiercely especially the 2d Wisconsin. Vanmeter's horse 
 was killed, but Jack Rupe stopped under fire for him and carried 
 him out in safety. James and Clements, though riding jaded 
 horses the same horses, in fact, which had made the long inhospi- 
 table trip up from Texas galloped steadily away in retreat side 
 by side, and fighting as best they could. Mounted on a superb 
 black horse, a single Wisconsin trooper dashed ahead of the 
 balance and closed in swiftly upon James, who halted to court 
 the encounter. At the distance of ten feet both fired simultane- 
 ously, and when the smoke cleared away the brave Wisconsin 
 man was dead with a dragoon revolver ball through his heart. 
 Scarcely had this combat closed, however, before another Wis- 
 consin trooper, equally as resolute as his stricken comrade, 
 rushed at James, firing rapidly, and closing in as he fired. 
 James killed his horse, and the Federal in turn sent a pistol 
 bull through Jame s' right lung, the same lung that had before 
 been so severely wounded. Then the rush passed over and 
 beyond him. Another volley killed his horse, and as the 
 Johnson county militia galloped by, five fired at -him as he lay 
 bleeding under the prostrate animal. Clements, seeing horse 
 and rider go down together, believed his beloved comrade was 
 killed, and strove thereafter to make good his own escape. 
 Extricating himself with infinite toil and pain, Jesse James left 
 the road for. the woods, pursued by five Federals, who fired at 
 him constantly as they followed. At a distance of two hundred 
 yards he killed the foremost Federal and halted long enough 
 under fire to disencumber himself of his heavy cavalry boots, 
 one of which was a quarter full of blood. He fired again and 
 shattered the pi stol arm of the second pursuer, the other three 
 closing up and pressing the maimed Guerrilla as ravenous 
 hounds the torn flanks of a crippled stag. James was getting 
 weaker and weaker. The foremost of the three pursuers could 
 be heard distinctly yelling: "Oh! g dd n your little soul, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 335 
 
 we have you at last! Stop, and be killed like a gentleman!" 
 James did not reply, but when he attempted to lift his trusty 
 dragoon pistol to halt the nearest trooper, he found it too heavy 
 for his hand. But reinforcing his right arm with his left, he 
 fired finally at the Wisconsin man almost upon him and killed 
 him in the saddle. Perhaps then and there an end might have 
 been made to co me to the career of the desperate Guerrilla if 
 the two remaining pursuers had been "Wisconsin cavalry instead 
 of Johnson county militia ; but terri fied at the prowess of one 
 who had been so terribly wounded, and who killed even as he 
 reeled along, the militiamen abandoned the chase, and James, 
 staggering on four or five hundred yards further, fell upon the 
 edge of a creek and fainted. From the 15th to the 17th he lay 
 alongside the water, bathing his wound continually and drinking 
 vast quantities of it to quench his burning fever. Towards 
 sunset, on the evening of the 17th, he crawled to a field where 
 a man was plowing, who proved to be a Southern man and a 
 friend. That night he rode fifteen miles to the house of a Mr. 
 Bowman, held upon a horse by his new-found friend, where he 
 remained, waited upon by Clements and Rupe, until the sur- 
 render of Poole, on the 21st, with one hundred and twenty-nine 
 Guerrillas. Major Rodgers was so well satisfied that James 
 would die that he thought it unnecessary to parole him, and so 
 declared. To give him every chance, however, for his life, and 
 to enable him to reach his mother then a fugitive in Nebraska 
 Rodgers furnished him with transportation, money, and a 
 puss. While awaiting a steamboat at Lexington, James became 
 acquainted with the soldier who had shot him John E. Jones, 
 Company E., 2d Wisconsin Cavalry. They exchanged photo- 
 graphs, became fast friends, and separated mutually satisfied 
 with each other's prowess. The end of the war had come for 
 the wounded Guerrilla, but not the end of his battles or his 
 besetments. Recovering slowly so slowly, in fact, that it was 
 three years before he could back a horse or fire a pistol he 
 lives to-day in the full strength of a splendid physical manhood, 
 an outlaw, yet an innocent and persecuted man, covered with 
 the scars of twenty-two wounds and as desperate and as un- 
 daunted as though there was still war in the land and he a 
 soldier in the thick of it. 
 
 Capt. Arch Clements would not surrender when Poole and his 
 
336 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 men did, nor would James Anderson, Joshua Esters, Sam Wade, 
 Samuel Brooks, John and Thomas Maupin, Theo. Castle, Jack 
 Bishop, John Chatman and Capt. Kelley. Many of these pre- 
 ferred to fight to the death, and others to leave the country. 
 Esters, Wade and Brooks crossred over into Clay county, en 
 route to British Columbia, when Esters and Wade were killed, 
 and Brooks wounded and captured. His extreme youth saved his 
 life being only seventeen, and looking much younger. Esters 
 and Wade fought to the death. Surrounded by sixty militia, 
 they killed six and wounded four. 
 
 Clements, pushing boldly in the direction of Howard county 
 from Lafayette, acted just as though the war was still in 
 progress and that it was a part of his military duty to fight and 
 kill as formerly. A heavy rain fell upon the -Guerrillas, the 
 roads from being bad had become to be dreadful, and a strong 
 detachment of Federals struck this last of a once terrible organ- 
 ization and killed Thomas Maupin, Theo. Castle, John Chatman 
 and Capt. Kelley. Kelley was a maimed Confederate soldier, 
 whose arm had been shot off at Vicksburg. John Maupin was 
 badly wounded at the same time, but escaped. After this fight, 
 in which two hundred militia were engaged, all the balance of 
 the Guerrillas surrendered except Clements and Anderson. In 
 the fall of 1865 these two went to Texas, but Clements returned 
 to Missouri, and on December 13, 1866, was killed in Lexington. 
 
 But before all this disintegration and falling to pieces, much 
 desperate and isolated fighting and killing had been done. Fletch 
 Taylor believed he had a special mission to perform during the 
 war, and he performed it to the letter, despite of wounds, muti- 
 lation, tne constantly increasing odds he had to encounter and 
 the difficulty of making head way or even holding his own as the 
 strife went on. This mission, practically summed up, was 
 simply to fight. He fought anywhere ; he fought always ; he 
 fought man to man or one against ten ; he fought at all hours 
 and in all weathers ; he fought as well with one arm as with two ; 
 he fought to kill. Low, square about the jaws, the brow broad, 
 the eyes prominent, the limbs rounded and heavily girt around 
 with muscles, the chest and shoulders massive, tireless in 
 energy, and with immense nervous power, Taylor roamed per- 
 petually at the head of a score of followers equally as intrepid 
 as himself and as enterprising. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 337 
 
 After the fight at Ridgely, in Platte county, Capt. Taylor 
 entered Lafayette in company with Anderson and did some 
 hazardous duty for him in the way of picketing the roads while 
 Anderson's men procured horses, moulded bullets, and prepared 
 themselves generally for a savage forward movement. John 
 Hope, Nat. Tigue, Newton Oliiant, Gooly Robertson, Press 
 Fugitt, John Fisher and McMacane were the seven men Taylor 
 took with him from Lafayette and re-crossed into Clay. There 
 was to be a season of desperate Guerrilla work, and to do this 
 work who were so well fitted as the old instruments? Where 
 were Jesse and Frank James, and those of their ow n immediate 
 comrades who came as they came and went as they went? Capt. 
 Taylor would know for himself. Every man of his following 
 was dressed as a Federal. From tasseled hat to spurred cav- 
 alry boots, the whole ensemble was perfect. But because of 
 their uniform they received at Mrs. Samuels' scant kindness or 
 courtesy. Mrs. Samuels had seen Taylor once in 1863, and 
 briefly ; but disguised as he was and as obnoxious as his clothing 
 made him, this unregenerate Southern woman devoted to the 
 Confederacy with all the passionate attachment of a singularly 
 strong and patriotic nature bade him find her boys if he wanted 
 to find them with arms in his hands. Taylor laughed and was 
 rejoiced at a manifestation like this of so much defiance, and 
 rode in his quest of the Clay county Guerrillas to the house of 
 Gilbert McElvaine. McElvaine was an old man who feared 
 God much and loved him, and who loved also next to his 
 religion Jefferson Davis and the Southern Confederacy. He fed 
 the Southern soldier, brought news to him, risked fifty times 
 over his old gray head for him, prayed for him as a patriarch 
 of the days of David, and kept thus because of it all a conscience 
 clean and a lamp ready trimmed for the final coming. At Jesse 
 Cole's, Taylor was joined by Jesse James, Oil Shepherd, Frank 
 James, Peyton Long, Theo. Castle, Allen Farmer, Dock Rupe, 
 Silas King and James Commons. Mr. Cole was a Union man, 
 an uncle of the James brothers, but a just and upright citizen. 
 As Captain Moses, of the 2d Colorado, Taylor had established 
 most gratifying social relations with Mr. Cole. In a walk of a 
 morning or a talk in the twilight he 
 
 " had praised the kine, 
 The clover's reach and the meadow's fine, 
 And so made the 'Squire his friend forever." 
 22 
 
338 NOTED GUERRILLAS OR, 
 
 An exhibition something in the nature of a school exhibition 
 was being held at Mt. Gilead church, in the upper part of Clay 
 county, and Taylor believed something in the way of game 
 worthy of being trapped and slain might be found there or 
 prowling about in the neighborhood. A rapid night march from 
 Cole's left him at daylight within a mile of the church, where 
 he halted in the timber and hid himself. Taking, after a brief 
 rest, seven men with him of his twenty Frank James, Peyton 
 Long, McMacane, Jesse James, Theo. Castle, Allen Farmer, 
 and John Hope Captain Taylor surrounded the church in 
 search of an enemy, but found none not even a straggling 
 militiaman in citizen's dress. 
 
 The next day two brothers, Captain and Lieutenant Bigelow, 
 were killed. These men commanded a militia company of sinister 
 local reputation. They lived near the line separating Clinton 
 and Clay counties, and in the northeastern part of Clay. Many 
 bad things had been done by the men they commanded, and 
 some cruel and murderous things. Taylor surrounded their 
 dwelling-house about noon and demanded a surrender on the 
 part of the brothers who were within. Peremptorily refusing 
 this, a fight began instantly. The brothers unsupported and 
 outnumbered fought to the death. The house sheltered them 
 much, and they were otherwise cool, dangerous, athletic men. 
 John Hope was wounded and his horse killed, James Commons 
 lost his horse as he stood up in the saddle and sought to shoot 
 through a window. Castle was also wounded slightly, and 
 Jesse James painfully in the left arm. Taylor ordered a charge. 
 Bursting down doors and breaking away all obstructions, the 
 Guerrillas ended the combat with one furious rush. Frank 
 James killed Captain Bigelow at the head of a flight of steps, 
 and Jesse James, wounded as he was, followed the Lieutenant 
 into a lumber room and shot him there, defending himself des- 
 perately with a piece of a bedstead. 
 
 This savage episode aroused the country from Liberty to St. 
 Joseph, the militia began to swarm, and the regular troops to 
 put themselves in motion. Captain Taylor chose as a camping 
 place a spot somewhat difficult of approach, and some little dis- 
 tance away from the more frequented lines of travel. Here he 
 crouched himself awaiting an opportunity for another spring. 
 Peyton Long, Jesse James, Allen Parmer, Oil Shepherd, Frank 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 339 
 
 James and Theo. Castle, sent various ways to encounter the 
 enemy and bring tidings of his operations, met by appointment 
 at a church on Clear Fork and attended divine services in a body. 
 Perhaps there was more bravado than piety in this ; certainly 
 more curiosity than religion. They talked long to the girls there, 
 renewed some old acquaintances, heard by signs and signals 
 some news it would be of advantage for Taylor to know, and 
 rode away into the brush after lingering late and leaving with 
 reluctance. Busy people and unfriendly as well, made haste to 
 hurry into Liberty where Capt. John Younger commanded, and 
 tell the tale of the terrible Guerrillas. Younger belonged to 
 the county and was a cruel, bold, unscrupulous, unforgiving 
 man. When he had the numbers he fought, and when he had 
 the advantage he killed. The citizens feared him, and the sol- 
 diers sought every opportunity to meet him in combat. Man to 
 man, before a Guerrilla attack he would have lasted probably long 
 enough to fire a volley. Younger, at the head of seventy-five 
 men, came rapidly out from Liberty when the news was brought 
 to him, struck the trail of the Guerrillas at the church and fol- 
 lowed it up at a gallop. In some timber near the residence of a 
 Mr. Duncan he found them all asleep except Frank James, and 
 charged furiously down upon the helpless camp. Luckily a high 
 fence was between the laggards and the militia, or the sur- 
 prise must have been murderous. Frank James shot 
 and shouted, and fought as though he bore a charmed life. 
 Peyton Long was wounded in an arm, Frank James in a leg, 
 Jesse James in the face, while the two Jameses had their horses 
 killed, and Shepherd and Parmer theirs captured. If Younger 
 lost a man it was not known among the Guerrillas. 
 
 Three days afterward, while scouting well down towards Mis- 
 souri City, Silas King, Oil Shepherd, Dock Rupe, Nat Tigue, 
 and Press Fugitt were overtaken at the house of a Mr. Ander- 
 son by seventy-five Federals and furiously attacked. A run- 
 ning fight of seven miles ended in the killing of Fugitt and six 
 of the pursuing column. It was not permitted at that time to 
 bury dead Guerrillas. Made wild animals by all kinds of procla- 
 mations and general orders, if a citizen succored one of them he 
 was himself a cut-throat, and if he gave to one of them who was 
 dying or starving a cup of water or a crust of bread, he was an 
 outlaw who had committed treason. Fugitt lay for some little 
 
340 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 time where he had fallen. People passed the corpse by on the 
 other side. In the land which he had died for there might not 
 at last be found for him a shallow grave. Then there rose up 
 an old hero, Mr. Ryland Shackelford, and went forth alone with 
 mattock and spade and buried the dead man boldly and in the 
 light of the sun. His neighbors, fearing for his life, besought 
 him to let the dead Guerrilla be. Passers by who knew him well 
 and who had known him long, saw him toiling at his work and 
 bade him beware of the fate the law had decreed for Christian 
 acts like these or any deeds of charity. He heeded neither 
 friendly word nor token. He dug the grave both deep and 
 wide, and he placed therein and reverently the corpse that 
 neither had shroud nor coffin. Perhaps he said a prayer over 
 the placid face past all recognition of Pharisee or Samaritan, of 
 cowardly time- server or Christian man ; but be sure if a prayer 
 were said the good God heard it and gave it heed against the 
 resurrection day. 
 
 The 3d of July, 1864, Captain Taylor was at the hospitable 
 mansion of Judge Levels, where a hearty welcome was alway? 
 in waiting for those who fought for the South. Near the house 
 of Obadiah Harris, a Union man, the Guerrillas spent the night 
 of the 3d in the timber, a rainy, barren, tempestuous night, and 
 returned to Harris* dwelling in the morning for breakfast. 
 Every carbine was wet, and almost every revolver unserviceable. 
 While cleaning these and taking them apart thoroughly for 
 inspection, an old man named Bivens, the father of two gallant 
 boys who were fighting bravely under Joe Johnston, hurried up 
 with the information that a body of Federals one hundred and 
 ten strong was at a Mr. Anderson's only a mile distant, and that 
 as he passed they were making all haste to get to saddle and 
 get upon the road. Instantly Spencer rifles were put together, 
 and dragoon pistols made whole again. The coolest men worked 
 rapidly, and the most indifferent felt the need of great expedi- 
 tion. It was time ! The arms of the Guerrillas had not been 
 loaded a dozen seconds, nor had they been in line a greater 
 space themselves before the Federals were upon them, yelling 
 and shooting. Taylor at a gallop made a trail broad and good 
 for ten miles or until he reached Fishing river. This stream 
 was fordable, and turning down where he struck it and marching 
 down it a few hundred yards, he crossed over where a bluff bank 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE SOU DEE 341 
 
 on the opposite side gave him the basis of an ambuscade. His 
 men were made to dismount and tie their horses, none being 
 permitted to hold them. Frank James was stationed near the 
 stream and especially charged to kill the leader of the pursuing 
 party, as James was recognized as the best and quickest pistol 
 shot in the command. Lining the bluff and ranged wide apart, 
 the balance of the Guerrillas held themselves in readiness to fire 
 when Frank James should have singled out and dispatched the 
 victim accorded to him. 
 
 In tolerable array, considering the long chase and the heavy 
 roads, the Federal column followed right on. It did not halt at 
 the crossing, nor send a single skirmisher forward to penetrate 
 the woods beyond and develop the unknown the forbidding 
 bluff seemed to foreshadow. At sixty feet from the ambush 
 Frank James fired at the man leading the column and killed 
 him. It was Sergeant Kirby, instead of Capt. Kemper, the 
 ranking officer ; but he tired again and brought Kemper down 
 with a severe wound. Then the Guerrillas, crouched along the 
 crest of the bluff, poured into the demoralized and affrighted 
 Federal mass half way up from the river and at the crossing of 
 the stream and along the whole width of it, a merciless and 
 unbroken fire. Sixteen were killed and twenty-two more or 
 less severely wounded. Panic succeeded to surprise, and flight 
 to panic. Those mounted the best escaped soonest beyond 
 range. As a great crowd of fleeing fugitives hatless, without 
 array, heeding no orders if indeed any orders were given the 
 mass forced its way as best it could back from the stream and 
 then on towards Liberty, pdl mell, and throwing away arms and 
 accoutrements at every fresh alarm. Taylor pursued scarcely a 
 mile. His horses were of more value to him than the lives of a 
 dozen or so additional militia. It was not at all necesmry to 
 catch the enemy in order to inflict punishment upon him, for if 
 all signs did not fail he would only be required to remain a day 
 or two in any given place to have about him as many as he 
 could conveniently accommodate. 
 
 Capt. Kemper' s intention had been twofold in the commence- 
 inc ,it of his expedition: first, to extirpate Taylor's audacious 
 band of Guerrillas, and, second, to visit a most hospitable 
 Union man named Gordon and eat a national dinner. The 4th 
 of July cauie, and a company also; but not the company which 
 
342 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 was expected, nor Gordon's guest in particular, Captain 
 Kemper. The host, too well-bred to betray surprise when 
 Taylor rode up with his command, marred in no manner the 
 excellence of the feast by stint, or scowl, or niggardly 
 behavior. He served the wine in a generous fashion, listened 
 gravely to the story of the morning's fight, neither said yea nor 
 nay when the tale was finished, and bade his guests goodbye in 
 a stirrup cup that might have warmed again into flowing the 
 blood of some of the dead men down on the Fishing river. 
 
 Col. Thornton, recruiting here and there through various 
 counties, was now in Platte, arraying a formidable following. 
 Thither Taylor went, increasing his command from twenty to 
 fifty within a few days. Scarcely any member of his company 
 was older than twenty-one years. Beardless boys they were, 
 veritable devils to fight and to ride, and rapacious as Bedouins 
 for air and exercise. Young soldiers for certain services are 
 superior to old ones. The young soldier excels in deeds of 
 desperation. He stands killing superbly. An intrepid leader 
 can carry him anywhere. He is tireless, energetic, irresistible 
 in attack, impa':ent of restraint, careless in the presence of 
 danger, often surprised, not always obedient, but in a crisis and 
 brought face to face with absolute death, he fights furiously to 
 the last. He knows nothing of hygiene, while the old soldier, 
 properly trained, looks upon cleanliness as next of kin to 
 godliness. He is not so steady in the face of a pitiless pursuit 
 as his older comrade, he does not rally so quick, he cannot hold 
 himself so still under a fire which, while it distresses him sorely 
 is too remote to be silenced ; but for the most of the services 
 the Guerrilla is called upon to perform, the young man of 
 twenty is unsurpassed for dash, cruelty and desperation. 
 
 Parkyille, Platte county, was garrisoned by twenty-five militia, 
 who bore a good name among the citizens for fair dealing, and 
 merciful conduct. Otherwise they would have been exter- 
 minated. Capt. Taylor attacked the place at daylight and was 
 stubbornly resisted. Holding a stone house impervious to pistol 
 balls, the Guerrillas to succeed had need to carry it by assault. 
 Oil Shepherd shot the wife of the captain of the besieged acci- 
 dentally. She fought at her husband's side during the few hot 
 moments preceding the assault and appeared more than once at 
 a window with a loaded gun which she discharged. The Guer- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 343 
 
 rillas cheered her every time she showed herself and withheld 
 their fire. Finally a man occupied her place, and just as Shep- 
 herd, who was nearest to the window, shot at him the woman 
 came again within range arid received in her bosom the ball 
 intended for another. Then began the assault led by Taylor 
 with all the furious rush and rapidity of his reckless nature. 
 Six men manned a beam and battered a door d(5wn. Others 
 made the windows too hot to be held by the boldest of the 
 besieged. Twenty Guerrillas, massed for the effort, swarmed 
 into the house and swept its lower story bare of defenders by a 
 single volley. Those above capitulated. The Federal dead 
 numbered six and the wounded sixteen. Taylor's loss was 
 eleven wounded. All who fell alive into his hands were honor- 
 ably treated and generously paroled. Those who fell, fell through 
 the fortunes of open warfare. 
 
 While the fight at Parkville was in progress a characteristic 
 tragedy was being enacted in another portion of the county. 
 Five Guerrillas William Stone, John Thomas, Hines, Morehead 
 and Marshfield were surrounded by fifty Federals at the house 
 of a man named Bradley, six miles north of Platte City. The 
 five held the house until Hines and Morehead were killed. 
 Three times they were called upon to surrender, and three times 
 the defiant answer was sent back : "Come and take us!" The 
 survivors, their ammunition well nigh exhausted, broke away 
 from the house fighting desperately and striving to cut through 
 the enemy who encompassed them. Thomas and Marshfield 
 were killed in the orchard, riddled by musket balls. Stone, 
 fleet of foot though encumbered by four heavy pistols, gained 
 some timber to the east of the house, followed by three militia- 
 men. He hid behind a tree and killed the nearest. The two 
 others rushed upon him and shot him down. Recovering some- 
 what from the shock, and crawling barely to his knees, he killed 
 as he crouched thus the surviving pursuers. Then he fell 
 upon his face again, remaining there a long time. The voices 
 of those in search of their comrades aroused him at last and 
 spurred him up for a final effort. A minie ball had gone through 
 his right thigh, and five buckshot into his back and hips. 
 Slow!} 7 , however, and with the grim, silent, impurturable endur- 
 ance of the bull-dog, he dragged his maimed body forward 
 through the brush with his hands and knees. He did not know 
 
344 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 the coarse he was going, so only he was going away from where 
 the three dead men lay, whose bodies were being hunted in 
 every direction. He did not care where he went so only it was 
 not back again towards Bradley 's. Wounded as he was, and 
 weak as he was, he still held on to his pistols. Twenty rounds 
 yet remained to him, and twenty rounds to a desperate man at 
 best but little better than mortally wounded meant a consolation 
 almost equivalent to a rescue. The voices of men searching 
 carefully gained upon him as he crawled, gaine d rapidly and on 
 every hand. He reached a fence and essayed to surmount *it. 
 Twice he fell back exhausted, his wounds burning as though so 
 many hot pointed things had been thrust therein. Militiamen 
 were in sight, coming straight towards him. He gathered in 
 his front some pieces of rotten wood, dry sticks, and such other 
 debris as might go to make a miserable barricade, laid easily to 
 hand his trusty pistols, maybe said a prayer or two, and then 
 felt himself ready to die. At this instant a furious fire from the 
 direction of Bradley's, a single yell, then a series of yells, then 
 a long, irregular, zigzag volley, halted as if petrified the Fed- 
 erals almost upon Stone, and turned them about and influenced 
 them back at the double-quick. What had happened? As 
 Stone crawled and bled and listened to the firing which became 
 weaker and weaker and finally ceased altogether, his mind kept 
 thinking and repeating: What has happened? 
 
 This had happened: George Fielding, a young soldier of 
 Shelby's old Brigade, scarcely turned of nineteen, wounded, 
 and at home on a furlough, knew and loved John Thomas in 
 boyish soldier fashion. Between them had been the fresh con- 
 fidences and the artless comming lings of youth. They had 
 rode side by side in battle. Together they had shared the same 
 blankets, endured the same cheerless bivouacs, stood the same 
 long picquet watches, were opposites in many things, and yet 
 one supplying what the other needed they drew thereby the 
 bond which united them closer and closer, and made what had 
 not been separated in life in death not disunited. 
 
 Fielding, in hearing of the guns at Bradley's, mounted his 
 horse at once and rode at a run for the point of combat. Ho 
 neither knew nor sought to understand the situation. He 
 neither drew rein nor slackened speed until he was upon the 
 enemy and in the midst of them fighting like some madman 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 345 
 
 intent only upon being killed. He did know that John 
 Thomas was surrounded, outnumbered, in imminent peril, and 
 he meant to reach him in time to save him or die by his side. 
 It is probable that this is all he either comprehended or cared 
 to comprehend. He had to ride two miles to bring him to the 
 fray, and these were ridden like a swallow flies. While yet a 
 quarter of a mile away, John Thomas had received five wounds, 
 either one of which would have been mortal, but Fielding rushed 
 right on, a pistol in each hand and the reins of the bridle in 
 his teeth. As he reached revolver range he fired right and left 
 and yelled once, a short, sharp, singular, piercing Guerrilla yell, 
 which was answered by a louder one of mockery and defiance, 
 and a scattering volley. These were the shots and the shouts 
 that Stone heard, crouching in his fence corner and waiting 
 before he began to put up his life at auction the ten or twelve 
 more forward steps the enemy would undoubtedly have taken, 
 had not Fielding's hot charge in the rear required a concentra- 
 tion. There could but one thing happen. Fielding seemed 
 never to have cared to retreat. He rode full tilt upon twenty 
 Federals ranged along the yard fence, firing as fast as his pistols 
 would revolve. His horse was killed. Before the animal fell 
 he was off of his back on the ground, erect, unhurt, and still 
 firing. He had killed four of the enemy, as strange as the story 
 may sound, and had wounded two severely, when there was 
 another cooler, closer, deadlier volley, and a furious rush from 
 every quarter to where the dead rider lay by his dead steed, but 
 the work had been done. Shot five times and literally killed 
 as he stood in the attitude of splendid defiance, George Fielding 
 was past all pain before his face was upon the ground. Stone 
 escaped, and lives to-day to tell of that savage combat wherein 
 six men set upon by fifty fought until five were killed, taking as 
 a recompense the lives of thirteen Federals. 
 
 From Parkville Capt. Taylor moved suddenly into Buchanan 
 county. At that time there was operating in that portion of 
 Missouri a Colonel Morrison, whose name and whose fame were 
 evil together. The citizens were plundered by him indiscrim- 
 inately. The non-combatant received only hurt at his hands. 
 Some Confederate soldiers on recruiting service were captured 
 by him and killed. He burned, proscribed, was unnecessarily 
 cruel, and thought considerably more of how to avoid an armed 
 
346 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OR 
 
 enemy than to meet one in open conflict and crush or kill him there. 
 Capt. Taylor ended speedily that infamous career of Col. Mor- 
 rison's. Fifty Guerrillas at daylight surrounded his house 
 where sixteen picked soldiers of his regiment not alone formed 
 his body-guard but his garrison. The house, prepared to stand 
 a siege, was as much of a fortress as a dwelling. Heavy fast- 
 enings held the doors shut. Plank made the windows 
 impervious to musket balls. Loop-holes at every angle gave to 
 its defenders a perpetual flanking or enfilading fire. In its 
 cellar was a cistern ; among its supplies rations enough for any 
 reasonable environment. Taylor made all these advantages 
 worthless in a moment. Volunteers especially called for put 
 torches to this demi-redoubt in five places, losing in the effort 
 three killed and eight wounded. The flames took hold, 
 however; they eat into the woodwork; they climbed up the 
 walls ; they clambered along the eaves ; they caught in their 
 fierce embrace the whole mass of fortified doors and windows, 
 and then they were in the citadel. As Morrison's men rushed 
 out, some of them afire, blinded with smoke, or tortured to 
 madness with stifling heat and flame, they. were shot down as 
 rats are shot when leaving a rat-infested barn. Morrison 
 remained to the last. When finally he broke from his furnace, 
 his beard burnt off and his garments afire, he rushed through 
 the door at which Jesse and Frank James and McMacane were 
 standing guard. Frank James halted him instead of shooting 
 him, and Morrison replied with a pistol ball which cut a black 
 feather from James' hat. Then a dozen Guerrillas fired at the 
 singed and smoking apparition as it ran, and missed it clear. 
 Was it to be over again that wild bull rush of Bertram 
 Risingham? 
 
 " And where is Bertram ? Soaring high 
 The general flame ascends the sky ; 
 In gathered group the soldiers gaze 
 Upon the broad and roaring blaze, 
 When, like infernal demon sent, 
 Eed from his penal element, 
 To plague and to pollute the air 
 His face all gore, on fire his hair, 
 Forth from the central mass of smoke 
 The giant form of Bertram broke." 
 
 Morrison was gaining rapidly upon his pursuers who were afoot 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 347 
 
 and firing defiantly as he ran, when Jesse James cooler than 
 many there hurriedly mounted his horse and came riding at a 
 gallop upon the track of the doomed man. Morrison, spent 
 with toil and speed, turned about and stood still. He meant to 
 die in his tracks, and he was dangerous. Jesse James took 
 no note of his attitude, nor did he wait a second for any help 
 or advantage two or three comrades at his back might have 
 given him. He dashed upon Morrison single-handed, fired at 
 him and missed. Morrison returned the fire and shot James' 
 horse in the mouth. James fired again and struck his antag- 
 onist just above the right hip. As he reeled and staggered 
 from the blow, his revolver being dischared in the air, James 
 shot again, sending this time a bullet fair into Morri- 
 son's forehead. This ended the fight the garrison had been 
 exterminated. 
 
 Colonel Thornton, after having recruited three hundred men 
 the nucleus of what might have been made a very formidable 
 band attacked and captured Platte City and its garrison of 
 militia, seventy strong. Then he took up his headquarters there. 
 One of his strange notions entertained at that time was the 
 notion that he commanded an army of occupation. He meant 
 to hold North Missouri and organize a powerful column of Con- 
 federates for active service in his new department. Taylor came 
 to him from Buchanan county, preceded by the news of the 
 savage blow dealt Morrison and a portion of Morrison's unre- 
 generate regiment. Thornton proposed to Taylor a division of 
 honors, he retaining command of the infantry, while Taylor took 
 charge of the cavalry. " You have too few men for a regular 
 army, five hundred miles from a base line," was the reply of 
 the cool, keen, common-sense Missourian, " and too many for 
 a band of Guerrillas. Get to the South as soon as possible, 
 Colonel Thornton, or be cut to pieces without hope of escape or 
 succor." Colonel Thornton did not get to the South. He 
 moved from Platte City to Camden Point, where Taylor left him. 
 Two* days afterwards he was attacked by four hundred Federals 
 and routed, with a loss of forty killed and sixt3^-eight wounded. 
 Some of his men also scattered away from their command, 
 while others, choosing commanders for themselves, went to them 
 in a body. John Thrailkill and Joe Macy brought one hundred 
 and twenty-five splendid young fellows to Taylor and asked to 
 
348 NOTED GUERBILLAS, Oil 
 
 be permitted to operate with him in Guerrilla warfare- 
 From the Iowa line to Arkansas, Thrailkill had been run- 
 ning and fighting. He was at home wherever he camped. 
 Wherever he found the enemy he fought him. If he had food, 
 very well he ate ; if he had no food, still very well he did not 
 eat; if he had blankets he used them, if he had none he did not 
 go to bed ; what he understood by sleep was to pull off his spurs 
 and unbuckle his pistol belt ; it was night, it was day no differ- 
 ence to Thrailkill ; it was stormy, or frozen, or glorious sun- 
 shiny weather all right, so only whatever the sort of weather 
 was it was good weather for hunting and finding the enemy. He 
 asked only to be allowed to fight, while others were asking for 
 good food, fine horses, showy clothes, ivory handled pistols, 
 gaudy bridles, McClellan saddles, and city resting places in the 
 winters in the South. 
 
 Jo Macy had the ear of an Indian and the horsemanship of a 
 Mexican bull-fighter. Educated on the plains, he preferred a 
 bed even in the snow to a pillow of down. He saw with his 
 eyes and also with his ears. He could listen to the march of a 
 column and tell to the half of a squadron how many ranks were 
 riding by. He fought superbly everywhere. If a charge were 
 needed, Macy wa - the man to lead it ; if a rear pressed to the 
 girth had to be held, who so much like a rock as Macy ; if a posi- 
 tion was eminently in danger, the watch at night had to be 
 Macy's watch ; he rarely ever shot until he knew he could kill ; 
 probably in his whole life he was never excited ; he did not know 
 what surprise meant ; the war found him a patient, truthful, 
 plain-spoken, conscientious man, and it left him just as it found 
 him, with this addition he was a hero. 
 
 Taylor, Thrailkill and Macy entered Ray county from the west 
 and raided it from one end to the other, killing on the trip fifty- 
 seven militia and securing horses sufficient in number for three 
 hundred recruits waiting for a mount before they began their march 
 to the Southern army. On their return into Clay they halted a 
 day or two at the house of Richard King, where ammunition 
 was prepared and cartridges were manufactured for extended 
 operations. There at this camp the services of a young girl 
 were found to be most valuable. The men were almost totally 
 destitute of revolver bullets. Powder in plentiful supplies could 
 be obtained in any direction, but lead was the article that was 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDEE 349 
 
 so necessary and yet so scarce. Miss Mattie King, with the 
 beauty and the bashfulness of one who had lived much with 
 nature, had yet the clear perception and the calm self-reliance 
 of a real heroine. She seems to have anticipated just such a 
 condition of things as had now come about. For months and 
 months before there had been any extraordinary demand for 
 lead among the Guerrillas who were operating generally 
 throughout Clay and the contiguous counties, she had begun to 
 buy it, quietly and persistently and to hoard it as though it had 
 been gold. All of her hidden stores were now brought forth, 
 more precious than pearls or rubies. The men blessed. her 
 and felt something akin to reverence for the tender maiden as 
 she went about moulding bullets and preparing cartridges for 
 the pistols. As modest as any wood flower blooming alone 
 upon her father's premises, and artless as any wild bird swaying 
 and singing in the trees about her country home, savage Guer- 
 rillas softened visibly as she spoke to them as she passed, and 
 boisterous young desperadoes lifted plumed hats to her as to an 
 innocent thing that was to bring them good luck. Lithe, sun- 
 browned, blue-eyed, winning in all frank and ingenuous ways, 
 there are yet left a few of Taylor's Guerrilla band who speak of 
 her to-day as a Queen by the dusk on her hair, and tell in praise 
 of her and as a token of their loyalty to the past that two hun- 
 dred Federals fell before the bullets moulded by her willing 
 hands. 
 
 Captain Taylor rarely rested more than two days in thirty 
 rarely slept more than four hours in twenty-four. He had a 
 theory of his own touching the struggle which, summed up 
 thoroughly, gave about such a proposition as this: The war 
 cannot last always; the pace is too terrific to continue long; 
 the exertions are too immense to endure. Consequently the 
 more frequently we fight the less those of us who survive the 
 war will have to reproach ourselves with when the end comes. 
 A battle a day is about the average. 
 
 Ray county was again invaded. Taylor marched along .the 
 Liberty and Richmond road, in the direction of Richmond, lead- 
 ing the advance himself with twenty-four men. Next to Taylor 
 was Thrailkill, and next to Thrailkill, Jo Macy. At the Conrow 
 House, two miles west of Fredericksburg, forty-seven Colorado 
 soldiers were encountered, commanded by Captain Moses. 
 
350 NOTED GUEREILLAS, OB 
 
 These, busy at work on the contents of the Conrow House 
 ripping open mattresses, appropriating whatever was coveted, 
 breaking, destroying, and wantonly trampling under foot began 
 to form instantly and disencumber themselves of all superfluities 
 as the Guerrillas rode in sight. Without waiting for the detach- 
 ments under Thrailkill and Macy to close up compactly, Taylor 
 dashed at the Colorado people savagely, unable to restrain his 
 men and unwilling as well. Peyton Long, Jesse James, Fletch 
 Taylor, Frank James, and John Thrailkili were neck and neck 
 in the run. Bud Pence-, Dick West, Gooly Robertson, Nat 
 Tigue, McMacane, Dock Rupe, Henry Coward, Silas King, 
 James Commons, Allen Parmer, Jo Nicholson, James Nichols, 
 Garrette Groomer, Joe Macy, Oil Shepherd, William Stone, and 
 a few others strove with desperate emulation the one to surpass 
 the other in speed and prowess. Jesse James, by the time the 
 onset culminated in its crash upon the enemy, was a length 
 ahead of the swiftest riders and killed the first Federal in the 
 midst of his own ranks. Afterward the melee passed as a whirl- 
 wind. Jesse James was shot severely in the left hand and 
 knocked senseless from his saddle by a powerful blow from the 
 butt of a Colorado soldier's carbine. Another soldier stood 
 over him while he was down and attempted to blow out his 
 brains. Taylor killed him, and in falling he fell across the 
 Guerrilla's body. Captain Moses fought like a frontiersman 
 surrounded by Indians, but of what avail was fighting there? 
 The revolver volleys made it impossible for any Federal force, 
 evenly matched, to live and hold its own beyond a second or 
 two of awful sacrifice. Moses held on until thirty of his men 
 were dead or wounded about him, and then he fled followed by 
 the remnant of his stricken company. Not far away from the 
 point of combat they separated in every direction ; Moses and 
 six others keeping boldly to the highway. Jesse James, recov- 
 ered somewhat from the furious blow dealt him, staggered to his 
 feet, and from his feet to his horse, and then spurred away in 
 the exciting chase. Moses was followed five miles by Peyton 
 Long, Joe Macy, Henry Coward, Frank and Jesse James. 
 Four of his squad of six were killed, while Moses himself pur- 
 sued by Jesse James with ferocious intensity lost his plumed 
 hat, his horse, and his pistols, and only escaped after taking 
 refuge in a dense swamp where it was impossible for horsemen 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 351 
 
 to come after him. The hat a plumed trophy of no inconsider- 
 able merit in those days was presented to George Todd after- 
 ward by Jesse James. The day he was killed, leading a furious 
 charge upon the rear of this same Second Colorado regiment to 
 which Moses belonged, Todd fell wearing this hat. 
 
 The other fruits of the fight besides the dead and the wound- 
 ed were thirty-three serviceable horses, thirty-three McClellan 
 saddles, twenty-eight dragoon revolvers, and forty Star carbines 
 one pattern of an innumerable array of breech-loaders the 
 Federal government was then experimenting with, corrupt Con- 
 gressmen and venal army boards dividing profits equally with 
 the inventor and the manufacturer. 
 
 Resuming his march, Taylor passed through Knoxville into 
 Caldwell county, and encountered fifty militia, thirteen of whom 
 were killed, twenty-two wounded, and the balance captured and 
 paroled. At Kingston, Commons, Castle, Tigue and Robertson 
 took from the county treasurer $6,000 in greenbacks and divided 
 it among the Guerrillas per capita a sort of prize money 
 scarcely legitimate and certainly of but little account so gener- 
 ally apportioned. 
 
 At Plattsburg, in Clinton county, the court house was held by 
 a Federal garrison numbering eighty militia. Taylor attempted 
 to surprise it but failed. Some citizen spy preceded him with 
 accurate information of his movements and when he charged into 
 the town the court house was defiant and impregnable. Desultory 
 skirmishing followed. The keen, practical, savage Guerrilla 
 had no intention of losing against brick walls and barricaded 
 passage-ways a single man or a single horse. He cooped up the 
 garrison in their citadel a sufficient length of time to obtain all 
 the powder and lead possible and retired afterwards with one 
 man slightly wounded. As the Guerrillas rode out, however, 
 and as Taylor and Thrailkill were moving slowly along together 
 in the rear, they halted upon the last elevation that overlooked 
 the town, and gazed for a moment back upon the fortified build- 
 ing. A man stood in its main door, holding in his right hand a 
 field glass. No firing was going on, for those in the court house 
 imagined that the larger body of the Guerrillas had passed 
 beyond range. Thrailkill spoke to Taylor and said: "I shall 
 try a shot at that Yank with the field glass. Can I hit him?" 
 Always curt, Taylor answered shortly: "Too far." "So it may 
 
352 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 be, but some bullets are charmed." ' 'Shoot, then." Thrail- 
 kill had a Savage pistol which he generally held in reserve for 
 skirmishing work a huge, uncouth, big-bored, unpromising 
 thing and this he quickly elevated and fired as a man fires who 
 expects little from his shot or is indifferent to its effect, what- 
 ever it is. With the report the man pitched forward from the 
 door of the court house upon his face. "If he gets up," 
 Thrailkill coolly ejaculated, beginning to load the empty cylin- 
 der, "he is hit but not hurt. If he does not get up he is dead." 
 The two stood there a few brief moments, waiting. He did not 
 get up. Finally half a dozen soldiers rushed from the court 
 house, lifted up the prostrate form, and carried it back into the 
 building with them. It was a limp thing they carried, the back 
 swagged, the hair trailed, the knees at their joints were helpless 
 instead of a man the burden borne away was like a sack filled 
 with sand. "That will do," Taylor said, as he touched his horse 
 lightly with a spur, "the man is dead." And he was. Thrail- 
 kill, however Jhe thing happened so, had killed the commander 
 of the garrison, Captain Turner, at a distance of one hundred 
 and fifty-six measured yards. From that day to this he might 
 have stood shooting there, as innocent of marksmanship again 
 so fatal as William Tell was innocent of Colt's revolvers. 
 
 Little things sometimes, unnoticed and unimportant, go far 
 to make up the warp and woof of what men call destiny. An 
 ambuscade ore of a countless number the war saw and made 
 to become a part of its tactics saved Des Moines, Iowa, from 
 a thunderbolt similar to the thunderbolt which destroyed Law- 
 rence. Some Iowa troops, serving temporarily along the bor- 
 der between Missouri and Kansas, had surpassed the Jayhaw- 
 kers, if that were possible, in the cruelty of their reprisals and 
 the completeness of their pillage. They not only burned dwell- 
 ings, like the Jayhawkers, but put the torch as well to out- 
 houses, fruit trees, fences, grain in stacks, and forage in the 
 fields. They not only killed wounded soldiers shot down in 
 battle, as their omniverous prototypes, but old men fared 
 roughly at their hands, and non-combatants were put to death. 
 Taylor fought them wherever he found them, but he meant to 
 do more. He meant to make them understand what kind 
 of taste the chalice bore they had so sternly pressed to the lips of 
 the Missourians. He meant to burn, to pillage, and slay iust 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 353 
 
 as the Iowa troops had burnt, and pillaged, and slain, and he 
 meant to do it speedily. Leaving his com pany tinder the com- 
 mand of Frank James, he took with him, after his return from 
 Plattsbnrg, Thrailkill and Allen Farmer and crossed the Missouri 
 river into Jackson county, for a conference with George Todd. 
 Todd embraced the proposition as though it had been a woman, 
 large-breasted and beautiful. "Iowa!" he exclaimed, when 
 Taylor had told him of his plans, and explained to him how 
 feasible they were, "I had rather kill ten lowans to-morrow 
 than fifty Kansas Jayhawkers. Get your men together at once 
 and let us begin to march!" 
 
 Taylor, still keeping near him Thrailkill and Farmer, and 
 having been joined in Jackson county by Henry Porter, was 
 making much haste back to his company in Clay. While pass- 
 ing through Rash Bottom, and riding carelessly along, unsuspi- 
 cious of all clanger, a deadly fire from thirty ambushed Federals 
 tore off Taylor's left arm close to the shoulder, hurt Thrailkill 
 badly in the head, put a ball into Porter's right leg, and another 
 into Farmer's right shoulder. Wounded as they were, and as 
 desperately wounded as was Taylor, these four men, bleeding at 
 every step and scarcely able to keep fast to their saddles, fought 
 back their pursuers for eight miles and finally escaped and 
 recovered. With this ambushment ended the Des Moines expe- 
 dition. Had Fletch Taylor escaped that day the dreadful 
 wound which mutilated him for life, he would have been with 
 Todd the day following with one hundred and fifty of as desper- 
 ate Guerrillas as Missouri ever furnished, while Todd still in 
 command of the bulk of Quantrell's original band would have 
 added fifty additional veteran, fighters to the column especially 
 adapted for the work proposed. A single volley, however, 
 saved an Iowa city and many a head and many a habitation 
 round about. 
 
 Frank James succeeded to a stormy legacy, the command 
 of a company hunted hourly by a thousand horsemen. At 
 Mrs. Robertson's, where he had taken breakfast, a Federal 
 scout, one hundred and fifty strong, attacked him and drove 
 him into some heavy timber. There forming an ugly 
 ambuscade he sent back as a lure from the depths of its 
 obscurity Jesse James and seven picked Guerrillas. The 
 Federals, forming on the edge of the timber and keeping 
 23 
 
354 NOTED QUBBRZLLA8 t OH 
 
 altogether there, would not be moved into the gloom of the 
 overhanging trees and the thicker undergrowth. Jesse James 
 tried to tempt them into pursuit of him by bravado, defiance, 
 annoying volleys at pistol range, insulting cries and motions of 
 contempt, but the wily militia were imperturbable. Then he 
 charged them recklessly. His own horse was shot from under 
 him, James Justis, riding on the right hand, was killed, 
 Fred Breaker was wounded badly, together with Gooly Robin- 
 son, Johnson Barbie and Bud Pence, or four wounded and one 
 killed out of the eight skirmishers sent forward as a decoy 
 detachment. The next day Anderson entered Clay county with 
 a hundred followers, Frank James joined him at once, and 
 thereafter, and until his death, the exploits of this noted Guer- 
 rilla might be written down equally as the exploits of the 
 Jameses, and the bulk of Taylor's decimated yet desperate 
 organization. 
 
 James Justis, not yet eighteen, was a brave boy from Jackson 
 county. Shot dead in the furious charge made by Jesse James, 
 he fell within twenty yards of the enemy. Afoot himself his 
 disabled horse but a little space behind him Jesse James 
 halted long enough by Justis, as he ran to the rear, to unbuckle 
 his pistol belt and remove his revolvers. As he did this Dof 
 Carroll stood over him on his horse fighting back a dozen 
 Federals and keeping them back until James had taken away 
 from his boyish comrade, whose wide open blue eyes were 
 tenderly closed, everything which savored of a trophy. All 
 that day the dead body lay where it had fallen. The Guer- 
 rillas too weak to attack the enemy where he stood in position 
 broke up their ambushment and disappeared. The Federals 
 rcontent to leave unexplored all that portion of the unknown 
 in front of them fell back later in the day to Liberty. 
 Neither gave a coffin to the corpse. The young face, very 
 ghastly now and pitiful, still gazed up reproachfully to the sky. 
 At nightfall Mrs. Zcrelda Samuel and Miss Bettie Robertson, 
 accompanied by a negro woman of middle age, came to where 
 the dead boy lay. They were going to bury him. The land- 
 scape was in unison with the occasion. A summer wind sighed 
 through the great elms, and the slow moving women were as so 
 many phantoms among the trees. Twilight had deepened into 
 darKness. Here and there the noise as of wings told of a night 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 355 
 
 bird flying away to its own. Close by some running water 
 murmured a monotone. The light of the stars needed no moon 
 it was so soft and quiet. The women dug the grave and bore 
 the boy to it tenderly when it was finished. For shroud there 
 was a white sheet, and about this sheet an army blanket for a 
 coffin. "He has a mother/* Mrs. Samuel whispered, "and 
 one day she will bless me for this." As she spoke she stooped 
 and cut from above the bronzed, open brow a long, fair lock of 
 hair, moist with the summer dew. No burial service was read, 
 no audible prayer was spoken. The bare-headed women, alone 
 with the corpse and the darkness, laid the young hero to rest 
 reverently, yet without rite or ritual. Mrs. Samuel's face was 
 calm, earnest, yet fixed and resolute. The fair girl beside her, 
 with her unbound hair about her shoulders, fixed her pure 
 eyes upon the dead. The composure of each was per- 
 fect. Tne negro woman, standing herself at the bottom of 
 the grave, received from the hands of the two above her the 
 shrouded form of the Southern soldier. Over his face, and to 
 keep it fair and boyish to the last, they placed branches with 
 leaves upon them and bunches of sweet smelling grass. Then, 
 toiling there, and speaking briefly to one another there and 
 always in whispers, they filled up the grave, and marked it 
 foot and head, and left it alone for God and the resurrection. 
 But is it any wonder that when the South had such women the 
 South had also such men? The burial of the Guerrilla dead 
 had been forbidden every where along the border. Where one 
 of the accursed class fell there should he remain until the 
 elements wasted him, or the buzzards devoured him, or the 
 hogs ate him up. The citizen who dug a hole to put him in 
 no matter how shallow or wretched was an outlaw branded 
 like Cain ; and the woman who dared to do what the man was 
 forbidden to do, was a dangerous woman necessary to be caged 
 or ironed. Many women were served thus, Mrs. Samuel 
 among the number ; and many old citizens were shot down in 
 cold blood, simply because some Guerrilla corpse upon the 
 highroad had been hidden away or buried. 
 
 Frank James, the day when he united his own fortunes to 
 those of Anderson, carried with him into the new organization: 
 Jesse James, Dock Rupe, Silas King 
 
 William Grindstaff, Peyton Long, James Commons, 
 
356 
 
 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 William Blackrnore, 
 Richard West, 
 William Stone, 
 David Wade, 
 Jeptha Bowles, 
 Marston Lisle, 
 Richard Ellington, 
 Newton Oliphant, 
 Allen Farmer, 
 William Henaburg, 
 Robert Todd, 
 Johnson Barbie, 
 Newman Wade, 
 Gooly Robinson, 
 Ling Litten, 
 
 Joshua Esters, 
 Jack Rupe, 
 Harvey Brown, 
 Creth Creek, 
 Leon Martinez, 
 Snowy Jenkins, 
 John Fisher, 
 Theodore Castle, 
 Dof Carroll, 
 James Bissett, 
 Plunk Murray, 
 John Wilson, 
 Abner Creek, 
 Oil Shepherd, 
 
 Samuel *Vade, 
 Dock Corly, 
 Joe Holt, 
 Bud Pence, 
 Socrates Johnson 
 Parker Talcott, 
 Peter Farley, 
 John Hope, 
 Nat Tigue, 
 Patrick McMacane, 
 George Daily, 
 Thomas Fulton, 
 Garrett Groomer, 
 John Chatman, 
 Thomas Tuckett, 
 Rezin Magruder, 
 Valentine Baker, 
 
 Henry Coward, 
 
 William Winchester, Henry Buford, 
 Samuel Finnegan, Oscar Swisby, 
 
 Clarence Tomlinson. 
 
 Before a year had passed what a harvest death reaped in the 
 ranks of these ardent Guerrillas, young and dauntless. Peyton 
 Long fell among the last of Taylor's heroic band, but many had 
 preceded him and some few had followed him. In unnoted or 
 forgotten graves they sleep from the Ohio river to the Pacific 
 ocean. Not all the killed can be enumerated after the lapse of 
 so many years, but the following are the names of many of the 
 most intrepid ones: 
 
 Dock Rupe, 
 
 Garrette Groomer, 
 
 John Chatman, 
 
 James Bissett, 
 
 Harvey Brown, 
 
 Newton Oliphant, 
 
 Thomas Tuckett, 
 
 Snowy Jenkins, 
 
 Leon Martinez, 
 
 Peyton Long, 
 Robert Todd, 
 Theodore Castle, 
 Joshua Esters, 
 Patrick McMacane, 
 Gooly Bobertson, 
 Joe Holt, 
 Marston Lisle, 
 
 Dof Carroll, 
 Newman Wade, 
 Samuel Wade, 
 John Wilson, 
 Thomas Fulton, 
 Oil Shepherd, 
 Peter Farley, 
 Parker Talcott, 
 Socrates Johnson, 
 Rezin Magruder, 
 Valentine Baker, 
 
 Jeptha Bowles, 
 
 William Winchester, Henry Buford, 
 
 Samuel Finnegan, Oscar Swisby, 
 
 Clarence Tomlinson. 
 
 John Thrailkill with a bloody rag about his head and that 
 ghastly pallor on his face which betokened much suffering, 
 
THE WARFABE OF THE BOEDER 357 
 
 rejoined his men near Union Mills, in Platte county, after the 
 murderous ambuscade of the Rush Bottom. Many of the 
 recruits desired to go South, and some who had been Guerrillas 
 preferred to become at last regular soldiers. Joe Macy him- 
 self was getting ready to lead them into Arkansas, when a 
 desperate battle ensued, one of the most savage and bloody of 
 the altogether too savage border war. A part of ThrailkilPs forces 
 were camped in some timber two miles from the road, commanded 
 by Joe Macy, and a part a mile further away, commanded 
 by Thrailkill in person. Altogether the Confederates numbered 
 probably two hundred and fifty. Six hundred militia, made up 
 of detachments from various posts, battalions and regiments, 
 sought to surprise Thrailkill and exterminate him. A forced 
 march of eighteen miles was made with great secrecy and speed. 
 No one was permitted to pass beyond the head of the column. 
 If any traveler upon the highway was overtaken, a guard was 
 set to watch him and to regulate his pace with the pace of the 
 swift moving horsemen. No scout of the enemy had been 
 encountered. Neither picquet, nor sentinel, nor vigilant guard, 
 nor outlying detachment seemed to be abroad anywhere in the 
 darkness. At daylight the energetic leader of the Federal 
 column of attack had reached unobserved to within a mile of 
 Thrailkill' s position. If he had pressed on he must unques- 
 tionably have ridden into a sleeping camp and broken the 
 slumbers of a too negligent foe with a musket volley. He did 
 not ride on. The night air had given him a keen appetite, and 
 he stopped long enough at a farm house to arouse its inmates 
 and provide for a pot of hot coffee. His host had a daughter 
 a brave, high-spirited Southern girl who saw at a glance the 
 situation of affairs and the imminent peril of the Guerrilla 
 camp. She scarcely took time to complete her toilette. She 
 made no effort at obtaining a horse. Half clad, her hair 
 unbound, her feet wet with the night dew, her cheeks aflame, 
 her eyes eager and expectant, she burst into Thrailkill's presence 
 while he was yet wrapped up in his blankets and told him vividly 
 the story of the peril. Many men would have dallied and 
 doubted ; this man thanked the brave girl with a look full of 
 reverence and gratitude, and leaped to his feet a living embod- 
 iment of skill, courage and determination. A swift runner 
 aroused Macy. A swift whisper encompassed the camp. Som- 
 
358 NOTED QUEKKILLAS, OR 
 
 nolent thinga, stupid with sleep, stood armed and clear-eyed 
 through the clear revealment. Every laggard was alert, every 
 inert mass was moving. Preparation ran from group to group 
 as fire from tree to tree in a pine forest. In the gray dawn 
 gun-barrels glistened. From out the shadows short orders told 
 of officers. The undergrowth was alive; the morning mist 
 became inhabited. By this time the Federal commander had 
 finished his coffee, closed up his column, and burst upon the 
 Guerrillas. Instead of a surprise, a hurricane of fire awaited 
 him. Behind each oak, and elm, and cottonwood, and walnut 
 a covered marksman, border trained and bred, held his tree as 
 a bull-dog holds its grip. The fight, hot at first and from the 
 very beginning, grew suddenly desperate. The Federal com- 
 mander fought splendidly. Once on the left he broke through 
 a portion of Thrailkill's line and enfiladed mercilessly his whole 
 position. A charge alone could recover the ground thus furiously 
 wrested a hot, swift, unrelenting charge. Thrailkill led it. 
 He looked like some monstrous nightmare. A bloody rag was 
 still about his face. His eyes were inflamed because through 
 much suffering he had not slept. The plaster put upon his 
 wound had melted and run along his cheeks. His beard was 
 matted and bristling. One side of his head had been shaved. 
 He tottered as he walked. The dauntless spirit, however, 
 burned as the eternal fire of the Persians, and his desperate 
 hardihood bore him up as though the skeleton was hardest iron. 
 The charge was as a wave that had no ebb. Twenty Guer- 
 rillas fell in as many seconds. Peters was killed, and Johnson, 
 Love, Marshall, Benedict, Parsons, Sallee, Nuckols, Parker, 
 Jeter, Samuels, Morgan, Tomlinson, Jeffries, Solomon, Tilton, 
 Harker, Leftwich, Myers, Snowdon, James, Thoroughman, and 
 Harrison Norton. Many more were wounded. ThrailkilPs 
 horse was killed. He mounted another the horse of a dead 
 comrade and this was killed. In falling it fell upon him and 
 broke his left arm. He did not know that it was broken until 
 the battle was done. A ball carried away his hat and the plaster 
 about his wound. He had not time to find another covering for 
 it. Another ball cut through his upper lip and knocked two 
 teeth away. He spit forth a mouthful of blood and bone, and 
 shouted loud to his desperate followers : " Hold on, boys ! hold 
 on for your lives ! Macy is coming!" 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER - 359 
 
 And Macy had come! Delayed somewhat in his efforts to 
 secure the horses, and pestered to a considerable degree by the 
 difficulties of crossing a couple of creeks, he yet arrived at that 
 very moment of time when he was most needed. Thrailkill was 
 whipped undoubtedly. He had lost eighty of his best men 
 killed or wounded. His line was being cut to pieces. His 
 charge, desperate as it had been and as unyielding, had failed. 
 He was afoot and maimed. Some of his soldiers were out of 
 ammunition. Many were falling back. Not a few were running 
 away. 
 
 Macy attacked nt a run. The Federals broken considerably 
 themselves, and fighting in squads and detachments knew 
 nothing of this second force until it was upon them. They 
 rallied fast, however, and faced it manfully. There were some 
 few brief moments of savage combat another rush, another 
 deadly volley close, hot, irregular, and decisive and the whole 
 Federal array broke back from the timber in hopeless disorder 
 and made frantic haste to their horses, followed by Macy with 
 the fury of a whirlwind. A few mounted men at this time might 
 have destroyed the routed militia at a blow, but none were at 
 hand. Every Guerrilla was afoot. Many of their horses had 
 been killed, and those of Macy's were a mile from the battle- 
 field. He had turned a defeat into a victory, however, and by 
 his energy and intrepidity had rescued Thrailkill and saved the 
 remnant of his devoted followers. In the absence of orders he 
 had done simply what every good soldier history deals with had 
 done as did Desaix at Marengo, Boufflers at Steinkirk, Han- 
 cock at Gettysburg, Stonewall Jackson at Antietam he has- 
 tened to where the fire by its intensity told of a terrible fight. 
 If he had tarried a single minute for instructions, if he had 
 waited the bare time a swift horseman might have taken to ride 
 as if riding a race the scant mile between camp and camp, if 
 even when upon the road he had waited to find fords or preserve 
 a soldierly array, the jaws of the fierce Federal attack would 
 have closed upon Thrailkill and crushed him beyond redemp- 
 tion. 
 
 But the true victor in the morning's bloody battle was the 
 patriotic young girl, Mary Harrison. Her unerring intuition 
 almost a sixth sense with a majority of women had enabled 
 her to understand at a glance the intentions of the Federal com- 
 
360 NOTED aUEERILLAS, OK 
 
 mander, and the rapid execution of a courageous purpose had 
 enabled her thoroughly to prevent their execution. She lives 
 to-day, a blessed memory in many a faithful heart, a matron 
 indeed whose husband was once a notorious Guerrilla, and who, 
 whatever else he may teach his white-haired children, will teach 
 them that there is 
 
 "No crime, or curse, or vice 
 As bad as that of cowardice," 
 
 The death of Andrew Blunt was eminently in keeping with his 
 stormy and desperate life. Nothing was known of this man's 
 earlier history. He was one among the first who came to Quan- 
 trell. Some said one thing of him, some another. He had been 
 a private in the 2d United States Cavalry, he had killed a sergeant 
 and escaped, he had been punished so severelv by a lieutenant 
 in New Mexico that he had shot the lieutenant and made his 
 way to Missouri, he had some weighty secret always upon his 
 mind, he had done some terrible deed, he was a brooding and a 
 mysterious man these are some of the things told of Blunt 
 among the Guerrillas, little heeded, however, or accounted of. 
 Quantrell found him a most excellent orderly sergeant, and 
 recruited him as such. He wrote an excellent hand. He 
 certainly had been a soldier at some time in his life. All the 
 details of a cavalry soldier's duty were as an open book to him. 
 He rode splendidly. His skill with a pistol was marvelous. He 
 excelled as a spy. He had as many shapes as Porteus, as 
 many disguises as a conspirator of the Riye House Plot. No 
 deed was too desperate for him to attempt, no service too reck- 
 less to receive his help. A mingled feeling of devotion and 
 intrepidity cost him his life. 
 
 In December, 1863, Otho Hinton, a comrade in arms of Blunt, 
 and a Quantrell Guerrilla of great prowess and courage, was shot 
 badly and captured at the house of Mrs. Neal, of Lafayette 
 county, situated on the Warrensburg and Lexington road. 
 Hinton was carried to Lexington, tried as a Guerrilla, found 
 guilty as a Guerrilla and sentenced to be shot. With something 
 of a plausible yet bitter irony, those who had condemned him con- 
 cluded to keep him until his wounds were healed, and it was 
 while he was in the hands of the surgeon that Blunt with two 
 men attempted his rescue in January, 1864. Miss Annie Fickel 
 was taken into his confidence. She was a Southern woman of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 361 
 
 action and Patriotism. Cultivated, refined, full of maiden 
 modesty and timidity, she yet recognized it as her Christian 
 duty to give aid and encouragement to the Confederate cause, 
 and to risk much and make use of every resource at her com- 
 mand for the succor or safety of its defenders. She came often 
 to Lexington from her home in Greenton Valley. She made 
 herself acquainted with the prison and its surroundings. The 
 topography of its approaches was impressed thoroughly upon 
 her mind. Once she obtained an interview with Hinton and 
 bade him, in the name of Blunt, be of good cheer. The 
 remarked the points at which guards were stationed, ascertained 
 accurately the nature of the discipline which prevailed, observed 
 everything of importance, and finally reported to Blunt, and 
 with great precision and clearness, the exact conditions of the 
 case. Bluut's own plan was soon formed. Dressed as Federal 
 soldiers, he and his two companions were to enter boldly into 
 Lexington, avoiding the outlying picquets and the grand guards, 
 and gain unobserved the old Masonic College building where 
 Hinton, tolerably well cured of his wound, was awaiting execu- 
 tion. There, mingling coolly with the Federals, and asking and 
 answering questions indifferently, he was gradually to work 
 his way into the guard room, arm Hinton, kill the sentinel on 
 duty at the door, and make upon the consummation of the 
 killing a desperate rush for liberty. The absence of a counter- 
 sign added probably another chance to whatever the chances 
 where at any time of success. 
 
 Blunt chose the night well upon which the adventure was to 
 be made. Although it was January a drizzling rain was falling, 
 and the darkness was of that impenetrable sort which might 
 indeed have made it almost black to the blind. Accompanied 
 by two Guerrillas equally desperate with himself, Blunt flanked 
 the picquets easily, avoided as easily the guards, and entered 
 the city afoot and unchallenged. Things speedily happened, 
 however, which alarmed him. Armed men were patroling the 
 streets. Very few soldiers where to be seen about the saloons. 
 An unusual air of preparation and expectancy pervaded Lex- 
 ington. Blunt did not waver. He made his way slowly but 
 surely to the College and was gliding with his men as three 
 black spectres into the very building itself when he was discov- 
 ered and fired at without even being called out to or halted. 
 
362 NOTED GUEKllILLAS, OR 
 
 He stood perfectly still, hoping that in the darkness he might 
 remain undiscovered until the alarm was over. Such probably 
 might have been the case if none had known of the attempted 
 rescue but himself. It has never been satisfactorily ascertained 
 to this day how the Federal commander at Lexington knew in 
 advance of the intentions of Blunt, but that he did know the 
 extensive preparations made to receive him too well attested. 
 It is probable that an attack in much larger force was expected. 
 Two hundred soldiers at least were under arms about the Col- 
 lege. All the guards had been doubled. The patrolling par- 
 ties about the streets were very strong, and every public way 
 for ingress or egress vigilantly sentineled. Blunt' s superb 
 nerve and presence of mind did not save him. Although he 
 neither exhibited by motion nor movement that those who had 
 fired at him had fired at anything more tangible than air, the 
 firing continued viciously, and the Guerrillas were forced to 
 retreat. Then a furious pursuit followed. Blunt lost one of 
 his men, shot dead by his side, as he ran down College street 
 towards Main, and the other over beyond Main barely a square. 
 He was alone now, and beset on every side by a numerous foe. 
 He did not quicken his pace. He was neither nervous, excited, 
 nor alarmed into making haste. He had about his body six 
 heavy revolvers, and he would see. On Franklin street he fired 
 his first shot and killed a Federal who had taken him by the 
 collar. On South street he killed another. His line of retreat 
 was through the cemetery, but so closely was he pressed that at 
 the first fence a musket ball wounded him in the left leg. He 
 stumbled among the graves and fell over tombstones. The 
 fierce hue and cry was at his heels. Every now and then a volley 
 seemed to be trying to search him out in the darkness. At the 
 second or further fence he trusted too much to his wounded leg 
 in climbing, and it gave way beneath him. As he fell he fell 
 upon a pointed paling which inserted itself between his belt 
 and his body and held him tightly there, suspended between 
 heaven and earth. The noise made by his endeavors to free 
 himself attracted two pursuing Federals to the spot, one of 
 whom fired at him, and the other closed upon him. Blunt killed 
 the two almost with as much ease as Bogardus would kill the 
 pigeons from a double rise. He was not yet extricated, how- 
 ever, nor did he wrench himself free from the paling until 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 363 
 
 twenty or thirty pursuers more had drawn near to him, attract- 
 ed by the firing, and poured in a telling volley which wounded 
 him badly in the right side. Here he lost four of his pistols. 
 As by a mighty effort he bursted the revolver belt which held 
 him as in a vise, four of his trusty weapons fell upon the side 
 next to his pursuers, and he was too grievously hurt to venture 
 an effort to recover them. Finally he cleared the cemetery, 
 distanced those who followed on his track, reached the road 
 leading out by the fair ground, and took it at a snail's pace, 
 faint, bleeding, desperate, dangerous, a pistol in each hand, 
 and that cruel, hungry look on his face which never yet had 
 boded good to any enemy. Presently there came the sound of 
 horses' feet. Blunt drew himself up in the middle of the road 
 and listened. Those riding through the night and into Lexing- 
 ton were but two, and if they were Federals he would kill them 
 both. Not until the oncoming horses were near enough to be 
 taken by their bridles, did he call keenly out, "Halt!" Sup- 
 posing in the darkness that they had ridden close up to the 
 advanced outpost of a picquet, the two horsemen halted 
 instantly and made answer: "We are halted. What will you 
 have?" Blunt drew a small space nearer, peered up into the 
 faces of the men on horseback, saw by their dress that one was 
 a Federal officer and one, perhaps, his orderly, and killed them 
 both as swiftly and as unerringly as he had killed the two at the 
 paling fence. Afterwards it was ascertained that one of the two 
 killed thus was a man named Thomas Mocabee, a Kansas Red 
 Leg deeply concerned in the murder of Cole Younger's father, 
 Col. Henry W. Younger. Riding Mocabee's horse and leading 
 the other, Blunt made what haste it was possible for a badly 
 wounded man to make to the Sni hills. Resting quietly at a camp 
 deep in the woods, a woman betrayed him and gave up the 
 secret of his hiding place to a detachment of Federal soldiers 
 numbering fifty. Blunt died as a wild boar. So terrible was 
 the name of the man, and so remarkable was his skill with the 
 pistol, that he was shot to death with long range guns. Only 
 two of the fifty ventured to come within revolver range, and 
 these he killed. Indeed, he rarely ever missed any object at 
 which he fired. He fought until he was literally shot to pieces, 
 until eleven bullets had been put into various portions of his 
 body. Otho Hintou was killed in prison the night of his 
 
364 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 attempted rescue, and in a short time afterwards Miss Annie 
 Fickel was arrested for conspiracy against the government and 
 treated with the cold brutality of vindictive cowardice. 
 
 In June and July, 1864, there was a reign of terror every- 
 where along the border. Jesse James and Allen Farmer cap- 
 tured Bradley Bond, a militiaman living near Claytonville, Clay 
 county. Bond was at home on furlough, and though heavily 
 armed, surrendered without a struggle. James wanted him 
 especially. He had, according to James' belief, been the chief 
 of a scouting party who in one day's raiding had killed four 
 Southern citizens, hung his step-father, Dr. Samuel, until life 
 was nearly extinct, insulted his mother, and, with a rope about 
 his own neck, had dragged him from the field where he had been 
 at work, beating him cruelly and without cause. Bond begged 
 hard for his life, but James told him first of his crimes and 
 then killed him. 
 
 The next day Frank James, taking with him his brother Jesse 
 and four other Guerrillas, visited the house of Travis Finley, a 
 resident of Clay county, and surprised there and captured a 
 militia soldier named Alvas Dailey. Dailey, though only 
 twenty- two years of age, was regarded by the Guerrillas as an 
 extremely bad man.. He had accompanied Bond on the occa- 
 sion of the Samuel raid, and at several other times and places 
 had been guilty of some grievous crimes. Frank James shot 
 him dead on the highway and left him unburied for the citizens 
 to look after. 
 
 Two days after Dailey was killed, Frank and Jesse James 
 visited, dressed in Federal clothing, the house of an old man 
 named Banes, which was situated in the northeastern portion 
 of Clay county. Some Southern citizens had reported more 
 than once to the Jameses that Banes believed in a war of exter- 
 mination. It was known that he often had dealings with the 
 enemy. Many of his neighbors felt confident that he was a 
 spy. The Guerrillas more than once had been made to suffer 
 severely through the information of their whereabouts conveyed 
 by Banes to the Federal soldiery. It would be a miracle if 
 sooner or later a sudden blow did not destroy him. As soldiers 
 belonging to a Colorado regiment, Jesse and Frank James were 
 cordially received. An excellent supper was served. The after- 
 talk was both curious and unexpected. It is reported that 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 365 
 
 Banes was especially anxious to have Mrs. Samuel killed and 
 her property destroyed. The reason of his dislike was asked 
 and boldly given: "She has two devils for sons," he said, "and 
 she is cheek by jowl with all the infernal bushwhackers in the 
 country. In order to break up an immense nest of unclean 
 birds, it would be a righteous thing to burn every shingle on the 
 premises." "Why has it not been done?" her sons asked. 
 "The militia are too cowardly," the old man fiercely replied, 
 "and the regular Federals are too conscientious. Sometimes I 
 feel like trying to do it alone." "Who are these James boys?" 
 was the further enquiry of the ostensible Coloradans. "Two 
 Guerrillas who have killed more Union soldiers and citizens than 
 any other two butchers in Missouri. They are here to-day and 
 gone to-morrow. Their old mother posts them. The Southern 
 citizens feed them. Sometimes they operate together and some- 
 times with fifty or sixty more. They are veritable wild beasts, 
 I tell you, and they devour everything." "If you will pilot us, 
 Mr. Banes," Jesse James spoke up, "and help us to fight if 
 there is fighting to be done, we will try to-night the virtue of a 
 little fire." The old man's exultation was immense. A saddled 
 horse was soon at the fence for him. From one secret place a 
 Spencer rifle was brought, and from another a brace of navy 
 revolvers. He was impatient to be gone. A mile from his 
 house the trio halted. "Old man," Frank James began in that 
 slow, deliberate, finely modulated voice of his, which was all 
 the more dangerous because it had so often before preceded 
 sudden death, "we had not the heart to kill you nearer home, 
 but if you would pray, pray now. We are the James boys!" 
 Instantly, and against each temple a cocked pistol was pressed. 
 Powerless, but not paralyzed, the old man essayed to explain 
 himself. "I believed at the first you were Federals," he said, and 
 that you had come to kill me. What I have said I have said to 
 save myself. These are dreadful times, gentlemen, and some- 
 times we have to be one thing and sometimes another. Do not 
 kill me, for the love of God." Two pistol shots, deadly and 
 close together, was the only answer to the old man's prayer. 
 
 Gen. Bacon Montgomery has been accused by some of the 
 Guerrillas, and unjustly accused, of the murder of Arch 
 Clements. It is true that he was in command of the militia at 
 Lexington at the time he was killed, but he was in no manner 
 
366 NOTED GUEEEILLAS, OB 
 
 responsible for his death, and would have saved him if he could 
 have done so. It was Montgomery's fortune to have to do with 
 a desperate following. The militia commanded by him were 
 bad men, uncontrollable men, ex-Federals and ex-rebels, and 
 totally without honor or civilized impulses. The bulk of them 
 were the dregs of the civil war the Thenardiers of a struggle 
 that had its Austerlitz as well as its Waterloo. He was a 
 brave, generous, liberal-minded man, individually, and he 
 strove with might and main to protect private property and 
 save human life. That he was not always successful was 
 because almost unsupported in a band which carried into peace 
 times the very worst of the passions of the strife, he could not 
 in every instance enforce obedience or punish the viciousness of 
 his desperadoes. Yet he did what he could energetically and fear- 
 lessly. Others in his place would have been monsters. Mont- 
 gomery saved many a life that even the people among whom he 
 was stationed knew nothing of, and many a house from destruc- 
 tion that the owners to this day do not know were ever threat- 
 ened. Dave Poole had been into Lexington with his Guerrillas 
 and had gone out soberly and in order, Arch Clements marching 
 with him. Outside of the city he met a comrade, Young 
 Hicklin, who was going in, and Clements turned about and 
 returned with him to the City Hotel. While drinking at the 
 bar they were fired upon, and each made a rush for his horse, 
 fighting as they ran. Probably two hundred shots were fired at 
 them, and Clements was killed, Hicklin making his escape by 
 sheer desperate fighting and running. Montgomery knew 
 nothing even of the cause of this firing until the deadly work had 
 been done. He deplored it, but he neither counselled it nor 
 approved of it. A lot of drunken cut-throats did the work 
 upon two isolated men, cut off from their comrades, which 
 man to man they would not have attempted for the county of 
 Lafayette. Montgomery was too brave a man for such devil's 
 doings. He felt that the war was over, and he was anxious 
 that the Guerrillas should come back into peaceful life and 
 become again a part of the peaceful economy of the local 
 administration. In such mood he treated with Poole, and in 
 such mood he would have treated with Clements if it had been 
 permitted for him to have encountered Clements. It was not 
 to be, however, and this young, superb, almost invincible 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 367 
 
 Guerrilla, died as he had lived, one of the most desperate men 
 the country ever produced. 
 
 In the last terrible days of the war, isolated and individual 
 deeds of daring were done everywhere. Coming up from the 
 South, Doc Campbell led a little party from Yellvill j , Arkansas, 
 composed of Given Horn, Al Scott, George Maddox and James 
 Stewart. Almost every day there was a fight. Campbell was a 
 born scout, who saw in the night and rode fastest when it was 
 darkest. At the crossing of the Osage river, and while they were 
 in the middle of the stream swimming and pushing a sort of a 
 raft ahead of them on which were their clothes, arms and ammu- 
 nition, twenty Federals gained suddenly the southern bank and 
 fired upon the helpless men. Indifferent to the bullets pattering 
 about them like hailstones, these four desperate men kept evenly 
 on, stroke upon stroke. Presently Horn spoke quick to 
 Campbell: "Doc I am hard hit and I cannot goon. Help me 
 if you can; if you cannot, save yourself." "I will stay with 
 you, Given," was the reply, irreverent it may be, but splendid 
 with devotion, "until hell freezes over." Then he put one arm 
 about Horn, while George Maddox put another, and thus 
 against a strong current and in the face of a furious fire they 
 bore him safely to the shore, standing naked there together with 
 Stewart, and fighting back the twenty militia until Horn tied up 
 his wound, which was in the left arm, dressed himself and got 
 upon his horse. Then they too leisurely performed their 
 own toilettes, stopping every now and then and at the adjust- 
 ment of every garment, to reply by a rattling volley to the steady 
 fusillade of the persevering enemy. Before the affair was 
 finished, Campbell himself was wounded, but not too badly to 
 ride, nor to continue as the unerring guide of these determined 
 men. 
 
 A squad of militia belonging to Capt. John W. Sheets' com- 
 pany surprised at the house of Mrs. Richard Kinney, in Jack- 
 son county, a crippled Guerrilla named Charles Saunders. 
 Some little while before Anderson with ten men had had a 
 severe fight near Hopewell Church, in Lafayette county, and 
 Saunders had been badly shot. When he saw that his hiding- 
 place had been discovered he crawled out into the yard in order 
 that none of the family might be hurt. Death was near to him, 
 but a high courtesy and considerateness abode with him to the 
 
368 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 end. He would face it alone, crippled, surrounded, doomed. 
 He had four loaded pistols with him, and in suggestive Guerrilla 
 vernacular he meant to " sell out." As soon as the militia saw 
 him hobbling to the garden fence they opened their fire. 
 Saunders reached this fence, fell over rather than climbed down 
 upon the other side, and held it for a quarter of an hour. It 
 took that length of time to kill him at long range. Twice they 
 charged him, and twice his accurate and deadly fire drove them 
 back. Seven balls were put into his body before he fell for the 
 last time and never to get up again. Four Federals were killed 
 and five wounded, and a single load remained the last of twenty- 
 four. Too weak to fire this, the hammer of his revolver was at 
 a half-cock in his stiffened fingers when the enemy reached him 
 and found the Guerrilla dead, his eyes wide open, and a look of 
 awful menace on his pinched, yet bronzed and weather-beaten 
 face. 
 
 At the house of Richard White, in Jackson county, another 
 savage border tragedy was born. Frank Gregg, Thomas and 
 Ambrose Maxwell, Sam Constable, and Ed Hink were sur- 
 rounded by fifty -two Federals. Would they surrender? 
 4 'Never!" shouted Gregg, in a voice that might have been 
 heard a mile, " never while there is a leg to stand on or a bullet 
 to kill. Look out, for we are coming!" As he cried thus, 
 jibing and hilarious, the five savage Guerrillas broke out from 
 the house, shooting. It was about twenty yards to their horses, 
 but they did not make haste towards them. Side by side and 
 steady as men plowing in a fallow field, they marched and 
 fought, taking and returning the fire of the fifty-two. Presently 
 Hink leaped from his feet into the air and fell forward upon his 
 face and as a log might fall from a log-sled to the ground. 
 Gregg stooped and turned him over. A huge round hole where 
 the heart was told the tale without the trouble of a further 
 searching. " Poor Hink !" sighed his comrade, perfectly uncon- 
 cerned in the pelting bullet rain, "he ran a long time, but he 
 died at last with his boots on." Then Gregg unbuckled the 
 pistol belt and strode forward with the weapons of his dead 
 comrade, a giant. Close to the horses Constable was seen to 
 stagger, fall upon one knee, rise again, and then fall the second 
 time. By this time the Federals had come to within fifty yards, 
 yelling and shooting. Gregg halted by Constable, fired five 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BORDER 
 
 # 
 
 shots in quick succession at the nearest enemy, knocked two 
 from their saddles, demoralized to a certain extent the balance, 
 and gave place to the Maxwell brothers who kept up the fight 
 desperately. Gregg spoke to Constable, u Where are you hit, 
 Sam? Speak quick, for if this thing lasts much longer, you,, 
 and I, and all of us will need as many lives as a cat." "In 
 the right shoulder, Frank, but I can ride if you will put me upon 
 my horse." Frank Gregg was a giant in size and in strength, 
 and he lifted Constable in his arms as though he were lifting a 
 sack of feathers. Just as he straightened up with his burden, 
 a rifle bullet knocked his hat off. u Better the hat than the 
 head," was the dry retort, "but I must have back my hat for 
 9,11 that." He put Constable upon his horse and bade him ride 
 ahead by and by he would come along after him. Then he 
 lazily walked back to where his hat was, picked it up, brushed 
 from it some specks of dirt, smoothed out its creases and 
 wrinkles, called to the Maxwells to get speedily to horse, took 
 his own time to mount himself, and finally rode away at a walk 
 and in splendid bravado, firing back and with deadly effect 
 wherever he was crowded, or whenever an attempt was made to 
 make his wounded comrade ride faster than he thought it would 
 be good for his hurt. The pursuit was scarcely a pursuit. Evi- 
 dently the enemy were timid were afraid of what the brush 
 might contain of something ahead or in the unknown that 
 savored of stratagem or ambuscade. 
 
 Captain John Rudd was one of the coolest scouts, spies, 
 guides, and Guerrilla fighters Shelby ever recruited, trained, or 
 let loose upon the enemy. He entered Missouri five times from 
 the South, bringing and carrying to and fro a multitude of 
 letters. First and last he conducted safely into the Confederate 
 lines a regiment of recruits from Missouri. He knew every 
 road South, every path, trail, direction, water-course, ford, 
 friendly stopping-place, or inaccessible fastness. If he had to 
 fight, he fought savagely. If he could not go round an object, 
 he went over it. If there was no other way to get through, he 
 cut through. When he had to kill he always made a clean job 
 of it. There were five Rudds in Shelby's old brigade, and the 
 five were brothers. Better soldiers never followed, and braver 
 ones never defended a flag. John Rudd had as many disguises 
 as a detective, as many stratagems as an Indian, and as many 
 24 
 
370 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR' 
 
 voices as a mocking-bird. Once lie did this manner of a deed : 
 Going South with one hundred and fifty recruits for Shelby's 
 Division, he captured one day seven wagons loaded with Federal 
 clothing. Right then and there he made his men take off one 
 set of garments and put on another. When the dressing was 
 done instead of a speckled or a variegated column, there was a 
 column as blue as a field in the spring sown with blue birds. 
 Seventeen miles from the place of the metamorphosis and close 
 to Yellville, in Arkansas, there was a militia cavalry camp, two 
 hundred strong. Rudd reached it about sunset. In advance 
 with ten men, he rode up to the Federal picquets and made 
 himself known. He was Major William Thatcher, of the 22d 
 Missouri, especially commissioned to inspect all the posts along 
 the border, arid to report what was needed in the way of arms, 
 ammunition, and supplies. The officer on duty at this camp 
 was a Lieutenant Jackson, from Fayetteville, Arkansas, who 
 reported promptly to Rudd and awaited his orders. " Lieuten- 
 ant," said the ostensible Thatcher, "form your command in 
 twenty minutes, without arms, in front of my quarters, that I 
 may first inspect their personal appearance. After that I will 
 look at your guns." Then he went from soldier to soldier in 
 his own ranks and told them of his programme. They were to 
 keep cool, quiet, vigilant, and obey his slightest nod or motion. 
 A line was formed. Two hundred stalwart militiamen dressed 
 up in front of Rudd's quarters, a huge white oak tree, and 
 waited a little curiously to see what the new comer, in the uni- 
 form of a major, wanted so far down among the mountains and 
 the outlying militia. They were well informed. Rudd passed 
 slowly along the front of the line, looking once in the face of 
 each soldier there. Then he passed along the rear of the line 
 to about half its distance, and until he had gained the point 
 nearest to his own troops, when he lifted his hat quickly and 
 waved it once. Instantly the Confederates poured out from 
 among their horses, armed, resolute, ready for work. There 
 was some confusion at first among the Federals, but Rudd 
 rushed through their ranks, gained their front, and cried aloud 
 so that all might hear him: "Keep your places if you would 
 keep your scalps. We are Confederate soldiers clothed as Fed- 
 erals, but we will not harm you if there is no resistance. Take 
 but a step towards your guns, and we'll murder you lijje cattle!" 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 37 J 
 
 Not a man stirred. Some of the Confederates seized the mus- 
 kets, some rushed to where the horses were, and in an hour 
 more Rudd, without the firing of a single shot, was hurrying on 
 into Arkansas with two hundred prisoners, two hundred and 
 eleven horses fit for service, seven wagons loaded with valuable 
 supplies, over two hundred cavalry carbines and revolvers, and 
 five ammunition wagons filled with precious ammunition. He 
 was thanked in general orders for his skill and coolness, and 
 sent back into Missouri with important dispatches to several 
 officers who were recruiting in the State. 
 
 Before Gooly Robinson was killed he performed many desper- 
 ate deeds of bravado and valor, but none that surpased the fol- 
 lowing in hardihood or abandonment. A desperate Federal 
 scout, whose soubriquet was Ben McCoulloch, was known to 
 many upon the border as a bold, bad, cruel, relentless man. 
 He killed, burned, stole, plundered, fought, and was not afraid. 
 If he could have found good backing anywhere in the ranks of 
 the militia, he would have made his mark broad and bloody. 
 Single-handed, he did not give back from any man, Guerrilla or 
 Confederate. He dressed in fringed buck-skin, carried four 
 dragoon revolvers, rode a coal black horse, and hunted at the 
 head of fifty Federals. Quantrell had sought for him once or 
 twice, but failed to find him. Todd sent him a challenge once 
 to meet him on a certain day at the head of fifty men, pledging 
 himself to meet him with twenty-five. If McCoulloch received 
 the message, he never replied to it. Indeed, if he knew Todd 
 as Todd really was, it was no disgrace to him that he did not 
 reply. One day, however, this man of the soubriquet this 
 buck-skin Ben McCoulloch went a step too far. Gooly 
 Robinson had a widowed aunt living in Johnson county whose 
 house McCoulloch burnt, whose horses he confiscated, whose 
 cattle he drove off, and whose entire substance he wantonly and 
 wickedly wasted. The bereft woman told the story of her ruin 
 truly to her nephew, and the nephew dressed himself as a 
 Federal soldier, mounted a horse as swift as any other Fed- 
 eral's horse, cleaned a double-barrel shot-gun thorougly, 
 loaded it with buck-shot, buckled on his pistols, and went a 
 man hunting. The second day out he met full in the big 
 road a column of Federal cavalry, and rode boldly up to 
 within twenty yards of it. Ben McCoulloch was at its head, 
 
872 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 gay with fringes and furbelows. One man against fifty alone, 
 unsupported, indifferent to consequences, and reckless to a 
 degree exceptional even for him, Robinson fired both barrels of 
 his gun full into the bosom of McCoulloch, literally tearing his 
 heart out, and killing and wounding five of those who were next 
 to and nearest to him. So daring was the deed, so sudden was 
 the fire, so fatal was the aim, that the savage Guerrilla had 
 turned his horse and was dashing away like the wind ere a 
 single volley was fired after him or a single horseman started in 
 pursuit. Of course he was neither harmed nor overtaken, the 
 strangest thing of all, however, being the fact that McCoulloch's 
 splendid black charger sprang away from the Federal column 
 when its rider fell and rushed furiously after Robinson until it 
 overtook and ranged up alongside of his own horse, keeping 
 pace with him and submitting afterwards to capture and 
 control. 
 
 Oil Shepherd was a young hero who survived the war, and 
 who was killed in Jackson county, in 1868, by a Vigilance 
 Committee. They went one day to his home near Lea's 
 Summit, to capture him for some alleged offence ; but he would 
 not surrender. Shot seven times, he fought to the death. Once 
 he led something almost like a forlorn hope up from Arkansas. 
 It rained on him every day for eight days, and he fought every 
 day for eleven days. Andy Walker was his second in com- 
 mand, one of Quantrell's oldest and best soldiers, and a bosom 
 friend. Probably Walker knew more of Quantrell's secrets 
 than any other Guerrilla along the border. He never talked. 
 He was twice noted, once for his reticence, and once for his 
 deadly skill with the revolver. In battle he neither smiled, 
 shouted, nor spoke. He killed. In camp he neither laughed, 
 sang, nor was boisterous. He watched. On duty he neither 
 sat down nor slept. It might be said of him that he was 
 perpetually in ambush. If one had to fight for a crown with 
 twenty picked men, Walker would have been one of the twenty. 
 En route up from the South, Walker in advance, Shepherd 
 Came one day to a house in Taney county that was more of a 
 cbarnel house than a habitation. Eleven militiamen were about 
 the premises. Down stairs the old man was lying in a pool of 
 blood. Some feet from the back door the old man's son-in law 
 had just died, a great powder- blackened hole above his left eye. 
 
GEORGE SHEPHERD. 
 
 OLL SHEPHERD. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 373 
 
 The old woman was wild with agony, and some little grand- 
 children, scared speechless, had hidden themselves under the 
 bed. Crazed with grief, a daughter, and the wife of the 
 youngest murdered man, had fled to the woods. Shepherd had 
 fifteen men with him, dressed all of them in Federal clothing. 
 As he rode up the militia started to run, but seeing the uniform 
 of the Guerrillas, turned about and came smiling to the fence in 
 front of the house. The Guerrillas dismounted and entered in. 
 They did not need to be told what was meant by the two dead 
 men lying there, the crouching children, the frantic grand- 
 mother, the poor crazed mother shrieking in the woods. As 
 they mingled again with the militia it might have been noticed 
 that eleven Guerrillas stood close to eleven Federals. Shepherd 
 gave the word, and there was a single volley. Not a bullet 
 missed. Eleven men fell as one man. If the earth had opened 
 and swallowed up the victims, the sacrifice could neither have 
 been more crushing nor more instantaneous. As the Guerrillas 
 rode away the dead-house had become to be a sepulchre. 
 
 In Clay county and just arrived he had come safely through 
 fire and tempest, when Oil Shepherd was surrounded at 
 the house of Mrs. Fox, and furiously attacked. Captain 
 Rogers and one hundred militia were after him. He broke out, 
 rode through mud knee deep for ten miles, and fought every 
 step of the way, losing two o his best men, and two brothers 
 at that, Alexander and Arthur Dever. Alexander was only 
 eighteen years of age, but a veteran in every soldierly thing. 
 Arthur had served intrepidly under Bragg and Joe Johnston, 
 and was noted among the Guerrillas for a certain stubbornness 
 in battle that nothing could overcome. Both were buried in the 
 same grave, separated neither in life nor in death. 
 
 At Dover, in Lafayette county, there was a physician who 
 was also a man without fear. He was under the ban because he 
 penetrated the brush in search of wounded Guerrillas and healed 
 them there. Perhaps he also helped to hide them as well. 
 This man Dr. S. T. Meng was a charitable, God fearing, 
 conscientious man, who prayed now and then, who preached 
 occasionally, -who felt to stir within him, as the strife deepened 
 and became more and more savage, something of that fell spirit 
 of Moses when Moses rose up in his wrath and slew the 
 Egyptian. Dr. Meng, however and notwithstanding the provo- 
 
374 NOTED GUEKBILLAS, OS 
 
 cations that he had over and over again to take up his gun and 
 go to the highway healed instead of killing, saved instead of 
 taking life. Federal or Guerrilla, Union man or Secessionist, 
 good man or bad man, if either was in extremity, the calm, 
 patient face peered at him just the same, and the quick, skilled 
 hands did what had to be done for him without homily or 
 upbraiding. One day he was deep in the brush waiting upon a 
 wounded Guerrilla. There came of a sudden the rattling of 
 scabbards, the ringing of horses' fee 1 -, the noisy clamor 
 of contending voices, and the peculiar crashing, swishing soun 1 
 of heavy bodies forcing their way through heavy underbrush. 
 As a turkey-hunter, Dr. Meng had been famous in two States. 
 From the gliding of a chipmunk, or the pattering of a squirrel, 
 or the drumming of a pheasant, or the whirring of a partridge, 
 or the leaping of a buck, he knew all sounds the woods gave 
 birth to, he could name all approaching things without turning 
 his head. He was sitting close to the Guerrilla, who was griev- 
 ously hurt. "They are here," he said to the wounded man, 
 coolly, u and if we are discovered we are dead. Can you lie 
 still and be ridden over without crying out?'* "I can be roasted 
 without crying out. Try me!" Rapidly, yet so quietly and so 
 noiselessly that even the birds in the trees overhead might not 
 have heard him, Dr. Meng cut a whole armfull of bushes, thick 
 with leaves, and covered completely the body of the prostrate 
 man lying at full length upon his blanket and as still as the 
 silence which follows death. Two feet away from him any eyes 
 other than a lynx's eyes must surely have failed to discover this 
 hidden Guerrilla. Then Dr. Meng glided quietly away into 
 the thick undergrowth and was for a moment lost to sight. 
 Abreast in a single line, sixty Federals were scouting through 
 the timber, hunting for some of Poole's men who had been 
 reported as wounded in Lexington and hidden somewhere in the 
 river bluffs close to Dover. If they held on as they were they 
 would surely ride over James Welby, the maimed man lying 
 there, bis left arm shattered almost to the shoulder, and his jaw- 
 bone fractured. James Welby was one of Poole's men, desper- 
 ately wounded in a recent combat, and Dr. Meng, with unfal- 
 tering devotion, had braved proscription, imprisonment, hourly 
 danger, and violent death to save him, if human skill could save 
 him, and restore him cured to his savage leader. The Federals 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 375 
 
 were within ten paces of Welby and still advancing, when a 
 single voice in their rear, loud and high and penetrating, called 
 out to them to turn about. It was Meng's voice, without a 
 quaver or a tremor. Unobserved, he had watched them ride 
 until in his own mind he had concluded that they would 
 undoubtedly ride over his patient, and then to halt them and 
 divert them from their course he came boldly out from behind 
 his cover and risked every thing upon the single chance of a 
 defiant bearing. They did halt and turn about. Meanwhile 
 Meng had mounted his own horse, which had been tied back 
 from where the wounded man was resting, and rode to meet the 
 Federals, a shot-gun crossed before him on the saddle. "What 
 is your business here?" the leader asked, with the air of an 
 educated tyrant crossed upon a born highwayman. "My bus- 
 iness," the doctor blandly replied, "is a very simple business 
 indeed. I came out to kill a few squirrels for a squirrel pie. 
 Any orders against that?" "There are orders against carrying 
 guns and dodging about in the bush." "But I am not dodging 
 about. I saw you and I hailed you. I wanted to tell you that 
 if you were looking for rebel Guerrillas you were looking in the 
 wrong part of the country." "How do you know?" "Because I 
 am a physician, and I ride everywhere." "Aha! And so you 
 are a doctor. You wait on all alike, I reckon ; you give physic 
 to all alike, don't you? You swear by the rebel and you swear 
 by the Federal, I make so bold as to say ; you are indigenous 
 to this soil, you are; you'll do first-rate for a Guerrilla, won't 
 you? Answer quick, lest it is worse for you." Dr. Meng did 
 not even change color. Used to either extreme of fortune and 
 having an abiding faith in the good God, he argued the case. 
 Meanwhile the Federal commander, while he had been talking 
 had also been riding, and before he had finished his tirade he 
 was several hundred yards back from the wounded soldier. 
 Whatever else was to happen, Welby at least was safe. His 
 sturdy old physician had taken the chances of getting himself 
 into trouble that he might make a profitable diversion in favor 
 of his patient. Presently the doctor replied to the officer: 
 "Suppose a gun was to accidentally go off this moment in your 
 column and hurt grievously one of your men. If I did not help 
 him, wait upon him, sa/e him if I could and cure him soundly, 
 would you not make me do it, or at least do my best towards 
 
376 NOTED aUEEMILLAS, OH 
 
 it?" "I would." "If I refused you would shoot me?" "Even 
 so, I would shoot you." "Then as you would do in extremity, 
 so would do the Guerrillas. How standing as I do between 
 the devil and the deep sea how, I say, am I to make fish of 
 one and flesh of the other? Answer me this, for so sure as you 
 are here beside me it has been a proposition that has puzzled me 
 sorely." The Federal officer born robber as he was and cruel 
 was a logical, practical, sensible fellow, not averse to an 
 argument, and not indisposed to logical things. He pondered 
 for a mile and more over what Meng had said to him, and then 
 when the two, still riding together, reached the main road, the 
 Federal going towards Lexington and the doctor towards 
 Dover, the Federal left instead of a benediction an ultimatum : 
 "What you have argued is logical, but not loyal. If in any 
 manner hereafter you give aid and encouragement to the enemy, 
 and if after so doing I ever come to hear of it and to lay hands 
 upon you, I will hang you to the nearest tree, so help me God !" 
 In six days after this savage threat, and while riding at the head 
 of a column on a hunt for Guerrillas south of Wellington, this 
 Lieutenant, Jimison by name, and eight of his troopers were 
 encountered by Todd and slaughtered to a man. 
 
 At other times and after other fights, this proscribed yet sin- 
 gularly devoted physician, went here and there and continually, 
 carrying healing to many grievous hurts and comfort to many a 
 crippled soldier. Twice, at the imminent risk of his own life, 
 he faced the fire of a Federal force to do his duty as a Christian 
 man, and twice when none other would go to the wild beast 
 bleeding in his lair, this physician went with splints, and oint- 
 ments, and food, and raiment and hopeful words from that 
 book which somehow is a blessed book to all when by the 
 bare putting out of the hand waters of the eternal river can be 
 felt cold to the shoulder. 
 
 There was one man in the Trans-Mississippi Department who 
 understood the war thoroughly and perfectly. He was the 
 friend and the correspondent of President Davis. He was the 
 confidant and the adviser of Kirby Smith. He was a scholar, a 
 diplomatist, a statesman, and a soldier. The revolution never 
 deceived him, because he never deceived himself. Events and 
 not enthusiasm impressed themselves upon the placid surface of 
 a mind that was singularly clear, penetrating, exacting, and 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 377 
 
 analytical. He looked upon life as too short for little things. 
 He had a motto paraphrased from the French that nothing suc- 
 ceeded like success. Others had their ideals, their hopes, their 
 fears, their superstitions, their whimsical likes or dislikes, their 
 hours of boisterousness or gloom, their playfulness like a kitten, 
 or their sullenness like an owl, but this man granite in the hour 
 of peril and colossal in the moment of extremity had that 
 grasp of intellect and that fixedness of purpose which, like 
 Loyola, would have plucked out an eye for the cause, or like 
 Curtius, would have leaped, full statured and panoplied, into 
 any gulf that because of the closing through the sacrifice would 
 have saved the South. This man was Governor Thomas C. 
 Reynolds. The Guerrilla fight was a fight repugnant to every 
 idea of civilized war. He condemned it, deplored it, sought to 
 break it up, strove to divert its terrible energies into legitimate 
 channels ; but when it passed beyond his control and began to 
 assume proportions that were as ferocious as they were unex- 
 pected, he saw beneath the black flag an unconquerable spirit of 
 resistance, and in the midst of the fastnesses and the ambus- 
 cades a splendid valor that made Thermopylses, and he calmly 
 weighed these prodigies of Western heroism and as calmly 
 watched the passing of the storm cloud without deploring or 
 condemning its thunderbolts. He stood between the Guerrilla 
 and the native Confederate authorities of the Trans-Mississippi 
 Department. There came times when it was whispered that upon 
 the Guerrilla bands fleeing South for brief shelter and succor, 
 there should be done the work that was done upon the Strelitz, 
 the Jannissaries, and the Mamalukes. Two men stood as two 
 ramparts between the haters and the hated Reynolds and 
 Shelby ; Reynolds because to the inexorable logic of his unob- 
 scured mind the Revolution had need to have its excesses, and 
 Shelby because there was a touch of the tiger in his own compo- 
 sition, and because no living thing that struck and bled for the 
 South should have a hair plucked out even though that thing 
 were a dog as lousy as Lazarus. 
 
 Instantaneous in action, Governor Reynolds was also as im- 
 movable as he was rapid. His processes of thought were so 
 thoroughly perspicuous, and the reach of his analysis so wide 
 and withal so just and penetrating, that what might have come 
 to others as the result of days of mental conflict or discussion, 
 
378 NOTED GUEBIilLLAS, OS 
 
 came to him as intuition comes to genius. He saw at a glance 
 that the border must of necessity have Guerrillas, and that any 
 effort made by the Confederate authorities to extripate them 
 would be an effort little less injurious than the unchecked 
 revolt of an army corps in an army. He believed conscien- 
 tiously that this species of warfare was a grievous injury to the 
 Southern cause ; he believed that it encouraged desertion and 
 called down vengeance upon the innocent and the unprotected ; 
 he believed that isolated fighting, no matter how desperate or 
 unsparing, was a useless sacrifice of priceless material; he 
 believed that the destruction which would inevitably come upon 
 the country made the theatre of savage combats would out- 
 weigh the damage done to those who invaded it ; he believed 
 that campaigns carried on by regular, soldiers were the cam- 
 paigns which decided all appeals to the sword ; he believed that 
 Quantrell should be in the regular army with his men, and Todd, 
 Anderson, Taylor, Blunt, Yager, Thrailkill, Poole, and all the 
 balance of the leaders and demi-leaders ; but when they did not 
 come, and when because of it strange things were whispered 
 and suggested, this courageous statesman, who was also a sol- 
 dier and a patriot, said some few words in his low, sententious, 
 emphatic way which scared the young conspirators about 
 Shreveport into panic and the older ones into common sense. 
 Thereafter there was no more talk of fusillades. Missouri's 
 great war Governor had held out his right hand over the heads 
 of his people, and though there might not have been seen any- 
 where about it the iron, those who had reason to know best of 
 all, kn^w that it was mailed. 
 
 And it was to carry a message from Quantrell to Reynolds that 
 George Maddox made his memorable trip in 1863. Reynolds, 
 in order to understand thoroughly the military condition of 
 Missouri, and to know for special reasons how many militia 
 were on duty in the State, how many Federal troops, what 
 posts were fortified, and what the strength of the posts was, 
 had commissioned Quantrell to ascertain these facts and forward 
 them to him without delay. Quantrell did what he was ordered 
 to do, and did it thoroughly. Ten reports were made of this 
 information, and George Maddox, at the head of nine men, was 
 entrusted with the hazardous duty of conveying said informa- 
 tion to Arkansas. He was to stop for nothing. He was to ride 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 379 
 
 by night as well as by day. If there were no fords he was to 
 swim ; if he could not swim he was to drown. If he had to 
 fight, very well fight ; if he had to run, still very well run ; 
 if he had men wounded, leave them ; if he had men killed, 
 leave them. If he had men crippled leave them. Some 
 one of the ten was to get through as last as human 
 flesh and horse flesh would hold together and go on. 
 These were Quantrell's iron orders, and he chose an iron man 
 to carry them out. George Maddox was all tenacity and 
 endurance. Tried in the fire of fifty desperate combats, he was 
 a fatalist to the extent of believing in fate's good care of him. 
 He did not speculate ; he did not build air castles at night for 
 the mists of the morning to dissipate; if he was an hungered 
 and could not get to eat, he drew his revolver belt a 
 hole or two tighter and forgot that he had an appetite. As he 
 rode he sang, or was glad, or gay. Air and exercise put iron 
 into his blood as wine puts fancies into the brain. When he 
 started southward the night was a summer night, and a waning 
 moon was far and faint in the West a blindfold moon with a 
 black cloud across its face like any veil. 
 
 The country in every direction was swarming with Federals. 
 They were by streams and crossings, at ferries and bridges, in 
 the towns and on the main roads, on scouting expeditions 
 and harrying marches. They were killing everywhere, burning 
 everywhere, destroying everywhere, robbing everywhere, watch- 
 ing everywhere. 
 
 Maddox rode fast the first night and fought at daylight the 
 next morning, losing a man killed, Wilham Strother. The 
 dispatch that Strother bore was taken from his person under 
 fire, together with his pistols, and the nine rode on, hard 
 bestead and forced nine times during the day to turn about and 
 give and take whether or no. Just at nightfall John Coger was 
 wounded. The ball knocked him at first from his horse, but he 
 leaped defiantly to his feet and killed the soldier who shot him, 
 mounting again and riding on apparently unhurt with his com- 
 rades until the darkness deepened. Then his leg began first to 
 burn and throb, next to grow fiery red, and then to stiffen. 
 Evidently this battered old hero would have to fall out by the 
 wayside and return by easy stages and at his leisure. Where 
 some heavy timber grew in the lower portion of Johnson 
 
380 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 county, Maddox left Coger, taking first his dispatch, and giving 
 him in place of it Strotner's trusty revolvers. 
 
 "Watch well behind and before, Coger, old boy,*' said 
 Maddox cheerily in parting, and the eight rode steadily away to 
 the South. 
 
 In Henry county there was another fight, a short, savage, 
 venomous one, wherein the eight Guerrillas charged twenty 
 ambushed Federals and routed them, losing Sam Jessup killed 
 and Newt Majors seriously wounded. Jessup was let remain 
 where he fell, and Majors, carried carefully along to the edge 
 of St. Clair, was deposited at the house of a well known 
 Southern man deep in some timber. Two days afterwards 
 Majors was surrounded and killed, killing, however, even as he 
 died. But neither on the body of Jessup, nor yet on that of 
 Majors, was anything found that told of name, or band, or 
 flag, or mission. These dead men surely told no tales ! 
 
 In St. Clair, and close to where it abuts upon Cedar, the 
 besetments of a night ambuscade added its terrors to the 
 fatigues of the long day's march, and here before the hidden 
 hornets had done stinging, Sim Whitsett was shot past riding 
 further than to find a place of safety. Whitsett was all nerve, 
 and dash, and rugged endurance, but he was human. He 
 closed his lips tightly, and gripped his horse with his knees, 
 and managed to make five miles painfully before he found a 
 sure asylum ; but the five could not tarry. Maddox took his 
 comrade's precious dispatch, blessed him, and bade him 
 goodbye a parting that might for want of a better simile be 
 likened to the parting of sledge-hammer and anvil. 
 
 Cedar county, that Valley of the Shadow of Death for isolated 
 or belated Confederate travelers, was circumvented with a 
 balance left largely to the Guerrilla side. Secure in a security 
 that had scarcely known a stir or a ripple of excitement for a 
 year, Maddox caught nine unwary pillagers and left them past 
 seeing or feeling. The last one to be killed was a preacher who 
 blasphemed beyond all endurance and died cursing God and the 
 devil. As a vengeance, or maybe as a punishment for not mow- 
 ing a wider swathe through Cedar county, Maddox lost one man, 
 Patrick Nagle, killed in Dade, and another, Silas Woodruff, 
 killed in Lawrence. There were but three left three guant, 
 grim, silent, desperate men worn from hard riding, much 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 381 
 
 starving, scant sleep, and continual fighting. In Barry county, 
 Henry Hockensmith undaunted and unflagging, as he pressed 
 forward with his stern, set face far towards Arkansas, was shot 
 from a roadside hollow and severely wounded. The ball did not 
 even sway him in the saddle. Solid as a young oak, built like 
 a grizzly bear for depth of chest and weight of muscle, cool as 
 a grenadier, schooled by Quantrell, drilled by George Todd, 
 and graduated from a school that knew no peril that would not 
 flee if faced and no bloody ground that would not give up its 
 ogres if penetrated, he rode on for twenty-two miles further 
 with a ball in his shoulder, and into a safe place in Arkansas. 
 Five days afterwards George Maddox and one other comrade, 
 the indomitable Press Webb, dismounted at Reynolds' tent 
 door travel-stained, hollow eyed, bronzed brown as Indians, 
 but triumphant. On the exhaustive information thus sent and 
 received, and on similar information similiarly sent in 1864 was 
 the Price Expedition conceived and inaugurated. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE DEATH OF QUANTRELL. 
 
 OiUFFERING more or less from old wounds, and to a consid- 
 ^_} erable degree from a tenacious sickness, QuantrelPs com- 
 parative quietude after the Lawrence expedition was simply the 
 quietude of a man who desired above all other things to get 
 well. At times he could scarcely ride. Once or twice he 
 dragged himself with difficulty from one hiding-place to another. 
 But for the devotion of a small body-guard not at any time 
 larger than twenty picked men he must have fallen into the 
 hands of the enemy. Those who composed this, however, 
 watched over him day and night, scouted for him while he rest- 
 ed, stood guard for him while he slept, secured for him under 
 every adverse circumstance the most skillful of medical attend- 
 ance ; and finally and as a reward saw the slow fever that was 
 not all a fever broken up and banished saw the color come back 
 to the cheeks of their Chieftain, the light to his eyes, the 
 elasticity to his figure and finally and forever saw him mount 
 his horse for the last time in Missouri and ride away from the 
 State forever. 
 
 Quantrell believed, after Price had retreated southward from 
 Westport, baffled and broken up, that the end of the regular 
 war was near at hand. His idea at this time was to change his 
 theatre of operations, and transfer from the West to the East 
 that terrible kind of resistance to subjugation which had 
 already made the border a desert inhabited only by graves. He 
 was clearly of the opinion that to the warfare of the regular 
 Confederate government there would succeed the warfare of the 
 Guerrilla. He was anxious to reach Maryland, and to operate 
 from this State into Pennsylvania. As a nucleus for a larger 
 organization after he should have reached his eastern point of 
 hostilities, he deemed it absolutely necessary to secure the ser- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 383 
 
 vices of as many of his old soldiers as possible, and with this view 
 sent John Barker and James Little, on the 20th of November, 
 1864, to notify the command to meet him at Mrs. Wigginton's on 
 the 4th of the following month. Mrs. "Wigginton lived five miles 
 west of Waverly, Lafayette county, and was a refugee from 
 Jackson, whose husband had been killed, whose property had 
 been destroyed, and whose sons had been fighting the long, 
 merciless fight of the four years' war. 
 
 The word for the rendezvous was sped swiftly. Frank James 
 gathered up Donnie and Bud Pence, Oil Shepherd and George 
 Robinson, and made haste to cross into Jackson. En route to 
 the river, and while at the house of Captain Smith, Frank James 
 found a Federal in Smith's stable. He ordered him to come 
 out speedily, and the Federal fired at James, the ball cutting 
 through his overcoat, uniform coat, vest, and shirt. It burnt 
 the skin sharply, but it did not draw blood, and James putting 
 his pistol through a crack in the stable killed the soldier before 
 he succeeded in getting in a second bullet. Occupying the 
 house also was a detachment of militia numbering thirty-two, 
 which opened up a lively fusillade and drove the Guerrillas away 
 from their range after a sharp volley or two. Captain Smith 
 was badly wounded and his son killed, together with three 
 others of the command. 
 
 On the 4th of December forty-seven men were at the Wig^- 
 ginton rendezvous, and Quantrell ranged them in line for a final 
 understanding. The most of the faces that were turned fair 
 towards him as he stood in front of the line, were familiar faces, 
 and scarred and bronzed. He saw Peyton Long there, and Will 
 and Henry Noland, John Barker, Chat Renick, Ben Morrow, 
 Rufas and Babe Hudspeth, John Coger, Oil Shepherd, Frank 
 James, William Hulse, and many others of the tried and true. 
 QuantrelFs talk to them was brief. "I have called you 
 together," he said, u that I might say to you what I have not 
 yet said to myself, and ask of you to my proposition the simple 
 answer yes or no. This side the Mississippi river the war ended 
 with the abandonment of Missouri by General Price. All the 
 West is overrun with Federal soldiers. No food, no forage, no 
 horses, no houses, no hiding-places, no traffic any more with the 
 posts if we operate longer along the Kansas border we operate 
 at a disadvantage altogether disproportionate to our means. 
 
384 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 My intention is to cross east of the Mississippi ri\er, pass 
 through Illinois and Ohio as a Federal scout, gain Maryland, 
 and carry into the heart of Pennsylvania the torch and the black 
 flag. If I live I mean that they shall feel in the East what we 
 have felt in the West. How many will follow me to the end r" 
 
 As one man those stern, scarred Guerrillas shouted, "All!" 
 
 "Many may never come back," continued Quantrell, " and 
 it may be my lot to fall among the first ; but those who do not 
 mean to die if the need come ever in the future for them to die, 
 can ride now two paces to the front. They shall lose nothing 
 in name, or fame, or comradeship." 
 
 Not a spur stroke fell up a horse's flank, not a left hand lifted 
 a bridle. From right to left the rear rank and front rank were 
 adamant. At noon they marched the most of them into the 
 unknown. 
 
 The ice in the Missouri river ran heavily, too heavily indeed 
 for any patch-work boats launched hurriedly, or any frail craft 
 stumbled upon unawares to live in it. Quantrell, waiting four 
 days at Saline City for either a sudden breaking up of the 
 extreme cold or a solid gorge fit for crossing, saw neither come 
 nor like to come. On the morning of the fifth day he changed 
 his course from east to south, abandoned the intention of march- 
 ing through Illinois and Ohio, and chose Kentucky as the next 
 best route for a march into Maryland. 
 
 Getting well over the Larnine river, he left Union Church upon 
 his left, crossed the Missouri Pacific Railroad eight) miles 
 west of Tipton, and marched southeast boldly between Cole 
 Camp and Florence. Each man, clothed perfectly in Federal 
 uniform, met Federals hourly, talked with them, moved with 
 them, mixed with them, ate and slept with them, and every now 
 and then shot numbers of them to death. Of course this kill- 
 ing was done quietly, and in lonesome and sudden places. If 
 any hue and cry were raised over bodies found mysteriously 
 and shot most generally in the head, the echoes thereof did not 
 reach up to Quantrell hurrying on to find a crossing somewhere 
 and put between him speedily and the gathering storm behind 
 him the broad Mississippi. 
 
 At a camp twelve miles from Tuscumbia, Miller county, 
 Quantrell had information brought to him that this place was 
 held by a garrison of fifty militia. He asked his men how many 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 385 
 
 among them thought they could ride boldly into Tusoumbia, as 
 Federals, talk as Federals, act as Federals, and finally ride out 
 again just as Federal soldiers would ride out from among their own 
 comrades. Every Guerrilla imagined himself equal to the task, and 
 when within a mile of the town Quantrell ordered Frank James 
 and Peyton Long to ride some fifty paces in advance, continue 
 directly to the headquarters of the commandant, and notice 
 whatever seemed to be suspicious, and report it instantly. He 
 did not know what stories might have preceded him, and most 
 certainly did he not intend to march blindfold into a trap, and 
 be dealt with afterwards leisurely and with effectiveness. 
 
 The two scouts, however, saw nothing that indicated even a 
 faint supposition that the assumed Federals were aught but 
 Federals in reality. The greeting was hearty, the welcome 
 warm, and the commingling old-fashioned and sincere. As 
 Quantrell rode up he asked for the ranking officer of the 
 post, and a Major came to the front door of the house where 
 his headquarters had been established. The two saluted, and 
 the Federal asked of the Guerrilla the name of the corn- 
 command to which he belonged. Quantrell promptly responded : 
 "Company E., Second Colorado Cavalry." "And your name, 
 Captain?" "Charles W. Moses." "Can I serve you in any 
 manner?" the Major continued. "Yes," replied Quantrell. 
 "Some food and forage will be very acceptable indeed. We 
 have ridden far and fast, and have still great need to make 
 haste. I have a special mission to pertorm under special 
 orders." 
 
 The Guerrillas dismounted coolly after this little dialogue, 
 and went to and fro about the town. At first the novelty of the 
 adventure and the peril of the situation, kept every man to his 
 duty. By and by, however, familiarity began to break down 
 the barriers circumspection had erected. The hands of some of 
 the more desperate among the band could scarcely be kept from 
 the throats of the miiitia. Here and there little quarrels began 
 to make headway, and ugly though furtive looks were beginning 
 to be cast at the freest and the mosi, outspoken ones of the gar- 
 rison. Quantrell formed his resolution instantly. Calling 
 about him John Ross, John Coger, Frank James, Peyton, 
 Long, Rufus Hudspeth, Babe Hudspeth, Ben Morrow, 
 and five or six others he bade them inform the balance quietly 
 25 
 
386 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 that it was his intention to disarm the militia. As a torch that 
 passes along a line of ready gaslights, this word went from 
 Guerrilla to Guerrilla almost instantly. Then Quantrell turned 
 sternly to the Major commanding, and ordered him to surrender 
 every musket and pistol belonging to the garrison. Surprised 
 but wholly powerless for each Guerrilla with a drawn revolver 
 in his hand stood covering a militiaman the Major yielded 
 with the best grace imaginable and extended his own sword. 
 Quantrell gave it back to him. "I do not want your sword," he 
 said, as he pushed it towards him, "but my duties are 
 imperative. You have permitted your soldiers to steal with 
 impunity, to rob the citizens right and left, to occasionally kill 
 some so-called Southern resident who may have become obnox- 
 ious to this or that personal enemy ; and because of all these 
 things, and in pursuance of direct and positive orders, I have 
 disarmed you." Not a word in remonstrance did any man or 
 officer put up. Probably a guilty conscience made of each a 
 coward ; probably none suspected Quantrell of being other than 
 what he represented himself as being. One of the garrison a 
 private broke away from, his captors and refused to halt when 
 he was cried out to. Twenty pistols clicked and were covering 
 him in a moment. Quantrell knocked them up. "No shooting 
 here!" he shouted fiercely; "not a single drop of blood. Take 
 him, some of you, but take him alive." Swift as runners, and 
 agile as antelope, John Ross and Dick Burnes separated them- 
 selves from the press and dashed after the ungovernable militia- 
 man. Even when overtaken and grappled with, he fought 
 furiously, yielding only after he had been thrown npon the 
 ground, sat upon and choked into submission. For the stub- 
 bornness of his resistance he gave stealing as a reason. He had 
 heard the conversation between Quantrell and the commanding 
 officer, and he supposed that for his numerous larcenies, both 
 pettit and grand, the reckoning at last was near at hand. Quan- 
 trell broke the guns to pieces, appropriated the pistols, bade the 
 Major commanding report at Holla under arrest, and marched 
 away South followed by the subdued curses of the disarmed and 
 discomfited militia, but not their suspicions. To all intents and 
 purposes he was still Capt. Charles W. Moses, Company E., 2d 
 Colorado Cavalry. 
 The role of the Federal special scout was renewed again. 
 
THE Y'AEFAEE OF THE BOEDEE 387 
 
 Union citizens were to remain unmolested. Union soldiers were 
 not to be killed only in instances where concealment was 
 absolute. Nothing of interference was permitted with indi- 
 vidual property. Decorous, in short, and velvet-pawed, these 
 lions of the border were neither to roar nor leave anywhere the 
 marks of claws or jaws. The old lust of conquest, however, 
 so far overcame John Coger one day that he laid violent hands 
 upon a militiaman, who rode a fine horse and carried buckled 
 about him four elegant navies. Quantrell remonstrated sternly 
 with his soldier and a better one no army ever had but Coger 
 disarmed his anger by pleadingly proclaiming : "Captain, the 
 temptation was so strong that I weakened. Tliar ar the pistols, 
 just bran new. and bully. If a white man had the handling of 
 them, the confidence he mought put into them would neither be 
 denied nor disappointed. As they ar, and left as I found them, 
 and they'll never kill a more dangerous thing, "by g d, than a 
 gra} r beard or a woman. I sot store by them for the good I 
 thought mought be got out of them ; but if it's agin orders, 
 give them back to the skulker who couldn't hit a barn door the 
 length of a hoop-pole." Quantrell did not laugh, neither did 
 he restore to the trooper his revolvers. In fact, and at night- 
 fall, in addition to the pistols, the militiaman lost both his horse 
 and his life. Shot dead and cast into a stream of running 
 water, when found afterwards he could not be recognized 
 because of his disfigurement. 
 
 Riding boldly past Rolla, openly and unquestioned, the 
 four thousand Federal cavalry there never even so much as 
 looked towards their horses as the Guerrillas hurried by. At 
 Salem, in Dent county, there was a regiment whose picquets 
 gave and returned the compliments of the day, and at King's 
 Mountain Qauntrell dined with a Federal Colonel named 
 McWilliams, commanding four hundred men. Near Thomas- 
 ville the Guerrillas crossed into Arkansas, hurried forward to 
 Pocahontas, fraternized with a garrison there of eighty Illinois 
 infantry, an<t remained in the town several days to refit and 
 recruit. Here Joseph and John Hall were left, the former sick 
 of virulent small-pox, and the later being detailed to wait 
 upon him. Joseph recovered and was killed; John avenged 
 his brother thoroughly and survived the war. 
 
 Mr. Charles Morrison lived upon the south bank of the Mis- 
 
388 NOTED aUEEKlLLAS, QE 
 
 sissippi river, eighteen miles above Memphis. In the secret 
 service of the Confederate government, and operating with two 
 score or more of scouts with great vigor and perspicacity, was 
 Major Morrison Boswell. At times his headquarters were at 
 Morrison's house, while all the country round about was 
 embraced in the scope of his operations and gave up its military 
 secrets to his untiring quest. Past forty ; pulling the beam at 
 two hundred and fifty pounds if pulling it a pound; always 
 laughing ; at peace with mankind and ardent to please as a 
 preacher who preaches upon a circuit; the best judge of horse- 
 flesh in the Trans-Mississippi Department ; something of a phy- 
 sician, and much of a botanist ; patient with children ; a little 
 of a priest and a good deal of a confessor ; powerful in prayer 
 and unctuous among class leaders ; sleepless, omnipresent, 
 brave, unexceptionable as a scout and inexorable at the court- 
 martial, Major Boswell, a Nemesis as it were in a cane-brake t 
 kept watch and ward upon the river, strangling the cotton 
 thieves who to corrupt the soldiery would sometimes venture far 
 inland, and putting to a swift and voiceless death every 
 unmasked and accredited spy who presumed upon the license of 
 the border to penetrate the lines. There was no parade. 
 Ostentation did not belong to this rubicund Colossus, patting a 
 child's curly head while signing a death warrant. Among the 
 weeds there may have been a rustle, and afterwards a volley ; 
 but never a noise as of the beseeching of men or the crying out 
 of executioners. 
 
 Of course Major Boswell who had almost everything else 
 had also a boat. Boats at that time, however, were as precious 
 as a gold mine. What between the ironclads proper and the 
 marine fleet, the regular dry land soldiers and those other fellows 
 who were amphibious, the Confederates had scarcely left to 
 them a flat-boat, skiff, canoe, dug-out, raft, four planks one 
 upon another or aught of anything in fact that would float, or 
 swim, or hold safe from wind and water a single courier carrying 
 a single carbine. 
 
 Major Bos well's boat was stowed away in a cane-brake. 
 When it was needed it was hauled up out of the mud and carried 
 on men's shoulders a mile to the Mississippi. Quantrell needed 
 it badly, and Major Boswell placed it quickly at his service. 
 Frank James steered, and the horses were forced to swim. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 389 
 
 Above, the black smoke of an anchored ironclad floated up from 
 the heavy timber that cut the sky-line and trailed sable garments 
 along the tallest cottonwoods as a presage of discovery. Below, 
 the noise of escaping steam sounded as though a fleet were 
 crouching there. On the thither bank cavalry patrols had passed 
 in numbers but an hour before. Danger was everywhere ; the 
 water was in arms against the Guerrillas equally with the land. 
 " Steer boldly!" Quantrell gave no other order. The men 
 buckled tight about them their revolver-belts and manned the 
 boat. In an hour all were over, neither accident nor discovery 
 complicating in any degree an already desperate situation. 
 
 When everything was over and well over, and when the line 
 of march was just about to be resumed into the interior, Oil 
 Shepherd, Robert, Rufus, and Babe Hudspeth, and John Coger 
 took leave of Quantrell. They had no need to go further. 
 They had seen him safely reach to within the confines of a 
 territory where at least there might be found comparative 
 succor and shelter. While there was danger, or anything 
 even that suggested danger, they had pressed closer and 
 closer about their Chieftain. Now there was a material lifting 
 of the load of anxiety and doubt, and they stood fully acquit 
 of any further service in the direction of Kentucky. Some 
 wept as these men said good-bye, and Quantrell was sensibly 
 affected. They never met again ! 
 
 On the first day of January, 1865, the Guerrillas marched 
 northeast from the Mississippi river, and reached Brownsville, 
 Tennessee, after being ambushed and fired upon several times 
 by scouts from Forrest's command, who mistook them for Fed- 
 eral cavalry. From Brownsville to Paris, in Henry county, the 
 journey because of its safety and freedom from restraint was 
 one of real relaxation, but at Paris the Confederate commander 
 of the post required that Quantrell should report to him for 
 duty and sought to detain him. Quantrell remonstrated with 
 the officer without at first disclosing his intentions or revealing 
 his identity. Later on he told him the whole story and urged 
 the necessity of an immediate advance. The Confederate 
 laughed at his assumption of the name of Quantrell, and 
 refused him positively the permission to go forward. Quantrell 
 cut the knot that he could not untie. Causing his men to 
 mount and form instantly, he bade the Lieutenant commanding 
 
390 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 the post to do the best or the worst that he could, and rode 
 boldly out from the town, crossing the Tennessee river at Birm- 
 ingham uupursued and unmolested. At Canton, on the Cumber- 
 land, Quantrell always more or less of a fatalist had what he 
 called a "premonition of bad luck." "Old Charlie" was the 
 name of his favorite war-horse. He was noted along the border 
 not so much for great speed as for great bottom. He never 
 tired. Under fire no oak tree was steadier. Where the white 
 spots were on his g'ossy hide, the bullets had scarred him. 
 Trained to either extreme of fortune, he knew how to neigh his 
 exultation in victory or hold his breath hard when the crisis of 
 an ambuscade was about to culminate. Safely through many a 
 forlorn and stubborn fight had he borne his master, and never 
 once in all his inexorable years of service had his proud spirit 
 needed a whip lash or his laboring flanks a spur stroke. Quan- 
 trell loved his horse. 
 
 Well over the Cumberland river, and seeking to strip the 
 command to the waist as it were for fighting, Quantrell saw at a 
 glance the necessity of having Old Charlie shod. In attempt- 
 ing to do it the horse struggled an unusual thing for him and 
 Robert Hall, the blacksmith, accidentally cut the main tendon of 
 his right hind leg with the buttress, ruining him forever. "It 
 is fate," said Quantrell, when the calamity wa- reported to him, 
 "and now for me the long lane of a successful career is about 
 to have a turn. So be it." 
 
 John Ross presented Quantrell instantly with his own horse, a 
 splendid Missouri animal, inured to service and hardened by 
 much exercise and marching, and Quantrell took the road that 
 led to his destiny. He had now assumed the name of Captain 
 James Clark. Capt. Clark was once an officer of the 2d Colorado 
 Cavalry and had been killed by Quantrell in 1863. Dispossess- 
 ing the dead man of his uniform and preserving it carefully 
 against a time like this when the need for it would be great, he 
 put it on the day the march was resumed from Canton. In 
 height, size, features, and general appearance Clark had been 
 singularly like Quantrell; but as none in Kentucky probably 
 knew Clark, the only advantage his personation possessed was 
 the advantage of a more than usually agreeable fit of coat and 
 pantaloons. 
 
 Through Cadiz, in Trigg county, and on towards Hopkins- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 391 
 
 ville, the Guerrillas rode boldly, Federals soldiers in everything 
 in walk, talk, dress, circumspection, bearing, declaration, and 
 decorous behavior. General I^on, a Confederate officer of 
 great dash, enterprise and courage had but recently been well 
 up into Kentucky on a raid, and from the pursuit of him and 
 his gallant followers many Federal cavalry detachments were 
 returning. Why not Quantrell among the rest? 
 
 Near unto Hopkinsville the Guerrillas struck the trail of thirty 
 Federals and followed it with alacrity. They desired much 
 some fresh horses, and to obtain them they would even risk the 
 breaking up of a disguise which was and had been working in 
 a most satisfactory manner. The Federal cavalry out rode their 
 pursuers, and it was supper time before a portion of them were 
 overtaken at a house and brought to terms. Quantrell 
 attempted to keep up the Federal imposition, but when the coun- 
 tersign was demanded he could not give it. As a result those in 
 the house fired a volley which broke the right thigh of Lieutenant 
 James Little, and caused the balance of the Guerrillas to dis- 
 mount speedily and surround the dwelling. Those within side 
 held on well, and Quantrell, to save his own men as much as 
 possible, called for volunteers to fire the building. Chat 
 Renick, Peyton Long, William Hulse, Frank James, and Andy 
 McGuire sprang forward to do his bidding, covered by the 
 carbines of their watchful comrades. The flames, however, 
 had not made much headway when there was a surrender, and 
 three cavalrymen crept out through a door, carrying each a 
 Spencer rifle. "Where are the balance?" Quantrell sternly 
 demanded. " There are but three of us," was the reply, kk ln 
 the stable I have counted twelve horses; that ^ould be four 
 horses for each of you; not thus do cavalrymen ride in the 
 country I came from." " There were nine others with us when 
 you came up men whom we thought were soldiers, but when 
 they saw you dismount they disappeared afoot. By this time, 
 perhaps, they are safe in Hopkinsville." 
 
 It was simple truth, the story they told, and Quantrell 
 admitted that for the first time in his life his. command had been 
 brought to bay and held some little time in that defensive atti- 
 tude by three resolute Kentuckians. He went no further that 
 night, nor did he deem it best to advance upon Hopkinsville and 
 attempt to get horses there from the balance of a detachment 
 
392 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 whose intrepidity he eould well understand and appreciate. 
 
 At daylight the next morning he bade James Little goodbye 
 forever. Mortally wounded, the young Guerrilla lingered for a 
 few days at the house where he had been so grievously hurt, and 
 died as he had lived, a soldier who never knew fear. Little was 
 one among the original number who composed Quan troll's first 
 insignificant baud. He had participated equally with his chief 
 in the gloom or the glory of every combat. Things changed 
 all about him, and men, and measures. He kept right onward 
 towards where he believed the goal to be. He did not expect 
 to survive the war, and he was not disappointed. None were 
 braver than he, none truer to word or comrade, none more 
 pervious to human mercy or affection, none that fought a 
 nobler fight or died a calmer, happier death. He loved the 
 South as a lover does a mistress, and he gave all that he 
 possessed on earth for her his life. 
 
 Quantrell passed directly through Greenville, in Muhlenburg 
 county, garrisoned heavily by Federals. As Capt. Clark, he 
 succeeded admirably in allaying all suspicion, if, indeed, any 
 suspicion at that time had been aroused. At Hartford, in Ohio 
 county, Quantrell so far varied the monotony of disguise as to 
 eschew the Colorado part of it for the Tennessee counterfeit. 
 To the commander in Hartford he was Capt. Jasper W. Ben- 
 edict, of A. J. Smith's corps, then stationed at Memphis. His 
 company was a picked company, and had been sent into Ken- 
 tucky especially to hunt Guerrillas and exterminate them. Did 
 any Federal thereabouts know aught of Guerrilla ways or 
 people? It would give Capt. Benedict great pleasure to have 
 pointed out to him any bands in the neighborhood that needed 
 breaking up. Captain Barnette, a Federal officer at the post 
 there, thought he knew of several cases where a little killing 
 would clear up the military atmosphere amazingly, and so 
 solicited and obtained permission from Capt. Benedict to 
 accompany him upon the hunt. Barnette, between his own men 
 and the men who were eager to volunteer for any service that 
 promised plunder, brought to swell Quantrell's ranks thirty 
 finely armed and mounted Federals, thoroughly equipped and 
 thoroughly demonstrative. 
 
 As Quantrell rode out in an easterly direction from Hartford 
 there was on his face the same bad look that many of his men 
 
THE WAS FAKE OF THE BOEDER 
 
 had noticed the morning .the Lawrence massacre began. He 
 was polite enough to Capt. Barnette, and listened attentively 
 enough to his garrulous talk of rebel comings and goings ; but 
 he did it all with the air of a man who was not thinking of the 
 present, or who was revolving in his mind the pros and cons of 
 a deed that he had not yet gained the consent of his conscience 
 to commit. Finally he ceased talking altogether to Barnette, 
 and called to his side Frank James, Burnes, Glasscock and 
 William Hulse. Between them there was some earnest col- 
 loquy. When they separated Barnette had begun to be commu- 
 nicative again, and to point out with a volubility eminently in 
 keeping with the patriotism of a militiaman, the substance that 
 belonged to the Southern people living along the road that 
 should be wasted, the flocks and herds that should be confis- 
 cated, and the houses given over to pillage and the flames. 
 While he was talking, however, and while the march was going 
 on so placidly and so peacefully through the sparkling winter 
 weather, one by one the Guerrillas were devouring the militia- 
 men. Not a gun was fired, not a pistol-shot awoke an echo in 
 the air. At every quarter of a mile there was a corpse, maybe 
 two. Through this pretense or that, and because of a solicita- 
 tion here or a special pointing out yonder, Federal soldier 
 after Federal soldier dropped back to the rear to lay hold of 
 some rebel's property or beat up the hiding-places about his 
 premises. Not one returned again to the marching column. 
 Four Guerrillas, always by each soldier's side with a rope, hung 
 him in some lonesome place and left him there, stark and stiff, 
 in the freezing weather. The last man to execute thus of the 
 detachment of thirty was a singularly tall and angular man. 
 Something grotesque about his figure, perhaps, awoke the 
 badinage of the Guerrillas detailed to hang him, and they 
 upbraided him savagely for being a bushwhacker. "You came 
 to us ostensibly as a Union soldier,'' they sneered, "and here 
 you are as full of rebel venom as a Northern Copperhead of the 
 Vallandingham stripe. You can't fool this crowd, however. 
 We know your kind, and we hang them. String him up, boys!" 
 Protesting his innocence to the last the uncouth victim gave in 
 extremity, and as a crowning argument of the faith that was in 
 him, the fact that he had voted for Abraham Lincoln. As 
 Glas cock, the executioner, rode away and turned to take a 
 
394 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 last look at his victim swinging to and fro in the afternoon's 
 sun, he said sententiously to William Hulse: "At first I took 
 his height to be about six feet; now it appears to me to be 
 eight. Do people grow when they die?" 
 
 From the rear of the column that ferocious Nemesis which all 
 the day had been pursuing its voiceless yet vindictive work, 
 was about to be transferred to the front. Capt. Barnette was 
 there, riding knee to knee with Quantrell. Thrice he had said : 
 "I do not see my men ; what has become of my men?" "They 
 are scouting behind us," was Quantrell's quiet reply, "and if 
 anything happens you will hear of it. Do not be uneasy." 
 Later on, and when the sun was about two hours high, Barnette 
 spoke up again: "I see the most of your men, Capt. Clark, 
 but I do not see any of mine. Can it be that they have 
 returned?" "Of course not, Capt. Barnette. Are you not in 
 command of them?" He had been in command of them, but 
 the last of the thirty had just been hung twenty minutes before 
 the end of the dialogue. 
 
 Quantrell left the front at this time, and Eichard Glasscock 
 rode up to the left side of Barnette. As Quantrell rode down 
 the column his quick eyes ran along the ranks quickly of his 
 own men and saw that not a single Federal soldier marched 
 with the files of the Guerrillas; then his brow lifted. He even 
 laughed as he called Frank James to him and whispered briefly 
 in his ear, and apart from the rest. Frank James spurred at 
 once to the front. 
 
 The sun had set, red and threatening, and in the distance the 
 night was coming on apace. It was not far to a stream of run- 
 ning water, on the banks of which timber abounded. Barnette's 
 surname was Frank and James' was the same. The signal 
 agreed upon was a simple signal. James was to fall in with the 
 file immediately behind Glasseock and Barnette, and Quantrell 
 was to take his place two files behind James. At the appointed 
 time Quantrell, calling out sharply the single word "Frank," 
 was to convey thus to his subordinate the order to shoot the 
 Federal Captain. At the creek the crossing had on either shore 
 precipitous banks, and when the bed of the stream was reached 
 the twilight, made more dense by the trees, darkened the space 
 between the banks perceptibly. A dozen files, reining up to 
 drink, filled all the space at the crossing, and looked as a huge 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 395 
 
 wedge driven in there and fastened as if to keep the two banks 
 asunder. . For deft hands at killing, and for wary eyes quick at 
 seeing pistol sights, there was still enough light left to give the 
 finishing touches to the last of a detachment of thirty. 
 
 "Frank!" It was Quantrell's voice that the column heard 
 questioning, penetrating, emphatic. Barnette, imagining his 
 own name to have been called, turned once fairly in his saddle 
 and looked down along to the rear with an attentive face clearly 
 unsuspecting. As he did so the muzzle of James' huge dragoon 
 pistol almost touched his forehead. He neither had time to 
 speak nor to cry out. A single shot all the more ringing 
 because so unexpected stirred the night air just a little, and a 
 cold, suggestive splash in the water summed up for the nearest 
 Guerrillas the meaning of the tragedy. Quantrell scarce iy 
 lifted his eyes. Glasscock looked back at James reproachfully 
 and spoke to him as if upbraiding: "As I rode with him it was 
 my right to kill him. You shoot well, comrade, but you shoot 
 out of your turn." "Hush!" answered the executioner; "it 
 was the order of Quantrell.'* In an hour this episode one of 
 a thousand such was as old as the leaves of the summer 
 maples. 
 
 Tne Guerrillas camped that night only a few miles further to 
 the east, and as they returned the next morning past the cross- 
 ing and on towards Litchfield, in Grayson county, Captain Bar- 
 nette was lying, face upward, where he had fallen. During the 
 night the freezing water had formed for the wan, drawn features 
 a spotless frame-work of ice. The eyes looked up from this, 
 wide open and appealing, while the frost as if to banish the 
 ominous splotch from the perfect repose of the rigid picture 
 had spread above the huge round wound in the centre of the 
 forehead a white veil, fringed and scintillant in the morning sun. 
 As Frank James rode quietly by and looked his last on the evi- 
 dence of a handiwork he had labored for years to make perfect, 
 he remarked to Hulse: "Whether just or unjust, this thing 
 called war kills all alike in the end. To-day a Federal, to- 
 morrow a Confederate at any time a Guerrilla. Whose turn 
 will it be next?" "What matters it," replied his comrade, 
 "if the iinal mustering-out is near at hand for all of us? As 
 for me, 1 am ready." 
 
 The final mustering-out was near at hand for many of 
 
396 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 At Upton's Station, in Hart county, Quantrell crossed the 
 Louisiana and Nashville Railroad, still representing himself and 
 his men as Federal soldiers. Near Marion county he entered 
 the Lebanon and Campbellville turnpike at Rolling Fork and 
 traveled north to New Market, thence east to Bradford, and 
 from Bradford towards Hustonville, camping for the night pre- 
 ceding the entrance into this place at Major Dray's, on Rolling 
 Fork. Thirty Federal soldiers were in garrison at Hustonville, 
 possessed of as mary horses in splendid condition, and these 
 Quantrell determined to appropriate. No opposition was made 
 to his entrance into the town. None imagined him to be other 
 than a Union officer on a scout. He dismounted quietly at a 
 hotel in the place and entered at once into a pleasant conversa- 
 tion with the commander of the post. Authorized by their Chief- 
 tain, however, to remount themselves as speedily and as thor- 
 oughly as possible, the Guerrillas spread quickly over the town 
 in a search for horses, appropriating first what could be found 
 at the public stables and later on those that were still needed to 
 supply the deficiency from the private places. 
 
 As Quantrell conversed with the commander, a Federal private 
 made haste to inform him of the kind of work the new comers 
 were doing, and to complain loudly of the unwarranted and 
 outrageous appropriation. Enraged and excited, the com-, 
 mander snatched up a brace of revolvers as he left his head- 
 quarters, and buckled them about him as he hurried to the 
 nearest livery-stable where the best among the animals of his 
 men had been kept. Just as he arrived, Allen Farmer was 
 riding out, mounted on a splendid horse. The Federal Major 
 laid hands upon the bridle, and bade Farmer dismount. It was 
 as the grappling of a wave with a rock. No Guerrilla in the ser- 
 vice of the South was cooler or deadlier ; none less pervious to 
 the influences and emotions of physical fear. He looked at the 
 Federal Major a little curiously when he first barred the passage- 
 way of his horse, and even smiled pleasantly as he took the 
 trouble to explain to him the nature of the instructions under 
 which he was operating. "D n you and d n your instruc- 
 tructions," the Major fiercely shouted. "Dismount!" "Ah!" 
 ejaculated Farmer, "has it really come to this?" and then the 
 two men began to draw. Unquestionably there could be but 
 one result. The right hand of the Federal Major had scarcely 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 397 
 
 reached the flap of his revolver, before Farmer's pistol was 
 against his forehead, and Farmer's ballet had torn half the top 
 of his head off. He fell prone under the horse's feet, with many 
 of his own men gathering about him. A dozen muskets covered 
 Farmer. "Hold h^rd! Hold for your lives!" shouted Quan- 
 tivll, rushing down to the rescue, followed by twenty Guerrillas, 
 "for if so be it that one of you fires a gun in anger I swear by the 
 God above us all to murder you in mass!" The terrible look 
 that came from the flashing eyes of this quiet tiger suddenly 
 aroused, the pale face that had absolutely become frightful in 
 its transformation, the avenging attitude of the whole man 
 standing on the edge of the threatening Federals, a revolver in 
 each hand, made the soldiers nearest to Farmer lower their 
 weapons involuntarily, and those nearest to Quantrell surrender 
 theirs without a blow. In a score of minutes more not a single 
 armed enenry existed in Hustonville, and beyond the dead com- 
 mander, no other life was take i. The Guerrillas secured horses 
 fresh, fine unobjectionable horses but they secured them at 
 the sacrifice of the protecting uniform they wore. Hereafter, 
 Quantrell was Quantrell ; he could not, because of the protest- 
 ing corpse lying there in front of the livery stable, be any longer 
 Capt. Benedict or Capt. Clark. Perhaps Quantrell himself was 
 tired of the role. Ferhaps he wanted to have over him again 
 the folds of the black flag, to hear the winds spread again the 
 terrcr of his deeds, to get away from an assumption that was 
 galling to him, to meet death if he had to meet it as became 
 one who loved the name that he had done so much to render 
 terrible. In any event, however, the end may not have been 
 kept back or hastened by anything said of human speech or 
 fashioned of human hands. 
 
 At Danville, the next place entered after the tragedy at 
 Hustonville, a lady advanced cordially to Quantrell, frankly 
 extended her hand, and addressed him by his proper name. 
 He did not recognize the woman, but he did not deny the truth- 
 fulness of her recognition. Flattered because of an acquaint- 
 ance with a Guerrilla at once oO noted and so successful, and 
 anxious to make known as widely as possible the news of hi& 
 arrival in Kentucky, this woman told everything she knew. 
 Though told of course always as a great secret, it was yet told 
 nevertheless. Finally the story took wings and flew everywhere a& 
 
398 NOTED GUEEEILLAS, OK 
 
 a bird. Corroborative testimony impressed it upon the readily 
 impressionable nerves of the Federal authorities. Dead men 
 began to be found here and there. The stark human fruit the 
 trees bore the wind shook down. Barnette's face, looking out 
 from its placid picture-frame, was seen and recognized. The 
 Hustonville encounter enraged the regiment to which belonged 
 the unfortunate Major who in hunting for horses had penetrated 
 a jungle. There was mustering and marching, and the State 
 was in arms. 
 
 And in Danville also there was another episode. About the 
 town, as about almost every other town or city in Kentucky, 
 there were a few armed Federals who seemed to pay very little 
 attention to Quantrell's men one way or the other. Evidently 
 they did not believe them to be Guerrillas ; certainly they did 
 not know them to be such. Quantrell himself took no note of 
 them. He came and went as he always did, alone and non- 
 chalently. There was one among the Federals, however, a 
 Lieutenant, who had heard some portionb of the woman's con- 
 versation earlier in the day, and who to satisfy himself and to 
 justify the deed he was about to do added enough to the 
 glimpses already obtained from his own imagination to identify 
 the leader of the newly arrived detachment as the famous 
 Guerrilla Quantrell. He cleaned, therefore, a Mississippi rifle 
 carefully, loaded it as though upon every grain of powder behind 
 the ball there depended a life, buckled about him four navy revol- 
 vers, and commenced at his own time and in his own fashion to 
 hunt for his man. Quantrell noticed this officer in uniform, and 
 wondered what he was doing with the gun of a private. For an 
 hour and more as he went from place to place, he saw this Lieu- 
 tenant, now before him, now behind him, and not unfrequently 
 close at his side. He never supposed at any time that he was being 
 watched, much less was he prepared for what followed. It was 
 near the dinner hour ; the first bell at the hotel in Danville had 
 sounded. Quantrell, still alone and perfectly unsuspicious, 
 entered a convenient saloon for a drink, and while standing at 
 the bar and facing it, he saw in the glass before him the Lieu- 
 tenant fill up the doorway, rifle in hand. Just as he turned 
 about he was covered. The gaping muzzle was scarcely three 
 feet from his breast, and the eye that ran down the barrel was a 
 cold, keen eye, full of pluck and purpose. Quantrell's heavy 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 399 
 
 overcoat was buttoned to the chin. His pistols were about him, 
 but for the emergency that was upon him, they had just as well 
 have been in California. He did not feel that his heart beat the 
 smallest traction of a second faster. He felt no blood rush to 
 his face. He leant languidly back against the counter, held up 
 the whisky glass in his hand, as if to let the light filter through 
 it and irradiate it, and then spoke to the Federal in a tone 
 betwixt an enquiry and a caress: u How now, comrade? What 
 are you going to do with that gun?" "Shoot you like a dog if 
 you stir!" You are Quantrell. You have played it for a long 
 time, but you have about played the farce out at last. March 
 into that room to the right of you there !" 
 
 Quantrell did not stir a finger. He cast his eyes quickly to 
 the right without moving his head, and saw the bar- keeper, evi- 
 dently in league with the Lieutenant, holding a door open for 
 him to enter. Many things were clear to Quantrell, now the 
 clearest thing being that he did not mean to obey the Lieutenant. 
 Once well within the confines of this apartment, and guarded in 
 the perfectness and the quietness of its isolation, he might be 
 held there until his men unable to find him abandoned the 
 town, or until a heavy body of Federals already in swift pursuit 
 no doubt came upon his track and finished his following at a 
 blow. If he had to take the risk of being killed while he haz- 
 arded everything upon the chance of getting at a pistol, he 
 meant to take it standing there by the bar and nearer to the 
 daylight. Superb nerve, however, and the coolness for which 
 he was noted, prevented the worst from coming to the worst. 
 Still holding the whisky in his hand, and still leaning back 
 against the counter negligently, he spoke to the Lieutenant and 
 smiled as he spoke: " You take me for Quantrell, but you do 
 wrong. Permit me to call my orderly sergeant, who has all my 
 papers, and a glance at them will convince you in a moment 
 that I am as true to the cause of the Union as you are." The 
 Federal Lieutenant surprised somewhat at the unruffled bear- 
 ing of the man, and never from the first perfectly assured of the 
 identity of his prisoner weakened visibly. Quantrell contin- 
 ued, sure now of a way out from his uncomfortable predicament: 
 "I have heard, perhaps, the same stories you have heard about 
 the whereabouts of the famous Missouri Guerrilla, and if I had 
 not been officially informed to the contrary, equally with your- 
 
400 NOTED GUEEBILLA8, OH 
 
 self I might have believed them. He is not in Kentucky, to my 
 certain knowledge, and you are making a d d fool of your- 
 self. Put down your gun, pull off your pistols, and as long as 
 we are comrades let us be friends." 
 
 Not entirely convinced, and yet more than half way ashamed of 
 the part he was playing, the Lieutenant stepped away from the 
 door several feet and bade Quantrell call his orderly sergeant, 
 keeping him still covered with the gaping muzzle of the Missis- 
 sippi rifle. Luckily the saloon was but a short distance from 
 the hotel, while about the hotel the bulk of the Guerrillas 
 were grouped waiting for the second ringing of the dinner bell. 
 Standing indifferently in this doorway, with his back to the 
 covering rifle, Quantrell called out quietly: "John Barker!" 
 Several of the men saw him standing there and started down to 
 the saloon. "Go back all of you," he said ; "I only wane John 
 Barker." John Barker came. As he entered the saloon he 
 saw the leveled gun bearing upon his commander, and his 
 pistol came out from its scabbard so quickly that the Lieu- 
 tenant, to save his own life, turned the muzzle of the rifle from 
 Quantrell to Barker. "Stop, sergeant," said Quantrell, "you 
 are too fast. Put back your pistol. There need to be no 
 killing here. Our friend, the Lieutenant yonder, has heard 
 much of Quantrell of late, has made up his mind to the fact 
 that I arn Quantrell, has armed himself like an arsenal to 
 capture Quantrell, has followed me here and got the drop on 
 me here, and to convince him of his mistake and to show him 
 how absurd and ungenerous he has been, I have called you 
 here as my orderly sergeant to show him our special orders, 
 and to put into his hands the authority of no less a person than 
 the Secretary of War himself, Edwin M. Stanton, per A. J. 
 Smith. Show him these papers, Barker, and then we will go to 
 dinner." Barker stepped forward close to the Lieutenant, felt 
 carefully a moment or two in the breast pocket of his coat, 
 rattled something there audibly that sounded like a package, 
 and then all of a sudden and with the spring of a tiger-cat he 
 threw himself upon the Federal officer, cast aside the Missis- 
 sippi rifle with his left hand, thrust into his face and close to it 
 the muzzle of a dragoon revolver, and spoke up to him 
 quaintly: "These are the papers, I reckon, you was expectin'. 
 I keep just sich things for people like you. They carry a 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 
 
 401 
 
 fellow a long ways, and the oftener you show them the furder 
 they carry you. Say the word, Captain, and I'll put the old 
 mark on* him between the eyes." But Quantrell did not say 
 the word. Indeed, he ^rather seemed to enjoy the episode, and 
 to think more of the Lieutenant for the coolness he had 
 displayed and the hardihood he had made manifest. As for the 
 Lieutenant, he expressed himself as thoroughly satisfied with 
 Barker's papers, stipulating only that a social glass should be 
 taken all around and the episode itself kept a secret from the 
 balance of the soldiers. 
 
 After dinner Quantrell marched northwest from Danville 
 towards Washington, and halted the command at sunset eight 
 miles from Harrodsburg. There were present and in line every 
 man who had crossed the Mississippi river except Lieutenant 
 James Little, the following being the role and the roster of the 
 little band: 
 
 OFFICERS. 
 
 William C. Quantrell, Captain. 
 
 James Little, First Lieutenant. 
 
 Chatham Renick, Second Lieutenant, 
 
 John Barker, Orderly Sergeant. 
 
 PRIVATES. 
 
 Richard Burnes, 
 
 James Evans, 
 
 William Gaugh, 
 
 Isaac Hall, 
 
 William Hulse, 
 
 Foss Ney, 
 
 Bud Pence, 
 
 George Wigginton, 
 
 John McCorkle, 
 
 Henry Noland, 
 
 George Roberson, 
 
 James Younger. 
 
 Little had already been killed, and more were to follow 
 speedily. After the halt, and the inspection of his command, 
 Quantrell ordered John Barker to go with ten men to the house 
 near which the inspection took place and procure rations for the 
 night and ample forage. Accompanied by Lieutenant Renick 
 and the balance of the company, Quantrell marched a mile fur- 
 26 
 
 Ves Acres, 
 John Barnhill, 
 Jack Graham, 
 David Helton, 
 Clark Hockensmith, 
 Frank James, 
 Allen Farmer, 
 Ran Venable, 
 James Lilly, 
 Andy McGuire, 
 Donnie Pence, 
 
 William Basham, 
 Richard Glasscock, 
 Thomas Harris, 
 Robert Hall, 
 Payne Jones, 
 William Noland, 
 John Ross, 
 Peyton Long, 
 Lee McMurtry, 
 Henry Porter, 
 James Williams, 
 
402 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 tker, halted at a hospitable mansion, and made preparations 
 to spend the night. The Guerrillas, however, had scarcely 
 finished the evening meal when a furi ous volley came back from 
 the direction of the house at which Sergeant Barker had stop- 
 ped, followed by the fierce counter-fighting of determined men. 
 In a moment Renick was mounted and on the road at a gallop 
 to fathom the meaning of the fusillade. He did not return. 
 Quantrell made his detachment take horse instantly, get into line, 
 and get ready. Then ordering Allen Farmer, Payne Jones, Will- 
 iam Hulse and Frank James to go forward rapidly and ascertain 
 the worst or the best, he took an excellent position himself, 
 available for either advance or retreat. The sound of the 
 firing waxed louder and fiercer. The four men rus lied away at 
 a pace that had business in it quick, unmistakable, absolute. 
 Half a mile out on the road Frank James' horse swerved 
 swiftly to one side, and shook him, superb rider as he was, 
 seriously in the saddle. A dead man lay there, where the horse 
 had swerved, face downward and gigantic in the gathering twi- 
 light. Over him stood his faithful horse, all but human in his 
 faithfulness and compassion. Taught by kindness to revere his 
 master and trained to go when he went and stop when he stop- 
 ped, death never severed the tie nor broke down the old habits 
 between them. Living, he loved him dead, he was at his side. 
 
 Hulse dismounted and lifted up a white face to what little 
 was left of the daylight, and cried aloud: "It's our Lieuten- 
 ant, boys ; it's Renick. Through his head there has been put a 
 ball larger than a pistol ball." 
 
 Sergeant Barker's detachment, including himself, numbered 
 eleven Ves Acres, Richard Burnes, Richard Glasscock, George 
 Roberson, James Evans, James Williams, Andy McGuire, 
 William Gaugh, William Noland and Henry Noland. They 
 had unsaddled and fed their horses and were about to 
 begin their own supper when Major Bridgewater, com- 
 manding one hundred and eighty Federal cavalry, dashed up to 
 the house, surrounded it on every side, cut off the men from 
 their horses, and opened a furious fire upon the doors and the 
 windows of the dwelling. The Guerrillas, used to either extreme 
 of fortune, accepted the issue as it was made up for them, and 
 fought as they had fought for four years as wild beasts hunted 
 hard and hemmed at last. In their extremity they were mag- 
 
THE WARFABE OF THE BOEDER 403 
 
 nanimous ; in their furious grapple they were full of chivalry. 
 Gathering together all of the family in the safest room of the 
 mansion the room least pervious to bullets and least exposed 
 Ves Acres, as he put into the arms of its mother the youngest 
 child, said consolingly though rather quaintly: "Don't expose 
 yourself for the sake of this little thing, not much bigger than a 
 rabbit. Keep away from the windows ; keep close to the floor ; 
 do not get excited ; do not cry if any of us get killed. What 
 matters a Guerrilla more or less in this world?" And then with 
 a smile on his face and a great resolution in his eyes, this brave, 
 steadfast Missouri hero turned quietly to his duty and fought 
 like a lion until he was shot down. 
 
 Eleven men against one hundred and eighty ! It was fitting, 
 perhaps, that in those last days of Quantrell such soldiers as he 
 led should fight such odds. It is the revenge courage takes 
 upon history which does not see the immense heroism of the 
 Guerrilla while groping beneath his uniform for his bloody hands 
 and holding them up to the reprobation of mankind. 
 
 The fight was the fight of a house against a fence, a tree, a 
 barn, a pile of lumber, an out-building, a covering of any kind 
 large enough to wholly or even partially shelter a trooper. 
 Bridgewater wasted no lives foolishly. He did not assault the 
 mansion ; he did not permit his men to expose themselves reck- 
 lessly ; he would not resort to the torch because the house held 
 by the Guerrillas was the house of a Union man, and yet his loss 
 was heavy thirty-two killed and eighteen wounded. Barker 
 was killed. As he fell he tried to speak, but death caught his 
 speech just on its utterance and strangled it to all eternity. 
 Ves Acres took him up reverently, smoothed out the locks of his 
 long hair, closed tenderly the dauntless eyes wide open to where 
 the dead man may have thought the good God to be, and said as 
 if in sorrow: " Boys, if I knew a prayer I would say it here 
 for John Barker. He was true, he was brave, he never went 
 back on his word, he never left a comrade when it was touch 
 and go and the devil a grabbing for the hindmost, he never 
 faltered because it was dark in the South and the men many 
 days had neither rations nor cartridges ; but he's gone. God 
 take care of you, John." If he had been praying instead of 
 lighting for the past four years, Ves Acres could have told to 
 the Infinite no truer or tenderer story. 
 
404: NOTED GUEEBILLAS, OR 
 
 Henry Noland fell next, killed as he fought at a window. 
 The ammunition of the Guerrillas was becoming exhausted, and 
 a council of war was called. " I have eight rounds," said Dick 
 Glasscock, " and I but four," spoke up Andy McGuire. 
 Others had more or less, the average being five to the man. 
 Ves Acres answered at last for all: "While there is a ballet 
 left there will be a man to shoot it. No surrender if there is a 
 cartridge." 
 
 Brief as was this dialogue, before it was finished William 
 Noland was killed standing face to face with Richard Glasscock 
 and talking to him. Brothers they were these two young 
 Nolands and in the full vigor of ardent and stalwart manhood. 
 As they lay side by side on the floor of a fort they had died in 
 defending, some wind from without blew over the face of one 
 the hair of the other. Was it a caress? Did the first who had 
 crossed the wonderful river send this as a token to tell the other 
 that all was well ? Who knows ? The Guerrilla has a God as 
 well as the grenadier. 
 
 Ves Acres was down now. There were but two rounds left to 
 the man. He had been shot in the right side and the left shoul- 
 der, and was too weak to rise to his place at the window. The 
 rifle balls 'of the besiegers were coming through the planks of 
 the dwelling-house. No spot was safe. Death was at the win- 
 dows, at the doors everywhere. There was no longer any 
 more ammunition. Some dead Federals were close to the house 
 outside, and Glasscock proposed that those who had a round 
 yet left in their revolvers should make a last rush for the road 
 and for Quantrell. " Good !" said Ves Acres, " very good. I 
 will go with you." He tried to drag his crippled body up to 
 his knees, and from his knees to his feet, but he fell over again 
 as a child who had not yet learned how to walk. All his wounds 
 bled afresh. "No use," he said, pleasantly. " I have a couple 
 of chambers left yet. Take my pistol, Glasscock, and use it as 
 you have need. It's a good pistol; it has done a power of 
 shooting in its day ; it has two loads left, and two loads some- 
 tunes are worth more than two wagon loads of gold." 
 
 There was a grand rush now of the survivors seven in all 
 who fired once as they leaped the fence, and once more as they 
 struck the line of ambushed Federals be3'ond it. The answer- 
 ing volley close, and hot, and full of vengeance covered 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 405 
 
 them with a cloud of smoke. When the smoke lifted Glasscock 
 was down, Williams was down, McGuire was down, Barnes 
 shot twice, was unable to continue his rush while Roberson, 
 Evans, and Gaugh surrounded on all sides and powerless with 
 empty pistols surrendered to Major Bridge water. Then there 
 was a great stillness. The Federals swarmed about the wounded 
 and captured Guerrillas and began to deal with them as each 
 man's generosity or vindictiveness suggested. One smote 
 McGuire in the face, wounded as he was, and another put a pis- 
 tol to the head of Burnes, threatening to blow out his brains. 
 McGuire snapped his empty revolver at the coward who struck 
 him, and would have been killed instantly in return, if Bridge- 
 water's roaring voice had not driven the Federal aggressor 
 away abashed and threatened instant death to any one who 
 further interfered with a prisoner. At this moment the four 
 men sent back by Quantrell to develop the situation, fired point 
 blank into the Federal mass gathered about the Guerrillas and 
 charged up to the very fence that surrounded the house. 
 Renick had been killed eight hundred yards from Bridgewater's 
 position shot through the head and it was only by taking a 
 dangerous fire themselves and charging full tilt down upon the 
 enemy that Frank James and his three companions were enabled 
 to return to Quantrell and report truthfully that all of Barker's 
 detachment were either killed, wounded, or captured. 
 
 Hard hit and as much dead as alive, Glasscock when ordered 
 by Bridge water to unbuckle his belt and surre nder his pistols 
 refused to do so. "I have sworn never to give them up volun- 
 tarily, and give them I never will. Kill me if it so pleases 
 you, and then unbuckle my belt for yourself. Dead men have no 
 sentiments." A Federal trooper covered him in a twinkling and 
 cursed him bitterly as he spoke to him: " Be quick! O ft' with 
 them, g d d n you. What right has a lousy beggar like you to 
 be a chooser?" "Hush!" commanded Bridge water, "he is too 
 brave a man to be either shot or insulted. I will disarm him 
 myself," and as he spoke he unbuckled the Guerrilla's belt, 
 containing its six dragoon pistols, and handed it to his orderly. 
 He tried to restrain himself, poor fellow, but in spite of his 
 efforts, large tear-drops forced themselves from his eyes and 
 ran down upon his breast. And of the eleven, how many to- 
 day survive to read this story of the combat literally to the 
 
406 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 death. Barker and the two Nolands fell in the house; later 
 on Glasscock died over QuantrelPs crippled body trying to save 
 it ; Andy McGuire was hung by a vigilance committee in Ray 
 county ; Richard Burnes was murdered in Jackson county ; 
 George Roberson was hung soon after in Lexington, charged 
 falsely with being the soldier who killed the Federal officer in 
 Hustonville ; Acres recovered and is living to-day in Missouri, 
 while Evans, Gaugh, and Williams somewhere near the 
 setting sun 
 
 "are content and clever 
 In tending of cattle and tossing of clover, 
 In the grazing of cattle and the growing of grain." 
 
 Bridgewater was a brave man , even where the odds were not 
 in his favor; having the advantage, he pushed the crippled Guer- 
 Guerrilla band to the wall. All that night and all the next day the 
 hammering at QuantrelPs rear went on the Missourians fighting 
 as they had fought two hundred times before. Ambuscades were 
 tried with good effect. Bridgewater did not know apparently 
 what possibilities there were connected with an ambuscade. He 
 believed he could ride through, or ride down, or ride over every- 
 thing. Quantrell undeceived him speedily. During the night 
 pursuit succeeding his successful attack upon the little squad 
 under Barker, he lost eleven of his boldest riders. By daylight 
 he was desperate but not convinced ; more wary, perhaps, but 
 scarcely any more cautious. Another sudden snare was nec- 
 essary to make the furious hunter appreciate at its ultimate 
 worth the game that had been long afoot and for a night and 
 a day in the front of him. 
 
 The traveled road towards ten o'clock crossed a bold stream 
 abruptly. On the further bank where it came up from the 
 water it ran for fifty feet or more between perpendicular banks, 
 rocky but wooded. On either side six Guerrillas were posted, 
 in the road in front and back some distance from the crossing 
 nine more under Quantrell in person were massed to charge 
 the pursuers when they should have received the fire of those 
 commanding the cut, while the remaining four consisting of 
 John Barnhill, John Ross, John McCorkle and John Graham, 
 were sent back half a mile to skirmish with Bridgewater and 
 lure him forward. The four Johns were four giants. Not in 
 size because they were young and beardless but in dash, 
 enterprise and intrepidity. Barnhill was a sleepless, vigilant, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 407 
 
 gay-hearted, laughing Guerrilla, who would fight all day and 
 frolic all night. Sometimes between his scouts and his slumbers 
 there was a lapse of fifty hours. John Ross was a boy turned 
 Paladin. Ordered to charge, he would have ridden over a 
 precipice. Looking at his face, one would have said: There is 
 an amiable youth ; at his attitude in battle : there is an oak tree. 
 McCorkle and Graham were of that old iron breed who had seen 
 death so often and in so many sudden and curious ways that he 
 had become to be regarded as an old acquaintance. The four 
 had begun by making the sign of the cross when he approached ; 
 they would end by saying: "How now, comrade?" 
 
 Barnhill by a sort of intrepid assurance took command of 
 the four and posted them wisely two on one side of the road 
 and two on the other. "Most likely," he argued, "the first 
 volley of these fellows following us will go between the two 
 flanks." 
 
 Bridgewater came on at a swinging trot. Barnhill leaped 
 recklessly into the middle of the highway, fired thrice at the 
 foremost files, followed by the balance of the Guerrillas in a 
 deadly volley, and then retreated, seemingly without understand- 
 ing or firmness of purpose. Bridgewater's men yelled once 
 fiercely and broke from a trot into a furious gallop. Over the 
 creek at a dead run, an4 up through the narrow way beyond 
 the pursuers and pursued came as a thunder cloud, the revolver 
 vollies the electric explosions. Then the trees as it were joined 
 in the melee. The Guerrillas behind them safe to a large 
 extent from any fire directed from below shot coolly and with a 
 deadly precision into the compact mass, filling the ambushed 
 gorge. Then Quantrell charged just in the first wild moment 
 of the Federal agony that supreme moment when the bravest 
 who were ever chosen for battle must have time to think a 
 second and get just a second's breath if they would not fall 
 away panic stricken or run as those run who are not pursued. 
 No combat of the war excelled this for prowess and execution. 
 Frank James surpassed himself; Allen Farmer multiplied his 
 capabilities as a fighter ; Payne Jones a pistol shot never sur- 
 passed among the Guerillas improved, if that were possible, 
 upon his markmanship ; James Younger riding a fleet, power- 
 ful horse, led the pursuit and refrained from killing a handsome 
 young Federal whose own steed was crippled, and who could 
 
408 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 not escape with his comrades. Younger captured him, secured 
 for him a fresh horse, paroled him, and bade him go free. 
 Clark Hockensmith, close by Quantrell's side, saw a Federal 
 aiming at his Chief from behind a tree, and spurred his horse 
 instantly between the sharp-shooter and the sharp-shooter's 
 mark. The bullet intended for Quantrell killed Hockensmith's 
 horse, but in a second George Wigginton had killed the sharp- 
 shooter. What was done in that fight had need to be done 
 quickly. William Hulse, carried away by a battle ardor that he 
 very rarely ever cared to curb, fought his way into the midst of 
 the struggling and stricken Federal rear only to be surrounded 
 in turn and put in desperate jeopardy. John Barnhill, John 
 Ross, John McCorkle, John Graham, fighting altogether, cut 
 him out, helped by Lee McMurtry, William Basham, Bud Pence 
 and Donnie Pence. Thomas Harris, Isaac Hall, David Helton, 
 and Robert Hall were wounded slightly but fought all the harder, 
 killing two men each and capturing five valuable horses. Henry 
 Porter won the admiration of the whole command by an exhibi- 
 tion of superb coolness and dash. He was cut off from Quan- 
 trell and fired at by six Federal cavalrymen who closed in upon 
 him and would have killed him but for his own rapid fighting and 
 the help of a few comrades. Ran Venable, nearest to him, rushed 
 to his assistance, followed by Frank James, Peyton Long, and 
 James Lilly. These, together with Porter, killed the six who 
 were about him, and four others who rushed up to succor the 
 six. The gorge was now cleared o/ all save the dead and the 
 wounded. Bridge water in a melee that had not lasted longer 
 than twenty minutes had lost in killed fifty-two of his bravest 
 followers, and in wounded seven. He withdrew the remnant of 
 his shattered advance speedily from the gorge, reformed his 
 ranks on the open ground beyond, and came on slowly in 
 pursuit and after the lapse of some time, but always thereafter 
 in skirmishing order. The lesson taught him was a bitter one, 
 but it may have been useful as well. It saved Quantrell also. 
 Eight of his men were wounded none of them, however, very 
 seriously but whenever he formed in the future and faced 
 about as if to fight, those who were following him did him at 
 least the honor of forming too and coming towards him slowly 
 and in cautious array. 
 Snow lay upon the ground to the depth of at least four inches, 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 400 
 
 and a cold north wind cut like a knife. The pursuit of the 
 night had to light it a splendid winter moon ; of the day a great 
 garment of white that filled all the woods and the ways. But 
 the Guerrillas, inured to every hardship and proof against every 
 extreme, starved and fought, and fought and froze for a stretch 
 of fifty-two hours, losing sight of Bridge water and his con- 
 stantly increasing column of pursurers in Washington county. 
 After food, rest and forage Quantrell rode on into Chaplain, 
 in Nelson county, where he arrived early in the afternoon. 
 Just as he had passed well to the centre of the city, Captain 
 Edward Terrell, at the head of sixty Federal Guerrillas, reached 
 the outskirts of Chaplain, hard upon his track. Terrell was a 
 soldier as thoroughly desperate as Quantrell in some respects, 
 but his men were not equal to Quantreli's men. Terrell under- 
 stood well the value of dash, of rush, of quick fighting, of a 
 blow that carried with it the power of its own perpetuation. That 
 is to say, he knew how when he once got thoroughly warmed up 
 to his work to keep at it until something yielded or somebody 
 got badly hurt. As soon as he saw Quantrell he dashed at him 
 as a greyhound at a hare. Quantrell had just escaped a 
 formidable antagonist after a bloody grapple. Substract from 
 his original thirty-seven men the five who had been killed, the 
 eight who had been wounded and captured, and the eight who 
 had been wounded and not captured, and Quantrell was 
 scarcely in a condition to fight Terrell's sixty fresh Guerrillas 
 effectively. He did fight them, however, those who were wound- 
 ed holding* the rear in turn equally with those who were not 
 wounded. The fight lasted for five miles along the Bloomfield 
 turnpike. William Hulse, John Barnhill, Frank James, John 
 Ross, John Graham, John McCorkle, Payne Jones, Allen 
 Farmer, Foss Ney, Clark Hockensmith, Peyton Long and James 
 Younger doing two hours battle work so splendid and so superb 
 that Terrell himself spoke of them afterwards as devils and not 
 men. Try how he would, the Federal commander could never 
 break up Quantreli's rear. In eveiy rush he got the worst of 
 the melee. His men could not shoot like Quantreli's men, 
 neither could they ride so surely. There was a fierce conflict 
 at the point where Quantrell left the turnpike and took a road 
 leading to Taylorsville, in Spencer county, and once thereafter 
 on the Taylorsville road proper; but TeiTell was worsted so 
 
410 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 badly in the first encounter, and cut up so seriously in the 
 second that he abandoned the pursuit and returned with his 
 wounded and his dead to Chaplain. 
 
 Resting a day and a night at the hospitable house of a well- 
 to-do farmer living near Taylorsville, who loved the South, 
 Quantrell threw off all Federal disguise and boldly declared 
 his name, his principles, and his intentions. He sought to find 
 Sue Mundy, a Kentucky Guerrilla of Confederate proclivities, 
 who had already done much valuable spy work and delivered 
 many swift and telling blows. Mundy was away at the time on 
 an extended scout, but a comrade of his Captain Marion in 
 no way inferior as a fighter or less enterprising as a partisan, 
 met Quantrell at an interview arranged by the host of the hospi- 
 table mansion, part Guerrilla himself and part non-combatant. 
 The meeting took place in Taylorsville. Naturally distrustful, 
 and made extremely cautious because of the imminence of 
 the danger that daily confronted him Marion talked at first 
 with his eyes rather than with his lips, and listened with his 
 right hand upon his revolver. He neither denied nor affirmed 
 that Quantrell was QuantrelL Man for man he was not of 
 course afraid to meet him in a friendly way, discuss events with 
 him, plan with him expeditions, compare with him notes, and 
 lay schemes with him to entrap and inveigle a common enemy ; 
 but when it came about that he had to march side by side with 
 these scarred, bronzed Missourians, who might be Missourians 
 and who might not, Captain Marion's yes sounded mightily 
 like an unmistakable no. 
 
 Finally, however, Marion agreed to this : Commanding forty 
 Guerrillas of his own, if Quantrell would put at his disposal all 
 the serviceable Missourians who were willing for Work, he 
 would inaugurate a raid at once and march immediately 
 towards its accomplishment. But as an absolute guarantee of 
 good faith it would be necessary for Captain Quantrell to report 
 temporarily to Captain Marion. Quantrell felt annoyed at the 
 suspicions of his Kentucky comrade, and vexed that he should 
 be required to separate himself even temporarily from his con- 
 stantly decreasing band, but the surroundings of the situation 
 required something of a sacrifice. He was hunted everywhere 
 by his enemies, and suspected everywhere by those who, if 
 they had known all, would have been his steadfast friends. In 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 411 
 
 order to place himself as speedily as possible en rapport with 
 the Confederate Guerrillas of Kentucky, and be enabled to 
 utilize at once the valuable services of their spies, guides, 
 couriers, hiding-places, and horse purveyors, he had to convince 
 Marion of his own identity and put himself also in his power as 
 a kind of hostage for the good behavior of his men. Quantrell 
 chose to do deliberately what he was required to do, and Marion 
 moved with the Missourians for Georgetown. Quantrell remain- 
 ed behind, after first explaining to his men the necessity of the 
 separation, and the need of faithfulness on their part and the 
 exercise of the old bravery as well. 
 
 Marion caused a strong guard to be stationed about the Mis- 
 sourians the first night, and one not so strong the second night. 
 By the fifth night he had become so thoroughly convinced of 
 their principles that he put them on watch over the Kentuckians, 
 while early in the morning of the sixth day out after having 
 charged, routed, and killed to a man a Federal scout of eleven 
 cavalry Marion opened his heart to his suspected allieis and 
 praised them loudly for their fidelity and courage. 
 
 The crossing of the Kentucky river at Worthville was not 
 without its episode. A portion of Marion's men were well over, 
 a portion in mid-stream, and a portion still upon the nearer shore 
 when an alarm was given and a volley fired. Marion had crossed, 
 and the bulk of the Kentuckians, but the attack came from the 
 rear and its full brunt had to be borne by the Missourians. 
 Frank James sprang first to his horse and charged back upon the 
 enemy. Hulse followed him, then Ross, Barnhill, Ney, McMur- 
 try, Venable, the two Halls, Porter, Long, Younger, Wigginton, 
 Graham, McCorkle, Farmer, Bud and Donnie Pence, Jones, 
 Lilly, Hockensmith, Bashara, Harris, Helton, and several Ken- 
 tucky Guerrillas as brave as the best of them. Outnumbered, 
 the Guerrillas yet fought a fight that could not be resisted. The 
 enemy was driven a mile and more at a headlong pace, his dead 
 dotting the road in ghastly spots where when living they had 
 gallantly formed and gallantly stood to keep the Guerrillas back. 
 It was in this combat that Frank James killed a Federal with 
 the butt of his heavy dragoon revolver. So relentless had been 
 the race and so fierce the fighting that every barrel of his six 
 pistols had been discharged. Ahead of him was a stalwart rider 
 whose revolver was also empty. James called upon him to halt 
 
412 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 and surrender himself. The Federal turned sideways in his 
 saddle, looked back once as if in superlative derision, and 
 shouted: "Shoot, and be d d to you!" James could not 
 shoot, but he sent his horse ahead furiously by a spur stroke, 
 lifted himself up sheer in the stirrups, grasped his heaviest 
 dragoon revolver by the barrel and struck once and struck hard 
 as he ranged alongside the galloping enemy. The skull crashed 
 as a hazel-nut. A sound came from the blow like the sound of 
 wood upon wood dull, yielding, deadened and all of a heap 
 and prone under his horse's feet, the stricken Federal pitched 
 forward, a writhing and contorting figure in the middle of the 
 road. Hulse seized and appropriated his horse, a most service- 
 able animal, and the pursuit ended with this ferocious episode. 
 Well over the Kentucky river and well beyond and unmo- 
 lested, Marion pushed boldly and rapidly on towards George- 
 town. The enemy had gained the town ahead of him, however, 
 and were in full possession of the place when the Guerrillas 
 reached to within an hour's march. Marion possessed of con- 
 siderable enterprise and no small amount of stubborn courage 
 refused to fall back without a fight. It might be feasible to 
 assume a Federal role and take under the guise of comradeship 
 an immense advantage of the garrison. Once well among them 
 and secure from attack for the first few moments of entrance, 
 Marion believed that he could either kill or capture the entire 
 command. As the Missourians alone wore the United States 
 uniform, he sent these ahead to reconnoitre the position and 
 ascertain if the ruse proposed to be practiced was practicable. 
 Peyton Long carried a Federal flag in the front file, having 
 Frank James on his left. Behind these two came Hulse, 
 Basham, Barnhill, Graham, Helton, the two Halls, Hockensmith, 
 Jones, Ney, Lilly, and McCorkle. Behind these and as blue 
 in their great cavalry overcoats as a bar of indigo there rode 
 as a reserve, McMurtry, Farmer, Porter, the brothers Pence, 
 Ross, Venable, Harris, Wigginton, and Younger. Long boldly 
 approached the picquets with his flag and was not even halted. 
 The others rode up and rode through these covering cavalrymen 
 unchallenged. So far the scheme advised by Marion was work- 
 ing admirably. It might be possible to win with it along the 
 entire line. In any event the next twenty minutes were big 
 with the fate of the whole adventure. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 415 
 
 Eighteen miles from Georgetown, Marion had halted the 
 night before with his Guerrillas and occupied the house of a 
 Union citizen. The Missourians quartered to themselves in 
 the barn were quiet, taciturn and discreet. They did not 
 talk of military men or things. They looked like Federals, 
 they acted like Federals, they neither denied nor affirmed that 
 they were Federals : were they Federals ? Their host said that 
 they were, but their host had a pretty daughter who peered with all 
 the eyes she had and listened with all the ears she had for further 
 information pro or con. Not so circumspect as Quantreli's old 
 men, nor so watchful of little things, Marion had a soldier of 
 his own at the supper table to disclose the secret of the expe- 
 dition with a sentence. Desultory conversation had been 
 generally indulged in. The Guerrilla Captain desired nothing 
 but agreeable things to be left in his rear, and so had made 
 himself especially communicative to the host, and especially 
 agreeable to his hostess and her charming daughter. His men 
 also had been firmly admonished to keep upon their good 
 behavior. Matters were moving smoothly along, and an assur- 
 ing social footing had just been reached, when supper was 
 announced. During the meal, one of Marion's Kentucky fol- 
 lowers spoke quietly but significantly to another: "How we will 
 fool them to-morrow if we find them in Georgetown." In a 
 second he had caught himself and was striving to 1 recover what 
 he had lost by changing the conversation. Too late ! Neither 
 the man nor the woman of the house looked up or gave by any 
 sign heed to the talk of the babbler; but the daughter 
 heard the words of exultation, divined their meaning with all a 
 woman's swift intuition and flushed scarlet to her hair. Marion 
 frowned, bit his lips and tried to annihilate with his eyes the 
 garrulous offender. That night, when all the soldiers slept, and 
 when the frost and the north wind were abroad in -the midnight 
 together, the young girl crept from her bed to the stable, 
 saddled a swift horse for herself, and rode as only country girls 
 know how to ride full tilt into Georgetown. The mistake the 
 imprudent Guerrilla made, even though his words had been 
 taken at their real meaning, might easily have been provided 
 against if Marion's caution had in any manner approximated bis 
 audacity. Four guards advantageously posted would have 
 made impossible the Union girl's night ride, and a watchful 
 
414 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 sentinel about the house might even have prevented the attempt. 
 As it was, she carried to the Federals stationed near to George- 
 town the news of Marion's approach and the probable nature of 
 the stratagem he would attempt to play. The Federals early 
 the next morning occupied the place in force, posted their 
 picquets with orders to admit the Guerrilla column without 
 question, and then prepared themselves thoroughly, by. fortifica- 
 tion and ambushment, to destroy it. 
 
 It was well for Marion and well for his men that the Missou- 
 rians rode that day in front of the column. As the leading files 
 advanced half through the town and were nearing the larger 
 and heavier buildings about the public square, Peyton Long, 
 the standard bearer, stopped. Marion, some few paces in 
 advance of Frank James, turned to know the reason. "It 
 does not become me, aptain," James spoke up, "to either 
 advise with you or suggest to you unless I am so requested, but 
 I must tell you respectfully that we do not like the looks of 
 things. There are no soldiers upon the streets; the picquets 
 did not halt us ; Georgetown is as quiet as a graveyard ; there 
 is treachery somewhere ; if we go further without developing 
 the situation, we shall be surrounded and savagely attacked. 
 Ten skirmishers thrown well forward now may save thirty lives 
 further on. Evidently we are expected, but not as friends are 
 expected. Look yonder, Captain!" 
 
 Four men, running in a stooping position with their guns in 
 their hands, were seen making much haste from one house to 
 another. Marion saw them and understood in a moment the whole 
 situation. In five minutes more the skirmishers had developed 
 the enemy and there was a terrible fire going on from the 
 doors and the windows of the buildings upon the Guerrillas in the 
 street. Frank James' horse was killed, and Hulse, Bud Pence, 
 James Younger and John Boss were slightly wounded. Nothing 
 remained but a countermarch. Increased by accessions here 
 and there on the trip, Marion's command numbered probably 
 seventy, the Federals one hundred and eighty-two. As many 
 as one hundred and eighty-two in addition should be counted 
 for the houses. Indeed, to fight at all with Marion would have 
 been madness. There was still time to get away from the trap 
 whose jaws in springing had grazed with their teeth the bulk of 
 the column, but the need was to make haste. Larger bodies of 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 415 
 
 the enemy were hastening up from two directions, and the 
 country now must certainly be aroused. Frank James' watch- 
 fulness had stood all in good stead so far, but superior watch- 
 fulness could not always avail against superior numbers. 
 Marion retreated rapidly, first gathering up the picquets who 
 had deliberately sacrificed themselves for the success of the 
 ambushment inspired by a woman. From these he learned of 
 the young girl's mission, and the motive, other than patriotism, 
 which inspired her. Beloved by a young Lieutenant stationed 
 near to Georgetown, and betrothed to him, she had more than 
 once carried to his Colonel information of military movements 
 hostile or suspicious. Suspecting Marion from the first, and 
 more than usually curious and vigilant, she had divined at last 
 the true character of the Guerrillas and the true intention of 
 their mission. 
 
 Frank James, afoot, would not leave Georgetown without a 
 horse. Under the point blank range of the guns of one of the 
 largest houses in the place there was a livery stable filled with 
 splendid cavalry animals. For this he made a rush, a revolver 
 in each hand, killed two guards by the door who disputed his 
 passage, mounted the finest horse feeding there a magnificent 
 gray, pure blooded as Lexington and dashed back to his 
 comrades, leading four others in no way inferior to his own 
 valuable capture. The Federals fired at him furiously without 
 effect, and then they ceased firing and chased him heartily as 
 long as he was in sight. 
 
 Marion made haste through Owen county, after his repulse at 
 Georgetown, and into Woodford county, where he swooped 
 down upon the famous stock farm of Colonel R. A. Alexander. 
 Alexander was an importer and breeder known to the country. 
 The blood in the veins of his horses was royal blood. King 
 Lexington had by almost immortal speed established a dynasty 
 and begotten a long line of imperial racers. Federals and Con- 
 federates alike had spared him, but the Guerrillas were inexora- 
 ble and took from his stables thoroughbred horses to the number 
 of nineteen, and valued in the aggregate at $100,000. Alex- 
 ander offered $10,000 for the release of a favorite stallion, Bald 
 Chief, but Marion refused the offer and marched away with the 
 property. 
 
 Re-crossing the Kentucky river near Lawrenceburg, and halt- 
 
416 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OR 
 
 ing beyond a few miles for breakfast, Frank James suddenly 
 leaped from his seat upon the table, and from the table to the 
 door, shouting: "Yonder they come! To the stable, quick! to 
 the stable, boys, for your horses and your lives!" 
 
 There was a rush and a volley. All the road was blue with 
 overcoats. James led, behind him came Hulse, behind Hulse, 
 Donnie Pence, and behind Pence, Clark Hockensmith. Marion 
 formed the balance of the company behind fences and out- 
 buildings. The first four, James, Hulse, Pence and Hocken- 
 smith, tarried not a moment until they reached the stable, fifty 
 yards from the dwelling. A few of the enemy were already 
 there and shot through the cracks at the Guerrillas as they 
 bridled and saddled their horses. The} T fired back, even while 
 busy with buckle and strap, and killed three of the boldest 
 forcing the fighting from the outside. All about it was touch 
 and go. Of the eight horses feeding in the stable, the four 
 Guerrillas got safely out with only the four they rode. Bald 
 Chief was killed in the rae/ee, and two others of Alexander's 
 most valuable thoroughbreds disabled permanently by wounds. 
 Marion extricated himself finally from the heavy force which 
 threatened him, and rode away, fighting fiercely for several 
 miles. Eight of his men were wounded, seven of whom were 
 brought off by their more fortunate comrades, leaving the eighth 
 man, Thomas Henry, too hard hit to ride. Henry was a Ken- 
 tuckian, young, dauntless, and utterly fearless in combat. He 
 had -helped hold the rear against desperate odds for two long 
 miles, fighting foot by foot and hand to hand. Many remarked 
 his prowess. Frank James especially complimented him and 
 spoke to him banteringly : "You ought to be a Missourian you 
 fight like a Jackson county man." Finally Henry fell, shot 
 sheer through the right breast, and the Federal wave swept over 
 and beyond him. As it returned from a pursuit which for their 
 numbers had been singularly barren and unprofitable, a savage 
 trooper dashed up to the wounded, hero still lying there, bleed- 
 ing and helpless, and shot him twice fall in the face. So close 
 each time was the muzzle of the pistol that powder was 
 blown into the skin, and the eye-lashes and eye-brows burned 
 completely off. The first ball entered his mouth and passed out 
 on the left side of his neck, while the second entering the 
 right cheek an inch below the eye made its exit near to and 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 417 
 
 below the base of the right ear. Finished apparently, and 
 bloody, disfigured, and still,* the soldier who shot him rifled his 
 pockets, disposed of his boots, and rode away boasting that 
 there was "one d d bushwhacker less in the world." But in 
 spite of his three desperate wounds, Henry lived on. When he 
 awoke to consciousness he crawled, half frozen, through the 
 bitter February weather to the house of a Southern man, three 
 miles away. There he found food, succor, shelter, a nurse, a 
 doctor, and a courier who went for Marion. Marion was a man 
 who never feared an enemy or forgot a friend. As none in 
 battle were braver or more reckless, so none in its lapse or lull were 
 more faithful to the hurt or gentle with the crippled. Twenty 
 times over had he risked his own life to save what little life yet 
 remained to some grievously wounded yet gallant follower. He 
 turned about at once as soon as word was brought to him of 
 Henry's condition, and watched over him day and night until he 
 could be carried to a place of safety. He survived the war, and 
 makes in peace an upright, stalwart citizen, without fear and 
 without reproach. His scars are his decorations, and for fewer 
 many major-generals have been made. 
 
 Captain Marion, without further adventure or serious com- 
 bat, delivered again into Quantrell's keeping that portion of 
 Quantrell's command which had followed him so far and fol- 
 lowed him so well. He thanked him briefly for their services, 
 and summed up briefly the praise all felt was but a portion of 
 what was due to them : "Braver men," he said, "I never saw 
 in battle, truer men never fired a gun since the war began." 
 
 Marion and Quantrell parted for awhile now, but temporarily. 
 Before the separation, however, he prevailed upon Marion to re- 
 store to Alexander the remaining sixteen blooded horses still in 
 his possession. Marion readily consenting, delivered the 
 horses over to Quautrell, and Quantrell in turn delivered them 
 over to their owner. As an appreciation of this disinterested 
 act, and as a real token of gratitude to the two men who were the 
 most instrumental in this transfer, Alexander presented Quan- 
 trell with a magnificent thoroughbred, and Frank James with 
 another, known everywhere by his name of Edwin Forrest, and 
 noted everywhere for his speed and for the prowess of his rider. 
 
 The Missouri Guerrillas needed rest. They had ridden and 
 fought, with scarcely a day of real quiet, from Jackson county, 
 27 
 
418 NOTED GUERRILLAS, Oft 
 
 Missouri, to Nelson county, Kentucky through Arkansas, 
 Tennessee, and Kentucky and it was time for a little re- 
 laxation. The February weather, even in the latitude in 
 which they were, was bitter cold, and the State in every di- 
 rection was overrun with Federal regiments. Quantrell, there- 
 fore, resorted once more to his old tactics of Missouri and dis- 
 banded his Guerrilla following until further orders. Some went 
 to one portion of Nelson county and some to another. Among 
 the mountains in the west, and at the truly hospitable mansions 
 of the Thomases, Russells, and McClaskeys, about Bloomfield, 
 the battle-scarred and war-worn Guerrillas found a hearty wel- 
 come. One detachment, consisting of Lee McMurtry, Bud 
 Pence, Frank James, Doimie Pence, Payne Jones, William 
 Hulse and John Ross, made homes with Mrs. Samuels and Mrs. 
 Finetta E. Sayers. These families were especially kind to the 
 Missouri Guerrillas. Food, shelter, information, skillful medical 
 attendance, fresh horses everything in fact was furnished to 
 them ungrudgingly when thsy were either sick, hard pressed, 
 wounded, ahungered, or afoot. Mrs. Samuels was truly a South- 
 ern mother in Israel. Mrs. Sayers feared nothing neither pro- 
 scription, arrest, military punishment, the confiscation of prop- 
 ert} r , nor the imprisonment of her people. Another famous 
 rendezvous, their few brief resting days knew, was at the house 
 of Dock Hoskins Old Dock as the Guerrillas called him. He 
 lived in a prominent and comfortable dwelling on the top of a 
 hill. For many miles round about this mansion might have 
 been remarked. Cedar woods surrounded it. A shout of warn- 
 ing, a cry, a galloping horse, a single pistol shot, and no matter 
 what the number of the attacking force, ten steps in a retreat 
 hid the Guerrillas and as effectually protected them from pursuit 
 as a ship in a harbor is protected from a storm. Once only 
 during the war did an enemy beat up these commodious quar- 
 ters. Bud Pence and Henry Turner, scouting well up in the 
 direction of Samuels' Depot, were attacked by Lieut. Hancock, 
 commanding a detachment of the 47th Kentucky, and driven 
 rapidly towards Dock Hoskins' house. Pence fought them 
 step by step. Turner was shot through the right shoulder, and 
 Pence in the right arm, but they escaped among the cedars and 
 Hancock halted awhile at Hoskins'. 
 
 Thus Mrs. Samuels, Mrs. Sayers, Dock Hoskins, the Russells, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 419 
 
 and the McClaskeys ministered to the Missourians. What hurts 
 there were among them were speedily healed. These who 
 needed clothing were bountifully supplied. Bad horses had 
 been traded away for good ones. Small supplies of ammunition 
 were increased to large ones. Carbines were looked to, pistols 
 cleaned, the men grew restless, and the signs visibly increased 
 of stormy movements, to be stormily made. It was March 
 now, and something of the Spring was felt in the air, seen on the 
 trees, heard in the streams, and made known by the springing 
 grasses. The nights, less cheerless and full of frost, were 
 getting fit again for bivouacs. In the maple trees some sap was 
 rising, and from the South a soft wind was beginning to blow. 
 Those who at the fight in Jessamine county had been wounded 
 and captured Ves Acres, Dick Glasscock, McGuire, Burnes, 
 Gaugh, Evans, Roberson, and Williams had been carried to 
 Louisville and imprisoned there. Helped from the outside, and 
 finding numerous friends throughout the city, these desperate 
 Guerrillas sawed asunder the iron bars of their dungeons, dug 
 and burrowed as veritable badgers, crawled through holes a fer- 
 ret could scarcely have found feasible, and reached daylight and 
 liberty both at once, wounded as some of them were and emaci- 
 ated. Further safety required immediate separation. Acres 
 escaped in one direction, Williams in another, Burnes and 
 McGuire in a third, Gaugh in a fourth, Evans and Roberson in a 
 fifth, Glasscock alone of all the fugitives reached Quantrell in 
 safety and Roberson alone of all of them was recaptured. Taken 
 at Lexington and transferred again to Louisville, he was tried 
 by a drum-head court-martial and sentenced to be hung. The 
 charge upon which he was convicted was a charge shamefully 
 false. Infuriated at the escape of men so notoriously desperate 
 as were these Guerrillas of Quantrell, the Federal authorities at 
 Louisville needed a victim. George Roberson was found. Any 
 evidence was sufficient for conviction. No evidence at all would 
 have answered just as well. He was accused of having killed 
 the Federal officer in Hustonville who attempted at the livery 
 stable to prevent the appropriation of the horses of his men. 
 Allen Farmer killed that officer, as all the command knew. 
 Farmer and Roberson had no single feature alike. In nothing 
 did they resemble each other neither in eyes, hair, form, gait, 
 speech, or general appearance. Mistaken identity was a plea 
 
420 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 too preposterous to be put up. Those who swore away his life 
 were simply murderers after another fashion. Instead of cutting 
 his throat while asleep, or shooting him unawares, or crushing 
 his skull with a blow from behind, they hung him with a lie. 
 Even the wolfs courage was wanting to them; it was the 
 weasel which they assimilated. Few friends were about the scaf- 
 fold when the young Missourian intrepid as though it was a 
 battle-day was brought forth to die. These friends dared not 
 speak to him, much less to bid him be cool and brave. He had 
 asked permission to be shot as a soldier, but murders for revenge 
 have no appreciation of chivalry, and this being a precious boon 
 to him was of course denied. Bound as he was, he walked like 
 La Tour de Auvergne at the head of his Grenadiers. The 
 drums beat, there was the tread of marching men cavalry and 
 infantry and the rabble called to one another and laughed as 
 the procession wound its way slowly along from the prison to 
 the scaffold. Brave men in the ranks of the cordon about him 
 spoke soldierly words afterwards of his quiet grace and daunt- 
 lessness. He was but a wild beast, many said and no doubt 
 honestly believed for the name Guerrilla was synonymous 
 then with extermination but the wild beast died like a demi- 
 god. He looked once at the houses, the people, the white 
 clouds far to the west, the sea of faces upturned and all about 
 him, and then to the bright sun shining over all. Yes, 
 
 " He walked out from the prison wall, 
 Dressed like a prince for a parade, 
 And made no note of man or maid, 
 But gazed out calmly over all; 
 Then look'd afar, half paused, and then 
 Above the mottled sea of men 
 He kiss'd his thin hand to the sun; 
 Then smiled so proudly none had known 
 But he was stepping to a throne." 
 
 A few friends begged the body from the hangman and buried 
 it away be}^ond the reach of the resurrectionist. None the less 
 had he died for his country in dying upon the scaffold. The 
 principle for which the hero dies, and not the mode of dying, 
 makes the consecration. If patriotism has anywhere beyond 
 the river an abode where the spirits of the dead who died for 
 the right are gathered together and re-endowed with form and 
 substance, be sure the angel keeping watch and ward by the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 421 
 
 golden gates will never know anything of difference between the 
 scar the rope made and the scar of the bullet in open battle. 
 
 Dr. McClaskey gave to the Guerrillas a re-union feast. 
 Magruder, a Kentuckian somewhat of the fashion of George 
 Todd, came to it. He was a bold, cool, untiring, venturesome 
 man, used to hard knocks and difficult to kill. When he fought 
 he fought to exterminate. Those who followed him had also to 
 follow a black flag. His frame, gigantic as it was, sat upon a 
 horse as a rider might who was riding for a crown. If he got 
 four hours of sleep he got enough. The Federals called him a 
 butcher ; his own men Rough and Ready. Sue Mundy came to 
 it, a quiet, gentle, soft-spoken dandy, with his hair in love-knots 
 six inches long, a hand like a school-girl, and a waist like a 
 woman. Sometimes he dressed also as a woman, hence the 
 soubriquet of Sue. As a spy he came and went as a wind that 
 blew. So many were his shapes and disguises, so perfectly 
 under control were his speech and bearing, that in some quarters 
 his identity was denied, in others his sex was a matter of doubt, 
 in all, those who did not fear him had an improbable idea both 
 of the man's prowess and personal appearance. Mundy was a 
 cool, brave, taciturn, experienced soldier, well acquainted with 
 the country where he operated and utterly fearless. In addition, 
 he was also a thorough fatalist. His smooth, open, rosy-cheeked 
 face made almost any disguise easy of encompassment. His 
 iron nerve carried him easily through many self-imposed diffi- 
 culties that without it extrication could not have come through 
 a regiment of cavalry. When he fought he fought savagely. 
 Beneath an exterior as effeminate as a woman of fashion he 
 carried the muscles of an athlete and the energ3 r of a racer. 
 His long hair in battle blew about as the mane of a horse. The 
 dandy in a melee became a Cossack ; in desperate emergencies 
 a giant. Mundy, Marion and Magruder were a Kentucky trio 
 famous as fighters and fit to be relied upon equally with the 
 best of any Guerrilla band, Quantrell's not excepted. 
 
 To this feast also came Quantrell, a deeper light in his clear 
 blue eyes, and a graver cast on his grave, cold features. The 
 few who were left to him of all his desperate following and who 
 remarked their chief at this last reunion this side eternity, 
 remarked as they had never done before, how tall and straight he 
 was, how fair if not to say florid his complexion was, how much 
 
422 NOTED GUEKEILLAS, OX 
 
 darker his hair had become, how broad his shoulders were, and 
 how if anything his nose had become longer and more aquiline. 
 All who had ever studied him knew from the first that his appli- 
 cation was indefatigable, his temper cool, his understanding vig- 
 orous and decisive, and that in his practice he preserved that 
 rare and salutary moderation in the government of intractable 
 men which pursued his own ideas at an equal distance from the 
 opposing ideas of those who were the most ambitious among his 
 band, and invariably enforced them without seeming to control. 
 He had come now again and for the last time to propose a raid. 
 
 There was mirth at Dr. McClaskey's, and music, and feast- 
 ing, and dancing, and many tender words spoken at parting 
 for Southern girls had gathered in from all the country round 
 about but good-byes were said at last and the Guerrillas rode 
 away. The road they took ran towards Lebanon. At sunset a 
 bivouac was had, still a little crisp and chilly in the night air, 
 and a rousing fire made. In the morning an advance was 
 formed, Magruder, Bud Pence, John Ross, William Hulse and 
 Frank James comprising it. Quantrell and Mundy marched 
 with the reserve. Entered well upon the turnpike leading from 
 Lebanon to Campbellsville, Hulse and James discovered a 
 wagon train making its way up from Lebanon, convoyed by a 
 detachment of Federal soldiers, four of whom were in front of 
 it. Magruder first sent Hulse back to notify Quantrell of the 
 near proximity of the enemy, and then moved boldly forward. 
 For awhile the Federal advance guard looked upon Quantrell' 8 
 advance guard as friends, as their uniform was like their own, 
 and permitted them to approach within a few feet unchallenged. 
 At the order to surrender, the Federals attempted to draw their 
 pistols, when three of them were shot down instantly, the 
 fourth one turning to run, followed by Frank James at a furious 
 pace to within half a mile of the fort at Lebanon. Almost safe 
 and nearly within reach of shelter and succor, Frank James 
 shot him running fifty yards away, putting a bullet in the back 
 of his head. The train, composed of twenty wagons, wa& 
 burnt, and its escort numbering thirty-eight cavalrymen was 
 totally destroyed, twenty-seven being killed, ten wounded, and 
 one taken alive and unhurt. 
 
 At a toll-gate two miles west from Bradfordsville, QuantrelPs 
 rear was heavily attacked. Sue Mundy held it and turned 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 423 
 
 upon the head of the pursuing column with an energy so sudden 
 and savage that he staggered it until it reeled, when rushing 
 down at the charge and clearing everything down before him as 
 of old in his murderous onset, Quantrell checked the pursuit 
 for the day, after killing and wounding seventy-six of the 
 enemy. In the first moments of this fight, however, and before 
 Quantrell had quite reached to the rescue of his Kentucky 
 comrade holding the rear, Mundy was down under his dead 
 horse, held as though a log were upon his body. Fifty Federals 
 were hacking at him with swords and firing at him with 
 revolvers. His own men nearest to him and available for 
 immediate help were Magruder, William Hulse, George Wiggin- 
 ton, John Barnhill, Frank James, John Ross, Farmer, Porter, 
 Venable and James Younger. These charged en masse upon 
 Mundy's assailants, fought off those immediately bent upon 
 killing him as he lay prostrate there, and held them off until 
 Quantrell finished the combat by a pistol fight remarkable for 
 its rapidity and execution. The next day Capt. Fidler was 
 encountered commanding sixty men, each man leading an 
 excellent cavalry horse. Fidler did not fight, and perhaps it 
 was no part of his programme to fight. He sacrificed forty- 
 five of his best horses, seven of his men, and escaped with the 
 balance. 
 
 QuantrelPs old antagonist, Colonel Bridgewater, lived on 
 Rolling Fork, in Marion county, and he would beat up his quar- 
 ters and pounce upon him if possible. Reaching Bridge water's 
 house about ten o'clock at night, Quantrell surrounded it at 
 once, but soon satisfied himself that the Colonel was not at home. 
 He then marched to the neighborhood of Hustonville and was 
 attacked twelve miles from this place by an entire regiment of 
 cavalry. Here Foss Ney was killed, one of his old men, as brave 
 as any of the band, and Jo Lisbon. Fighting superbly in the 
 rear, James Younger was badly wounded and captured, together 
 with William Merriman, who rushed up in the face of two hun- 
 dred Federals to rescue his comrade and bring him out. 
 Younger, when his horse was killed and his comrades had been 
 driven back far beyond his ability ttf'reach them on foot, stood 
 up in front of the whole Federal line which had been firing at 
 long range and fired every barrel of his six revolvers. Probably 
 five hundred Federals fired at him specially. Shot in the right 
 
424 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 shoulder, he used his pistols with his left hand, and when he fell 
 the enemy were within a dozen yards of him, and he had been 
 again shot badly in the right breast. While closing in upon 
 him, many in the advancing line cried out to him to surrender. 
 He answered neither yes nor no, but he continued to shoot. 
 "When Merriman reached him, he was too badly hurt to mount 
 up behind, even though Merriman's horse in that fire could have 
 lived a moment. A second later, Merriman's own horse was 
 killed, and shot twice and badly hurt, Merriman himself was 
 lying a few feet from James Younger, incapable of resistance. 
 The Federals were particularly kind to these two prisoners, 
 Guerrillas though they were, and extended to them many 
 friendly acts and favors because of a bravery never surpassed. 
 
 Quantrell extricated himself from the desperate pursuit with 
 difficulty. He formed and fought, and fought and formed, but 
 outnumbered as he was nearly ten to one, he scarcely made an 
 impression upon the bold horsemen who constantly came on. 
 Payne Jones was afoot, Allen Farmer was afoot, James Lilly 
 was afoot, Lee McMurtry was afoot, Frank James was afoot, 
 John Barnhill's horse was standing up barely under his wounds, 
 Ike Hall was wounded, Venable was wounded, Clark Hocken- 
 smith was wounded, and others of his men had been more or 
 less severely handled. Quantrell passed the word hurriedly 
 along his own ranks to the effect that with the men not yet disa- 
 bled he would charge once more furiously, but that during the 
 charge those who were dismounted must leave the road, as 
 whether successful or unsuccessful, he would order a disband- 
 ment. The charge was made furiously, and it swept away the 
 head of the Federal column as a strong stream sweeps away a 
 mass of driftwood. There was a halt, a lull in the storm of the 
 pursuit, a sudden change of the combat from a column of rough- 
 riding cavahymen into a line of cautious skirmishers, and in the 
 interval of time thus gained by one audacious counter-move- 
 ment, the dismounted men escaped and the wounded men were 
 carried off by their comrades. 
 
 As of old the second rendezvous was in Nelson county. Lee 
 had surrendered. Everywhere the Confederate armies were 
 falling to pieces. Neither the Southern soldiers nor civilians 
 knew anything of the intentions of the Confederate authorities. 
 Even in the air there were evidences of gloom and disaster. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 425 
 
 Discipline was gone. The masses were not in favor of making 
 a Guerrilla war succeed to that of the war of a regular govern- 
 ment. Kentucky, like Missouri, had furnished more soldiers to 
 the Northern than to the Southern armies, and was willing 
 to make peace almost before there had been a commencement of 
 hostilities. While Lee stood everything stood erect, hopeful, 
 defiant. When Lee fell, the fabric which four years of heroic 
 fighting had erected and the blood of half a million of men had 
 been poured out to make its foundations immutable, fell with 
 him and with a great crash. African Slavery was buried at 
 Appomattox court house, and let us take care that American 
 Liberty was not buried there as well. 
 
 The last week in April, 1865, Quantrell, having with him only 
 John Ross, Payne Jones, William Hulse and Frank, James, 
 started to Winchester, in Clark county, but before he reached 
 it the town was occupied by the enemy. Every day for a week 
 there was a fight. In single combat with a Federal cavalryman, 
 Quantrell killed his man nearly a hundred yards. At the head 
 of his squad he encountered late one afternoon a superior body 
 of the enemy and advanced alone to inspect them further. A 
 single Federal rode out to encounter him, and halted at the dis- 
 tance of fifty yards. Quantrell called to him to come closer, 
 but he refused, and Quantrell fired and missed him. The Fed- 
 eral returned the fire with his carbine and missed, and then 
 followed it up with three additional shots from his revolver. 
 The range evidently being too great for his skill, he turned 
 quickly and was galloping back to his comrades when Quantrell 
 fired his second shot and put a bullet in the Federal's neck just 
 at the base of the skull. Something of the desperation of those 
 combats in Missouri when it was darkest along the border, came 
 now to the winnowed and battered few who still rallied about 
 their beloved leader and obeyed him with a touching devo- 
 tion abnormal in that time of falling away and abandonment. 
 John Ross and Frank James, sent to a house to procure horses 
 for three dismounted comrades, were fired upon from the stable 
 ind slightly wounded. They burnt the stable and killed the 
 chree soldiers who had ambushed them. 
 
 Glasscock, Ike Hall and Venable were ordered to bring pro- 
 visions from a citizen's house to Quantrell' s camp in the woods. 
 Hall, the spokesman, was refused everything. A fair talking, 
 
426 NOTED QUERRILLAS, OK 
 
 amiable, upright man, he pleaded his own positive orders and 
 the peculiar exigencies of the situation. No use ! There were 
 five Federal militia at the house, and no three Missourians in 
 arms anywhere could take from five Kentuckians a pound of 
 meat or a baking of flour. Short work and very sharp ! When 
 the smoke lifted, four of the militia were dead, and the fifth so 
 badly wounded that he begged to be killed, a request Venable 
 was in more than half a humor to gratify. 
 
 Later on Clark Hockensmith, John Barnhill, David Helton, 
 and Thomas Harris were surrounded by thirty cavalrymen while 
 at dinner. As Helton lifted a cup of coffee to his lips he hap- 
 pened to look through the window of the dining room and saw 
 the head of the Federal column almost jutted up against the 
 house. An alarm and a volley, and the Guerrillas fought their 
 way desperately to their horses and escaped, after killing and 
 wounding five of the pursuers, Harris receiving a severe wound 
 in the face. 
 
 Quantrell returned at last to Nelson county, much worn by a 
 week's incessant fighting, and more badly cut up and crippled 
 than lie had ever yet been in men and horses since his entrance 
 into Kentucky. While one of the Missourians lived, however, 
 he might surely count upon a following. Man by man they 
 would march at his bidding and die at a word. 
 
 Mundy, Marion, and Magruder, within a few days after 
 Quantrell's arrival in Nelson county, passed through on a raid. 
 Of the Missouri Guerrillas but one Peyton Long joined them. 
 Fighting successfully about Owensboro, in Owen county, and 
 holding their own pretty well in several hot fights in Breckin- 
 ridge county. Marion was sent with twelve men into Bewley- 
 ville, Meade county. Thirty Federal cavalry attacked him 
 there and Marion charged them fiercely. Peyton Long led this 
 charge. He was ahead of the foremost rider, shooting with the 
 terrible effect of his old Missouri training. Four of the enemy 
 had already fallen, shot dead from their saddles. He was close 
 upon the fifth when an ambushed body of Federals variously es- 
 timated at from two hundred to two hundred and fifty rose sud- 
 denly up from behind fences and trees and poured one deadly 
 volley into the ranks of Marion's little band. A heavy carbine 
 ball cut Peyton Long's pistol belt between the U. and the S. and 
 wounded him mortally in the bowels. Five others of the Guer- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 427 
 
 rillas were killed or wounded. Even under that fire Marion 
 halted long enough to lend a hand to Long and steady him in 
 the saddle. For eight miles such was his wonderful nerve and 
 endurance he held to his horse, riding upright as a soldier on 
 duty. Far in the rear Marion, with that devotion to his wounded 
 which made him conspicuous among the Guerrillas, fought back 
 the pursuit and held it back until the sun set. Then he halted 
 long enough for Peyton Long to die. A comrade holding his 
 head in his lap, suggested that to mitigate somewhat the pain 
 his belt be taken off. "No," said the suffering man, gently, 
 "I will die so. Tell my comrades that while life was left my 
 be.lt was buckled about me." Once he lifted himself up and 
 looked fair at the west where the sky still shone with the dark- 
 ening glories of the sun. His lips moved but he did not pray. 
 Perhaps some name, sweeter then than any name life had ever 
 made soft for him, came back just once again for the fashioning. 
 Perhaps he saw a face somewhere in the gathering twilight, just 
 a little pale but surely not reproachful. No matter : when the 
 twilight came and the night deepened somewhere out in the in- 
 finite and the unknown a spirit wandered, made pure before 
 God and beautiful because of an intrepidity no man has ever yet 
 surpassed, fight how he might for king, or cause, or creed, or 
 country. 
 
 Peyton Long was a soldier before Fort Sumpter fell. He 
 left Liberty, Clay county, Missouri, in May, 1861, a private in 
 Capt. Tom McCarty's company, of John T. Hughes' regiment. 
 McCarty was a Missouri lawyer who should have been a 
 Crusader or a mediaeval knight. He abhorred a lie, believed 
 female purity a thing fit to be worshiped, scarcely understood 
 the meaning of the word fear, was simple, child-like, confiding, 
 a lion in combat, and a patriarch in his camp and among the 
 soldiers of his company. McCarty enlisted Peyton Long took 
 him, indeed, a boy and left upon him the impress of a hero. In 
 every battle fought west of the Mississippi river Long partici- 
 pated Carthage, Oak Hills, Dry Wood, Lexington, Elk Horn 
 and when General Price crossed east of the river after Shiloh, 
 Long crossed with him, fighting a brave man's fight at luka 
 and Corinia. In the summer of 1863 he became a Guerrilla. 
 Quantreli tfas not more cool, Todd was not more desperate, 
 Haller wait not more dashing, Anderson was not more reckless, 
 
428 NOTED GUEEEILLAS, OR 
 
 Taylor was not more deadly, none of them were more persistent 
 and eternally in the saddle than this Missouri infantryman, 
 turned bushwhacker. At Lawrence his intrepidity was conspic- 
 uous ; at Centralia he was one of four who followed up the 
 remnant of Johnson's exterminated command to within a 
 hundred yards of the block-house at Sturgeon ; everywhere he 
 was face to face with danger, noted alike for coolness, prowess, 
 horsemanship, and desperation. A people whose cause after 
 having been appealed to the sword perishes by the sword, feel 
 satisfied perhaps with here and there a monument. This man, 
 this Confederate, Guerrilla, bushwhacker, border fighter, black 
 flag follower, this hero, whatever else he may be called de- 
 serves one. It need not be costly. A plain stone, barely large 
 enough for an inscription, is all the patriotic fitness of the act 
 requires a stone whereon this might be written : "Death smote 
 him in the harness and he fell where it was an honor to die." 
 On the llth day of June, 1865, Quantrell started from 
 Bedford Russell's, in Nelson county, with John Ross, William 
 Hulse, Payne Jones, Clark Hockensmith, Isaac Hall, Richard 
 Glasscock, Robert Hall, Bud Pence, Allen Parmer, Dave 
 Helton and Lee McMurtry. His destination was Salt river. At 
 Newel McClaskey's the turnpike was gained and traveled 
 several miles, when a singularly severe and penetrating rain 
 storm began. Quantrell, to escape this, turned from the road 
 on the left and into a woods pasture near a post-office called 
 Smiley. Through this pasture and for half a mile further he 
 rode until he reached the residence of a Mr. Wakefield, in 
 whose barn the Guerrillas took shelter. Unsuspicious of 
 danger, and of the belief that the nearest enemy was at least 
 twenty miles away, the meu dismounted, unbridled their horses, 
 and fed them at the racks ranged about the shed embracing two 
 sides of the barn. While the horses were eating the Guerrillas 
 amused themselves with a sham battle, choosing sides and using 
 cobs as ammunition. In the midst of much hilarity and boist- 
 erousiiess, Glasscock's keen eyes saw through the blinding rain a 
 column of Federal cavalry, one hundred and twenty strong, 
 approaching the barn at a trot. He cried out instantly, and 
 loud enough to be heard at Wakefield' s house, sixty yards 
 away: "Here they are! Here they are!" Instantly all the 
 men were in motion and rushing for their horses. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 429 
 
 Capt. Edward Terrell, known well to Quantrell and fought 
 stubbornly once before, had been traveling the turnpike from the 
 direction of Taylorsville, as completely ignorant of Quantrell's 
 proximity as Quantrell had been ignorant of Terrell's, and would 
 have passed on undoubtedly without a combat if the trail left 
 by the Guerrillas in passing from the road to the pasture had 
 not attracted his attention. This he followed to within sight of 
 the barn, understood in a moment the character of the men 
 sheltered there, and closed upon it rapidly, firing as he came 
 on. Before a single Guerrilla had put a bridle upon a horse, 
 Terrell was at the main gate of the lot, distant some fifty feet 
 from the barn, and pouring such a storm of carbine bullets 
 among them that their horses ran furiously about the lot, difficult 
 to approach and impossible to restrain. Fighting desperately 
 and deliberately, and driving away from the main gate a dozen 
 or more Federals stationed there, John Ross, William Hulse, 
 Allen Farmer, Lee McMurtry and Bud Fence cut their way 
 through, mounted and defiant. The entire combat did not last 
 ten minutes. It was a fight in which every man had to do for 
 himself and do what was done speedily. Once above the 
 rattling of musketry, the neighing of horses and the shouting of 
 combatants Quantrell's voice rang out loud and high: "Cut 
 through, boys ; cut through, somehow. Don't surrender while 
 there is a chance to get out !" The fire upon the Guerrillas wa* 
 furious. Quantrell's horse a thoroughbrecj, animal of great 
 spirit and speed, could not be caught. His master, anxious to 
 secure him, followed him composedly about the lot for several 
 minutes, trying under a shower of balls to get hands upon his 
 favorite. At this moment Clark Hockensmith, who was mounted 
 and free to go away at a run, saw the peril of his chief and 
 galloped to his rescue. Quantrell, touched by this act of devo- 
 tion, recognized it by a smile and held out his hand to hi& 
 comrade without speaking. Hockensmith dismounted until 
 Quantrell took his own place in the saddle, and then sprang up 
 behind him. Another furious volley from Terrell's men lining 
 all the fence about the great gate, killed Hockensmith and 
 killed the horse Hockensmith and Quantrell were upon. The 
 second hero now gave his life for Quantrell. Richard Glass- 
 cock had also secured his own horse as Hockensmith had done, 
 and was as free to ride away in safety as he had been. Opposite 
 
430 NOTED G-UEERILLAS, OB 
 
 to the main entranc^ of the barn lot there was an exit uncov- 
 ered by the enemy, and beyond this exit a stretch of heavy 
 timber. Those who gained this timber were safe. Hocken- 
 smith knew it when he faced about and deliberately laid down 
 his life for his chief, and Glasscock knew it when he also turned 
 about and hurried up to the two men struggling there Quan- 
 trell to drag himself cut from under the body of the horse, and 
 Hockensmith in the agonies of death. The second volley from 
 the gate mortally wounded Quantrell and killed Glasscock' s 
 horse. Then a charge of fifty shouting and shooting men 
 swept over the barn lot. Robert Hall, Payne Jones, David 
 Helton and Isaac Hall had gone out some time before on foot. 
 J. B. Tooley, A. B. Southworth and C. H. Southworth, wounded 
 badly, escaped, fighting. Only the dead man tying by his 
 wounded chief, and the dauntless Glasscock erect, splendid 
 and fighting to the last remained as trophies of the desperate 
 combat. Two balls had struck Quantrell. The first, the heavy 
 ball of a Spencer carbine entered close to the right collar 
 bone, ranged down along the spine, injuring it severely, and hid 
 itself somewhere in the body. The second ball cut off the finger 
 next to the little finger of the left hand, tearing it from its 
 socket and lacerating the hand itself painfully. The shoulder 
 wound did its work, however, for it was the mortal wound. All 
 the lower portion of Quantrell's body was paralyzed, and as he 
 was lifted and carried to Wakefield's house his legs were limp 
 and his extremities cold and totally without sensation. At no 
 time did he either complain or make moan. His wonderful 
 fortitude and endurance remained unimpaired to the end. His 
 mind, always clearest in danger, seemed to recognize that his 
 last battle had been fought and his last encounter finished. He 
 talked very little. Terrell came to him and asked if there was 
 any good service he might do that would be acceptable. 
 41 Yes," said Quantrell, quietly, "have Clark Hockensmith 
 buried like a soldier." After he had been carried to the house 
 of Wakefield "and deposited upon a pallet, he spoke once more 
 to Terrell: "While I live let me stay here. It is useless to 
 haul a dying man about in a wagon, jolting out what little life 
 is left in him." Terrell pledged his word that he should not be 
 removed, and rode away in pursuit of those who had escaped. 
 Meanwhile a tragedy was being enacted which was a fitting 
 
THE WAR FAME OF THE BOB DEE 431 
 
 sequel to the war work of the great Missouri Guerrilla. Rich- 
 ard Glasscock had seen Quantrell trying in vain to catch his own 
 horse, had seen Hockensmith spur to his help, had seen the two 
 mount together and essay to escape, had seen them go down 
 under a fearful volley all of a heap, had seen Quantrell struggle 
 up from the wreck unhurt, and he, too free to dash away in 
 safety as Hockensmith had been rushed like Hockensmith to 
 Quantrell' s assistance. It was then the second volley was fired 
 which struck Quantrell to the earth and killed Glasscock's horse. 
 Even then, untouched as he was, he might have still escaped'. 
 He did not even try. He stood over his wounded chief and 
 emptied the remaining barrels of the last revolver left loaded, 
 killing two of Terrell's men almost upon him and wounding three. 
 Fifty infuriated Federals fired then full upon Glasscock. He 
 alone of all the band stood erect and defiant. His life appeared 
 to be charmed. Not a bullet drew blood. One cut his shirt, 
 another his hat, two his pantaloons, the fifth a heavy lock of 
 hair, but the skin nowhere was broken. He was stooping to 
 take a pistol from Quantrell' s belt, which still contained a few 
 loads, when a furious Federal charge rushed over him and beat 
 him down. When he arose he had been stamped upon, beaten 
 about the head and shoulders with the butts of pistols, and dis- 
 armed. No, not disarmed ! Desperate Guerrilla as he was and 
 had been, a singular superstition clung to him tenaciously 
 through all his war life. He had believed that at some one time 
 in his career he would be a prisoner and that maybe to run out 
 from his environment or cut out, he would be compelled to sur- 
 render himself and take the chances afterward of escape. So 
 firmly had this idea become fixed in his mind that he bought a 
 Derringer pistol at the earliest opportunity and kept it con- 
 stantly concealed about his person. This he inspected fre- 
 quently and knew from such inspection that it was fit to stake 
 his life upon. Those who beat him down and disarmed him, 
 took only his revolvers, six huge dragoons that had done for 
 four terrible years ceaseless and unsparing work. Perhaps it was 
 thought unnecessary to search him for any other weapon, and 
 he was not searched. Guarded by a single cavalryman and per- 
 mitted to ride at the rear of the Federal column unconfined, he 
 waited calmly until as tretch of heavy timber was reached, and 
 until the column upon its march had widened the distance 
 
432 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OH 
 
 between the files perceptibly. Of a sudden then and with a 
 movement as certain and swift as long and sure practice could 
 make it, Glasscock drew from his bosom the cocked Derringer 
 and snapped it full in the face of the Federal trooper. The keen 
 bursting of the cap alone awoke the echoes and revealed to the 
 guard the imminence of the danger averted by a hair's breadth. 
 Wetted by the morning's soaking rain and false in the only 
 moment possible for execution, the Derringer, with a dauntless 
 life staked upon it, did not win. The whole theory of the Guer- 
 rilla's four years' hoarding and inspecting disappeared in the 
 explosion of a pistol cap. He cursed his luck with a savage 
 curse, short and gutteral, stood upright a second in his stirrups 
 and struck the guard by his side a terrible blow over the head 
 with the useless weapon. Stalwart and huge, it did not even 
 knock him from his saddle. Now began the grapple of the tiger 
 with the elephant. The Federal shortened his carbine and 
 sought to shoot Glasscock as he sat. Glasscock seized the 
 muzzle of the gun and hurled it aside just as it was discharged. 
 Both men leaped upon the ground and grappled one another 
 almost under the feet of their horses. Glasscock was doomed. 
 An old wound in the left shoulder, not yet entirely healed, and 
 an old wound in the right leg, still discharging pieces of bone 
 and clothing, made him a child in the grasp of a giant. His 
 antagonist six feet in height and powerful in proportion 
 clasped him in an embrace that was crushing like a bear's and 
 sinewy like an anaconda's. The crippled Guerrilla, however 
 all the old Berserkyr blood in his veins on fire fought until 
 they killed him. The strange combat in the rear had caused 
 the bulk of the column to turn back. Twenty cavalrymen, with 
 carbines cocked, gathered about the desperate wrestlers waiting 
 to shoot the Guerrilla the moment he stood clear and free from 
 the body of their comrade. Meanwhile Glasscock had managed 
 to get from his pocket and unclasp a small knife, scant two 
 inches being the length of its longest blade. With this he made 
 battle until he died. So deadly was the hug of the Federal, 
 however, and so tense was the vise-like grip of his arms, that 
 Glasscock could use his last weapon only partially. Once he 
 thrust the point of the knife blade a quarter of an inch in his 
 back, once he cut him across the chin, several times he slashed 
 him slightly about the body, but he was too weak to break loose 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 433 
 
 from the iron arms of the Federal and too close to him to kill 
 him. Suddenly a quick-eyed soldier put a carbine to Glass- 
 cock's hips and shot him through. So close was the muzzle of 
 the gun that the powder set his shirt on fire. As he fell, or 
 rather as he settled down at the feet of the Federal who was 
 grappling with him, and who felt a limp, yielding body slipping 
 from his hold, Glasscock laughed a savage laugh and strove in 
 dying to drive the steel home to his heart. Too weak even to 
 cut through the clothing, he kept fast* hold upon the knife and 
 held it fast under the bullets of at least twenty soldiers who 
 fired into the body long after it was stiff and cold. 
 
 These two men who died for Quantrell were, with the lights 
 before them, Guerrilla Bayards. Either was free to go neithei 
 went. Each was commanded by Quantrell to leave him neithei 
 obeyed. It is probable both believed that they could not save 
 him, yet steadfast in the equanimity of accepted death, they 
 both died striving to serve their chief. Clark Hockensmith, 
 even in his boyhood, had been singularly devoted in his friend- 
 ships and unfaltering in the discharge of what he considered hig 
 duty. At school, if those he loved had to be punished, he 
 shared such punishment with them. If trouble came to any 
 companion magnified by boyish fears and aggravated by boy- 
 ish fancies he stood undismayed by his side. It there was 
 danger, the youth became a man so cool he was, so steadfast, 
 and so calm. As he grew up he grew braver and gentler. All 
 who knew him loved him. Patient, generous, frank, guileless, 
 accommodating with those of his own age he was popular and 
 trusted, and with those who were older and more sedate, he was 
 the ideal of manly courtesy and ingenuous deference. When 
 the war came he joined the Guerrillas. The desperate nature 
 of their warfare awoke in his nature an emotion that responded 
 quickly to every phase of their fighting. Noted among cool 
 men for coolness, among daring men for superlative daring, 
 among devoted men for pre-eminent devotion, among unsparing 
 men for winning sweetness of disposition and patience of 
 behavior, he never killed a foe save in open battle or shot at an 
 enemy except the enemy were shooting at him. In one of 
 Poole's fights close to Wellington, in which Poole was worsted, 
 a gallant Guerrilla defending the rear was wounded and left 
 afoot. The pursuit was merciless, the murder of the wounded 
 28 
 
434 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 man absolute. Who would go back to save him? Clark Hocken- 
 smith of course. He did go back, but the venture was well 
 nigh hopeless. Entrenched behind his dead horse, the crippled 
 Guerrilla had made his peace with God and was ready to get 
 for his life the best price the Federals might be willing to pay 
 for it. Fifty of them were close to him, firing and advancing. 
 In the face of these, and in spite of a fire that would have 
 beaten back and demoralized a less intrepid soldier, Hocken- 
 smith helped his hurt comrade up upon his own horse and brought 
 him to a place of safety with such a gentle resolution that it 
 seemed simple because it was so perfectly undemonstrative. 
 And as he did at Wellington, so did he do twice afterwards. 
 The fourth time was his last time. As he rode up to rescue 
 him, Quantrell bade him go back. Hockensmith did not reply 
 save to dismount under a fire that was hotter and more concen- 
 trated than any he had ever endured before, as many as he had 
 faced, and helped his chief into his own saddle. Quantrell 
 needed help. Two days before his horse had kicked him on the 
 left knee and injured the joint seriously. It gave him great 
 pain to hobble even over a perfectly level surface, but to use 
 the leg in mounting and dismounting without assistance was 
 agony of the intensest sort. The volley that killed Hocken- 
 smith would certainly have killed Quantrell also, but the faithful 
 comrade, considerate even in death, had mounted behind his 
 chief and built up thus with his own body a barricade that only 
 failed to furnish shelter when it neither knew nor felt any more 
 the world's human heroism and devotion. 
 
 Richard Glasscock, though coming by a road different from 
 the one traveled by Hockensmith, reached the same goal. He 
 was devoted through sheer excess of physical courage. If he 
 cared well enough for any one to fight at all for him, he cared 
 well enough to die at his back. He had stood over wounded 
 comrades as often as Hockensmith, and had as often in the 
 snpremest fury of a combat torn from the hands of the victo- 
 rious foe some crippled Guerrilla, too hard hit to fly afoot, and 
 too far in the rear to overtake his routed friends. Noted also 
 for dash and intrepidity, Glasscock while wanting the higher 
 emotion of devoted friendship in his attempted rescue of Quan- 
 t re ll had in lieu of it that which would carry him just as far- 
 the reckless ambition to save the coollest and fiercest fighter 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 435 
 
 known to border warfare. He cared nothing for his life, because 
 he had never taken a moment's thought of it. He cared 
 nothing for the danger to be dared, because he probably did not 
 know the meaning of the word. Hockensmith died through the 
 excess of devotion ; Glasscock through the excess of personal 
 courage. Hockensmith for his faith would have been burnt at 
 the stake ; Glasscock for his faith would have died as Harold 
 died, sword in hand and heroic, on the battle-field of Hastings. 
 
 John Ross, Allen Farmer, William Hulse, Lee McMurtry and 
 Bud Pence escaped, pursued fiercely, but turned at intervals 
 and fought the Federals back so savagely that it was not long 
 before they were permitted to continue their retreat unmolested. 
 All of these men would have died with Quantrell if Quantrell's 
 own order had not been of the suave qui pent armament. 
 4k Take care of yourselves, everbody!" he had shouted several 
 times to the Guerrillas fighting in groups and squads about the 
 barn lot, and as these men supposed that everybody naturally 
 would endeavor to save himself, Quantrell equally with the bal- 
 ance, they fought out together and escaped. 
 
 Robert Hall had his horse killed, as did Isaac Hall, Payne 
 Jones, and David Helton. Afoot and folio wed, they turned once 
 beyond the exit gate and made a desperate rally, driving back 
 the pursuers and gaining some brief breathing time. A separa- 
 tion next followed, Payne Jones going in one direction, Robert 
 Hall in another, while Isaac Hall and David Helton kept 
 together. These two, both wounded, took refuge in a pond four 
 hundred yards from Wakefield's house. Gathering together 
 sticks and bunches of grass they made of them a sort of screen 
 for their heads which, from the nose up, was all that remained 
 above the water. Hunted everywhere, they crouched for an 
 hour thus, chilled to the marrow but undiscovered. Leaving 
 the pond and hurrying as fast as possible to a wheat field, they 
 were again seen, fired at, and followed. In the midst of the 
 growing grain they concealed themselves for the second time, 
 pulling up great quantities of wheat and covering their bodies 
 with it completely. After nightfall they emerged once more 
 from their hiding-place and escaped before morning entirely out 
 of the neighborhood. 
 
 Some of the fugitive Guerrillas soon reached the well known 
 rendezvous at the house of Alexander Sayers, twenty-three 
 
436 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OB 
 
 miles from Wakefield's, with tidings of the fight. Frank James 
 heard all the story through with a set face, strangely white and 
 sorrowful,, and then he arose and cried out: ''Volunteers to go- 
 back! Who will follow me to see our chief, living or dead?" 
 "I will go back," said Allen Farmer," "and I," said John 
 Ross, "and I," said William Hulse. "Let us ride, then," re- 
 joined James, and in twenty minutes more John Ross having 
 exchanged his jaded horse for a fresh one these four devoted 
 men were galloping away to Wakefield's. At two o'clock in 
 the morning they were there. Frank James dismounted and 
 knocked low upon the door. There was the trailing of a wom- 
 an's garment, the circumspect tread of a watching woman's 
 feet, the noiseless work of a woman's hand upon the latch, and 
 Mrs. Wakefield cool and courtly bade the strange, armed 
 men upon the threshhold enter. Just across on the other side 
 of the room from the door a man lay on a trundle-bed, 
 watchful but very quiet. James stood over the bed, but 
 could not speak. If one had cared to look into his eyes they 
 might have been seen full of tears. Quantrell, by the dim light 
 of a single candle, recognized James, smiled, held out his hand, 
 and said to him very gently, though a little reproachfully: "Why 
 did you come back? The enemy are thick about here ; they are 
 passing every hour." "To see if you were alive or dead, Cap- 
 tain. If the first, to save you ; if the last to put you in a 
 grave." "I thank you very much, Frank, but why try to take 
 me away? I am cold belo^ the hips. I can neither walk, ride, 
 nor crawl. I am dead and yet I am alive." Frank James 
 went to the door and called in Farmer, Ross, and Hulse. 
 Quantrell recognized them all in his old, calm, quiet fashion, 
 and bade them wipe away their tears, for they were crying visi- 
 bly. Then Frank James joined in his entreaties by 
 the entreaties of his comrades, pleaded with Quan- 
 trell for permission to carry him to the mountains 
 of Nelson county by slow and easy stages, each swear- 
 ing to guard him hour by hour until he recovered or- die 
 over his body, defending it to the last. He knew that every 
 pledge made by them would be kept to the death. He felt that 
 every word spoken was a golden word, and meant absolute de- 
 votion. His faith in their affection was as steadfast and abid- 
 ing as of old. He listened till they had done, with the old staid 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 437 
 
 courtesy of victorious Guerrilla days, and then he silenced 
 them with an answer which from its resoluteness they knew to 
 be unalterable. "I cannot live. I have run a long time; I 
 have come out unhurt from many desperate places ; I have 
 fought to kill and I have killed ; I regret nothing. The end is 
 close at hand. I am resting easy here, and will die so. You 
 do not know how your devotion has touched my heart, nor can 
 you ever understand how grateful I am for the love you have 
 shown for me. Try to get back to your homes, and avoid if 
 you can the perils which beset you/' 
 
 Until 10 o'clock the next day these men remained with Quan- 
 trell. He talked to them very freely of the past, but never of 
 his earlier life in Kansas. Many messages were sent to absent 
 friends, and much good advice was given touching the surrender 
 of the remnant of the band. Again and again he returned to 
 the subject of their earlier struggles in Missouri and dwelt long 
 over the recollections and the reminiscences of the two first 
 years of Guerrilla warfare. Finally the parting came, and those 
 who looked the last on QuantrelPs face that morning as they 
 stooped to tell him goodbye, looked their last on it forever. 
 
 Terrell had promised Quantrell positively that he should not 
 be removed from Wakefield's house, but in three days he had 
 either broken or forgotten this pledge. He informed Gen. 
 Palmer, commanding the department of Kentucky, of the fact 
 of the fight, and of the desperate character of the wounded 
 officer left paratyzed behind him, suggesting at the same time 
 the advisability of having him removed to a place of safety. 
 Gen. Palmer sent an ambulance under a heavy escort to Wake- 
 field's, and Quantrell suffering greatly and scarcely more alive 
 than dead was hauled to the military hospital in Louisville and 
 deposited there. Until the question of recovery had been abso- 
 lutely decided against him, but few friends were admitted into 
 his presence. It' any one conversed with him at all, the conver- 
 sation of necessity was required to be carried on in the presence 
 of an official. Mrs. Ross visited him thus a Christian woman, 
 devoted to the South, and of active and practical patriotism 
 and took some dying messages to loved ones and true ones in 
 Missouri. Mrs. Ross left him at one o'clock in the afternoon, 
 and at four o'clock the next afternoon the great Guerrilla died. 
 His passing away after a life so singularly fitful and tempest- 
 
438 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 uous was as the passing of a summer cloud. He had been 
 asleep, and as he awoke he called for water. A Sister of Charity 
 at the bedside put a glass to his lips, but he did not drink. She 
 heard him murmur once audibly "Boys, get ready!" then a 
 long pause then one word more "Steady!" and then when 
 she drew back from bending over the murmuring man she fell 
 upon her knees and prayed. Quantrell was dead! 
 
 Before his death he had become a Catholic and had been 
 visited daily by two devoted priests. To one of these he made 
 confession, and such a confession! He told everything. He 
 was too serious and earnest a man to do less. He kept nothing 
 back, not even the least justifiable of his many homicides. As 
 the good priest listened and listened, and as year after year of 
 the wild war work was made to give up its secrets, what manner 
 of a man must the priest have imagined lay dying there cool, 
 precise, picturesque, an Apache warrior, and a Guerrilla Chief ! 
 Did he get absolution where there is only one priest, one pro- 
 pitiation, one God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost? Did 
 Marco Bozzaris ? Did Leonidas ? Did Charlotte Corday ? Did 
 William Tell ? Did Arnold Winkelreid ? 
 
 Let history be just. On that hospital bed, watched by the 
 calm, colorless face of a Sister of Charity, a dead man lay who, 
 when living, had filled with his deeds four years of terrible war 
 history. A singularly placid look had come with the great 
 change. Alike was praise or censure, reward or punishment. 
 Fate had done its worst, and the future stood revealed to the 
 spirit made omniscient by its journey through the Valley of the 
 Shadow of Death. He had done with summer's heat and win- 
 ter's cold, with spectral ambuscades and midnight vigils. 
 There would never be any war in the land of the hereafter. 
 The swoop of cavalry the ringing of revolvers the rapture o* 
 the charge the roar of combat the agony 'of defeat white 
 faces trampled by the iron feet of horses the march the 
 bivouac the battle ; what remained of these when the transfig- 
 uration was done and when the river called Jordan rolled 
 between the shores of the finite and the infinite? Nothing! 
 And yet by these, standing or falling, must the great Guerrilla 
 be judged. 
 
 Quantrell differed in some degree from every Guerrilla who 
 was either his comrade or his contemporary. Not superior to* 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 439 
 
 Todd in courage or in enterprise, nor to Haller, Poole, Jarrette, 
 Younger, Taylor, Anderson, Frank James, Thrailkill, Gregg, 
 Lea, Maddox, DanVaughn, Blunt , or Yager, he yet had one 
 particular quality which none of these save Gregg, Frank 
 James, Lea and Younger possessed to the same pre-eminent 
 degree extraordinary resource or cunning. All the Guerrillas 
 fought. Indeed, at certain times and under certain circum- 
 stances fighting might justly have been considered the least of 
 their accomplishments. A successful leader required coolness, 
 intrepidity, robust health, fine horsemanship, expert pistol 
 practice, quick perception in peril, great rapidity of movement, 
 immense activity, and ine orable fixedness of purpose. Those 
 mentioned excelled in these qualities, but at times they were 
 too eager to fight, took too many desperate chances, or rushed 
 too recklessly into combats where they could not win. Quan- 
 trell counted the cost of everything ; watched every way lest an 
 advantage should be taken of him ; sought to shield and save 
 his men ; strove by much strategy to have the odds with rather 
 than against him ; traveled a multitude of long roads rather 
 than one short road once too often ; took upon himself many 
 disguises to prevent an embarrassing familiarity; retreated 
 often rather than fight and be worsted ; kept scouts everywhere ; 
 had the faculty of divination to an almost occult degree ; 
 believed in young men ; relied a little upon mystification ; paid 
 attention to small things ; listened to every man's advice and 
 then took his own ; stood by his soldiers ; obeyed strictly the 
 law of retaliation ; preferred the old dispensation to the new 
 that is to say the code of Moses to the code of Jesus Christ ; 
 inculcated by precept and example the self-abnegation and 
 devotion of comradeship; fought desperately; carried a black 
 flag ; killed everything ; made the idea of surrender ridiculous ; 
 snapped his finger at death ; was something of a fatalist ; rarely 
 drank ; trusted few women, but these with his life ; played high 
 at cards; believed in religion; respected its ordinances; 
 went at intervals to church ; understood human nature 
 thoroughly ; never quarreled ; was generally taciturn, and 
 one of the coolest and deadliest men in a personal 
 combat known to the border. He rode like he was 
 carved from the horse beneath him. In an organization where 
 skill with a pistol was a passport to leadership, he shot with a 
 
440 NOTED GUEKEILLAS, OH 
 
 revolver as Leatherstocking shot with a rifle. The strength of 
 his blow was in its fury. No force not greatly superior to his 
 own ever stood before his onset. He drilled his men to fight 
 equally with either hand. Ambidextered, they fought finally 
 with both. Fairly matched, God help the column that came in 
 contact with him ! 
 
 As to the kind of warfare Quantrell waged, that is another 
 matter. History must deal with him as it finds him. Like the 
 war of La Vendee, the Guerrilla war was one rather of hatred 
 than of opinion. The regular Confederates were fighting for a 
 cause and a nationality, the Guerrillas for vengeance. Memen- 
 toes of murdered kinsmen mingled with their weapons, vows 
 consecrated the act of enlistment, and the cry for blood was 
 heard from homestead to homestead. Quantrell became a Guer- 
 rilla because he had been most savagely dealt with, and he 
 became a chief because he had prudence, firmness, courage, 
 audacity, and common-sense. In personal intrepidity he was 
 inferior to no man. His features were pleasing without being 
 handsome. His eyes were blue and penetrating. He had a 
 Roman nose. In height he was five feet eleven inches, and his 
 form was well-knit, graceful, and sinewy. His constitution was 
 vigorous, and his physical endurance equal to an Indian's. In 
 vigilance, diligence, and perseverance he was pre-eminent. His 
 greatest qualities were developed by great emergencies. His 
 glance was rapid and unerring. His judgment was clearest and 
 surest when the responsibility was heaviest, and when difficulties 
 gathered thickest around him. Based upon skill, energy, per- 
 spicacity, and unusual presence of mind, his fame as a Guer- 
 rilla will endure for generations. 
 
 Quantrell died a Catholic and was buried in the Catholic 
 cemetery at Louisville. Since 1865 many impostors have 
 appeared in various portions of the country, claiming to be none 
 other than the noted Missouri Guerrilla. A somewhat peculiar 
 case of this kind occurred in the Spring of 1866. General 
 Shelby, in company with probably half a dozen settlers of the 
 Carlotta Colony of Cordova, were in Vera Cruz waiting for the 
 American steamer to come in. They had been long upon the 
 mole and were returning, impatient, to their hotel. At that 
 moment a boat from the steamer landed some passengers on the 
 quay, one of whom recognized Shelby and called out to him to 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 441 
 
 tarry awhile longer. Qnantrell was aboard the ship and would 
 soon be on shore. "Quantrell?" repeated Shelby, in surprise, 
 "what Quantrell?" "The Guerrilla Quantrell," was the reply 
 of the new comer. "Impossible," rejoined the General. "The 
 man of whom you speak was killed in Kentucky and buried 
 there." While they were talking the reputed Quantrell made 
 his appearance in their midst. He seemed to be anxious and 
 nervous. He had been told that at Cordova there were some of 
 Quantrell' s old men, and that at Paso del Macho he would meet 
 John Thrailkill, a famous companion in arms. When introduced 
 to Shelby he changed color visibly. Shelby looked once at him, 
 looked once through and through him, and then summing him 
 up said curtly: "You are not Quantrell." "I know it, General, 
 nor have I ever claimed to be. When I took passage at New 
 York for Vera Cruz a Confederate aboard the ship greeted me 
 as Quantrell, and introduced me as Quantrell to all the passen- 
 gers. Against my will I was lionized. Necessity bade me keep 
 ray peace, however, and my passage was paid, money was sub- 
 scribed for me, the captain was very kind, the ladies were 
 very gracious ; but at no single time and in no single unguarded 
 moment did I claim to be the famous border fighter of the West. 
 I am not Quantrell, as none know better than yourself, nor 
 have I ever in my life seen Quantrell." The man spoke the 
 simple truth. His imposition had been one rather of omission 
 than commission. He had found it profitable to be considered 
 the celebrated Guerrilla in question, and he made no explana- 
 tion as long as it paid him to acquiesce in the identity. 
 
 Once again in British Honduras, thirteen of those who had 
 participated in Shelby's romantic expedition into Mexico, were 
 wrecked and cast away upon the coast. Further inland where 
 the mahogany cutters were at work a man was hiding, who called 
 himself Quantrell. He was a smart, suspicious, taciturn fellow, 
 armed like an arsenal and lazy as a hedge-hog. With the thir- 
 teen castaways there were two Guerrillas who had really good 
 cause to hide and were hiding, but when brought face to face 
 with the mysterious impostor they found to their infinite disgust 
 a yellow-bellied Indian from Costa Rica, scraping his sores in 
 the ashes like Job and alive with vermin as any beggar. 
 
 Once again on the Rio Grande, in 1868, the famous Guerrilla 
 revealed himself. A man had been murdered for his money, 
 
442 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OS 
 
 twenty head of cattle driven successfully into Mexico, a ranche 
 plundered, and a band of specious cut-throats organized for 
 extensive devil's work. Its leader declared himself to be Quan- 
 trell. He issued a proclamation and signed it Quantrell. He 
 forewarned obnoxious cattle-men and threatened with death 
 unpliant store keepers over the signature of Quantrell. Four of 
 Shelby's old Brigade, and two of Todd's original company, 
 banded themselves together to destroy the bogus Quantrell. 
 Ten Texans joined them, and altogether they broke into a chap- 
 arral where the robbers were, killed the whole band save seven, 
 and brought the seven, wounded, back, the so-called Quantrell 
 among the number. On the heels of the capture came the con- 
 fession. The leader of these bandits, instead of being the terri- 
 ble Missourian, was a Tennessee man who in 1858 had killed his 
 brother and fled to Texas. There giving full play to his fero- 
 cious passions he became speedily a murderer and a thief. 
 For a cold blooded killing in Navarro county he had been sent 
 to the penitentiary for ten years, had escaped by a desperate 
 rush, had fld to the unknown along the Rio Grande, had made 
 himself an evil name and fame in its inaccessible hiding-places, 
 and had at last been wounded and brought bound to the judg- 
 ment-seat. After his story had been fully told, there was a 
 brief trial and a sudden punishment. The man-slayer and the 
 cattle-stealer hung for weeks and weeks on a tree by a traveled 
 highway, a terror to evil-doers and a ghastly warning. 
 
 Once again a bogus Quantrell appeared in Arkansas, in 1870. 
 The worst this one did was to borrow money from credulous 
 sympathizers, and successfully elude pursuit after having appro- 
 priated two valuable trotting horses. 
 
 The last scoundrel to appropriate the name and the fame of 
 the great Guerrilla made his appearance in Colorado, close to 
 the New Mexican line. He only confessed his identity to a few 
 confidential friends. He was a ranche man and ostensibly Mr. 
 "William Harrison. He bought cattle, sheep, mules, dry goods, 
 and groceries on credit. He imposed upon ex-Guerrillas in 
 various ways, but always through the agency of those who hud 
 not known Quantrell, and finally fled the country, a fugitive 
 from justice and a swindler to the extent of four thousand 
 dollars. It was reported afterwards that a vigilance committee 
 hung him in Utah. 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 443- 
 
 Quantrell, a little while before he died, suggested that Henry 
 Porter should collect together the remnant of the Guerrillas 
 and surrender them in a body. He understood Porter's capac- 
 ity, and had unbounded confidence in his cool courage and 
 practical sense. Porter fully deserved every encomium passed 
 upon him by his chief. Circumspect, prompt to avail himself 
 of favorable surroundings, of deliberate judgment, intrepid, de- 
 voted to his comrades in arms, bold in the expression of opin- 
 ion, and unyielding in his demands for the same treatment ac- 
 corded to the regular Confederate soldier, he conferred 
 promptly with Gen. Palmer and was as promptly granted an in- 
 terview. Gen. Palmer was in every sense of the word an up- 
 right soldier. While the war raged, he believed in making war 
 mean war; when the end came he believed in making peace 
 mean peace. He was eminently a just man. He despised those 
 cruel hangers-on of the Union cause who lived in bomb-proofs. 
 The Cossacks of his command he court-martialed. In the field 
 he was bold, enterprising and full of fight. He knew how to 
 follow up a blow, to extract from a victory its least possible ad- 
 vantage, to advance far, to get much, to remain where he had 
 halted, and to retain what he had captured. Palmer's terms to 
 Porter were most liberal. Each Guerrilla was permitted to re- 
 tain two revolvers, what horses he owned, and what amunition 
 was left to him. If he was destitute, he was to receive trans- 
 portation to any portion of the country he might desire to go to. 
 No matter about his past it was not enquired into ; no matter 
 how evil his reputation had been the war was over. His oath 
 wiped out his outrages his parole was to be looked upon as his 
 pardon. 
 
 In the meanwhile a horrible outrage had been committed. A 
 most respectable woman, a Mrs. Clark, had been outraged 
 under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Riding an unfre- 
 quented road to a neighboring town in quest of medicine or 
 medical attendance for an ailing neighbor, she was overpowered 
 by two ruffians and monstrously abused. Some who both feared 
 and hated the remnant of QuantrelPs little band accused them 
 of the atrocious act. Gen. Palmer in a moment of unreasoning 
 indignation unusual for him, joined in the outcry without inves- 
 tigation and declared bitterly that until the savages who did the 
 deed were brought to him, living or dead, the Missouri Guer- 
 
444 NOTED QUEBRILLAS, OR 
 
 rillas should take their chances as outlaws and be hunted accord- 
 ingly. Equally with the indignation of the Federal General, 
 was the indignation of the Missourians. Frank James especially 
 was furious. Before Palmer even knew of the outrage, James 
 'had taken William Hulse with him and had struck and followed 
 rapidly the trail of the scoundrels. On the Chaplin river, above 
 Chaplin town, and after a sleepless hunt of two days and nights, 
 the Guerrillas came upon their prey. One was a Kentuckian 
 named Brothers, and the other a nondescript called Texas. His 
 true name was probably Jonathan Billingboy. These two des- 
 peradoes had been joined by a third, who, while he was in no 
 manner connected with the outrage, would probably in a fight 
 make common cause with his companions. "There are three,'* 
 aid Hulse, when the trail had ended at a house, and when a 
 further reconnoisance revealed the fact that none of them had 
 left it. "Yes," replied James, "there are three. If there 
 were six it would not matter.*' They dismounted and tied their 
 horses in some timber back from the dwelling and then gained 
 it unobserved. Those whom they sought were at dinner, armed 
 but indifferent. Throwing back the door of the dining room 
 unceremoniously, the two Guerrillas strode in, wrathful and 
 accusing. Frank James, always one among the coolest and 
 and deadliest fighters known to the border, called out in a sin- 
 gularly placid yet penetrating voice: "Keep your seats, all of 
 you; keep your hands up; keep your eyes to the front." Two 
 sat stone still, scarcely breathing, hardly lifting or letting fall 
 an eyelid. Brothers, desperate even in extremity such as this, 
 snatched swiftly for his pistol. Frank James blew his brains 
 out across the table. The other two did not move. Hulse cov- 
 ered both, but did not fire. He did not know Texas, and he 
 would not kill an innocent man. Texas, however, was not one 
 of the party, nor had he been with -Brothers since the outrage. 
 When this was ascertained, Frank James spoke to Hulse: "Our 
 work is but half done ; let us go and finish it." It was twenty 
 miles to Alexander Sayer's house, and these two men rode the 
 distance rapidly. They desired to find as soon as might be the 
 trail of the second scoundrel, no matter how cold or indistinct. 
 Others of his comrades had been ahead of him, as swiftly as he 
 had ridden, and Texas had shared the fate of Brothers. Cap- 
 tured by John Eoss, Henry Porter and Allen Parmer, he had so 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 445 
 
 vociferously defended himself, and so eloquently pleaded his 
 own innocence, that these three intrepid men unable, through 
 the very excess of those soldierly qualities which had made 
 them desperately brave, to understand how it was possible to 
 commit such a crime listened rather favorably to his protesta- 
 tions and permitted him to retain his pistols and ride leisurely 
 along with them towards the house of Benedict Pashe. Mr. Pashe 
 would establish his innocence beyond all controversy. Mr. 
 Pashe knew of his immediate whereabouts the day Brothers did 
 his devil's work, and Mr. Pashe would make his alibi impervious 
 to assault. Mr. Pashe never had an opportunity to say to the 
 plausible story yea or nay. While yet distant from his house a 
 mile and more, Texas broke away from his accommodating cap- 
 tors and fled like an Arab. Better mounted than either Ross 
 or Porter, Texas soon outstripped them, untouched by the 
 bullets sent after him, and would have escaped altogether if the 
 speed of the start had been joined to the bottom of Farmer's 
 horse. A gallop of a mile, however, told the story of the chase. 
 Texas was a thorough cavalryman, though a born robber. He 
 knew by the laboring breath of his steed, the reeling stride, the 
 foam of an unnatural perspiration, the uncertain way the feet 
 took hold of the ringing turnpike, the almost human agony 
 the faithful animal manifested over its own failing powers, that 
 the end was nigh at hand. He looked back once as he crowned 
 the crest of a sudden hill and saw Pariner, fixed as fate in the 
 saddle and as immovable, gaining upon him hand over hand. 
 There was one resource left common alike to the ant or the 
 elephant he could fight. He halted his blown horse and 
 turned about. Farmer came right on, a pistol in his right hand 
 and the reins well gathered up in his left. At fifty paces he 
 fired at Texas and missed him. Texas stood fast, his face 
 wearing a hunted look and his eyes wolfish. At thirty paces the 
 two fired simultaneously, Farmer missing again, but Texas- 
 wounding his horse severely if not fatally. Farmer lessened the 
 distance by a spur stroke and fired the third time at Texas 
 barely ten feet away. This time he did not miss. Game to the 
 last, Texas, even as he reeled in the saddle, gripped his own 
 horse with his knees, steadied himself for a moment or two, and 
 fired twice at Farmer before he fell. He had been hurt too 
 badly, however, to be accurate. Another bullet in the breast 
 
446 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OB 
 
 finished him. As he had lived, so had he died a bad, stoical, 
 unrepentant man. The bodies of both Texas and Brothers 
 were carried by the Federals into Bardstown and identified by 
 Mrs. Clark as the bodies of her assailants. Justice was satis- 
 fied, and Palmer was appeased. The Guerrillas had washed 
 out the stain cast upon them in blood, and public opinion 
 from being their slanderers and detractors commenced sud- 
 denly to flatter and to speak many gracious words in praise of 
 them. Coolly circumspect and quick to recognize the turn of a 
 tide that had risen to flood in their favor, Henry Porter gathered 
 hurriedly together the remnant of Quantrell's torn, scarred and 
 decimated Guerrilla band, just eighteen in all, and surrendered 
 them at Samuels Depot, Nelson county, July 25th, 1865. Cap- 
 tain Younger, of the 47th Kentucky, assisted by Lieutenant 
 Campbell, of the same regiment, received and paroled the Guer- 
 rillas. These two gallant officers were especially generous and 
 obliging. Soldiers themselves who had seen real service, they 
 respected brave men and recognized intrepidity even in an 
 enemy. Capt. Younger, as delicately as possible, administered 
 the oath, and Lieut. Campbell, with equal good-breeding, 
 required of the Guerrillas their promise simply that they would 
 not retain more pistols than were permitted by the terms of sur- 
 render. This little band scarcely a fragment of that terrible 
 organization known so well to the border was the last of 
 the Guerrilla race. They went their separate ways quietly 
 and in order. It had been a cruel, desperate, remorseless 
 race. It was the offspring of the fury and the agony of 
 invasion. It did as it was done by ; it killed and it was killed. 
 As the Missouri Guerrilla excelled in certain military character- 
 istics, so also did his reputation have over it the glare of a more 
 sinister light. Personal prowess always attracts, no matter how 
 utterly abused or misapplied. In the West especially is this the 
 case. Individual daring, more perfect the nearer the man 
 approaches the pastoral life, is a peculiar feature of Western 
 civilization. It existed in a latent yet easily aroused condition 
 before the war, now and then breaking forth into deeds of 
 sudden yet antique heroism, and since the war uickened by 
 all the tremendous energies of the strife, and given a new phase 
 because of a society that in losing its homogenity lost its power 
 to entirely control an element so liable to excess it has become 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 447 
 
 a part of the character of the people themselves. With such, 
 and for the next two or three generations, the Guerrilla will be 
 an object of study, admiration, or respect. The Missouri Guer- 
 rillaeminently pastoral, desperate in extremity, unsparing in 
 combat, and savage to the last, will remain the typical Guerrilla 
 of the war. As he lived, and fought, and died, this narrative 
 shows, if it shows anything. As he was beat upon by the fierce 
 blasts of the civil strife and driven hither and thither, sometimes 
 a fugitive and sometimes a wild beast at bay, it has likewise 
 been the mission of this history to set forth. He is interesting 
 because he was Anglo-Saxon. If through similar convulsions 
 the race of which he was the best living exponent should 
 again make its appearance, those who choose to understand 
 something of his nature, and something of his mode of warfare, 
 may not conclude that this book has been altogether written 
 in vain. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 AFTER THE WAR. 
 
 TO THE great mass of the Guerrillas the end of the war also- 
 brought an end to their armed resistance. As an organi- 
 zation, they never fought again. The most of them kept their 
 weapons ; a few had great need to keep them. Some were kill- 
 ed because of the terrible renown won in the four years' war ; 
 some were forced to hide themselves in the unknown of the out- 
 lying territories ; and some were mercilessly persecuted and 
 driven into desperate defiance and resistance because they 
 were human and intrepid. To this latter class the Jameses and 
 Youngers belonged. No men ever strove harder to put the past 
 behind them. No men ever submitted more sincerely to the re- 
 sult of a war that had as many excesses on one side as on the 
 other. No men ever went to work with a heartier good will to 
 keep good faith with society and make themselves amenable to 
 the law. No men ever sacrificed more for peace, and for the 
 bare privilege of doing just as hundreds like them had done 
 the privilege of going back again into the obscurity of civil life 
 and becoming again a part of the enterprising economy of the 
 commonwealth. They were not permitted so to do, try how 
 they would, and as hard, and as patiently. 
 
 After the death of Quantrell and the surrender of the remnant 
 of his Guerrillas, Frank James was not permitted, at first, to re- 
 turn to Missouri at all, much less to his home in Clay county. 
 He lingered in Kentucky as long as possible, very circumspect 
 in his actions and very conservative in his behavior. Tempted 
 one day by his beardless face and innocent walk and talk to bear 
 upon him roughly, four Federal soldiers set upon Frank James 
 in Brandenburg and made haste to force an issue. For a moment 
 the old fire of his earlier and stormier days flared up all of a sud- 
 den from the ashes of the past and consumed as with a single 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 449 
 
 hot blast of passion prudence, accountability, caution and dis- 
 cretion. He fought as he had fought at Centralia. Two of the 
 Federals were killed instantly, the third was desperately 
 wounded, while the fourth shot Frank badly in the point of 
 the left hip, inflicting a grievous hurt and one which caused him 
 afterwards a great deal of trouble and pain. Staunch friends 
 hid him while the hue and cry were heaviest, and careful surgical 
 attention brought him back to life when he lay so close to 
 death's door that by the lifting of a hand he might also have 
 lifted its latch. This fight, however, was not one of his own 
 seeking, nor one which he could have avoided without the exhi- 
 bition of a quality he never had known anything about and 
 never could know anything about physical cowardice. 
 
 Jesse James emaciated, tottering as he walked, fighting what 
 seemed to every one a hopeless battle of "the skeleton boy against 
 skeleton death" joined his mother in Nebraska and returned 
 with her to their home near Kearney, in Clay county. His 
 wound would not heal, and more ominous still, every now and 
 then there was a hemorrhage. In the spring of 1866 he was 
 just barely able to mount a horse and ride a little. And he did 
 ride, but he rode armed, watchful, vigilant, haunted. He might 
 be killed, waylaid, ambuscaded, assassinated; but he would be 
 killed with his eyes open and his pistols about him. The hunt 
 for this maimed and emaciated Guerrilla culminated on the 
 night of February 18th, 1867. On this night an effort was made 
 to kill him. Five militiamen, well armed and mounted, came to 
 his mother's house and demanded admittance. The weather was 
 bitterly cold, and Jesse James, parched with a fever, was tossing 
 wearily in bed. His pistols were under his head. His step-father, 
 Dr. Samuel, heard the militiamen as they walked upon the front 
 porch, and demanded to know what they wanted. They told him 
 to open the door. He came up to Jesse's room and asked him 
 what he should do. "Help me to the window," was the low, 
 calm reply, "that I may look out.*' He did so. There was 
 snow on the ground and the moon was shining. He saw that 
 all the horses hitched to the fence had on cavalry saddles, and 
 then he knew that the men were soldiers. He had but one of 
 two things to do drive them away or die. He had never sur- 
 rendered and he never would. Incensed at his step-father's 
 silence, they were hammering at the door with the butts of their 
 29 ' 
 
450 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 muskets and calling out to Jesse to come down, swearing that 
 they knew he was in the house, and that they would have him out, 
 dead or alive. He went down stairs softly, having first dressed 
 himself, crept up close to the front door and listened until 
 from the talk of the men he thought he was able to get a fatally 
 accurate pistol range. Then he put a heavy dragoon revolver 
 to within three inches of the upper panel of the door and fired. 
 A man cried out and fell. Before the surprise was off he threw 
 the door wide open, and with a pistol in each hand began a 
 rapid fusillade. A second man was killed as he ran, two men 
 were wounded severely, and surrendered, while the fifth 
 marauder, terrified, yet unhurt, rushed swiftly to his horse and 
 escaped in the darkness. 
 
 What else could Jesse James have done? In those evil days 
 bad men in bands were doing bad things continually in the 
 name of law, order and vigilance committees. He had been a 
 desperate Guerrilla ; he had fought under a black flag ; he had 
 made a name for terrible prowess along the border ; he had sur- 
 vived dreadful wounds ; it was known that he would fight at any 
 hour or in any way ; he could not be frightened out from his 
 native county ; he could be neither intimidated nor robbed, and 
 hence the wanton war waged upon Jesse and Frank James, and 
 hence the reasons why to-day they are outlaws, and hence the 
 reasons also that outlaws as they are and proscribed in county, 
 or State, or territory they have more friends than the officers 
 who hunt them, and more defenders than the armed men who 
 seek to secure their bodies, dead or alive. 
 
 Since 1865 it has been pretty much one eternal ambush for 
 these two men one unbroken and eternal hunt twelve years 
 long. They have been followed, trailed, surrounded, shot at, 
 wounded, ambushed, surprised, watched, betrayed, proscribed, 
 outlawed, driven from State to State, made the objective points 
 of infallible detectives, and they have triumphed. By some 
 intelligent people they are regarded as myths ; by others as in 
 league with the devil. They are neither, but they are uncom- 
 mon men. Neither touches whisky. Neither travels twice the 
 same road. Neither tells the direction from which he came nor 
 the direction in which he means to go. They are rarely 
 together, but yet they are never far apart. There is a design 
 in this the calm, cool, deadly design of men who recognize the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 451 
 
 perils which beset them and who are not afraid to die. They 
 travel this way because if any so-called friend tempted by the 
 large rewards offered for the life of either should seek to take it 
 and succeed, the other, safe from the snare and free to do his 
 worst, is pledged to avenge the brother slain through treachery, 
 and avenge him surely. That he will do it none doubt who 
 know the men. In addition, the Jameses trust very few people 
 two probably out of every ten thousand. They come and go as 
 silently as the leaves fall. They never boast. They have 
 many names and many disguises. They speak low, are polite, 
 deferential and accommodating. They do not kill save in stub- 
 born self-defence. They have nothing in common with a mur- 
 derer. They hate the highwayman and the coward. They are 
 outlaws, but they are not criminals, no matter what preju- 
 diced public opinion may declare, or malignant partisan dislike 
 make noisy with reiteration. The war made them desperate 
 Guerrillas, and the harpies of the war the robbers who came in 
 the wake of it and the cut-throats who came to the surface 
 as the honorble combatants settled back again into civilized 
 life proscribed them and drove them into resistance. They 
 were men who could not be bullied who were too intrepid to 
 be tyrannized over who would fight a regiment just as quickly 
 as they would fight a single individual who owned property 
 and meant to keep it who were born in Clay county and did 
 not mean to be driven out of Clay county and who had sur- 
 rendered in good faith, but who because of it did not intend any 
 the less to have their rights and receive the treatment the 
 balance of the Southern sold ; ers received. This is the summing 
 up of the whole history of these two men since the war. 
 They were hunted, and they were human. They replied 
 to proscription by defiance, ambushment by ambush- 
 ment, musket shot by pistol shot, night attack by counter 
 attack, charge by counter-charge, and so will they do, desper- 
 ately and with splendid heroism, until the end. 
 
 Jesse James, to-day however, owes his life to Dr. A. P. Lank- 
 ford. After the night attack on his mother's house, and after his 
 escape from the toils which beset him so closely there, much 
 exposure in pitiless weather made his wound open and bleed 
 afresh. He could neither walk, ride, nor be hauled about in a 
 wagon. He had to be left at a house deep in some heavy 
 
452 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 timber, and to run twice the risk of death once from the wound 
 which would not heal, and once from blood-thirsty enemies up 
 and after him in every direction. Lankford even then was both 
 surgeon and Samaritan. He had a theory that he never knew a 
 man until he handled his wrist, and he had also two mistresses, 
 science and great good humor. An excellent appetite gave him 
 always a hearty laugh, and this to a certain extent Was infec- 
 tious. It had this principle of magnetism, it was always genial. 
 In the capacity of a man of all hours he came to surprise the 
 secrets of this wounded Guerrilla. Maybe he was a little super- 
 stitious; what physicians are not? He had also his favorites. 
 He believed in calomel, pulled off his hat to quinine, flattered 
 carbolic acid high up in the pharmacopoeia, caressed chloroform, 
 gazed at opium through his half shut eyes, laid a hand warily 
 upon hydrate of chloral, and kept his knifes and his needles, 
 his cutting things and his thrusting things as the young Lochtn- 
 var kept the steed that he was to ride out of the West. He 
 called nature the good God of the cleanly man. He loved to 
 meet death face to face, to grapple with him, to overthrow him. 
 Death is a coward, he said. Half the time he will run if he is 
 crowded. One day a heavy wagon ran over a man's leg and 
 crushed the bones horribly. A crowd collected. Sympathy 
 was given, but the man wanted air he had fainted. Dr. Lank- 
 ford charged the crowd, awed, cowed, dispersed it, and seized 
 the leg as he would a thief by the throat. "It must come off,'* 
 said a young physician standing by, with a fine experimental 
 frenzy rolling in his scared, uncertain eyes and the monotonous 
 sing-song of the mechanical graduate in his hesitating voice. 
 "Eh? What! Come off? So must a man's hat when the king 
 passes; but suppose the king does not pass, what then? The 
 hat stays on. Water, water, water is all you want. Water 
 enough to swallow up the knife, and drown the surgeon, and 
 rust away the teeth of the saw. It is the mission of the surgeon 
 not to mutilate. The steel yes ; the steel is good like fire, or 
 strychnine, or prussic acid, or the dead man brought to the dis- 
 secting room dead of a plague ; but back of the whole business 
 there must be common sense. Lift him up, some of you, and 
 carry him home. In twenty minutes after he is laid upon his 
 wife's bed I'll make that mangled leg of his as good as new." 
 It was this manner of a man who went deep into the brush in 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 453 
 
 quest of the crippled Guerrilla, and found him where on one 
 hand was a swamp, on the other a river bottom, and everywhere 
 malaria. He stripped him and summed him up. Those blue 
 and red spots about his body were bullet wounds. Across his 
 head was a long white scar. The breech of a gun in the sinewy 
 hands of a powerful Federal had made this. The great open ulcer 
 from right breast to back was the ulcer of the ounce ball the 
 carbine of a Wisconsin cavalryman fired. At intervals the skeleton 
 was hot br cold, at intervals it shook or was on fire. The 
 malaria had taken hold. "Will I die, Doctor?" a mighty weak 
 voice asked of Lankford. "How brave are you?" "Brave 
 enough to know the worst." "Then you will not die. But 
 you must get away from here get on the sea get where the 
 air is pure get where you can feel the sunshine as a man feels 
 wine get far from this river mist which is perpetually in 
 ambush, far from this tawny exhalation that is even now creep- 
 ing about the matted undergrowth and the stagnant water." 
 For a month Lankford waited on James, put him once more on 
 his feet, enabled him once more to encompass praying ground 
 and pleading terms, added a little color to his cheeks one day 
 and a little iron to his blood the next, forced him to ride and to 
 walk, built up the fortifications in one direction that fever and 
 suppuration had thrown down in another, and finally cured his 
 patient for good, and all by getting him aboard a ship at New 
 York and ordering him to stay aboard until he got to San 
 Francisco. 
 
 The future of the Youngers after the war closed was similar 
 in many respects to that of the Jameses. Cole was in Califor- 
 nia when the surrender came, and he immediately accepted the 
 situation. He returned to Missouri, determined to forget the 
 past, and fixed in his purpose to re-unite the scattered members 
 of his once prosperous and happy family, and prepare and make 
 comfortable a home for his stricken and suffering mother. 
 Despite everything that has been said and written of this man, 
 he was during all the terrible border war a generous and a mer- 
 ciful man. Others killed, and killed at that in any form, or 
 guise, or fashion he alone in open and honorable battle. His 
 heart was always kind, and his sympathies always easily aroused. 
 He not only took prisoners himself, but he treated them after- 
 wards as prisoners, and released them to rejoin commands that 
 
454 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 spared nothing alive of Guerrilla associations that fell into their 
 hands. He was the oldest son, and all the family looked up to him. 
 His mother had been driven out of Cass county into Jackson, 
 out of Jackson into Lafayette, and out of Lafayette into Jack- 
 son again. Not content with butchering the father in cold blood, 
 the ravenous cut-throats and thieves followed the mother with & 
 malignity unparalleled. Every house she owned or inhabited 
 was burnt, every out-building, every rail, every straw stack, 
 every corn pen, every pound of food and every store of forage. 
 Her stock was stolen. Her household goods were even appro- 
 priated. She had no place to lay her head that could be called 
 her own, and but for the kindness and Christianity of her devot- 
 ed neighbors, she must have suffered grievously. At this time 
 Coleman and James returned to Missouri and went hopefully 
 and bravely to work. Their father's land remained to them. 
 That at least had neither been set fire to, hauled off in wagons, 
 appropriated, confiscated, nor driven over into Kansas. West- 
 ern Missouri was then full of disbanded Federal soldiers, organ- 
 ized squads of predatory Red Legs and Jay hawkers, horse 
 thieves disguised as vigilance committees, and highway robbers 
 known as law and order men. In addition, Drake's constitution 
 disfranchised every property owner along the border. An hon- 
 est man could not hold office ; a civilized man could not officially 
 stand between the helpless of his community and the iea ported 
 lazzaroni who preyed upon them ; a decent man's voice could 
 not be heard above the clamor of the beggars quarrelling over 
 stolen plunder; and a just man's expostulation penetrated 
 never into the councils of the chief scoundrels who planned the 
 murders and the robberies. 
 
 Coleman Younger 's work was like the work of a pioneer in 
 the wilderness, but he did it as became the hardy descendant of 
 a stalwart race of pioneers. He cut logs and built a comforta- 
 ble log house for his mother. He made rails and fenced in his 
 land. In lieu of horses or mules, he plowed with oxen. He 
 staid steadfastly at home. He heard rumors of threats being 
 made against his life, but he paid no attention to them. He 
 took part in no political meetings. He tried to hide himself 
 and be forgotten. The blood-hounds were on his track, how- 
 ever, and swore to either kill him or drive him from the country. 
 A vigilance committee composed of skulking murderers and red- 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOH DEB 455 
 
 handed Kansas robbers went one night to surprise the two 
 brothers and end the hunt with a massacre. Forewarned, 
 James and Coleman fled. The family was wantonly insulted, 
 and a younger brother, John, a mere boy, was brutally beaten 
 and then hung until life was nearly extinct. This was done to 
 force him to tell of the whereabouts of James and Coleman. Mrs. 
 Younger never entirely recovered from the shock of this night's 
 work, lingering along hopelessly yet patiently for several months 
 and finally dying in the full assurance of the Christian's blessed 
 hereafter. 
 
 The death of this persecuted woman, however, did not end 
 the persecution. Cole Younger was repeatedly waylaid and 
 fired at. His stock was killed through mere deviltry, or driven 
 off to swell the gains of insatiable wolves. His life was in 
 hourly jeopardy, as was the life of his brother James. They 
 plowed in the fields as men who saw suspended over them a 
 naked sword-blade. They permitted no lights to be lit in the 
 house at night. They traveled the public highways warily. 
 They were hunted men and proscribed men in the midst of their 
 own people. They were chased away from their premises by 
 armed men. Once Cole was badly wounded by the bullet of an 
 assassin. Once, half-dressed, he had to flee for his life. If he 
 made a crop, he was not permitted to gather it, and when some- 
 thing of success might have come to him after the expenditure 
 of so much toil, energy, long-suffering and forbearance, he was 
 not let alone in peace long enough to utilize his returns and 
 make out of his resources their legitimate gains. 
 
 Of course there could be but one ending to all this long and 
 unbroken series of malignant persecutions, lyings-in-wait, mid- 
 night surprises, perpetual robbings, and most villainous assaults 
 and attempted murders Coleman and James Younger left home 
 and left Jackson county. They buckled on their pistols and 
 rode away to Texas, resolved from that time on to protect them- 
 selves, to fight when they were attacked, and to make it so hot 
 for the assassins and the detectives who were eternally on their 
 track that by and by the contract taken to murder them would 
 be a contract not particularly conducive to steady investments. 
 They were hounded to it. They endured every species of insult 
 and attack, and would have still continued to endure it in silence 
 and almost unresisting, if such forbearance had mitigated in any 
 
456 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 manner the virulence of their enemies, or brought any nearer to 
 its appeasement the merciless fate which seemed to be eternally 
 at their heels. What they did in self-defense any Anglo-Saxon 
 would have done who did not have in his veins the blood of a 
 slave. The peaceful pursuits of life were denied to them. The 
 law which should have protected them was over-ridden. Indeed 
 there was no law. The courts were instruments of plunder. 
 The civil officers were cut-throats. Instead of a legal process, 
 there was a vigilance committee. Men were hung because of a 
 very natural desire to keep hold of their own property. To the 
 cruel vigor of actual war, there had succeeded the irresponsible 
 despotism of greedy highwaymen buttressed upon assassination. 
 The border counties were overrun with bands of predatory plun- 
 derers. Some Confederate soldiers dared not return home, and 
 many Guerrillas fled the country. It was dark everywhere, and 
 the bravest held their breath, not knowing how much longer they 
 would be permitted to remain peacefully at home, or suffered to 
 enjoy the fruits of their labors. Fortunately for all, however, 
 the well nigh extinct embers of a merciless border war were not 
 blown upon long enough and persistently enough tx> kindle 
 another conflagration.. 
 
 But neither the Jameses nor the Youngers have been per- 
 mitted to rest long at any one time since the surrender of the 
 Confederate armies. Some dastardly deeds have been done 
 against them, too, in the name of the law. Take for example 
 Pinkerton's midnight raid upon the house of Mrs. Zerelda 
 Samuel, the mother of the James boys. The family were 
 wrapped in profound sleep. Only women and children were 
 about the premises, and an old man long past his prime. The 
 cowards how many is not accurately known, probably a 
 dozen crept close to this house through the midnight, sur- 
 rounded it, found its inmates asleep, and threw into the kitchen 
 where an old negro woman was in bed with her children, alighted 
 hand-grenade, wrapped aboufc with flannel saturated with tur- 
 pentine. The lurid light from this inflammable fluid awakened 
 the negro woman, and she in turn awakened the sleeping whites. 
 They rushed to subdue the flames and save their property. 
 Children were gathered together in the kitchen, little things, 
 helpless and terrified. All of a sudden there was a terrible 
 explosion. Mrs. Samuel's right arm was blown off above the 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 457 
 
 elbow, a bright little boy, eight years of age, had his bowels 
 torn out, Dr. Samuel was seriously cut and hurt, the old negro 
 woman was maimed, and several of the other children more or 
 less injured. The hand-grenade had done its work, and there 
 had been a tragedy performed by men calling themselves civ- 
 ilized, in the midst of a peaceful community and upon a help- 
 less family of women and c hildren that would have disgraced 
 Nero or made some of the monstrous murders of Diocletian as 
 white is to black. Yet Pinkerton's paid assassins did this because 
 his paid assassins knew better how to kill women and children 
 than armed men in open combat. 
 
 Take for example another act of Pinkerton's paid assassins. 
 The first party of men sent down into St. Glair county, Mis- 
 souri, looking for the Youngers, was encountered by Cole 
 Younger, having with him his three brothers, James, Robert 
 and John. There were fifteen of the hunters, heavily armed 
 and prolific in promises of speedy overthrow. Cole came upon 
 them suddenly, covered the whole detachment with a double- 
 barreled shot-gun, and demanded a surrender. It was 
 instantly accorded, and Cole then calmly and kindly reasoned 
 with them against the injustice of their course. They were 
 hunting him and his brothers, he said, without cause, and as 
 wild beasts were hunted. He told them that he wanted to live 
 at peace with the law and his neighbors. God knew that he 
 had had strife enough. He had never in all his life harmed a 
 man wantonly, or killed a man wantonly, or imposed upon a 
 man wantonly. He had never committed a robbery in his life, 
 no matter what the reports were, and he asked only to be put 
 upon the same footing exactly that other law-abiding citizens 
 occupied, and to be treated as a human being instead of an 
 outlaw. Then he restored their arms to the posse and dismissed 
 them without a scratch. Thes were citizens of the county, 
 however, and were satisfied with the treatment they had received 
 and with Cole's explanation. Not so with Pinkerton and his 
 paid assassins. This great Chicago bugaboo had been worsted 
 in every encounter with those of the border whom it was his 
 especial and self-imposed mission to slay or entrap, and he grew 
 morbidly desirous of striking a blow that had vengeance in it. 
 As an instrument he selected a detective named Lull, said to be 
 cool, skillful, vigilant, and desperate. He had need to be! He 
 
458 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OS 
 
 came down into St. Glair, with another detective, and recruited 
 at Osceola the deputy sheriff of the county, a young man named 
 Daniels. These three began to hunt the Youngers, just as any 
 lot of trappers might begin to hunt a pack of wolves. It is not 
 believed that they had any warrant for the arrest of either of 
 the brothers. Only vague rumor or sensational journalism 
 had connected them in any manner with bank or railroud rob- 
 beries. The people among whom they lived believed in their 
 innocence and had borne testimony to it several times in such a 
 manner as to carry with their defence the convincing evidence 
 of its truth. Nevertheless, according to the theory of Pinkerton 
 and Pinkerton's paid assassins, they were to be shot down as so 
 many horses with the glanders or so many dogs with the hydro- 
 phobia. Lull began his hunt with a bravado and ended it with 
 a bullet. He found John and James Younger, or, rather, John 
 and James Younger found him. As Cole had done with the 
 first party of hunters, so would James and John do with the 
 second. They covered Lull's party with their shot-guns and 
 called out to them to surrender. The desperate Lull, picked 
 man as he was and chosen pre-eminently above a host of men, 
 did surrender to all intents and purposes. He threw his own 
 revolver upon the ground. He caused Daniels also to throw 
 down a pair. He made the other detective give up his, and 
 then when he had succeeded perfectly in disarming his compan- 
 ions, and when because of such disarmament John Younger 
 lowered his own gun and permitted himself for the first and the 
 last time in his history to be taken unawares he drew a smaller 
 pistol, which up to this time had been concealed, and shot the 
 unsuspecting man through the neck, cutting the jugular vein, 
 yet not knocking him from the saddle. With the hand of death 
 already clutching savagely at his own throat, and with the blood 
 spurting out in great jets at every heart beat, John Younger 
 yet steadied himself by a superhuman effort, mortally wounded 
 Lull, killed Daniels, and dashed at the third detective, who 
 turned about, born coward that he was, and fled, as the wind 
 flies, into Osceola. When James Younger reached John the 
 tragedy was over and the dauntless boy was dead. No more 
 infamous murder was ever committed in Missouri than this 
 killing of John Younger. He had not even been accused of 
 doing criminal things. His name had never even been connected 
 
THE WAMFAEE OF THE BOEDER 
 
 with the name of any railroad or bank robbery. He was a peace- 
 ful man, living in the midst of a peaceful community, respected 
 by his neighbors, trusted by men of business, honest, energetic 
 and enterprising. He was hunted to his death because his name 
 was Younger, and because all the guns in the world and all the 
 enemies in the world could neither scare him nor drive him 
 away from his own. In the full flower of his early manhood, 
 his lonely and premature grave to-day in his native State, cries- 
 out for vengeance on the head of a civilization which permits 
 an irresponsible and an accursed system of legalized assassina- 
 tion to prey upon innocent people equally with the guilty, and 
 defy and rise above the law while professing to obey its man- 
 dates and keep clearly within the limits of its just provisions. 
 
 Other Guerrillas did some desperate things after the war, and 
 escaped. One of QuantrelFs best scouts, Jack Bishop a cool, 
 desperate, dauntless, iron man, fell under the ban of the Kansas 
 people and was driven about from pillar to post until he got 
 tired. His brother, another daring Guerrilla, was waylaid at a 
 creek-crossing south of.Westport by some disbanded Kansas 
 militia, and killed. Jack determined to avenge him. With this 
 object in view he rode boldly into Kansas City where Major 
 Ransom, an ex-Federal officer, was doing the duties of a civil 
 office, and opened fire upon him as coolly as if he were saddling 
 and bridling a horse. Ransom was a Kansas man, well known 
 to the border, and Bishop would have killed him surely if Ransom, 
 running for his life, had not taken refuge in a strong building. 
 As it was he wounded him badly and rode slowly out of town 
 and away into the unknown of the Western territories. 
 
 The most of the survivors of the border war are scattered far 
 and wide. Oil Shepherd, as has already been stated, was 
 killed by a Jackson county vigilance committee, fighting to the 
 death. George Shepherd is ranching somewhere in the West. 
 Andy McGuire was hung by a mob at Richmond, Ray county,. 
 Missouri, charged but charged unjustly with having been en- 
 gaged in the robbery of the bank there and the killing of three 
 of the citizens of the town. Payne Jones survived Quantrell's 
 desperate raid into Kentucky, and returned to Missouri to be 
 killed by Jim Crow Chiles. Later on Jim Crow Chiles himself 
 was killed by a citizen of Independence. Dick Burnes, another 
 of Quantrell's most desperate men, went to sleep one might in an 
 
460 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 orchard where there was some straw, and when found the next 
 morning he was found with his head cleft in twain as though 
 while he slept some powerful assassin had cloven it with an axe. 
 John Jarre tte has a sheep ranche' some where in the wilds of Ari- 
 zona. Jesse and Frank James are outlaws and trading in cattle 
 along the lower Rio Grande river, sometimes in Texas and some- 
 times as far in-land in old Mexico as Mont erey. Fletch Taylor 
 is a most worthy citizen, rich, popular , and universally re- 
 spected. James Anderson, William Anderson's brother, was 
 cut to pieces in Texas in a bowie-knife fight. Dave Poole is in 
 New Mexico. William Greenwood is a prosperous farmer in 
 northeastern Missouri. Dick Maddox was killed by a Cherokee 
 Indian just after the close of the war. George Maddox was 
 arrested arbitrarily after the surrender for his participation in 
 the Lawrence Raid, and was confined a long time in jail. He 
 escaped, however, to go back into peaceful life, and made as good 
 a citizen as he made a soldier. Arch Clements was murdered 
 in Lexington. Frank Gregg, charged with the killing of a citi- 
 zen of Lafayette county while the war was going on, was ar- 
 rested in Independence and carried to Lexington for trial. Gen. 
 Shelby interposed in his behalf, and Frank Gregg was acquitted. 
 Tom Little was hung by a vigilance committee in Warrensburg, 
 Johnson county, one of the most virulent and blood-thirsty com- 
 mittees ever known to the criminal annals of Western Missouri. 
 Tom Maupin tends his flocks and herds far down in Texas 
 many a long days' ride southward from Sherman. Some went 
 to Mexico with Shelby in that famous Expedition of his which 
 aspired to an empire and ended with an exodus notably Crock- 
 ett, one of Anderson's original desperadoes, Joe Macey, John 
 Thrailkill, Erasmus Woods, William Yo well, and the noted Berry 
 brothers, Richard and Isaac. There is but space to record 
 briefly some of the deeds these Guerrillas did in Mexico. 
 Shelby had just crossed the Rio Grande at Piedras Negras, op- 
 posite Eagle Pass, in Texas, and had, after selling his surplus 
 arms, ammunition and canaon to Governor Biesca, of the State 
 of Coahuila, dismissed his men in the afternoon for a little rest 
 and relaxation. 
 
 The day had been almost a tropical one. No air blew about 
 the streets, and a white glare had come over the sands and 
 settled as a cloud upon the houses and upon the water. The 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 461 
 
 men scattered in every direction, careless of consequences, and 
 indifferent as to results. The cafes were full. Wine and 
 women abounded. Beside the bronzed faces of the soldiers 
 were the tawny faces of the senoritas. In the passage of the 
 drinking horns the men kissed the women. Great American 
 oaths came out from the tiendas, harsh at times, and resonant 
 at times. Even in their wickedness they were national. 
 
 A tragedy was making head, however, in spite of the white 
 glare of the sun, and the fervid kisses under the rose. The 
 three men, soldiers of Lee's army ostensibly men who had 
 been fed and sheltered were tempting providence be}^ond the 
 prudent point. They had joined the expedition some distance 
 back, and were lavishly provided for because it was supposed 
 they had once belonged to the army of Northern Virginia. 
 Having the heart each of a sheep, they were dealing with lions. 
 To their treachery they were about to add bravado to the 
 magazine they were about to apply the torch. There is a 
 universal Mexican law which makes a brand a bible. From it8 
 truth there is no appeal. Every horse in the country is 
 branded, and every brand is entered of record, just as a deed 
 or legal conveyance. Some of these brands are intricate, some 
 unique, some a single letter of the alphabet, but all legal 
 and lawful brands just the same, and good to pass muster any- 
 where, so only there are alcaldes and sandaled soldiers about. 
 Their logic is extremely simple too. You prove the brand and 
 you take the horse, no matter who rides him, nor how great the 
 need for whip or spur. In Shelby's command there were a 
 dozen magnificent horses, fit for a king's race, who wore a 
 brand of an unusual fashion many-lined and intricate as a 
 column of Arabesque. They had been obtained somewhere above 
 San Antonio, and had been dealt with as only cavalry soldiers 
 know how to deal with their horses. These the three men 
 wanted these three men ostensibly from Lee's army. With 
 their knowledge of Spanish they had gone among the Mexican 
 soldiers, poisoning their minds with tales of American rapine- 
 and slaughter, depicting, with not a little of attractive rhetoric, 
 the long and weary march they had made with these marauders, 
 that their beloved steeds might not be taken entirely away from 
 them. 
 
 The Mexicans listened, not from generosity, but from greed, 
 
462 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OH 
 
 and swore a great oath by the Virgin that the gringos should 
 deliver up every branded horse across the Rio Grande. Ike 
 and Dick Berry rode each a branded horse, and so did John 
 Rudd, Yowell and two other Guerrillas equally fearless, and 
 equally ignorant of any other law besides the law of possession. 
 The afternoon drill was over. The hot glare was still upon the 
 earth and the sky. If anything the noise from the cafes came 
 louder and merrier. Where the musical voices were the sweet- 
 est, were the places where the women abounded with disheveled 
 hair, and eyes of tropical dusk. 
 
 Ike Berry had ridden one of these branded horses into the 
 street running by regimental headquarters, and sat with one 
 leg crossed upon the saddle, lazily smoking. He was a low, 
 equat Hercules, free of speech and frank of nature. In battle 
 he always laughed ; only when eating was he serious. What 
 reverence he had came from the appetite. The crumbs that fell 
 from his long, yellow beard were his bendiction. 
 
 Other branded horses were hitched about, easy of access and 
 unnoted of owner. The three men came into the street, behind 
 them a young Mexican Captain, handsome as Adonis. This 
 Captain led thirty-five soldiers with eyes to the front and guns 
 at a trail. Jim Wood lounged to the door of a cafe and 
 remarked them as they filed by. As he returned, he spoke to 
 Martin Kritzer, toying with an Indian girl, beaded and beauti- 
 ful: "They are in skirmishing order. Old Joe has delivered 
 the arms ; it may be that we shall take them back again." 
 
 One of the men went straight up to Ike Berry as he sat cross- 
 legged upon his horse, and laid his hand upon the horse's bridle. 
 
 Ike knew him and spoke to him cheerily: 
 
 "How now, comrade!" 
 
 Short answer, and curt: 
 
 "This is my horse ; he wears my brand ; I have followed him 
 to Mexico. Dismount!" 
 
 A long white wreath of smoke curled up from Ike's meer- 
 schaum in surprise. Even the pipe entered a protest. The old 
 battle smile came back to his face, and those who were nearest 
 and knew him best, knew that a dead man would soon la}^ upon 
 the street. He knocked the ashes from his pipe musingly ; he 
 put the disengaged foot back gently in the stirrup ; he rose up 
 all of a sudden the very incarnation of murder; there was a 
 
THE WAMFABE OF THE BOEDER 468 
 
 white gleam in the air ; a heavy sabre that lifted itself up and 
 circled, and when it fell a stalwart arm was shredded away, as a 
 girl might sever a silken chain cr the tendrils of a vine. The 
 ghastly stump, not over four inches from the shoulder, spouted 
 blood at every throb. The man fell as one paralyzed. A shout 
 arose. The Mexicans spread out like a fan, and when the fan 
 closed it had surrounded Berry and his comrades. Yowell 
 alone broke through the cordon and rushed to Shelby. 
 
 Shelby was sitting in a saloon discussing cognac and Catalan 
 with an Englishman. A glance convinced Shelby that Yowell 
 was in trouble. 
 
 4 'What is it?" he asked. 
 
 "They are after the horses.'' 
 
 "What horses?" 
 
 "The branded horses; those obtained from the Rosser 
 ranche." 
 
 "Ah! and after we have delivered the arms, too. Mexican- 
 like, Mexican-like!" 
 
 He arose as he spoke and looked out on the street. Some 
 revolvers were being fired. These, in the white heat of the 
 afternoon, sounded as the tapping of wood-peckers. Afterwards 
 a steady roar of rifles told how the battle went. 
 
 "The rally! the rally! sound the rally!" Shelby cried to 
 his bugler, as he dashed down to where the Mexicans were 
 swarming about Berry and the few men nearest to him. " We 
 have eaten of their salt, and they have betrayed us ; we have 
 come to them as friends, and they would strip us like barba- 
 rians. It is war again war to the knife !" 
 
 At this moment the wild, piercing notes of an American bugle 
 were heard, clear, penetrating, defiant notes that told of sore 
 stress among comrades, and pressing need of succor. 
 
 The laughter died in the cafes as a night wind when the morn- 
 ing comes. The bugle sobered all who were drunk with drink 
 or dalliance. Its voice told of danger near and imminent of a 
 field-meeting of harvesters who were not afraid to die. 
 
 The men swarmed out of every doorway poured from under 
 every portal flushed, furious, ravenous for blood. 
 
 They saw the Mexicans in the square, the peril of Berry 
 and those nearest to him, and they asked no further questions. 
 A sudden crash of revolvers came first, close and deadly ; a yell, 
 
464 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 a shout, and then a fierce, hot charge. Has Woods, another 
 Guerrilla, with a short Enfield rifle in his hand, stood fair in the 
 street looking up at the young Mexican Captain with his cold 
 gray eyes that had in them never a light of pity. As the press 
 gathered about him, the rifle crept straight to the front and 
 rested there a moment, fixed as fate. It looked as if he was 
 aiming at a flower the dark olive beauty of the Spaniard was 
 so superb. 
 
 "Spare him!" shouted a dozen reckless soldiers in a breath, 
 "he is too young and too handsome to die." In vain! A 
 sharp, sudden ring was the response; the Captain tossed his- 
 arms high in the air, leaped up suddenly as if to catch some- 
 thing above his head, and fell forward upon his face, a corpse. 
 A wail of women arose upon the sultry evening such as may 
 have been heard in David's household when back from the tan- 
 gled brushwood they brought the beautiful Absalom, 
 " The life upon his yellow hair, 
 But not within his eyes.'* 
 
 The work that followed was quick enough and deadly enough 
 to appal the stoutest. Seventeen Mexicans were killed, includ- 
 ing the Captain, together with the two Americans who had 
 caused the encounter. The third, strange to say, recovered 
 from his ghastly wound, and can tell to this day, if he still lives, 
 of the terrible prowess of that American soldier who shredded 
 his arm away as a scythe blade might a handful of summer 
 wheat. 
 
 There were Guerrillas also in Mexico, native Mexican Guer- 
 rillas, who fought the French, robbed the rich, preyed upon the 
 passers by, and hovered about Shelby's column as it marched 
 on boldly into the South. He forbade his men to fight with 
 them. He could not take the time, he said, to brush away gad- 
 flies and have to do every day with mosquitoes. He would guard 
 his camp against them at night, and carefully shelter his stock 
 from their stealthy approaches, but for some several day's 
 march this was all. These Guerrillas, however, became embold- 
 ened in the face of such tactics. On the trail of a timid or 
 wounded thing they were veritable wolves. This long gallop 
 could never tire. In the night they were superb. Upon the 
 flanks, in the front or rear, it was one eternal ambush one 
 incessant rattle of musketry which harmed nothing, but which 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 465 
 
 yet annoyed, like the singing of misquitoes. At last they 
 brought about a swift reckoning one of those sudden things 
 which leave little behind save a trail of blood and a moment of 
 savage killing. 
 
 The column had reached to within two days' journey of 
 Lampasas. Some spurs of tke mountain ran down to the road, 
 and some clusters of palm trees grouped themselves at intervals 
 by the wayside. The palm is a pensive tree, having a voice 
 in the wind that is sadder than the pine a sober, solemn voice, 
 like the sound of ruffled cerements when the corpse is given to 
 the coffin. Even in the sunlight they are dark ; even in the 
 tropics no vine clings to them, no blosom is born to them, no 
 bird is housed by them, and no flutter of wings makes music for 
 them. Strange and shapely, and coldly chaste, they seem like 
 human and desolate things, standing all alone in the midst of 
 luxurious nature, unblessed of the soil, and unloved of the dew 
 and the sunshine. 
 
 In a grove of these the column halted for the night. Beyond 
 them was a pass guarded by crosses. In that treacherous land 
 these are a growth indigenous to the soil. They flourish 
 nowhere else in such abundance. Wherever a deed of violence 
 is done, a cross is planted ; wherever a traveler is left upon his 
 face in a pool of blood, a cross is reared ; wherever a grave is 
 made wherein lies the murdered one, there is seen a cross. No 
 matter who does the deed whether Indian, or Don, or Com- 
 mandante, a cross must mark the spot, and as the pious way- 
 farer journeys by he lays on all reverently a stone at the feet of 
 the sacred symbol, breathing a pious prayer and telling a bead 
 or two for the soul's salvation. 
 
 On the left a wooded bluff ran down abruptly to a stream. 
 Beyond the stream and near the palms, a grassy bottom spread 
 itself out, soft and grateful. Here the blankets were spread, 
 and here the horses grazed their fill. A young moon, clear and 
 white, hung low in the West, neither sullen nor red, but a ten- 
 der moon, full of the beams that lovers seek, and full 
 of the voiceless imagery which gives passion to the 
 song of the night, and pathos to deserted and dejected 
 swains. As the moon set the horses were gathered together 
 and tethered in amid the palms. Then a deep silence fell upon 
 the camp, for the sentinels were beyond its confines, and all 
 30 
 
466 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OH 
 
 withinside slept the sleep of the tired ancl the healthy. It 
 may have been midnight; it certainly was cold and dark. 
 The fires had gone out, and there was a white mist like a shroud 
 creeping up the stream and settling upon the faces of the 
 sleepers. On the far right a single pistol shot arose, clear and 
 resonant. Shelby, who slumbered like a night bird, lifted him- 
 self up from his blankets and spoke in an undertone to 
 Thrailkill: 
 
 "Who has the post at the mouth of the pass?" 
 
 "Joe Macey." 
 
 "Then something is stirring. Macy never fired at a shadow 
 in his life." 
 
 The two men listened. One a grim Guerrilla himself with the 
 physique of a Cossack and the hearing of a Comanche. The 
 other having in his hands the lives of all the silent and inert 
 sleepers lying still and grotesque under the white shroud of the 
 mountain mist. Nothing was heard for an hour. The two men 
 went to sleep again, but not to dream. Of a sudden and unseen 
 the mist was lifted, and in its place a sheet of flame so near to 
 the faces of the men that it might have scorched them. Two 
 hundred Mexicans had crept down the mountain, and to the 
 edge of the stream, and had fired point-blank into the camp. 
 It seemed a miracle, but not a man was touched. Lying flat 
 upon the ground and wrapped up in their blankets, the whole 
 volley, meant to be murderous, had swept over them. 
 
 Shelby was the first upon his feet. His voice rang out clear 
 and faultless, and without a tremor: 
 
 "Give them the revolver Charge!" 
 
 Men awakened from deep sleep grapple with spectres slowly. 
 These Mexicans were spectres. Beyond the stream and in 
 amid the sombre shadows of the palms, they were invisible. 
 Only the powder-pall was on the water where the mist had been. 
 
 Unclad, barefooted, heavy with sleep, the men went straight 
 for the mountain, a revolver in each hand, Shelby leading. 
 From spectres the Mexicans had become to be bandits. No 
 quarter was given or asked. The rush lasted until the game 
 was flushed, the pursuit until the top of the mountain was gained. 
 Over ragged rocks and cactus and dagger trees the hurricane 
 poured. The roar of the revolvers was deafening. Men died 
 aud made no moan, and the wounded were recognized only by 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 467 
 
 their voices. When it was over the Americans had lost in killed 
 eleven and in wounded seventeen, most of the latter slightly, 
 thanks to the darkness and the impetuosity of the attack. In 
 crawling upon the camp, the Mexicans had tethered their horses 
 upon the further side of the mountain. The most of these fell 
 into Shelby's hands, together with the bodies of the two leaders, 
 Juan Anselmo, a renegade priest, and Antonio Flores, a young 
 Cuban who had sold his sister to a wealthy haciendaro and turned 
 robber, and sixty-nine of their followers. 
 
 It was noon the next day before the march was resumed 
 noon with the sun shining upon the fresh graves of eleven daunt- 
 less Americans sleeping their last sleep, amid the palms and the 
 crosses, until the resurrection day. 
 
 There was a grand fandango at Lamp asas when the column 
 reached the city. The bronzed, foreign faces of the strangers 
 attracted much of curiosity and more of comment ; but no notes 
 in the music jarred, no halt in the flying feet of the dancers 
 could be discovered. 
 
 Shelby camped just beyond the suburbs, unwilling to trust 
 his men to the blandishments of so much beauty, and to the 
 perils of so much nakedness. 
 
 Stern camp guards soon sentineled the soldiers, but as the 
 night deepened their devices increased, until a good company 
 had escaped all vigilance and made a refuge sure with the sweet 
 and swarthy senoritas, singing : 
 
 O ven amal 
 Eres alma, 
 Say corazon. 
 
 There were three men who stole out together in mere wanton- 
 ness and exuberance of life obedient soldierymen who were 
 to bring ba -k with them a tragedy without a counterpart in all 
 their histoiy. None saw Boswell, Walker, and Crockett, three 
 of Quantrell's and Anderson's old Guerrillas, depart the whole 
 command saw them return again, Boswell slashed from chin to 
 waist, Walker almost dumb from a bullet through cheeks and 
 tongne, and Crockett, sober and unhurt, yet having over him 
 the sombre light of as wild a deed as any that stands out from 
 all the lawless past of that lawless band. 
 
 These men, when reaching Lampasas, floated into the flood- 
 tide of the fandango, and danced until the red lights shone with 
 
468 NOTED GUEKKILLAS, OB 
 
 unnatural brilliancy until the fiery catalon consumed what little 
 of discretion the dancing had left. They sallied out late at 
 night, flushed with drink, and having over them the glamour of 
 enchanting women. They walked on apace in the direction of 
 the camp, singing snatches of Bacchanal songs, and laughing 
 boisterously under the moonlight, which flooded all the streets- 
 with gold. In the doorway of a house a young Mexican girl 
 stood, her dark face looking out coquettishly from its fringe of 
 dark hair. The men spoke to her, and she, in her simple 
 fashion, spoke to the men. In Mexico this meant nothing. 
 They halted, however, and Crockett advanced from the rest and 
 laid his hand on the girl's shoulder. Around her head and 
 shoulders she wore a sebosa. This garment answers at the same 
 time for bonnet and bodice. When removed the head is uncov- 
 ered and the bosom is exposed. Crockett meant no real harm, 
 although he asked her for a kiss. Before she had replied to 
 him, he attempted to take it. The hot Southern blood flared up 
 all of a sudden at this, and her dark eyes grew furious in a 
 moment. As she drew back from him in proud scorn, the sebosa 
 came off, leaving all her bosom bare, the long, luxurious hair 
 falling down upon and over it as a cloud that would hide its 
 purity and innocence. 
 
 Then she uttered a low, feminine cry as a signal, followed 
 instantly by a rush of men who drew knives and pistols as they 
 came on. The Americans had no weapons. 
 
 Not dreaming of danger, and being within sight almost of camp, 
 they had left their revolvers behind. Boswell was stabbed three 
 times, though not seriously, for he was a powerful man, and 
 fought his assailants off. Walker was shot through his tongue 
 and both cheeks, and Crockett, the cause of the whole melee, 
 escaped unhurt. No pursuit was attempted after the first swift 
 work was over. Wary of reprisals, the Mexicans hid themselves 
 as suddenly as they had sallied out. There was a young man, 
 however, who walked close to Crockett a young Mexican who 
 spoke no word, and who yet kept pace with the American, step 
 by step. At first he was not noticed. Before the camp guards 
 were reached, Crockett, now completely sobered, turned upon 
 him and asked : 
 
 "Why do you follow me?" 
 
 "That you may lead me to your General.'* 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 469 
 
 "What do you want with my General?" 
 
 "Satisfaction." 
 
 At the firing in the city a patrol guard had been thrown out 
 who arrested the whole party and carried it straight to Shelby. 
 He was encamped upon a wide margin of bottom land, having a 
 river upon one side, and some low mountain ridges upon the other. 
 The ground where the blankets were spread was velvety with grass. 
 There was a bright moon ; the air, blowing from the grape gar- 
 dens and the apricot orchards of Lampasas, was fragrant and 
 delicious, and the soldiers were not sleeping. Under the solace 
 of such surroundings Shelby had relaxed a little of that grim 
 severity he always manifested toward those guilty of unsoldierly 
 conduct, and spoke not harshly to the three men. When made 
 acquainted with their hurts he dismissed them instantly to the 
 care of Dr. Tisdale. Crockett and the Mexican still lingered, 
 and a crowd of some fifty or sixty had gathered around. The first 
 told his story of the melee, and told it truthfully. The man was 
 too brave to lie. As an Indian listening to the approaching 
 footsteps of one whom he intends to scalp, the young Mexican 
 listened as a granite pillar vitalized to the whole recital. When 
 it was finished he went up close to Shelby and said to him, 
 pointing his finger at Crockett: "That man has outraged my 
 sister. I could have killed him, but I did not. You Americans 
 are brave, I know ; will you be generous as well, and give me 
 satisfaction?" 
 
 Shelby looked at Crockett, whose bronzed face, made sterner 
 in the moonlight, had upon it a look of curiosity. He at least 
 did not understand what was coming. "Does the Mexican 
 speak the truth, Crockett?" was the question asked by the com- 
 mander of his soldier. 
 
 "Partly ; but I meant no harm to the woman. I am incapable 
 of that. Drunk, I know I was, and reckless, but not willfully 
 guilty, General." 
 
 Shelby regarded him coldly. His voice was so stern when he 
 spoke again that the brave soldier hung his head : 
 
 "What business had you to lay your hands upon her at all? 
 How often must I repeat to you that the man who does these 
 things is no follower of mine ? Will you give her brother sat- 
 isfaction?" 
 
 He drew his revolver almost joyfully and stood proudly up, 
 
470 NOTED GUEKKILLAS, OH 
 
 facing his accuser. "No! no! not the pistol!" cried the Mex- 
 ican; "I do not understand the pistol. The knife, Senor 
 General; is the American afraid of the knife?" 
 
 He displayed as he spoke a keen, glittering knife, and held it 
 up in the moonlight. It was white, and lithe, and shone in con- 
 trast with the dusky hand which grasped it. 
 
 Not a muscle of Crockett's face moved. He spoke almost 
 gently as he turned to his General : 
 
 "The knife, oh! well, so be it. Will some of you give me 
 a knife?" 
 
 A knife was handed to him and a ring was made. About 
 four hundred soldiers formed the outside circle of this ring. 
 These, bearing torches in their hands, cast a red glare of light 
 upon the arena, already flooded with the softer beaming of the 
 moon. The ground under foot was as velvet. The moon not 
 yet full, and the sky without a cloud, rose over all, calm and 
 peaceful in the summer night. A hush as of expectancy fell 
 upon the camp. Those who were asleep slept on ; those who- 
 were awake seemed as under the influence of an intangible 
 dream. Shelby did not forbid the fight. He knew it was & 
 duel to the death, and some of the desperate spirit of the 
 combatants passed into his own. He merely spoke to an aide : 
 
 "Go for Tisdale. When the steel has finished, the surgeon 
 may begin." 
 
 Both men stepped fearlessly into the arena. A third form 
 was there, unseen, invisible, and even in his presence the traits 
 of the two nations were uppermost. The Mexican made the 
 sign of the cross, the American tightened his sabre belt. Both 
 may have prayed, neither, however, audibly. 
 
 They had no seconds perhaps none were needed. The Mex- 
 ican took his stand about midway of the arena, and waited. 
 Crockett grasped his knife firmly and advanced upon him. Of 
 the two, he was taller by a head and physically the strongest. 
 Constant familiarity with danger for four years had given him a 
 confidence the Mexican may not have felt. He had been 
 wounded three times, one of which wounds was scarcely healed 
 This took none of his manhood from him, however. 
 
 Neither spoke. The torches flared a little in the night wind,, 
 now beginning to rise, and the long grass rustled curtly under 
 foot. Afterwards its green had become crimson. 
 
THE WAEFAEE OF THE BOEDER 471 
 
 Between them some twelve inches of space now intervened. 
 The men had fallen back upon the right and the le ft for their 
 commander to see, and he stood looking fixedly at the two as he 
 would upon a line of battle. Never before had he gazed upon 
 so strange a sight. That great circle of bronzed faces, eager 
 and fierce in the flare of torches, had something monstrous yet 
 grotesque about it. The civilization of the century had been 
 rolled back, and they were in a Roman circus, looking down 
 upon the arena, crowded with gladiators and jubilant with that 
 strangest of war-cries : Moritusite salutant ! 
 
 The attack was as the lightning's flash. The Mexican lowered 
 his head, set his teeth hard, and struck fairly at Crockett's 
 breast. The American made a half-face to the right, threw 
 his left arm forward as a shield, gathered the deadly steel in 
 his shoulder to the hilt and struck home. How pitiful ! A great 
 stream of blood spurted in his face. The tense form of the 
 Mexican bent as a willow wand in the wind, swayed helplessly, 
 and fell backward lifeless, the knife rising up as a terrible 
 protest above the corpse. The man's heart was found. 
 
 Cover him up from sight! No need of Dr. Tisdale here. 
 There was a wail of women on the still night air, a shudder of 
 regret among the soldiers, a dead man on the grass, a sister 
 broken-hearted and alone foreverinore, and a freed spirit some- 
 where out in eternity with the unknown and the infinite. 
 
 Crockett was afterwards killed in a desperate night attack 
 upon a hacienda, but before . this attack was made it 
 was John Thrailkill's turn to come upon the scene in the 
 strangest guise, perhaps, ever yet known to Guerrilla. 
 
 Maybe Fate rests its head upon its two hands at times, and 
 thinks of what little things it shall employ to make or mar the 
 character save or lose a life banish beyond the light or enter 
 into and possess forevermore a Paradise. 
 
 The march was running by meadow and by river, and the 
 swelling of billowy wheat, and great groves of orange trees 
 wherein the sunshine hid itself at noon with the breeze and the 
 mocking birds. It was far into the evening that J6hn Thrail- 
 kill sat by the fire of his mess, smoking and telling brave stories 
 of the brave days that were dead. Others were grouped about 
 in dreaming indolence or silent fancy thinking, it may be, of 
 the northern land with its pines and firs of great rolling waves 
 
472 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OS 
 
 of prairie and plain, of forests where cabiiis were and white- 
 haired children all at play. 
 
 Thrailkill was a Guerrilla who never slept that is to say, who 
 never knew the length or breadth of a bed from Sumpter to 
 Appomattox. Some women in Platte county had made him a 
 little black flag, under which he fought. This, worked into the 
 crown of his hat, satisfied him with his loyalty to his lady-love. 
 In addition to all this, he was one among the best pistol shots in 
 a command where all were excellent. 
 
 Perhaps neither before nor since the circumstance here re- 
 lated, has anything so quaint in recklessness or bravado been 
 recorded this side the Crusades. Thrailkill talked much, but 
 then he had fought much, and fighting men love to talk now and 
 then. Some border story of broil or battle, wherein, at desper- 
 ate odds, he had done a desperate deed, came uppermost as the 
 night deepened, and the quaint and scarred Guerrilla was over- 
 generous in the share he took of the killing and the plunder. 
 
 A comrade by his side Anthony West doubted the story 
 and ridiculed its narration. Thrailkill was not swift to anger 
 for one SD thoroughly reckless, but on this night he arose, every 
 hair on his bushy beard bristling. 
 
 "You disbelieve me, it seems," he said, bending over the 
 other until he could look into his eyes, "and for the skeptic 
 there is only the logic of a blow. Is this real, and this?" and 
 Thrailkill smote West twice in the face with his open hand, once 
 on either cheek. No insult could be more studied, open and 
 unpardonable. 
 
 Comrades interfered instantly, or there would have been blood- 
 shed in the heart of the camp and by the flames of the bivouac 
 fire. Each was very cool each knew what the morning would 
 bring forth, without a miracle. 
 
 The camp was within easy reach of a town that was more of 
 a village than a town. It had a church and a priest, and a 
 regular Don of an Alcalde who owned leagues of arable land, 
 and two hundred game cocks besides. For Shelby's especial 
 amusement *a huge main was organized, and a general invitation 
 given to all who desired to attend. 
 
 The contest w as to begin at noon. Before the sun had risen, 
 Capt. James H. Gillette came to Thrailkill, who was wrapped up 
 in his blankets, and said to him : 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 473 
 
 ""I have a message for you." 
 
 "It is not long, I hope." 
 
 "Not very long, but very plain." 
 
 "Yes, yes, they are all alike, I have seen such before. Wait 
 for me a few minutes." 
 
 Thrailkill found Isaac Berry, and Berry in turn soon found 
 Oillette. 
 
 The note was a challenge, brief and peremptory. Some con- 
 ference followed, and the terms were agreed upon. These were 
 savage enough for an Indian. Colt's pistols, dragoon size, were 
 the weapons, but only one of them was to be loaded. The 
 other, empty in every chamber, was to be placed alongside the 
 loaded one. Then a blanket was to cover both, leaving the butt 
 of each exposed. He who won the toss was to make the first 
 selection, and Thrailkill won. The loaded and the unloaded 
 pistol lay hidden beneath a blanket, the two handles so nearly 
 alike that there was no appreciable difference. Thrailkill 
 walked up to the tent, whistling a tune. West stood behind 
 him, watching with a face that was set as flint. The first drew, 
 cast his eyes along the cylinder, saw that it was loaded, and 
 smiled. The last drew every chamber was empty! Death 
 was his portion as absolutely and as certainly as if death already 
 stood by his side. Yet he made no sign other than to look up 
 to the sky. Was it to be his last look ? 
 
 The terms were ferocious, yet neither second had protested 
 against them. It seemed as if one man was to murder another 
 
 O 
 
 because one had been lucky in the toss of a silver dollar. As 
 the case stood, Thrailkill had the right to fire six shots at West 
 before West had the right to grasp even so much as a loaded 
 pistol and Thrailkill was known for his deadly skill throughout 
 the ranks of the whole Expedition. 
 
 The two were to meet just at sunset, and the great cock main 
 was at noon. To this each principal went, and each second, and 
 before the main was over the life of a man stood as absolutely 
 upon the prowess of a bird as the Spring and its leaves upon the 
 rain and the sunshine. 
 
 And thus it came about: In Mexico, cock-fighting is a 
 national recreation perhaps is a national blessing as well. 
 Men engage in it when they would be robbing else, and way- 
 laying convoys bearing specie, and haunting the mountain 
 
474 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 gorges until the heavy trains of merchandise entered slowly i 
 to be swallowed up. 
 
 The priests fight then, and the fatter the padre the finer his- 
 chicken. From the prayer-book to the pit is an easy transition, 
 and no matter the aves so only the odds are in favor of the 
 church. It is upon the Sundays that all the pitched battles 
 begin. After the matin bells, the matches. When it is vespers, 
 for some there has been a stricken and for some a victorious 
 field. No matter again for all there is absolution. 
 
 The Alcalde of the town of Linares was a jolly, good-condi- 
 tioned Mexican, who knew a bit of English, picked up in Cal- 
 ifornia, and who liked the Americans for but two things their 
 hard drinking and their hard swearing. Finding any ignorant 
 of these accomplishments, there flowed never any more for them 
 a stream of friendship from the Alcalde's fountain. It became 
 dry as suddenly as a spring in the desert. Shelby won his heart 
 by sending him a case of elegant cognac a present from Gen- 
 eral Douay and therefore was the main improvised which was 
 to begin at noon. 
 
 The pit was a great circle in the midst of a series of seats 
 that arose the one above the other. Over the entrance which 
 was a gateway opening like the lids of a book was a chair 
 of state, an official seat occupied by the Alcalde. Beside 
 him sat a bugler in uniform. At the beginning and the end of 
 a battle this bugler, watching the gestures of the Alcalde, blew 
 triumphant or penitential strains accordingly as the Alcalde's 
 favorite lost or won. As the main progressed the notes of glad- 
 ness outnumbered those of sorrow. 
 
 A born cavalryman is always suspicious. He looks askance at 
 the woods, the fences, the ponds, the morning fogs, the road that 
 forks and crosses, and the road that runs into the rear of a halted 
 column, or into either flank at rest in bivouac. It tries one's 
 nerves so to fumble at uncertain girths in the darkness, a rain 
 of bullets pouring down at the outposts and no shelter anywhere 
 for a long week's marching. 
 
 And never at any time did Shelby put aught of faith in Mexi- 
 can friendship, or aught of trust in Mexican welcome and 
 politeness. His guard was perpetual, and his intercourse, like 
 his marching, was always in skirmishing order.' Hence one-half 
 the forces of the Expedition were required to remain in camp 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 475- 
 
 under arms, prepared for any emergency, while the other half, 
 free of restraint, could accept the Alcalde's invitation or not a& 
 they saw fit. The most of them attended. With the crowd 
 went Thrailkill and West, Gillette and Berry. All the village 
 was there ; the pit had no caste. 
 
 Benevolent priests mingled with their congregations and bet 
 their pesos on their favorites. Lords of many herds and acres, 
 and mighty men of the country round about, the Dons of the 
 haciendas^ pulled off their hats to the peons and staked their 
 gold against the greasy silver, palm to palm. Fair senoritas shot 
 furtive glances along the ranks of the soldiers glances that 
 lingered long upon the Saxon outline of their faces and retreat- 
 ed only when to the light of curiosity there had been added that 
 of unmistakable admiration. 
 
 The bugle sounded and the betting began. The sport was 
 new to many of the spectators to a few it was as a sealed 
 book. Twenty-five cocks were matched all magnificent birds, 
 not so large as those fought in America, but as pure in game and 
 as rich in plumage. There, too, the fighting is more deadly ; 
 that is to say, it is more rapid and fatal. The heels used have 
 been almost thrown aside here. In the North and West abso- 
 lutely in New Orleans very nearly so. These heels, wrought ot 
 the most perfect steel and curved like a scimeter, have an edge 
 almost exquisite in its keenness. They cut asunder like a 
 sword-blade. Failing in instant death they inflict mortal 
 wounds. Before there is mutilation there is murder. 
 
 To the savage reality of combat there was added the atoning 
 insincerities of music. These diverted the drama of its premed- 
 itation, and gave to it -an air of surprise that, in the light of aa 
 accommodating conscience, passed unchallenged for innocence. 
 In Mexico the natives rarely ask questions the strangers never. 
 Shelby seated himself by the side of the Alcalde ; the first five 
 or six notes of a charge were sounded and the battle began. 
 Thereafter with varying fortune it ebbed and flowed through all 
 the long afternoon. Aroused into instant championship, the 
 Americans espoused the side of this or that bird, and lost or 
 won as the fates decreed. There was but scant gold among 
 them, all counted, but twenty dollars or twenty thousand, it 
 would have been the same. A nation of born gamblers, it 
 needed but a cock fight to bring all the old national traits upper- 
 
476 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 most. A dozen or more were on the eve of wagering their car- 
 bines and revolvers, when a sign from Shelby checked the unsol- 
 dierly impulse and brought them back inst antly to a realization 
 of duty. 
 
 Thrailkill had lost heavily that is to say every dollar he 
 owned on earth. West had won without cessation won in 
 pite of his judgment, which was often adverse to the wagers 
 laid. In this, maybe, Fate was but flattering him. Of what 
 use would all his winnings be after the sunset? 
 
 It was the eighteenth battle, and a magnificent cock was 
 brought forth who had the crest of an eagle and the eye of a 
 basilisk. More sonorous than the bugle, his voice had blended 
 war and melody in it. The glossy ebony of his plumage needed 
 only the sunlight to make it a mirror where courage might have 
 arrayed itself. In an instant he was everybody's favorite in 
 his favor all the odds were laid. Some few clustered about his 
 antagonist among them a sturdy old priest who did what he 
 could to stem the tide rising in favor of the bird of the beautiful 
 plumage. 
 
 Infatuated like the rest, Thrailkill would have staked a crown 
 upon the combat ; he did not have even so much as one real. 
 The man was miserable. Once he walked to the door and 
 looked out. If at that time he had gone forth, the life of West 
 would have gone with him, but he did not go. As he returned 
 .-he met Gillette, who spoke to him : 
 
 "You do not bet, and the battle is about to begin." 
 
 "I do not bet because I have not won. The pitcher that goes 
 eternally to a well is certain to be broken at last." 
 
 "And yet you are fortunate." 
 
 Thrailkill shrugged his shoulders and looked at his watch. 
 It wanted an hour yet of the sunset. The tempter still 
 tempted him. 
 
 "You have no money, then. Would you like to borrow?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Gillette mused awhile. They were tying on the last blades, 
 and the old priest cried out : 
 
 "A doubloon to a doubloon against the black cock!" 
 
 Thrailkill' s eyes glistened. Gillette took him by the arm. 
 He spoke rapidly, but so low and distinct that every word was a 
 thrust 
 
THE WAHFARE OF THE BOEDER 477 
 
 "You do not want to kill West. The terms are murderous 
 you have been soldiers together you can take the priest's bet 
 here is the money. But," and he looked him fair in the 
 face, "if you win you pay me ; if you lose I have absolute 
 disposal of your fire." 
 
 "Ah!" t and the Guerrilla straightened himself up all of a 
 sudden, "what would you do with my fire?" 
 
 "Keep your hands clean from innocent blood, John Thrail- 
 kill. Is not that enough?" 
 
 The money was accepted, the wager with the priest was laid, 
 and the battle began. When it was over the black cock lay 
 dead on the sands of the arena, slain by the sweep of one 
 terrific blow, while over him, in pitiless defiance, his antago- 
 nist, dun in plumage and ragged in crest and feather, stood a 
 victor, conscious of his triumph and his prowess. The sun was 
 setting, and two men stood face to face in the glow of the 
 crimsoning sky. On either flank of them a second took his 
 place, a look of sorrow on the bold bronzed face of Berry, the 
 light of anticipation in the watchful eyes of the calm Gillette. 
 Well kept, indeed, had been the secret of the tragedy. The 
 group who stood alone on the golden edge of the evening were 
 all who knew the ways and the means of the work before them. 
 West took his place as a man who had shaken hands with life 
 and knew how to die. Thrailkill had never been merciful, and 
 this day of all days were the chances dead against a moment of 
 pity or forgiveness. The ground was a little patch of grass 
 beside a stream, having trees in the rear of it, and trees over 
 beyond the reach of the waters running musically to the sea. In 
 the distance there were houses from which peaceful smoke 
 ascended. Through the haze of the gathering twilight the 
 sound of bells came from the homeward plodding herds, and 
 from the fields the happy voices of the reapers. West stood 
 full front to his adversary certain of death. He expected 
 nothing beyond a quick and a speedy bullet one which would 
 kill without inflicting needless pain. 
 
 The word was given. Thrailkill threw his pistol out , covered 
 his antagonist once fairly, looked once into his eyes and saw 
 that they did not quail, and then, with a motion as instantaneous 
 as it was unexpected, lifted it up overhead and fired in the air. 
 
 Gillette had won the wager I 
 
478 NOTED GUEERILLAS, OB 
 
 The fight in which Crockett was killed was also a fight of 
 Thrailkill's contriving. It was a fight based upon a romance, a 
 night attack that grew from a goatherd's story into a savage 
 scene of shooting and killing. 
 
 As Shelby's Expedition won well its way into Mexico, many 
 (places old in local song and story, arose, as it were, from the 
 past, and stood out, clear-cut and crimson, against the back- 
 ground of a history filled to the brim with rapine, and lust, and 
 slaughter. No other land under the sun had an awakening so 
 storm-begirt, a christening so bloody and remorseless. First 
 the Spaniards under Cortez swart, fierce, long of broadsword 
 and limb ; and next the Revolution, wherein no man died peace- 
 fully or under the shade of a roof. There was Hidalgo, the 
 ferocious priest shot. Morales, with these words in his mouth 
 shot: "Lord, if I have done well, Thou knowest it; if ill, to 
 Thy infinite mercy I commend my soul." Leonardo Bravo, 
 scorning to fly shot. Nicholas Bravo, his son, who had offered 
 a thousand captives for his father's life shot. Matamoras 
 ishot. Mina shot. Guerrera shot. Then came the Repub- 
 lic bloodier, bitterer, crueler. Victoria, its first President 
 shot. Mexia shot. Pedraza shot. Santmanet shot by 
 General Ampudia, who cut off his head, boiled it in oil, and 
 stuck it up on a pole to blacken in the sun. Herrera shot. 
 Paredes shot. All of them shot, these Mexican Presidents, ex- 
 cept Santa Anna, who lost a leg by the French and a country by 
 the Americans. Among his game-cocks and his mistresses, he 
 lived many a day in Havana, seeing only when his aged eyes had 
 lost their lustre the white brow of Orizava from the Southern Sea, 
 and resting only again under the orange and the banana trees 
 about Cordova, a tottering frame that had felt to their fullest 
 the heat and the cold of Mexican revolution. It was a land old 
 in the world's history that these men rode into, and a land 
 stained in the world's crimes a land filled full of the sun and 
 the tropics. What wonder, then, that a deed was done on the 
 fifth day's marching that had about it the splendid dash and 
 bravado of mediaeval chivalry. 
 
 Keeping outtermust guard, one balmy evening, far beyond the 
 silent camp of the dreaming soldiers, John Thrailkill and James 
 Wood did vigilant duty in front of the reserve. The fire had 
 gone out when the cooking was done, and the earth smelt 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 479 
 
 sweet with grasses and the dew on the grasses. A low pulse 
 of song broke on the bearded faces of the cacti, and sobbed in 
 fading cadence as the waves that came in from the salt sea, 
 seeking the south wind. This was the vesper strain of the 
 katydid, sad, solacing, rhythmical. 
 
 Before the wary eyes of the sentinels a figure rose up, waving 
 his blanket as a truce-flag. Encouraged, he came into the lines, 
 not full assured of his bearings frightened a little and prone 
 to be communicative by way of propitiation. Had the Amer- 
 icans heard of Encarnacion. No, they had not heard of Encar- 
 nacion. What was Encarnacion ? 
 
 The Mexican, born robber and devout Catholic, crossed him- 
 self. Not to have heard of Encarnacion was next in infamy to 
 having slaughtered a priest. Horror made him garrulous. Fear, 
 if it does not paralyze, has been known to make the dumb 
 speak. Encarnacion was a hacienda, and a hacienda, literally 
 translated, is a plantation with royal stables, and acres of corral, 
 and abounding water, and long rows of male and female slave 
 cabins, and a Don of an owner, who has music, and singing- 
 maidens, and pillars of silver dollars, and a passionate, brief 
 life, wherein wine and women rise upon it at last and cut it 
 short. Even if no ill-luck intervenes, the pace to the devil is a 
 terrible one, and superb riders though they are, the best seat in 
 the saddle sways heavily at last, and the truest hand on the rein 
 relaxes ere manhood reaches its noon and the shadows of the 
 west. 
 
 Luis Enrico Rodriguez owned Encarnacion, a Spaniard born, 
 and a patron saint of all the robbers who lived in the neigh- 
 boring mountains, and of all the senoritas who plaited their hair 
 by the banks of his arroyos and hid but charily their dusky 
 bodies in the limpid waves. The hands of the French had been 
 laid upon him lightly. For forage and foray Dupin, that terrible 
 Contre-Guerrilla, had never penetrated the mountain line which 
 shut in his guarded dominions from the world beyond. When 
 strangers came he gave them greeting; when soldiers came, he 
 gave them of his flocks and herds, his wines and treasures. 
 
 There was one pearl, however, a pearl of great price, whom 
 no stranger eyes had ever seen, to whom no stranger tongue had 
 ever spoken a fair good morning. The slaves called it a spirit, 
 the confessor a sorceress, the lazy gossips a gringo witch, the 
 
480 NOTED GUEBBILLAS, OK 
 
 man who knew best of all called it wife, and yet no sprinkling 
 of water or blessing of church had made the name a holy one. 
 
 Rodriguez owned Encarnacion, and Encarnacion owned a 
 skeleton. This much James Wood and John Thrailkill knew 
 when the half goat-herder and robber had told but half hi 
 story. When he finished his other half this much re- 
 mained of it: 
 
 Years before, in Sonora, a California hunter of gold had found 
 his way to some streams where a beautiful Indian woman lived 
 with her tribe. They were married, and a daughter was born 
 tp them, having her father's Saxon hair and her mother's eyes 
 of tropical dusk. From youth to womanhood this daughter had 
 been educated in San Francisco. When she returned she was 
 an American, having nothing of her Indian ancestry but its 
 color. Even her mother's language was unknown to her. One 
 day in Guaymas Rodriquez looked upon her as a vision. He 
 was a Spaniard and a millionaire, and he believed all things 
 possible. The wooing was long, but the web, like the web of 
 Penelope's, was never woven. He failed in his eloquence, in 
 his money, in his passionate entreaties, in his stratagems, in his 
 lyings-in-wait in everything, indeed, that savored of pleading 
 or purchase. Some men come often to their last dollar never 
 to the end of their audacity. If fate should choose to back a 
 lover against the world, fate would give long odds on a Span- 
 iard. 
 
 At last, when everything else had been tried, Rodriguez deter- 
 mined upon abduction. This was a common Mexican custom, 
 dangerous only in its failure. No matter what the risk, no 
 matter how monstrous the circumstances, no matter how many 
 corpses lay in the pathway looking up from plotting to fulfil- 
 ment, so only in the end the lust of the man triumphed over the 
 virtue of the woman. Gathering together hastily a band of 
 bravos, whose devotion was in exact proportion to the dollars 
 paid, Rodriguez seized upon the maiden returning late one night 
 from the opera, and bore her away with all speed towards Encar- 
 nacion. The Californian, born of a tiger race that invariably 
 dies hard, mounted such few men as loved him and followed on 
 furiously in pursuit. Bereft of his young, he had but one thing 
 to do Ml. 
 
 Fixed as fate and as relentless, the race went on. Turning, 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 481 
 
 once fairly at bay, pursuers and pursued met in a death grapple. 
 The Californian died in the thick of the fight, leaving stern and 
 stark traces behind of his terrible prowess. What cared Rodri- 
 guez, however, for a bravo more or less? The woman was safe, 
 and on his own garments nowhere did the strife leave aught of 
 crimson or dust. Once well in her chamber, a mistress, per- 
 haps a prisoner certainly, she beat her wings in vain against 
 the strong bars of her palace, for all that gold could give or 
 passion suggest had been poured out at the feet of Inez Walker. 
 Servants came and went at her bidding. The priest blessed 
 and beamed upon her. The captor was fierce by turns, and in 
 the dust at her feet by turns ; but amid it all the face of a mur- 
 dered father rose up in her memory, and pra3 7 ers for vengeance 
 upon her father's murderers broke ever from her unrelenting 
 lips. At times fearful cries came out from the woman's cham- 
 ber. The domestics heard these and crossed themselves. Once- 
 in a terrible storm she fled from her thraldom and wandered 
 frantically about until she sank down insensible. She was found 
 alone with her beauty and her agony. Rodriguez lifted her in 
 his arms and bore her back to her chamber. A fever followed, 
 scorching her young face until it was pitiful, and shredding 
 away her Saxon hair until all its gloss was gone and all its silken 
 rippling stranded. She lived on, however, and under the light 
 of a Southern sky, and by the fitful embers of a soldier's bivouac, 
 a robber goatherd was telling the story of an American's daugh- 
 ter to an American's son. 
 
 " Was it far to Encarnacion?" 
 
 Jim Wood asked this question in his broken Spanish way r 
 looking out to the front, musing. 
 
 "By to-morrow night, Senor," the goatherd made answer, 
 "you will be there." 
 
 " Have you told the straight truth, Mexican?" 
 
 "As the Virgin is true, Senor." 
 
 "So be it. You shall sleep this night at the outpost. To- 
 morrow we will see." 
 
 The Mexican smoked a cigarito and went to h <i. Whether 
 he slept or not he made no sign. Full confi<U-nen rarely lavs 
 hold of an Indian's heart. Replenishing the li>v. Wood m\ 
 Thrailkill sat an hour together in silence. Bey<> - h 
 untiring glances of their eyes, the men were a.- 
 31 
 
482 NOTED GUEEBILLAS, OR 
 
 Finally Thrailkill spoke to Wood: 
 
 "Of what are you thinking?" 
 
 "Encarnacion. And you?*' 
 
 "Inez Walker. It is the same." 
 
 The Mexican turned in his blanket, muttering. Wood's 
 revolver covered him : 
 
 "Lie still," he said, "and muffle up your ears. You may not 
 understand English, but you understand this," and he waved 
 the pistol menacingly before his eyes. "One never does know 
 when these yellow snakes are asleep." 
 
 "No matter," replied Thrailkill, sententiously, "they never 
 sleep." 
 
 It was daylight again, and although the two men had not un- 
 folded their blankets, they were as fresh as the dew on the 
 grasses fresh enough to have planned an enterprise as daring 
 and as desperate as anything ever dreamed of in romance or set 
 forth in fable. 
 
 The to-morrow night of the Mexican had come, and there lay 
 Encarnacion in plain view under the starlight. Rodriguez had 
 kept aloof from the American encampment. Through the last 
 hours of the afternoon wide-hatted rancheros had ridden up to 
 the corral in unusual numbers, had dismounted, and had entered 
 in. Shelby, who took note of everything, took note of this also. 
 
 "They do not come out," he said. "There are some signs of 
 preparation about, and some fears manifested against a night 
 attack. Save for our grass and our goats, I know of no reason 
 why our foraging should be heavier now than formerly." 
 
 Twice Wood and Thraukill had been on the eve of telling him 
 the whole story, and twice their hearts had failed them. Shelby 
 had been getting sterner and sterner of late, and the reins had 
 become to be drawn tighter and tighter. Perhaps it was neces- 
 sary. Certainly since the last furious attack by the Mexican 
 guerrillas those who had looked upon discipline as an ill-favored 
 mistress had ended by embracing her. 
 
 As the picquets were being told off for duty, Wood came 
 close to Thrailkill and whispered : 
 
 "The men will be ready by twelve. They are volunteers and 
 splendid fellows. How many of them will be shot?" 
 
 "Q.uien sabe? Those who take the sword shall perish by the 
 sword.' 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BOEDER 483 
 
 With all his gold, and his leagues upon leagues of cattle and 
 land, Rodriguez had only for eagle's nest an adobe e3 r rie. 
 Hither his dove had been carried. On the right of this 
 long rows of cabins constituted the quarters of his peons. 
 Near to the great gate were acres of corral. Within this sad- 
 dled steeds in state were lazily feeding. A Mexican loves his 
 horse, but this is no reason why he does not starve him. This 
 night, however, Rodriguez was bountiful. For fight and flight 
 both men and animals must not go hungry. On the top of the 
 main building a kind of tower lifted itself up. It was roomy 
 and spacious, and flanked by step . that clung to it tenaciously. 
 In this tower a light shone, while all below and about it was 
 hushed and impenetrable. High adobe walls encircled the man- 
 sion, the cabins, the corral, the acacia trees, the fountain that 
 splashed plaintively, and the massive portal which had mystery 
 written all over its rugged outlines. 
 
 The nearest picquet was over beyond Encarnacion, and the 
 camp guards were only for sentinel duty. Free to come and 
 go, the men had no watchword for the night. None was 
 needed. Suddenly, and if one had looked up from his blankets 
 he might have seen a long, dark line standing out against the 
 sky. This line did not move. 
 
 It may have been twelve o'clock. There was no moon, yet 
 the stars gave light enough for the men to see each other's 
 faces, and to recognize one another. It was a quarter of a mile 
 from the camp to the hacienda, and almost the same distance to 
 the picquet post from where the Americans had formed. In the 
 ranks one might have seen such veteran campaigners stern and 
 rugged, and scant of speech in danger as McDougall, Tom 
 Boswell, Armstead, Winship, Ras Woods, Joe Macey, Vines, 
 James Kirtley, Blackwell, Rudd, Crockett, Collins, Jack Will- 
 iams, Owens, Timberlake, Darnell, Johnson, the two Berrys 
 Richard and Isaac and a dozen others of like courage and 
 material. Wood and Thrailkill stood forward by right as leaders. 
 All knew that they would carry them far enough, &ome may 
 have thought, perhaps, that they would carry them too far. The 
 line, hushed now and ominous, stood still as a wall. From 
 front to rear Thrailkill walked along its whole length, speaking 
 some low and cheering words. 
 
 "Boys," he commenced, "none of us know what is waiting 
 
484 NOTED GUERRILLAS, OR 
 
 inside the corral. Mexicans fight well in the dark, it is said, 
 and see better than wolves ; but we must have that American 
 woman safe out of their hands or we must burn the buildings. 
 If the hazard is too great for any of you, step out of the ranks. 
 What we are about to do must needs be done quickly. Shelby 
 sleeps little of late, and may be even at this moment searching 
 through the camp for some of us. Let him find even so much 
 as one blanket empty, and from the heroes of a night attack we 
 shall become its criminals." 
 
 Sweeney, a one-armed soldier who had served under Walker 
 in Nicaragua, and who was in the front always in hours of enter- 
 prise or peril, replied to Thrailkill : 
 
 "Since time is valuable, lead on." 
 
 The line put itself in motion. Two men sent forward to try 
 the great gate, returned rapidly. Thrailkill met them. 
 
 "Well?" he said. 
 
 "It is dark all about there, and the gate itself is as strong as 
 a mountain." 
 
 "We shall batter it down." 
 
 A beam was brought a huge piece of timber wrenched from 
 the upright fastenings of a large irrigating basin. Twenty 
 men manned this and advanced upon the gate. In an instant 
 thereafter there were tremendous and resounding blows, shouts, 
 cries, oaths and musket shots. Before this gigantic battering-ram 
 adobe walls and iron fastenings gave way. The bars of the 
 barrier were broken as reeds, the locks were crushed, the 
 hinges were beaten in, while with a fierce yell and rush the 
 Americans swarmed to the attack of the main building. The 
 light in the tower guided them. A legion of devils seemed to 
 have broken loose. The stabled steeds of the Mexicans reared 
 and plunged in the infernal din of the fight, and dashed hither 
 and thither, masterless and riderless. The camp where Shelby 
 rested was instantly alarmed. The shrill notes of the bugle 
 were heard over all the tumult, and with them the encouraging 
 voices of Wood and Thiailkill crying out: "Make haste, men, 
 make haste 1 In twenty minutes more we will be between 
 two fires." 
 
 Crouching in the stables and pouring forth a murderous fire 
 from their ambuscades in the darkness, some twenty rancheroa 
 made sudden and desperate battle. Joe Macey and Ike Berry 
 
THE WABFABE OF THE BOEDER 485 
 
 charged through the gloom upon the unknown, guided only by 
 the lurid and fitful flashes of the muskets. When the work was 
 over the corral no longer vomited its flame; silence reigned 
 there, that fearful and ominous silence fit only for the dead who 
 die suddenly. 
 
 The camp, no longer in sleep, had become menacing. Short 
 words of command came out of it, and the tread of trained men 
 forming rapidly for battle. Some skirmishers, even in the very 
 first moments of the combat, had been thrown forward quite to 
 the hacienda. They were almost nude, and stood out under 
 the starlight as white spectres, threatening yet undefined. They 
 had guns at least and pistols, and in so much were mortal. 
 These spectres had reason also and discretion. Close upon the 
 fragments of the great gate and looking in upon the waves of 
 the fight as they rose and fell, they yet did not fire. They 
 believed at least that some of their kindred and comrades were 
 there. 
 
 For a brief ten minutes more the combat raged evenly. 
 Cheered by the voice of Rodriguez and stimulated by his 
 example, his retainers clung bitterly to the fight. The doors 
 were as redoubts. The windows were as miniature casements. 
 Once on the steps of the tower, Rodriguez showed himself for 
 an instant. A dozen of the best shots in the attacking party 
 fired at him. No answer save an oath of defiance so savage 
 and harsh that it sounded unnatural even in the roar of the 
 furious hurricane. 
 
 There was a lull. Every Mexican outside the main building 
 had been either killed or wounded. Against the massive walls 
 of the adobes the rifle bullets made no headway. It was murder 
 longer to oppose flesh to masonry. Vickers was killed, young 
 and dauntless ; Crockett, the Guerrilla hero of the desperate 
 Lampasas duel, was dead ; Rogers was dead ; the boy Provines 
 was dead ; Matterhorn, a stark giant of a German, shot four 
 times, was breathing his last, while the wounded were on all 
 sides, some hard hit, and some bleeding yet fighting on. 
 
 "Once more to the beam!" shouted Thrailkill. 
 
 Again the great battering ram crashed against the great door 
 leading into the main hall, and again there was a rending away 
 of iron, and wood, and mortar. Through splintered timber, 
 over crumbling and jagged masonry, the besiegers poured. 
 
486 NOTED GUEBKILLAS, OR 
 
 The building was gained. Once well withinside, the storm of 
 revolver balls was terrible. There personal prowess told, and 
 there the killing was quick and desperate. At the head of his 
 hunted following, Rodriguez fought like the Spaniard he was, 
 stubbornly and to the last. No lamps lit the savage melee. While 
 the Mexicans stood up to be shot at they were shot where they 
 stood. The most of them died there. Some few broke away 
 towards the last and escaped, for no pursuit was attempted, 
 and no man cared how many fled or how fast. It was the 
 woman the Americans wanted. Gold and silver ornaments were 
 everywhere, and precious tapestry work, and many rare and 
 quaint and woven things, but the powder-blackened and blood- 
 stained hands of the assailants touched not one of these. It was 
 too dark to tell who killed Rodriguez. To the last his voice 
 could be heard cheering on his men and calling down God's 
 vengeance on the gringos. Those who fired at him specially 
 fired at his voice, for the smoke was stifling, and the sulphurous 
 fumes of the gunpowder almost unbearable. 
 
 When the hacienda was won, Shelby had arrived with the rest 
 of the command. He had mistaken the cause of the attack, 
 and his mood was of that kind which but seldom came to him, 
 but which when it did come, had several times before made 
 some of his most hardened and unruly followers tremble and 
 turn pale. He had caused the hacienda to be surrounded 
 closely, and he had come alone to the doorway, a look of 
 wrathful menace on his usually placid face. "Who among you 
 have done this thing?" he asked, in tones that were calm, yet 
 full and vibrating. 
 
 No answer. The men put up their weapons. 
 
 ''Speak, some of you. Let me not find cowards instead of 
 plunderers, lest I finish the work upon you all that the Mexicans 
 did so poorly upon a few." Thrailkill and Wood came forward 
 to the front then. Covered with blood and powder stains, they 
 seemed in sorry plight to make much headway in defence of 
 the night's doings, yet they told the tale as straight as the goat- 
 herd had told it to them, and in such simple soldier fashion, 
 taking all the sin upon their own heads and hands, that even 
 the stern features of their commander relaxed a little, and he 
 fell to musing. It may have been that the desperate nature of 
 the enterprise appealed more strongly to his own feelings than 
 
THE WARFARE OF THE BORDER 487 
 
 he was willing that his men should know, or it may have been 
 that his set purpose softened a little when he saw so many of his 
 bravest and best soldiers come out from the darkness and stand 
 in silence about their leaders, Wood and Thrailkill, some of 
 them sorely wounded, and all of 'them covered with the signs of 
 the desperate fight, but certain it is that when he spoke again 
 his voice was more relenting and assuring. 
 
 "And where is the woman?" 
 
 Through all the terrible moments of the combat the light in the 
 tower had burned as a beacon. Perhaps in those few seconds 
 when Rodriguez stood alone upon the steps leading up to the 
 dove's-nest, in a tempest of fire and smoke, the old love might 
 have been busy at his heart, and the old yearning strong within 
 him to make at last some peace with her for whom he had so 
 deeply sinned, and for whose sake he was soon to so dreadfully 
 suffer. Death makes many a sad atonement, and though late in 
 coming at times to the evil and the good alike, it may be that 
 when the records of the heart are writ beyond the wonderful 
 river, much that was dark on earth will be bright in eternity, 
 and much that was cruel and fierce in finite judgment will be 
 made fair and beautiful when it is known how love gathered up 
 the threads of destiny, and how all the warp was blood-stained 
 and all the woof that had bitterness and tears upon it, could be 
 traced to a woman's hand. 
 
 Grief-stricken, prematurely old, yet beautiful even amid the 
 loneliness of her situation, Inez Walker came into the presence 
 of Shelby, a queen. Some strands of gray were in her glossy, 
 golden hair. The liquid light of her large dark eyes had long 
 ago been quenched in tears. The form that had once been so 
 full and perfect, was now bent and fragile ; but there was such a. 
 look of mournful tenderness in her eager, questioning face that 
 the men drew back from her presence instinctively and left her 
 alone with their General. He received her commands as if she 
 were bestowing a favor upon him, listening as a brother might 
 until all her wishes were made known. These he promised to 
 carry out to the letter, and how well he did so none know better 
 than those who followed him to Mexico. 
 
 John Thrailkill still remains where Shelby left him in 1868, a 
 soldier of fortune, who to-day is hidden by a shadow, and 
 to-morrow made joyous with the sunshine. He fought for Juarez 
 
488 &OTED GUERRILLAS, Ob 
 
 against Maximilian, and commanded at Queretaro a battalion of 
 American scouts famed throughout the Republic for extraor- 
 dinary daring and enterprise. Later, he was a revolutionist 
 under Porfirio Diaz, and later still, he joined with Diaz in the 
 overthrow of both Lerdo and Iglesias. O thers of his Guerrilla 
 comrades who accompanied him to Mexico scattered in every 
 direction, as many of those did who remained in the United 
 States. Some joined the French and returned with the Zouaves 
 to Algeria. Some took service on the sea, some went to China, 
 some to the Sandwich Islands, and some remained half brigands 
 and half haciendaros, to live by the sword and, sooner or later, 
 to perish by it. 
 
 THE END. 
 
THE ONLY FULL AND AUTHENTIC! HISTORY OF 
 MISSOURI EVER PUBLISHED. 
 
 This book contains 900 Royal Octavo pages, printed on the finest 
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 2d. History of Missouri, from the date of the earliest settlement, 
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BOOK FOB YOUNG AND OLD. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE 
 
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 In which are recorded many incidents and adventures connected witb 
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 BLACK HAWK, 
 
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