Chapter II: Part 2

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 isolation. 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 and missed. Blunt left his position by the side of the horse and strode out into the open, accepting the challenge defiantly, and closed with his antagonist. The first time he fired he missed, although many men believed him a better shot than Quantrell. The Federal sat on his horse calmly and fired the second shot deliberately and again missed. Blunt went four paces toward 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, hit hard in the 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 shot. The heavy dragoon ball struck the gallant Federal fair in the forehead and knocked him dead from his horse.

While the duel was in progress, 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 encouragement from his own comrades, and a wicked volley from the enemy.

It was time. A second company of Federals in the neighborhood, 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 in almost the same straits as at the Tate house. His horses were in the hands of the Federals, it was some little distance to the timber, and the environment was complete. Captain Peabody, himself a Kansas man, knew who led the forces opposed to him and burned with a desire to make a finish of this Quantrell and his reckless band at one fell sweep. Not content with the one hundred and sixty men already in positions about the house, he sent off posthaste 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 house. Eager to kill the daring man, and excited somewhat by their own efforts made to do it, the Federals exposed themselves 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 different 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 protected by some superior presence. When at last even this artifice would no longer enable his men to fight with any degree of equality, Quantrell 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 remonstrated 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 into 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 engaged, Captain Peabody caused to be burned everything upon the premises which had a plank or shingle about it.

Something else was yet to be done. Getting out afoot as best he could, Quantrell saw a company of cavalry making haste from toward 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 ambushment was the work of a moment. George Todd, alone of all the Guerrillas, had brought with him from the house a shotgun. In running for life, the most of them were unencumbered. The approaching Federals were the reinforcements Peabody had ordered up from Pink Hill, and as Quantrell’s defense 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 the 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 of all and uppermost. There was a rally, however. Once out from under the 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 and putting himself at their head, he turned back for a fight, marching resolutely forward to the bluff. Quantrell waited for 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 shotgun. 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 the lagging men. At Todd’s signal there succeeded a fierce revolver volley, and again were the Federals driven from the hills and back towards their horses.

Satisfied with the results of this fight--made solely as a matter of revenge for burning Clark’s buildings--Quantrell fell away from the ford and continued his retreat on towards his rendezvous upon the waters of the Sni. Peabody, however, had not had his way. Coming on himself in the direction of Pink Hill, and mistaking these reinforcements for Guerrillas, he had quite a lively fight with them, each detachment getting in several volleys and killing and wounding a goodly number before either discovered the mistake.

“The only prisoner I ever shot during the war,” relates Captain Trow, “was a ‘nigger’ I captured on guard at Independence, Missouri, who claimed that he had killed his master and burned his houses and barns. The circumstances were these: Captain Blunt and I one night went to town for a little spree and put on our Federal uniforms. While there we came in contact with the camp guard, which was a ‘nigger’ and a white man. They did not hear us until we got right up to them, so we, claiming to be Federals, arrested them for not doing their duty in hailing us at a distance. We took them prisoners, disarmed them, took them down to the Fire Prairie bottom east of Independence about ten miles, and there I thought I would have to kill the ‘nigger’ on account of his killing his master and burning his property. I shot him in the forehead just above the eyes. I even put my finger in the bullet hole to be sure I had him. The ball never entered his skull, but went round it. To make sure of him, I shot him in the foot and he never flinched, so I left him for dead. He came to, however, that night and crawled out into the road, and a man from Independence came along the next morning and took him in his wagon. This I learned several years afterwards at Independence in a saloon when one day I chanced to be taking a drink. There I met the ‘nigger’ whom I thought dead. He recognized me from hearing my name spoken and asked if I remembered shooting a ‘nigger.’ I said ‘Yes.’ I had the pleasure of taking a drink with him.”

Jayhawkers and Militia Murder Old Man Blythe’s Son

Quantrell and His Company Were 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 were scoured thoroughly 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 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 traveling 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 all whom he pleased to feed, and sheltered all whom it pleased him to shelter. Among many of his warm personal friends was Cole 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 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 splendid in his boyish courage to the last. Turning over on his face as the Jayhawkers rushed up to finish him he shot one dead, mortally wounded another, and severely wounded the third. Before he could shoot a 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 had happened to be at Blythe’s house at the time, was a witness to 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 his 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, stationed some at each end of the passageway and some at the top on either side. Not a shot was to be fired until the returning Federals had entered it, front and rear. From the Blue Cut this fatal spot was afterwards 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 Low House Fight

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 blacksmith, who shot as well as he shod, 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 several rounds of cartridges to make. A Guerrilla knew nothing whatever of an ordnance master. His laboratory was in his luck. If a capture did not bring him caps, he had to fall back on ruse, or strategem, 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 Quantrell’s intention at this time to attack Harrisonville, the county seat of Cass County, and capture it if possible. With this object in view, and after every preparation was made 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 impossible.

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 house known as the Low house, and then from this house he had gone to some contiguous timber to bivouac for the night. About ten o’clock the sky suddenly became overcast, a fresh wind blew from the east, and rain fell in torrents. Again the house was occupied, the horses being hitched along the fence in the rear of it, the door on the south, the only door, having a bar across it in lieu of a sentinel. Such soldiering was perfectly inexcusable, and it taught Quantrell a lesson to remember until the day of his death.

In the morning preceding the day of the attack Lieutenant Nash, of Peabody’s regiment, commanding two hundred men, had struck Quantrell’s trail, but lost it later on, and then found it again just about sunset. He was informed of Quantrell’s having gone from the Low house to the brush and of his having come back to it when the rain began falling 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 them had overcoats. If once their ammunition were damaged, it would be as though sheep should attack wolves.

Nash, supplied with everything needed for the weather, waited patiently for the Guerrillas to become snugly settled 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 every available carbine in command upon the only door. At first all was confusion. Across the logs that 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 volleys 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 side four men fought, Younger calling on Todd in the intervals 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 shelter, 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 of shooting. When they halted and dodged about to get out of range, he would dash away again, gaining what space he could until he had to turn and re-enact the same unpleasant pantomime. Reaching the woods at last, he fired point blank, and in reality now, killing 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 two prisoners were all that were left for them.

Little Blue was bank full 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 was still pouring 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 again became necessary to disband the Guerrillas in this instance as in the preceding two. 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 was cut off. Of late the captures had not been as plentiful as formerly. Recruits were coming in, and the season for larger operations 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 smile when a smile would win, and when to frown when a frown was a better card to play, that something in this expedition appealed to every quixotic instinct of his intrepidity. Todd was all iron; Quantrell all glue. Todd would go at a circular saw; Quantrell would sharpen its teeth and grease it where there was friction. One purred and killed, and the other roared and killed. What mattered the mode, however, only so the end was the same?

Quantrell and Todd Go After Ammunition

Clad in the full uniform of Federal majors--a supply of which Quantrell kept always on hand, even in a day so early in the war as this--Quantrell and Todd rode into Hamilton, a little town on the Hannibal & St. Louis Railroad, and remained for the night at the principal hotel. A Federal garrison was there--two 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 Feneral 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 a major of the Sixth Missouri Cavalry and himself the major of the Ninth. Unacquainted 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 ever really belonged to the Jayhawkers? How much truth was there in the stories of the newspapers about his operations and 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 remarking: “If you were here, Colonel, surrounded as you are by a thousand soldiers, and they wanted you, they would come 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 boquet: 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 Henderson and Captain Gordon, and asked Todd if he were a relative of 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 headquarters of his regiment, Colonel Branch, with one hundred and thirty thousand dollars on his person, found that he would have to remain in Weston over night 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 Guerrillas there he was among them, calling for whiskey every now and then, incessantly telling some agreeable story or amusing anecdote. Thus he got through with what seemed to him an interminably long day. Not 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 in the near future to give Quantrell some stubborn fighting--passed in review the military situation, incidently 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 last time in his life Colonel Branch was disloyal to the government and the flag--he gave undoubted aid and encouragement during those three days to about as uncompromising 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 a man unquestionably devoted to the South with the whole amount of purchases made in both Hannibal and St. Joseph.

A Challenge

Quantrell with his band of sixty-three men were being followed by a force of seven hundred cavalrymen under Peabody. Peabody came up in the advance with three hundred men, while four hundred marched at a supporting distance behind him. Quantrell halted at Swearington’s barn and the Guerrillas were drying their blankets. One picket, Hick George, an iron man, who could sleep in his saddle and eat as he ran and who suspected every act until he could fathom it, watched the rear against an attack. Peabody received George’s fire, for George would fire at an angel or devil in the line of his duty, and drove him toward Quantrell at a full run. Every preparation possible under the circumstances had been made and if the reception was not as cordial as expected, the Federals could attribute it to the long march and the rainy weather.

Quantrell stood at the gate calmly with his hand on the latch; when George entered he would close and fasten it. Peabody’s forces were within thirty feet of the fence when the Guerrillas delivered a crashing blow and sixteen Federals crashed against the barricade and fell there. Others fell and more dropped out here and there before the disorganized mass got back safe again from the deadly revolver range. After them Quantrell himself dashed hotly, George Maddox, Jarrette, Cole Younger, George Morrow, Gregg, Blunt, Poole and Haller following them fast to the timber and upon their return gathering all the arms and ammunition of the killed as they went. At the timber Peabody rearranged his lines, dismounted his men and came forward again at a quick run, yelling. Do what he would, the charge spent itself before it could be called a charge.

Peabody arranged his men, dismounted them, and came forward again at a double-quick, and yelling. Do what he would, the charge again 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 “lay up close to Peabody,” as he expressed it, and keep him and his movements steadily in view.

The four daredevils 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 affixed, 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 by the following: Coleman Younger, William Haller, David Poole and John Brinker.

Younger bore it. Tieing a white handkerchief to a stick he rode boldly up to the nearest picket and asked for a parley. Six started towards 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, one hundred are sometimes 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 Quantrell’s line of retreat--a flank movement meant to be final. Haller hurried off to Quantrell to report, and Peabody, vigorous and alert, now threw out a cloud of cavalry skirmishers after the three remaining Guerrillas. The race was one for life. Both started their horses 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 were driving through it an incarnate scythe blade. As Poole 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 rode on, Poole heard the laughter and saw the jack, and imagined the devil to be after him leading a lot of crazy people.

The Battle and Capture of Independence

“On August 11, 1862,” says Trow, “about a month prior to the capture of Independence, while Press Webb and I were out on a little frolic, we attended a dance at his father’s, Ace Webb, and stayed all night there. During the night a regiment of soldiers surrounded the house. We barred the doors against them and I aimed to get away in a woman’s garb and had my dress all on, bonnet and everything, with permission to get out of the house with the women without being fired upon. But old Mrs. Webb objected to my going out for fear it would cause her son to be killed, so I had to pull off the dress and hide my pistols in the straw tick under the feather bed and surrender to them. I was taken to Independence and made a prisoner for a month.

“While in prison several incidents happened. A Federal officer in the prison who called himself Beauregard, was put into jail with me for some misdemeanor and challenged me to a sparring match, with the understanding that neither one of us was to strike the other in the face. However, he hit me in the face the first thing he did and I kicked him in the stomach and kept on kicking him until I kicked him down the stairs. For this offense I was chained down on my back for ten hours.

“The provost marshal would come in once in a while and entertain me while I was chained down. He was a Dutchman, and would say in broken Dutch, ‘How duse youse like it?’ and would sing me a song something like this: ‘Don’t youse vish you vas in Dixie, you d----d old secess?’ and dance around me.

“After I had been there a few days they cleaned up the prison and took out the rubbage and dirt. Press Webb, who had been captured with me, and I were detailed to do the work. We had an understanding that when we went out into the back yard, which was walled, we were each to capture the guards who were guarding us, take their arms and scale the wall. But Webb weakened and would not attempt to take his man, so we did not attempt to get away then. Then I was court-martialed and remained there in jail, while Webb was sent to Alton prison. I was held there under court-martial and sentenced to be shot.

“All this time Quantrell was trying to hear from me, whether I had been killed, and at the same time getting the boys together to make a raid on Independence and try to capture the town and release me from jail, all unbeknown to me, should I still be alive. Colonel Hughes had joined Quantrell with his company, the expedition being agreed between Quantrell and Colonel Hughes. Colonel Hughes asked Quantrell for some accurate information touching the strongest and best fortified points about the town. It was three days previous to the attack; the day before it was begun the information should be forthcoming. ‘Leave it to me,’ said Cole Younger, when the promise made to Hughes had been repeated by Quantrell, ‘and when you report you can report the facts. A soldier wants nothing else.’ The two men separated. It was the 7th day of August, 1862.

“On the 8th, at about ten 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 fruit were lively. This old woman was one of the ancient time. A faded sunbonnet, long and antique, hid almost all her 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 a 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, grandmother,’ he said. ‘Does the rebel crop need any rain out in your country?’ 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 said, ‘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 sneeringly. She drew it away with 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 Buell’s headquarters was overheard to say to a comrade: ‘There’s the making of four good bushwhacking 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 ammunition had been smuggled out to the enemy.

“At first the old lady did not heed the summons to halt--that short, 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 for 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 alongside 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 outpost it was a hundred yards, and a single picket stood there. The old woman said to the soldier, as he was turning her horse around and doing it roughly: ‘What will you have? I’m but a poor lone woman going peacefully 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 sunbonnet transformed itself; the demure eyes behind their glasses grew scintillant. From beneath the riding skirt a heavy foot 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 in sight. With his grasp still upon the reins of the old woman’s bridle, the Federal picket fell dead under the feet of the horse. Then stupified, 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 at the shoulders, streaming back as the smoke that follows a furnace. Coleman Younger had accomplished his mission. Beneath the bonnet 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.

“During this month’s stay in prison, being chained down, drinking coffee sweet as molasses, when they knew I did not like sweetened coffee they made it that much sweeter, running a boxing match, having songs sung to me of the sweet South in an insulting way and being janitor for the jail and thousands of other things that go with a prison life, and while Cole Younger was getting information under disguise as an old lady Sally selling apples and cookies to the Federals three days before, I made my bond, my father being a Union man and interceding with Colonel Buell in my behalf. I made bond for $50,000 to report at headquarters every two hours during the day and be locked up at night.

“About the third day after I gave bond and after I was thoroughly acquainted with the location of the soldiers I made my escape through the back way, through the guard, and found my way to a near-by friend by the name of Sullivan and got a horse and saddle, went by Webb’s and got my pistols out of a hollow log back of the barn where Mrs. Webb had hid them, and rode on to Quantrell’s camp, arriving there about eleven o’clock that night. After telling Quantrell how the soldiers and camps were located, and as Younger had told him about six hours before, it was decided to make the charge the next morning, and after a hard night’s riding we struck Independence just a little before daylight on the morning of August 11, 1862, surprised the camp, and nine hundred soldiers, with the exception of the colonel, who was in command, surrendered to two hundred and fifty of us. Colonel Buell was quartered in a brick building with his body guard and it was not until about nine o’clock that he surrendered. Buell lost about three hundred killed, besides three hundred and seventy-five wounded. We had a loss of only one man killed and four wounded. In attempting to take the provost marshal, who tortured me so when I was in prison, Kitt Child was shot and killed, making two men lost in the attack, all told.

“In the skirmish I was badly cut up by a saber, but I got away from them on foot, and so did Quantrell. While the colonel was slashing at me I struck him with a heavy dragoon pistol and burst his knee cap and he fell off his horse. This ended the fight. That night we got together at camp and Quantrell came in on foot, and I had to remount.

“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, Trow, Haller, Gregg, Jarrette, Morris, Poole, Younger, James Tucker, Blunt, George Shepherd, Yager, Hicks, George, Sim Whitsett, Fletch Taylor, John Ross, Dick Burns, Kit Chiles, Dick Maddox, Fernando Scott, Sam Clifton, George Maddox, Sam Hamilton, Press Webb, John Coger, Dan Vaughn, and twenty others, some 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 jailbirds, either as missionaries or militants, had work to do.”

The Lone Jack Fight

Once there stood a lone blackjack tree, taller than its companions and larger than any near it. From this tree the town of Lone Jack, in the eastern portion of Jackson County, was named. On the afternoon of the 13th of August clouds were seen gathering there. These clouds were cavalrymen. 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 continuously up and down. A company of these on the evening of the 15th were in the village of Lone Jack.

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. 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 there 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 all the toils spread for the unwary Jayhawkers. 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 when the Confederates were there, and eight o’clock when the Federal colonel, Colonel Foster, marched in, leading nine hundred and eighty-five cavalrymen, with two pieces of Rabb’s Indiana battery--a battery much celebrated for tenacious gunners and accurate firing. Cockrell, who was in command, knew Foster well; the other Confederates knew nothing of him. He was there, however, and that was positive proof enough that he wanted to fight. Seven hundred Confederates--armed with shotguns, horse pistols, squirrel rifles, regulation guns, and what not--attacked nine hundred and eighty-five Federal cavalrymen 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 emerald prairie, its orchards in fruit and its harvests goodly. On the west was timber, and in this timber a stream ran musically along. To the east the prairies stretched, their glass 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 wind stirred the languid pulse of summer into fervor.

In the center of the town a large hotel made a strong fortification. The house from being a tavern, had come to be a redoubt. From the top the Stars and Stripes floated proudly--a tricolor that had upon it then more of sunshine than of blood. Later the three colors had become as four.

On the verge of the prairie nearest the town a hedge row 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 trail. Here they waited, eager for the signal.

Joining Hays on the left was Cockrell and the detachments of 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 best handle. From the hedgerow, from the green growing corn, from the orchards and the groves, soldiers could not see much save the flag flying skyward on the redoubt on the Cave House.

At five o’clock a solitary gunshot aroused camp and garrison, and all the soldiers stood face to face with imminent death. No one knew thereafter how the fight commenced. It was Missourian against Missourian--neighbor against neighbor--the rival flags waved over each and the killing went on. This battle had 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 cornfields, from being green, became lurid. Dead men were in the groves. The cries of the wounded came in 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.

There is not much to say about the fight in the way of description. The Federals were in Lone Jack; the Confederates had to get them out. House fighting and street fighting are always desperate. The hotel became a hospital, later a holocaust, and over all rose and shone a blessed sun while the airy fingers of the breeze ruffled the oak leaves and tuned the swaying branches to the sound of a psalm.

The graycoats crept nearer. On east, west, north or south. Hays, Cockrell, Tracy, Jackman, Rathburn or Hunter gained ground. Farmer lads in their first battle began gawkies 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 sharp crack. 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 a third time he stood with his men until courage and endurance only prolonged a sacrifice. Once Haller, commanding 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 hammered his grip loose and drove him down the hill. Then Hays and Hunter--with the old plug hats and wheezy 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, 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, mortally shot, 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 more than 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. Captain Trow, who was in this battle, narrates that at one time during the battle, “I was forced to lie down and roll across the street to save my scalp.”

A mighty blow seemed impending. Commanders turned pale, 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 exodus, left him only the old guard as a rallying point. It was necessary again to reorganize.

After the Guerrillas had reorganized they stripped themselves for steady fighting. Federal troops were everywhere, infantry at the posts, cavalry on the war paths. The somber 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 weird laughter of owls could be heard in the thickets; in daylight, when the birds sang as they found sweet rest. 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 Federals surrendered there. Each garrison was patrolled and set free save seven from Shawneetown; these were Jennison’s Jayhawkers and they had to die. A military execution is where one man kills another; it is horrible. In battle, one does not see death. He is there, surely--he is in that battery’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.

The seven men rode into Missouri from Shawneetown puzzled; when the heavy timber along the Big Blue was reached and a halt made, 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 fellow gave a cry as piercing as the neighing 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 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.”

The oldest man there, some white hair was 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.