Chapter III: Part 3

“After Quantrell hanged these men, the only time I was ever scared during the war,” relates Captain Trow, “I had left camp one night to visit a lady friend of mine, and a company of Federals got after me, and in the chase I took to the woods and it was at the place where Quantrell had hanged these men. My saddle girth broke right there, but I held on to my horse. I thought the devil and all his angels were after me, but I made it to the camp.”

The March South in 1862

Winter had come and some snow had fallen. There were no longer any leaves; nature had nothing more to do with the ambuscades. Bitter nights, with a foretaste of more bitter nights to follow, reminded Quantrell that it was time to migrate. Most of the wounded men were well again. All the dismounted had found serviceable horses. On October 22, 1862, a quiet muster on the banks of the Little Blue revealed at inspection nearly all the old faces and forms, with a sprinkling here and there of new ones. Quantrell counted them two by two as the Guerrillas dressed in line, and in front rank and rear rank there were just seventy-eight men. On the morrow they were moving southward. That old road running between Harrisonville and Warrensburg was always to the Guerrilas 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. After 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!

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 not heavy. He laughed a good deal, and when he laughed he showed a perfect set of faultlessly white teeth. 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 slightly, and Quantrell saw the start. Attracted by something of novelty in the whole performance, a crowd collected. Quantrell, without looking at the newcomer, 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 suspect 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 the band--watching him with eyes that were blue at times and gray at times, and always gentle. More wood was put on the bivouac fire, and the flames grew ruddy. In their vivid light the young man did not seem quite so young. He had also a thick neck, great broad shoulders, and something of sensuality about the chin. The back of his skull was bulging and prominent. Here and there in his hair were little white streaks. Because there was such bloom and color in his cheeks, one could not remember these. Quantrell still tried to make out his face, to find a name for that Sphinx in front of him, to recall some time or circumstance, or place, that would make obscure things clear, and at last the past returned to him in the light of a swift revealment. “I have it all now,” 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 have to hang you this hour, by G--d.” Unabashed, the threatened man drew his breath hard and strode a step nearer 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 anything ever drive away that smile--anything ever keep those teeth from shining? “You ask me if I want to talk, just as if I had anything to talk about. What can I say? I tell you that I have been hunted, proscribed, shot at, driven up and down, until I am tired. I want to kill somebody. I want to know what sleeping a sound night’s sleep means.” Quantrell’s grave voice broke calmly in: “Bring a rope.” Blunt brought it. “Make an end fast.” 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 vice. He did not even defend himself. His flesh beneath their grip felt soft and rounded. The face, although all the bloom was there, hardened viciously--like the murderer’s face it was. “So you mean to get rid of me 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 afterwards, 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; even Quantrell himself was interested. The prisoner--threw off all disguise and defied those who meant to hang him. “You did well to disarm me,” he said, addressing Gregg, “for I intended to kill your captain. Everything has been against me. At the Tate house he escaped; at Clark’s it was no better; we had him surrounded at Swearington’s and his men cut him out; we ran him for two hundred miles and he escaped, 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.” “Do your worst,” he said, and he folded his arms across his breast and stood stolid as the tree over his head. Some pity began to stir the men visibly. Gregg turned away and went out beyond the firelight. Even Quantrell’s face softened, but only for a moment. Then he spoke harshly to Blunt, “He is one of the worst of a band that I failed to make a finish of before the war came, but what escapes today is dragged up by the next tomorrow. 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 breed and race to which he belongs should be exterminated. Sergeant, do your duty.” Blunt slipped the noose about the prisoner’s neck, and the four men who had at first disarmed him, tightened it. To the last the bloom abode in his cheeks. He did not pray, neither did he make plaint nor moan. No man spoke a word. Something like a huge pendulum swung 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 up from the northern picket 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 beneath 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 foremost 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 now, and years of toil and peril at a single blow, might have been 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 Quantrell’s trail late in the afternoon, had followed 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 rest of the night 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 courthouse and the houses near it. He attacked but got worsted, and attacked again and lost one of his best men. He attacked the third time and made no better headway. He finally 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 a trap that never gave up their victims alive. Near Cassville in Barry County, twenty-two were killed thus. They were coming up from Cassville and were meeting the Guerrillas, who were going south. The order given by Quantrell was a most simple one, 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 signal, 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, nothing remained of the unconscious detachment, which was literally exterminated, save a few who straggled in agony upon the ground, and a mass of terrified and plunging horses. Not a Guerrilla missed his mark.

Younger Remains in Missouri With a Small Detachment--Winter of 1862 and 1863

The remaining part of this chapter is the escapades of Cole Younger, who stayed in Missouri the winter of 1862 and 1863, with quite a number of the old band who were not in condition to ride when Quantrell and Captain Trow went south. But I know them to be true.

Younger was exceedingly enterprising, and fought almost daily. He did not seem to be affected by the severity of the winter, and at night, under 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 beyond the snug surroundings of their well furnished barracks.

The Guerrilla 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.

In a month after Quantrell arrived in Texas, George Todd returned to Jackson County, bringing with him Fletch Taylor, Boon Schull, James Little, Andy Walker and James Reed. Todd and Younger again came together by the bloodhound instinct which all men have who hunt or are hunted. Todd had scarcely made himself known to the Guerrilla in Jackson County before he had commenced to kill militiamen. A foraging party from Independence were gathering corn from a field belonging to Daniel White, a most worthy citizen of the vicinity, when Todd and Younger broke in upon it, shot five down in the field and put the rest to flight. Next day, November 30, 1862, Younger, having with him Josiah and Job McCockle and Tom Talley, met four of Jennison’s regiment face to face in the neighborhood of the county poor house. Younger, who had an extraordinary voice, called out loud enough to be heard a mile, “You are four, and we are four. Stand until we come up.” Instead of standing, however, the Jayhawkers turned about and rode off as rapidly as possible, followed by Younger and his men. All being excellently mounted, the ride lasted fully three miles before either party won or lost. At last the Guerrillas began to gain and kept gaining. Three of the four Jayhawkers were finally shot from their saddles and the fourth escaped by superior riding and superior running.

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. Never happy except when on the war path, he suggested to Younger and Cunningham a ride into Kansas City west of Little Santa Fe, always doubtful if not dangerous ground. Thirty Guerrillas met sixty-two Jayhawkers. It was a prairie fight, brief, bloody, and finished at a gallop. Todd’s tactics, the old yell and the old rush, swept everything--a revolver in each hand, the bridle reins in his teeth, the horse at a full run, the individual rider firing right and left. This is the way the Guerrillas charged. The sixty-two Jayhawkers fought better than most of the militia had been in the habit of fighting, but they could not stand up to the work at revolver range. When Todd charged them furiously, which he did as soon as he came in sight of them, they stood a volley at one hundred yards and returned it, but not a closer grapple.

It was while holding the rear with six men that Cole Younger was attacked by fifty-two men and literally run over. In the midst of the _melee_ bullets fell like hail stones in summer weather. John McDowell’s horse went down, the rider under him and badly hit. He cried out to Younger for help. Younger, hurt himself and almost overwhelmed, dismounted under fire and rescued McDowell and brought him safely back from the furious crash, killing as he went a Federal soldier whose horse had carried him beyond Younger and McDowell who were struggling in the road together. Afterwards Younger was betrayed by the man to save whose life he had risked his own.

Divided again, and operating in different localities, Todd, Younger and Cunningham carried the terror of the Guerrilla name throughout the border counties of Kansas and Missouri. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, from December 3rd to December 18th, these three fought some scouting party or attacked some picket post. At the crossing of the Big Blue on the road to Kansas City--the place where the former bridge had been burned by Quantrell--Todd surprised six militiamen and killed them all and then hung them up on a long pole, resting it, either end upon forks, just as hogs are hung in the country after being slaughtered. The Federals, seeing this, began to get ready to drive them away from their lines of communication. Three heavy columns were sent out to scour the country. Surprising Cunningham in camp on Big Creek, they killed one of his splendid soldiers, Will Freeman, and drove the rest of the Guerrillas back into Jackson County.

Todd, joining himself quickly to Younger, ambuscaded the column hunting him, and in a series of combats between Little Blue and Kansas City, killed forty-seven of the pursuers, captured five wagons and thirty-three head of horses.

There was a lull again in marching and counter marching as the winter got colder and colder and some deep snow fell. Christmas time came, and the Guerrillas would have a Christmas frolic. Nothing bolder or braver is recorded upon the records of either side in the Civil War than this so-called Christmas frolic.

Colonel Henry Younger, father of Coleman Younger, was one of the most respected citizens of Western Missouri. He was a stalwart pioneer of Jackson County, having fourteen children born to him and his noble wife, a true Christian woman. A politician of the old school, Colonel Younger was for a number of years a judge of the county court of Jackson County, and for several terms was a member of the state legislature. In 1858, he left Jackson County for Cass County where he dealt largely in stock. He was also an extensive farmer, an enterprising merchant and the keeper of one of the best and most popular livery stables in the West, located at Harrisonville, the County seat of Cass County. His blooded horses were very superior, and he usually had on hand for speculative purposes amounts of money ranging from $6,000 to $10,000. On one of Jennison’s periodical raides in the fall of 1862, he sacked and burned Harrisonville. Colonel Younger, although a staunch Union man, and known to be such, was made to lose heavily. Jennison and his officers took from him $4,000 worth of buggies, carriages and hacks and fifty head of blooded horses worth $500 each. Then the balance of his property that was perishable and not movable, was burned. The intention was to kill Colonel Younger, on the principle that dead men tell no tales, but he escaped with great difficulty and made his way to Independence. Jennison was told that Colonel Younger was rich and that he invariably carried with him large amounts of money. A plan was immediately laid to kill him. Twenty cut-throats were organized as a band, under a Jayhawker named Bailey, and set to watch his every movement. They dogged him from Independence to Kansas City and from Kansas City down to Cass County. Coming upon him at last in an isolated place within a few miles of Harrisonville, they riddled his body with bullets, rifled his pockets and left his body stark and partially stripped by the roadside.

Eight hundred Federals held Kansas City, and on every road was a strong picket post. The streets were patrolled continually, and ready always for an emergency. Horses saddled and bridled stood in their stalls.

Early on the morning of December 25th, 1862, Todd asked Younger if he would like to have a little fun. “What kind of fun?” the latter inquired. “A portion of the command that murdered your father are in Kansas City,” said Todd, “and if you say so we will go into the place and kill a few of them.” Younger caught eagerly at the proposition and commenced at once to get ready for the enterprise. Six were to compose the adventuresome party--Todd, Younger, Abe Cunningham, Fletch Taylor, Zach Traber and George Clayton. Clad in the uniform of the Federal cavalry, carrying instead of one pistol, four, they arrived about dusk at the picket post on the Westport and Kansas City road. They were not even halted. The uniform was a passport; to get in did not require a countersign. They left the horses in charge of Traber, bidding him do the best he could do if the worst came to the worst.

The city was filled with revelry. All the saloons were crowded. The five Guerrillas, with their heavy cavalry overcoats buttoned loosely about them, boldly walked down Main Street and into the Christmas revelry. Visiting this saloon and that saloon, they sat knee to knee with some of the Jennison men, some of Jennison’s most blood-thirsty troopers, and drank confusion over and over again to the cut-throat Quantrell and his bushwhacking crew.

Todd knew several of the gang who had waylaid and slain Colonel Younger, but hunt how he could, he could not find a single man of them. Entering near onto midnight an ordinary drinking place near the public square, six soldiers were discovered sitting at two tables playing cards, two at one 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 Bailey’s crowd that murdered your father. How does your pulse feel?”

“Like an iron man’s. I feel like I could kill the whole six myself.”

They went up to the bar, called for whiskey and invited the card players to join. They did so.

If it was agreeable, the boy might bring their whiskey to them and the game could go on.

“Certainly,” said Todd, with purring of a tiger cat ready for a spring, “that’s what the boy is here for.”

Over their whiskey the Guerrillas whispered. The killing now was as good 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 where the four sat. The signal to get ready was to be, “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 was to draw a pistol and hold it under the cape of his cavalry coat and after the last he was to fire. Younger, as a special privilege, was accorded the right to shoot the sixth man. Cole Younger’s deep voice broke suddenly in, filling all the room and sounding so jolly and clear. “Come, boys, another drink.” Neither so loud nor so caressing as Younger’s, yet sharp, distinct, and penetrating, prolonging, as it were, the previous proposition, and giving it emphasis, Todd exclaimed, “Who said drink?” A thunderclap, a single pistol shot, and then total darkness. The barkeeper dum in the presence of death, shivered and stood still. Todd, cool as a winter’s night without, extinguished every light and stepped upon the street. “Steady,” he said to his men, “do not make haste.” So sudden had been the massacre, and so quick had been the movements of the Guerrillas, that the pursuers were groping for a clue and stumbling in their eagerness to find it. At every street corner an alarm was beating.

Past the press in the streets, past the glare and the glitter of the thicker lights, past patrol after patrol, Tod 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?” asked 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 its 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 shrank away. Four did not move, however, nor would they ever move again, until, feet foremost, their comrades bore them to their burial place. But the hunt was hot. Mounted men were abroad, and hurrying feet could be heard in all directions. Rallying beyond range and reinforcements, the remnant of the patrol were advancing and opening fire. Born scout and educated Guerrilla, Traber--judging from the shots and shouts--knew what was best for all and dashed up to his hard-pressed comrades and horses. Thereafter the fight was a frolic. The picket on the Independence road was ridden over and through, and the brush beyond gained without an effort; and the hospitable house of Reuben Harris, where a roaring fire was blazing and a hearty welcome extended to all was reached.

In a week or less it began snowing. The hillsides were white with it. The nights were long, and the days bitter, and the snow did not melt. On the 10th of February, 1863, John McDowell reported his wife sick and asked Younger permission to visit her. The permission 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 to Independence and made the commander there, Colonel Penick, thoroughly acquainted with Younger’s camp and all its surroundings. Penick was a St. Joseph, Missouri, man, commanding a regiment of militia. The echoes of the desperate adventure of Younger and Todd in Kansas City had long ago reached the ears of Colonel Penick, and he seconded the traitor’s story with an eagerness worthy the game to be hunted. Eighty cavalry, under a resolute officer, were ordered instantly out, and McDowell, suspected 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 fireplace, 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 Federals on the north 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 his mistake, in a moment, however, he fired and killed the lieutenant in command of the attacking party and then aroused the men in the houses. Out of each the occupants poured, armed, desperate and determined to fight but never to surrender. 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 as he would he could get it neither off nor on. He could not run, situated as he was, and he had no knife to cut the leather. He too called out to Younger to wait for him and to stand by him until he could do something to extricate himself. Without hurry, and in the teeth of a rattling fusilade. Younger stooped to Talley’s assistance, tearing literally from his foot by the exercise of immense strength the well-nigh fatal boot, and telling him to make the best haste he could and hold to his pistols. Braver man than Tom Talley never lived, nor cooler. As he jumped up in his stocking feet, the Federals were within 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, being wet by the snow. He thus held in his hand a useless pistol. About thirty of the enemy had by this time outrun the rest and were forcing the fighting. Younger called to his men to take to the trees and drive them back, or stand and die together. The Guerrillas, hatless and some of them barefoot and coatless, rallied instantly and held their own. Younger killed two more of the pursuers here--five since the fighting began--and Bud 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 his 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.

A man by the name of Emmet Goss was now 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 out upon the warpath so endorsed, be sure that it meant all that it was intended to mean. Goss lived in Jackson County. He owned a farm near Hickman’s mill, and up to the fall of 1861, had worked it soberly and industriously. When he concluded to quit farming and go fighting, he joined the Jayhawkers. Jennison commanded the Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry, and Goss a company in this regiment. From a peaceful thrifty citizen he became suddenly a terror to the border. He seemed to have a mania for killing. Twenty odd unoffending citizens probably died at his hand. When Ewing’s famous General Order No. 11 was issued--that order which required the wholesale depopulation 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 fires in fifty-two houses, of having made fifty-two families homeless and shelterless, and of having killed, he declared, until he was tired of killing. Death was to come to him at last by the hand of Jesse James, but not yet.

Goss 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 for a tenant, by her husband before his death, 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. Goss, with forty men, dismounted 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 passageway, and the Jayhawkers had occupied this before the alarm was given. Desiring to go from one room to another, 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--with extraordinary presence of mind, blew out the light, snatched a coverlet from the bed, 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 close up 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 querously cried out:

“Don’t shoot a poor old nigger, Massa Sogers. Its nobody but me going to see what’s de matter. Ole missus is nearly scared 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 night. Swarming about the two rooms and rumaging everywhere, a portion of the Jayhawkers kept looking for Younger, and swearing brutally at their ill-success, while another portion, watching the movements of the old negress, saw her throw away the bed-spread, clap her hands exultantly and shout: “Run, Marse Cole; run for your life. The debbils can’t catch you dis time!”

Giving and taking a volley that harmed no one, Cole made his escape without a struggle. As for the old negress, Goss debated sometime with himself whether he should shoot her or hang her. Unquestionably a rebel negro, she was persecuted often and often for her opinion’s sake, and hung up twice by militia to make her tell the whereabouts of Guerrillas. True to her people and her cause, she died at last in the ardor of devotion.

The Trip North in 1863

On the return from Texas in the spring of 1863, Quantrell’s journey in detail would read like a romance. The whole band, numbering thirty, were clad in Federal uniforms, Quantrell wearing that of a captain. Whenever questioned, the answer was, “A Federal scout on special service.” Such had been the severity of the winter, and such the almost dead calm in military quarters, that all ordinary vigilance seemed to have relaxed and even ordinary prudence forgotten.

South of Spring River a day’s march, ten militia came upon Quantrell’s camp and invited themselves to supper. They were fed, but they were also killed. Quantrell himself was the host. He poured out the coffee, supplied attentively every little want, insisted that those whose appetites were first appeased should eat more, and then shot at his 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 in his face.

North of Spring River there was a dramatic episode. Perhaps in those days every country had its tyrants. Most generally revolutions breed monsters.

On the way to Missouri, they fell in with Marmaduke, who was commanding a bunch of Bushwhackers in St. Claire County, Missouri. He also had been wintering in Texas, and they camped one night near us. Marmaduke was telling Quantrell about an old Federal captain named Obediah Smith--what a devil he was and how he was treating the Southern people. Quantrell laughed and asked:

“Why don’t you kill him?”

Marmaduke said he was too sharp and cunning for him.

Quantrell said, “If you will detail one or two of your men to come with me and show me where he lives, I will kill him with his own gun.”

It being agreed upon, the next morning Marmaduke called on Oliver Burch to pilot Quantrell to where Smith lived. The following morning all marched up to within about a mile or so of where Captain Smith lived. Quantrell called his men together, chose Wash Haller, Dick Burns, Ben Morrow, Dick Kenney, Frank James and myself of his own command, and Oliver Burch of Marmaduke’s command. They rode up to Captain Smith’s house, all dressed in Federal uniforms, and called at the gate, “Hello.” Smith came walking out and Quantrell saluted him and told him he was a scout for the Federals from Colonel Penick’s army. Smith saw them in the same uniform as himself and did not once think of their betraying him. They talked for a few minutes when Quantrell said:

“Captain, that is a fine gun you have there; why don’t you furnish us scouts with a gun like that.”

“This is a fine gun,” replied Smith, “it has killed lots of d----d bushwhackers.”

Quantrell said, “Captain, would you mind letting me see that gun?”

Taking it from him, Quantrell began to look it over, and turning to his pals, said, “Ain’t that a dandy?”

They all answered, “Yes, wish I had one.”

Quantrell kept fooling with the gun and, catching Captain Smith’s eye off him, fired it at him, shooting him through the heart and killing him instantly. Killing Smith was getting rid of one of the worst men in Cedar County.

That day about ten o’clock, three militiamen came to the column and were killed. A mile from where dinner was procured, five more came out. These also were killed. In the dusk of the evening two more were killed, and where we bivouacked, one was killed. The day’s work counted eleven in the aggregate, and nothing of an exertion to find a single soldier made, at that.

Evil tidings were abroad, however--evil things that took wings and flew as birds. Some said from the first that Quantrell’s men were not Union men and some swore that no matter what kind of clothing they wore, 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 sleep the garrison along the Spring River. Smith’s execution stirred them to aggression, and the group of dead militiamen crossed continually upon the roadside, while it enraged it also horrified 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 on 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 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 him dearly. The advance, being the smaller, had outridden the main army and was unsupported and isolated when 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. When scarcely over it, a flanking column made a dash at him coming from the west, killed Blunt’s horse and drove Quantrell to timber. Night 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 directions to announce his arrival and make known the rendezvous.

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 for the German settlement of Lafayette County, and left some marks there that are not yet obliterated. Albert Cunningham, glorying in the prowess of a splendid manhood, and victor in a dozen combats against desperate odds, fell before the spring came, in an insignificant skirmish on the Harrisonville and Pleasant Hill road.

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 Springs, Younger and his comrades struck a blow that had the vigor of the olden days in it. The garrison at Pleasant Hill numbered three hundred, and from the garrison of Lieutenant Jefferson took thirty-two cavalrymen and advanced three miles towards Smith’s, on a scouting expedition. While Hulse and Noah Webster, two Guerrilas who seemed never to sleep and to be continually hanging about the flanks of the Federals, discovered Jefferson and reported his movements to the main body 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 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 getting ready apparently for a fight, although afterwards it was reported that Lee’s men were mistaken for a portion of the garrison 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 uncontrolable 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 could hold 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 from under him and crushed his senses out for half an hour. John 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 he dashed alongside of the rearmost trooper and knocked him from his saddle with the butt of one of them, and seized another by the collar of his coat and 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 Federal garrison remained in Cass, outside of Harrisonville, and the garrison there was as effectively 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 pickets and destroying its foraging parties. Other bands in other directions gathered up valuable horses 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 different combats, was destined to fall in a sudden and unnoted 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.

The battle of the year 1863 had commenced; formidable men were coming to the surface in every direction. Here and there sudden Guerrilla fires leaped up from many places about the State, and burned as if fed by oil, until everything in their reach had been consumed. It was a year of savage fighting and killing; 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 coming into sight, was flashing across the military horizon as a war comet. Left to himself and permitted to pursue his placid ways in peace, probably the amiable neighbor 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 uninformed 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 used indecent language in their presence. With these women, tenderly nurtured and reared, were two of Will Anderson’s sisters. Working industriously in Kansas with his father, Anderson knew nothing of the real struggles of the war, nor of the imprisonment of his sisters. A quiet, courteous, fair-minded man who took more delight in a book than in a crowd, he had a most excellent name in Randolph 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, ramshackle building in 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 in the morning when a little wind blew upon it and it was shaken, it fell with a crash. Covered up, the faces disfigured, the limp, lifeless bodies were past all pain! Dead to touch, or kiss, or passionate entreaty, Anderson’s eldest sister was taken from the ruins a corpse. The younger, badly injured in the spine, with one leg broken and her face bruised and cut painfully, lived to tell the terrible story of it all to a gentle, patient brother kneeling before her at her bedside and looking up above to see if God were there.

Soon a stir came along the border. A name new to the strife was beginning to pass from band to band and about the camp fires to have a respectful hearing.

“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 all the balance; but Anderson, never. Is he a devil in uniform?”

Jesse James Joins Command

Jesse James, younger brother of Frank James, had now emerged from the awkwardness of youth. He was scarcely thirteen years of age, while Frank was four years older. The war made them Guerrillas. Jesse was at home with his stepfather, Dr. Reuben Samuels, of Clay County. He knew nothing of the strife save the echoes of it now and then as it reached his mother’s isolated farm. One day a company of militia visited this farm, hanged Dr. Samuels to a tree until he was left for dead, and seized upon Jesse, a mere boy in the fields plowing, put a rope about his neck and abused him harshly, pricking him with sabers, and finally threatening him with death should they ever again hear of his giving aid or information to the Guerrillas. That same week his mother and sisters were arrested, carried to St. Joseph and thrown into a filthy prison, where the hardships they endured were dreadful. Often without 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, while the mother--a high spirited and courageous matron--was released only after suffering and emaciation had aged her in her prime. Before Mrs. Samuels returned to her home, Jesse had joined Frank in the camp of Quantrell, who had preceded him a few years, and who had already, notwithstanding the briefness of his service, made a name for supreme and conspicuous daring. Jesse James had a face as smooth and 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 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 four years older, and somewhat taller than Jesse. Jesse’s face was something of an oval; Frank’s was long, wide about the forehead, square and massive about the jaw 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 sober, sedate, a splendid man always for ambush or scouting parties.

Scott had to come back from the South and, eager for action, crossed the Missouri River at Sibley May 20, 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 command at Richfield, and his grave had already been 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 body.

“Mr. Mahoney, what is the news?” This was the greeting he got.

“No news, I have wood for sale. Yes, there is some news, too. I like to have forgot. Eight or ten of those Quantrell men are prowling about my way, the infernal scoundrels, and I hope they may be hunted out of the country.”

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 in 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 clinking along the line--the eight were 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 Sessions, Lieutenant Graffenstein and seven privates fell dead. What was left of the Federal 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. The remnant of the wreck surrendered, and Scott, more merciful than many among whom he soldiered, spared the prisoners and paroled them.

House Occupied by Women Light of Love

Four miles from Independence, and a little back from the road leading to Kansas City, stood a house 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 circumspection was required to make an envelopment of the house successful. Jesse James was chosen from among the number of volunteers and sent forward to reconnoiter 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 perilous 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 twelve men, followed in the rear of James to within a half a mile of the nearest picket post and hid in the woods until word could be brought from the bagnio ahead. If by a certain hour the disguised Guerilla did not return to his comrades, the pickets were to be driven in, the house surrounded, and the inmates forced to give such information as they possessed, of his whereabouts.