Chapter V: Part 5

There was neither trot not gallop. The Guerrillas simply dashed from a walk into a full run. The attack was a hurricane. Johnson’s command fired one volley and not a gun thereafter. It scarcely stood until the five hundred yards were passed over. Johnson cried out to his men to fight to the death, but they did not wait even to hear him through. Some broke ranks as soon as they had fired, and fled. Others were attempting to reload their muskets when the Guerrillas, firing right and left, hurled themselves upon them. Johnson fell among the first. Mounted as described, Frank James singled out the leader of the Federals. He did not know him then. No words were spoken between the two. When James had reached within five feet of Johnson’s position, he put out a pistol suddenly and sent a bullet through his brain. Johnson threw out his hands as if trying to reach something above his head and pitched forward heavily, a corpse. There was no quarter. Many begged for mercy on their knees. The Guerrillas heeded the prayer as a wolf might the bleating of a lamb. The wild route broke up near Sturgeon, the implacable pursuit, vengeful as hate, thundering in the rear. Death did its work in twos, threes, in squads--singly. Beyond the first volley not a single Guerrilla was hurt, but in this volley Frank Shepherd, Hank Williams and young Peyton were killed, and Richard Kenney mortally wounded. Thomas Maxwell and Harrison Carter were also slightly wounded by the same volley, and two horses were killed, one under Dave Poole and one under Harrison Trow. Shepherd, a giant in size, and brave as the best in a command where all are brave, fought the good fight and died in the harness. Hank Williams, only a short time before, had deserted from the Federals and joined Poole, giving rare evidences, in his brief Guerrilla career, of great enterprise and consummate daring. Peyton was but a beardless boy from Howard County, who in his first battle after becoming a Guerrilla, was shot dead.

Probably sixty of Johnson’s command gained their horses before the fierce wave of the charge broke over them, and these were pursued by five Guerrillas--Ben Morrow, Frank James, Peyton Long, Arch Clements and Harrison Trow--for six miles at a dead run. Of the sixty, fifty-two were killed on the road from Centralia to Sturgeon. Todd drew up the command and watched the chase go on. For three miles nothing obstructed the vision. Side by side over the level prairie the five stretched away like the wind, gaining step by step and bound by bound, upon the rearmost rider. Then little puffs of smoke rose. No sounds could be heard, but dashing ahead from the white spurts terrified steeds ran riderless.

Knight and Sturgeon ended the killing. Five men had shot down fifty-two. Arch Clements, in apportionment made afterwards, had credited to himself fourteen. Trow ten, Peyton Long nine, Ben Morrow eight, Frank James, besides killing Major Johnson and others in the charge upon the dismounted troopers, killed in the chase an additional eleven.

Johnson’s loss was two hundred ninety one. Out of the three hundred, only nine escaped.

History has chosen to call the ferocious killing at Centralia a butchery. In civil war, encounters are not called butcheries where the combatants are man to man and where over either ranks there waves a black flag.

Johnson’s overthrow, probably, was a decree of fate. He rushed upon it as if impelled by a power stronger than himself. He did not know how to command and his men did not know how to fight. He had, by the sheer force of circumstances, been brought face to face with two hundred and sixty-two of the most terrible revolver fighters the American war or any other war ever produced; and he deliberately tied his hands by the very act of dismounting, and stood in the shambles until he was shot down. Abject and pitiable cowardice matched itself against recklessness and desperation, and the end could be only just what the end was. The Guerrillas did unto the militia just what the militia would have done unto them if fate had reversed the decision and given to Johnson what it permitted to Todd.

Anderson

In June, 1864, Anderson crossed the Missouri River. Four miles out from the crossing place, he encountered twenty-five Federals, routed them at the first onset, killing eight, two of whom Arch Clements scalped, hanging the ghastly trophies at the head-stall of his bridle. One of the two scalped was a captain and the commander of the squad.

Killing as he marched, Anderson moved from Carroll into Howard, entered Huntsville the last of June with twenty-five men, took from the county treasury $30,000, and disbanded for a few days for purposes of recruiting.

The first act of the next foray was an ambuscade into which Anderson fell headlong. Forty militia waylaid him as he rode through a stretch of heavy bottom land, filled his left shoulder full of turkey shot, killed two of his men and wounded three others. Hurt as he was, he charged the brush, killing eighteen of his assailants, captured every horse and followed the flying remnant as far as a single fugitive could be tracked through the tangled undergrowth.

In July Anderson took Arch Clements, John Maupin, Tuck and Woot Hill, Hiram Guess, Jesse Hamlet, William Reynolds, Polk Helms, Cave Wyatt and Ben Broomfield and moved up into Clay County to form a junction with Fletch Taylor. By ones and twos he killed twenty-five militiamen on the march and was taking breakfast at a house in Carroll County when thirty-eight Federals fired upon him through doors and windows, the balls knocking dishes onto the floor and playing havoc with chinaware and eatables generally. The Guerrillas, used to every phase of desperate warfare, routed their assailants after a crashing volley or two, and held the field, or rather the house. In the melee Anderson accidentally shot a lady in the shoulder, inflicting a painful wound, and John Maupin killed the captain commanding the scouts, cut off his head and stuck it upon a gate-post to shrivel and blacken in the sun.

In Ray County, one hundred and fifty Federal cavalrymen found Andersons’ trail, followed it all day, and just at nightfall struck hard and viciously at the Guerrillas. Anderson would not be driven without a fight. He charged their advance guard, killed fourteen out of sixty, and drove the guard back upon the main body. Clements, Woot Hill, Hamlet and Hiram Guess had their horses killed and were left afoot in the night to shift for themselves. Walking to the Missouri River, ten miles distant, and fashioning a rude raft from the logs and withes, Hamlet crossed to Jackson County and made his way safe into the camp of Todd.

While with Anderson John Coger was wounded again in the right leg. Suffering from this wound and with another one in the left shoulder, he had been carried by his comrades to a house close to Big Creek, in Cass County, and when it was night, and by no road that was generally traveled. Coger, without a wound of some kind or in some portion of his body, would have appeared as unaccountable to the Guerrillas as a revolver without a mainspring.

At the end of every battle some one reckless fighter asked of another: “Of course, John can’t be killed, but where is he hit this time?” And Coger, himself, no matter how often or how badly hurt, scarcely ever waited for a old wound to get well before he was in the front again looking for a new one. He lived for fifty years after the battle, carrying thirteen bullet wounds.

The wonderful nerve of the man saved him many times during the war in open and desperate conflicts, but never when the outlook was so unpromising as it was now, with the chances as fifty to one against him.

Despite his two hurts, Coger would dress himself every day and hobble about the house, watching all the roads for the Federals. His pistols were kept under the bolster of his bed.

One day a scout of sixty militiamen approached the house so suddenly that Coger had barely time to undress and hurry to bed, dragging in with him his clothes, his boots, his tell-tale shirt and his four revolvers. Without the help of the lady of the house he surely would have been lost. To save him she surely--well, she did not tell the truth.

The sick man lying there was her husband, weak from a fever. Bottles were ostentatiously displayed for the occasion. At intervals Coger groaned and ground his teeth, the brave, true woman standing close to his bedside, wiping his brow every now and then and putting some kind of smelling stuff to his lips.

A Federal soldier, perhaps a bit of a doctor, felt Coger’s left wrist, held it awhile, shook his head, and murmured seriously: “A bad case, madam, a bad case, indeed. Most likely pneumonia.”

Coger groaned again.

“Are you in pain, dear?” the ostensible wife tenderly inquired.

“Dreadful!” and a spasm of agony shot over the bushwhacker’s sun-burnt face.

For nearly an hour the Federal soldiers came and went and looked upon the sick man moaning in his bed, as deadly a Guerrilla as ever mounted a horse or fired a pistol.

Once the would-be doctor skirted the edge of the precipice so closely that if he had stepped a step further he would have pitched headlong into the abyss. He insisted upon making a minute examination of Coger’s lungs and laid a hand upon the coverlet to uncover the patient. Coger held his breath hard and felt upward for a revolver. The first inspection would have ruined him. Nothing could have explained the ugly, ragged wound in the left shoulder, nor the older and not entirely healed one in the right leg. The iron man, however, did not wince. He neither made protest nor yielded acquiescence. He meant to kill the doctor, kill as many more as he could while life lasted and his pistol balls held out, and be carried from the room, when he was carried at all, feet foremost and limp as a lock of hair. Happily a woman’s wit saved him. She pushed away the doctor’s hand from the coverlet and gave as the emphatic order of her family physician that the sick man should not be disturbed until his return.

Etiquette saved John Coger, for it was so unprofessional for one physician to interfere with another physician’s patient, and the Federal soldier left the room and afterwards the house.

Press Webb, a Born Scout

Press Webb was a born scout crossed upon a highlander. He had the eyes of an eagle and the endurance of the red deer. He first taught himself coolness, and then he taught it to others. In traveling he did not travel twice the same road. Many more were like him in this--so practicing the same kind of woodcraft and cunning--until the enemy began to say: “That man Quantrell has a thousand eyes.”

Press Webb was ordered to take with him one day Sim Whitsett, George Maddox, Harrison Trow and Noah Webster and hide himself anywhere in the vicinity of Kansas City that would give him a good view of the main roads leading east, and a reasonably accurate insight into the comings and going of the Federal troops.

The weather was very cold. Some snow had fallen the week before and melted, and the ground was frozen again until all over the country the ground was glazed with ice and traveling was made well nigh impossible. The Guerrillas, however, prepared themselves and their horses well for the expedition. Other cavalrymen were forced to remain comparatively inactive, but Quantrell’s men were coming and going daily and killing here and there.

On the march to his field of operation, Webb overtook two Kansas infantrymen five miles west of Independence on the old Independence road. The load under which each soldier staggered proved that their foraging expedition had been successful. One had a goose, two turkeys, a sack of dried apples, some yarn socks, a basket full of eggs and the half of a cheese; while the other, more powerful or more greedy than the first--toiled slowly homeward, carrying carefully over the slippery highway a huge bag miscellaneously filled with butter, sausages, roasted and unroasted coffee, the head of a recently killed hog, some wheaten biscuits not remarkably well cooked, more cheese and probably a peck of green Jenniton apples. As Webb and his four men rode up the foragers halted and set their loads on the ground as if to rest. Piled about them, each load was about as large as a forager.

Webb remarked that they were not armed and inquired of the nearest forager--him with the dried apples--why he ventured so far from headquarters without his gun.

“There is no need of a gun,” was the reply, “because the fighting rebels are all out of the country and the stay-at-homes are all subjugated. What we want we take, and we generally want a good deal.”

“A blind man might see that,” Webb rather grimly replied, “but suppose some of Quantrell’s cut-throats were to ride up to you as we have done, stop to talk with you as we have done, draw out a pistol as I am doing this minute, cover you thus, and bid you surrender now as I do, you infernal thief and son of a thief, what would you say then?”

“Say!”--and the look of simple surprise yet cool indifference which came to the Jayhawker’s face was the strongest feature of the tragedy--“what could I say but that you are the cut-throat and I am the victim? Caught fairly, I can understand the balance. Be quick.”

Then the Jayhawker rose up from the midst of his spoils with a sort of quiet dignity, lifted his hat as if to let his brow feel the north wind, and faced without a tremor the pistol which covered him.

“I cannot kill you so,” Webb faltered, “nor do I know whether I can kill you at all. We must take a vote first.”

Then to himself: “To shoot an unarmed man, and a brave man at that, is awful.”

There amid the sausages and cheese, the turkeys and the coffee grains, the dried apples and the green, five men sat down in judgment upon two. Whitsett held the hat; Webster fashioned the ballots. No arguments were had. The five self-appointed jurors were five among Quantrell’s best and bravest. In extremity they had always stood forth ready to fight to the death; in the way of killing they had done their share. The two Kansas Jayhawkers came close together as if in the final summing up they might find in the mere act of dying together some solace. One by one the Guerrillas put into the hat of Whitsett a piece of paper upon which was written his vote. All had voted. Harrison Trow drew forth the ballots silently. As he unfolded the first and read from it deliberately; “Death,” the younger Jayhawker blanched to his chin and put a hand on the shoulder of his comrade. The two listened to the count, with every human faculty roused and abnormally impressionable. Should any one not understanding the scene pass, they would not be able to comprehend the situation--one man standing bareheaded, solemnly, and all the eyes bent keenly forward as another man drew from a hat a dirty slip of folded paper and read therefrom something that was short like a monosyllable and sepulchral like a shroud.

“Life,” said the second ballot, and “Life” said the third. The fourth was for death and made a tie. Something like the beating of a strong man’s heart might have been heard, and something as though a brave man were breathing painfully through his teeth lest a sigh escape him. Whitsett cried out: “One more ballot yet to be opened. Let it tell the tale, Trow, and make an end to this thing speedily.” Trow, with scarcely any more emotion than a surgeon has when he probes a bullet wound, unfolded the remaining slip of paper, and read, “Life”!

The younger Jayhawker fell upon his knees and the elder ejaculated solemnly: “Thank God, how glad my wife will be.”

Webb breathed as one from whose breast a great load had been lifted and put back into its scabbard his revolver. The verdict surprised him all the more because it was so totally unexpected, and yet the two men there--Jayhawkers though they were and loaded with spoils of plundered farm houses--were as free to go as the north wind that blew or the stream that was running by.

As they rode away the Guerrillas did not even suggest to one another the virtue of the parole. At the two extremities of their peculiar warfare there was either life or death. Having chosen deliberately as between the two, no middle ground was known to them.

Press Webb approached to within sight of Kansas City from the old Independence road, made a complete circle about the place, as difficult as the traveling was, entered Westport notwithstanding the presence of a garrison there; heard many things told of the plans and number of the Federal forces upon the border; passed down between the Kansas river and what is now known as West Kansas City, killed three foragers and captured two six-mule wagons near the site of the present gas works; gathered up five head of excellent horses, and concealed himself for two days in the Blue Bottom, watching a somewhat notorious bawdy house much frequented by Federal soldiers. This kind of houses during the war, and when located upon dangerous or debatable grounds, were man traps of more or less sinister histories.

Eleven women belonged to this bagnio proper, but on the night Webb stalked it and struck it, there had come five additional inmates from other quarters equally as disreputable. Altogether the male attendants numbered twenty, two lieutenants, one sergeant major, a corporal, four citizens and twelve privates from an Iowa regiment. Webb’s attacking column, not much larger than a yard stick, was composed of the original detail, four besides himself.

The night was dark; the nearest timber to the house was two hundred and fifty yards. There was ice on everything. The tramping of iron shod feet over the frozen earth reverberated as artillery wheels. At the timber line Maddox suggested that one man should be left in charge of the horses, but Webb overruled the point.

“No man shall stir tonight,” he argued, “except he be hunted for either war or women. The horses are safe here. Let us dismount and make them fast.”

As they crept to the house in single file, a huge dog went at Harrison Trow as if he would not be denied, and barked so furiously and made so many other extravagant manifestations of rage, that a man and a woman came to the door of the house and bade the dog devour the disturber. Thus encouraged he leaped full at Trow’s throat and Trow shot him dead.

In a moment the house emptied itself of its male occupants, who explored the darkness, found the dog with the bullet through its head, searched everywhere for the author of the act, and saw no man, nor heard any retreating steps, and so returned unsatisfied to the house, yet returned, which was a great deal.

As for the Guerrillas, as soon as Trow found himself obliged to shoot or be throttled, they rushed back safely and noiselessly to their horses, mounted them and waited. A pistol shot, unless explained, is always sinister to soldiers. It is not to be denied. Fighting men never fire at nothing. This is a maxim not indigenous to the brush, nor an outcome of the philosophy of those who were there. A pistol shot says in so many words: “Something is coming, is creeping, is crawling, is about--look out!”

The Federals heard this one--just as pertinent and as intelligible as any that was ever fired--but they failed to interpret aright this significant language of the ambuscade, and they suffered accordingly.

Webb waited an hour in the cold, listening. No voices were heard, no skirmishers approached his position, no scouts from the house hunted further away than the lights from the windows shone, no alarm had been raised, and he dismounted with his men and again approached the house.

By this time it was well on to twelve o’clock. Chickens were crowing in every direction. The north wind had risen high and was blowing as a winter wind always blows when there are shelterless men abroad in a winter night.

The house, a rickety frame house, was two stories high, with two windows on the north and two on the south.

George Maddox looked in at one of these windows and counted fourteen men, some well advanced in liquor and some sober and silent and confidential with the women. None were vigilant. The six upstairs were neither seen nor counted.

At first it was difficult to proceed upon a plan of action. All the Federals were armed, and twenty armed men holding a house against five are generally apt, whatever else may happen, to get the best of the fighting.

“We cannot fire through the windows,” said Webb, “for women are in the way.”

“Certainly” replied Whitsett, “we do not war upon women.”

“We cannot get the drop on them,” added Trow, “because we cannot get to them.”

“True again,” replied Maddox, “but I have an idea which will simplify matters amazingly. On the south there is a stable half full of plank and plunder. It will burn like pitch pine. The wind is from the north is strong, and it will blow away all danger from the house. Were it otherwise I would fight against the torch, for not even a badger should be turned out of its hole tonight on word of mine, much less a lot of women. See for yourself and say if the plan suits you.”

They saw, endorsed the proposition, and put a match at once to the hay and to the bundles of fodder. Before the fire had increased perceptibly the five men warmed their hands and laughed. They were getting the frost out of their fingers to shoot well, they said. A delicate trigger touch is necessary to a dead shot.

“Fire!”

All of a sudden there was a great flare of flames, a shriek from the women and a shout from the men. The north wind drove full head upon the stable, roared as like some great wild beast in pain.

The Federals rushed to the rescue. Not all caught up their arms as they hurried out--not all even were dressed.

The women looked from the doors and windows of the dwelling, and thus made certain the killing that followed. Beyond the glare of the burning outhouse, and massed behind a fence fifty paces to the right of the consuming stable, the Guerrillas fired five deadly volleys into the surprised and terrified mass before them, and they scattered, panic-striken and cut to pieces,--the remnant frantically regained the sheltering mansion.

Eight were killed where they stood about the fire; two were mortally wounded and died afterwards; one, wounded and disabled, quit the service; five, severely or slightly wounded, recovered; and four, unhurt, reported that night in Kansas City that Quantrell had attacked them with two hundred men, and had been driven off, hurt and badly worsted, after three-quarters of an hour’s fight. Press Webb and his four men did what work was done in less than five minutes.

Little Blue

Captain Dick Yager, commanding ten men, the usual number the Guerrillas then operated with, engaged twenty Federals under Lieutenant Blackstone of the Missouri Militia regiments, and slew fourteen.

Yager had ambushed a little above a ford over the Little Blue and hid behind some rocks about fifteen feet above the crossing place, and Blackstone, unconscious of danger, rode with his troops leisurely into the water and halted midway in the stream that his horses might drink. He had a tin cup tied to his saddle and a bottle of whiskey in one of his pockets. After having drunk and while bending over from his stirrups to dip the cup into the water, a volley hit him and knocked him off his horse dead, thirteen others falling close to and about him at the same time.

Jarrette and Poole, each commanding ten men, made a dash into Lafayette County and struck some blows to the right and left, which resounded throughout the West.

Poole pushed into the German settlement and comparatively surprised them.

Where Concordia now is, there was then a store and a fort, strong and well built. This day, however, Poole came upon them unawares and found many who properly belonged to the militia feeding stock and in an exposed position. Fifteen of these he killed and ten he wounded severely but not so severely as to prevent them from making their way back to the fort.

Arrock Fight, Spring of 1864

Todd and Dave Poole went east through Fayette County to Saline County and thence to Arrock, with one hundred and twenty men to avenge the death of Jim Janes, Charles Bochman and Perkins, who were captured by the Federals under Captain Sims.

The men who captured the boys made them dig their own graves and shot them and rolled them into them. We made the raid for the benefit of this captain and were successful. We caught him and his men playing marbles in the street, unaware of any danger. We rode slowly into town with our Federal uniforms on, Sim Whitsett in advance.

“Boys,” said he, “I will knock the middle man out for you.”

He fired the first shot. Then it was a continuous fire and the Federals surrendered in a very few minutes.

We killed twenty-five men, wounded thirty-five and had only one man, Dick Yager, wounded.

Ben Morrow and I had the pleasure of capturing the captain in an upstairs bed room of a hotel. He died with quick consumption with a bullet through his head.

We captured one hundred and fifty men and swore them out of service.

Fire Bottom Prairie Fight, Spring of 1864

One of the most daring things I ever witnessed was when Ben Morrow saved my life at the time they got me off my horse at the battle of Fire Prairie Creek near Napoleon, Missouri, in the spring of 1864.

George Todd, in command, was sent out to meet a bunch of Federals going from Lexington to Independence. We expected to meet them in the road and charge them in the usual way, but they got word we were coming and dismounted, hid their horses in the woods and came up, on foot, and fired on us from the brush as we charged. They caught my horse by the bridle and before they could shoot me I jumped off over the horse’s head. As I went over, I fired at the man holding him and he fell. I was on foot amidst the worst of them. This gave me an advantage as I could fire in any direction I wanted to and they could not, as their men were all around me and in danger of being hit by their own bullets. I saw a hole where a large tree had been uprooted, a hole large enough to conceal me almost, and I made direct for it, firing at everything in sight as I went.

Captain Todd ordered his men back, with three of them, Babe Hudspath, Bill McGuire and Tid Sanders, so badly wounded they were unable to go further.

I was left there in the hole, bullets blowing up the dirt all around me, the hole being deep enough for me to get out of sight. I lay on my back, loading my pistols and watched close as a hawk. They said I was dead and wanted to come up and get my pistols. Whenever one would show his head I took a shot at him and they saw that I was very much alive and their scheme would not work.

One of the blue billies climbed a tree close by, thinking he would be able to get a better shot at me. I waited until he got fairly up in the tree and then shot him in the thigh and down he came. I kept up firing, thinking the boys would hear it and come back and help me.

They were a quarter of a mile off when Ben Morrow said, “Boys, we are all here except Harrison Trow, and do you hear that shooting? He is still alive and by G--d I am going back to get him.” So on came Ben Morrow, yelling and shooting with a pistol in each hand. When within forty yards of me and letting in on the enemy with a pistol in each hand, he saw me and came straight for me. I caught the crupper of his saddle, jumped up behind him, and pulling two pistols, one in each hand, firing as we went, we got safely away. From that day on, I would have died any where, and any place and any how for Ben Morrow, who saved my life at the risk of his own.

After the Fayette fight Lieutenant Jim Little, one of Quantrell’s best men, was badly wounded in Howard County, Missouri, and Quantrell went with him to the woods to take care of him until he recovered.

Then, after the Centralia fight, Ben Morrow, Bill Hulsh and I went to where Quantrell and Jim Little were in the woods. Jim was much better by this time, so that Quantrell could leave him and he came back to us in Jackson County, where we swam the river on our horses near Saline City. After we had crossed the river we went to a house to get breakfast and dry our clothes. Quantrell wanted to intercept General Price who was on a raid and have a consultation with him.

At this house we discovered some Federal clothing--caps, etc.--in the hall and asked whose they were. We were told they belonged to some Federal soldiers who had stayed there through the night and attended a dance. We captured them at once and swore them out of service. We then went on to intercept Price at Waverly, Saline County, Missouri, where arrangements were made for Quantrell’s men to take the advance clear on up through Fayette and Jackson Counties, and up through Kansas City. We were in advance all of the way from that time until Price started south, and we went with him, about one hundred miles, almost to the Arkansas line, and turned back to Jackson County.

Death of Todd and Anderson, October, 1864

Curtis’ heavy division, retreating before General Price all the way from Lexington to Independence, held the western bank of the Little Blue, and some heavy stone walls and fences beyond. Marmaduke and Shelby broke his hold from these, and pressed him rapidly back to and through Independence, the two Colorado regiments covering his rear stubbornly and well. Side by side McCoy and Todd had made several brilliant charges during the morning, and had driven before them with great dash and spirit every Colorado squadron halted to resist the continual marching forward of the Confederate cavalry.

Ere the pursuit ended for the day, half of the 2nd Colorado regiment drew up on the crest of a bold hill and made a gallant fight. Their major, Smith, a brave and dashing officer, was killed there, and there Todd fell. General Shelby, as was his wont, was well up with the advance, and leading recklessly the two companies of Todd and McCoy. Next to Shelby’s right rode Todd and upon his left was McCoy. Close to these and near to the front files were Colonels Nichols, Thrailkill, Ben Morrow, Ike Flannery and Jesse James.

The trot had deepened into a gallop, and all the crowd of skirmishers covering the head of the rushing column were at it, fierce and hot, when the 2nd Colorado swept the road with a furious volley, broke away from the strong position held by them and hurried on through the streets of Independence, followed by the untiring McCoy, as lank as a fox-hound and as eager.

That volley killed Todd. A Spencer rifle ball entered his neck in front, passed through and out near the spine, and paralyzed him. Dying as he fell, he was yet tenderly taken up and carried to the house of Mrs. Burns, in Independence. Articulating with great difficulty and leaving now and then almost incoherent messages to favorite comrade or friend, he lingered for two hours insensible to pain, and died at last as a Roman.

George Todd was a Scotchman born, his father holding an honorable position in the British navy. Destined also for the sea, it was the misfortune of the son to become engaged in a personal difficulty in his eighteenth year and kill the man with whom he quarreled. He fled to Canada, and from Canada to the United States. His father soon after resigned and followed him, and when the war began both were railroad contractors in North Missouri, standing well with everybody for business energy, capacity and integrity.

Todd made a name by exceeding desperation. His features presented nothing that could attract attention. There was no sign in visible characters of the powers that was in him. They were calm always, and in repose a little stern; but if anything that indicated “a look of destiny” was sought for, it was not to be found in the face of George Todd. His was simple and confiding, and a circumspect regard for his word made him a very true but sometimes a very blunt man. In his eyes the fittest person to command a Guerrilla was he who inspired the enemy before people began to say: “That man, George Todd, is a tiger. He fights always; he is not happy unless he is fighting. He will either be killed soon or he will do a great amount of killing.” It has just been seen that he was not to be killed until October, 1864--a three years’ lease of life for that desperate Guerrilla work never had a counterpart. By and by the Guerrillas themselves felt confidence in such a name, reliance in such an arm, favor for such a face. It was sufficient for Todd to order a march to be implicitly followed; to plan an expedition to have it immediately carried out; to indicate a spot on which to assemble to cause an organization sometimes widely scattered or dispersed to come together as the jaws of a steel trap.

Nature gave him the restlessness of a born cavalryman and the exterior and the power of voice necessary to the leader of desperate men. Coolness, and great activity were his main attributes as a commander. Always more ready to strike than to speak, if he talked at all it was only after a combat had been had, and then modestly. His conviction was the part he played, and he sustained with unflinching courage and unflagging energy that which he had set down for his hands to do.

A splendid pistol shot, fearless as a horseman, knowing nature well enough to choose desperate men and ambitious men, reticent, heroic beyond the conception of most conservative people, and covered with blood as he was to his brow, his fall was yet majestic, because it was accompanied by patriotism.

Before the evacuation of Independence, Todd was buried by his men in the cemetery there, and Poole succeeded to the command of his company, leading it splendidly.

The night they buried Todd, Ike Flannery, Dick Burns, Andy McGuire, Ben Morrow, Press Webb, Harrison Trow, Lafe Privin, George Shepherd, George Maddox, Allen Parmer, Dan Vaughn, Jess and Frank James and John Ross took a solemn oath by the open grave of the dead man to avenge his death, and for the following three days of incessant battle it was remarkable how desperately they fought--and how long.

Until General Price started southward from Mine Creek in full retreat, the Guerrillas under Poole remained with him, scouting and picketing, and fighting with the advance. After Mine Creek they returned to Bone Hill, in Jackson County, some going afterwards to Kentucky with Quantrell, and some to Texas with George Shepherd.

Henceforward the history of the Guerrillas of Missouri must be the history of detachments and isolated squads, fighting always, but fighting without coherency or other desire than to kill.

Anderson had joined Price at Boonville and the meeting was a memorable one. The bridles of the horses the men rode were adorned with scalps. One huge red-bearded Guerrilla--six feet and over, and girdled about the waist with an armory of revolvers--had dangling from every conceivable angle a profuse array of these ghastly trophies. Ben Price was shocked at such evidence of a warfare so utterly repugnant to a commander of his known generosity and forbearance, and he ordered sternly that they be thrown away at once. He questioned Anderson Long of Missouri, of the forces in the state, of the temper of the people, of the nature of Guerrilla warfare, of its relative advantages and disadvantages and then when he had heard all he blessed the Guerrillas probably with about as much unction as Balaam blessed Israel.

General Price was a merciful man. Equable in every relation of life, conservative by nature and largely tolerant through his earlier political training, thousands are alive today solely because none of the harsher or crueler indulgences of the Civil War were permitted to the troops commanded by this conscientious officer.

Finally, however, he ordered Anderson back into North Missouri, and he crossed at Boonville upon his last career of leave taking, desperation and death.

Tired of tearing up railroad tracks, cutting down telegraph poles, destroying miles and miles of wire, burning depots, and picking up and killing isolated militiamen, terrified at the uprising in favor of Price, Anderson dashed into Danville, Montgomery County, where sixty Federals were stationed in houses and strong places.

He had but fifty-seven men, and the fight was close and hot.

Gooley Robinson, one of his best soldiers, was mortally wounded while exposing himself in a most reckless manner.

It was difficult to get the enemy out of the houses. Snatching up torches and braving the guns of the entrenched Federals, Dick and Ike Berry put fire to one house. Arch Clements and Dick West to another, Theo. Castle, John Maupin and Mose Huffaker to a third, and Ben Broomfield, Tuck, Tom and Woot Hill to the fourth.

It was a night of terror and agony. As the militiamen ran out they were shot down by the Guerrillas in the shadow. Some wounded, burnt to death, and others, stifled by the heat and smoke, rushed, gasping and blackened into the air, to be riddled with bullets. Eight, barely, of the garrison escaped the holocaust.

Anderson turned west towards Kansas City, expecting to overtake General Price there. En route he killed as he rode. Scarcely an hour of all the long march was barren of a victim. Union men, militiamen, Federal soldiers, home guards, Germans on general principles--no matter what the class or the organization--if they were pro-United States, they were killed.

Later on, in the month of October, while well advanced in Ray County, Anderson received the first news of the death of Todd and the retreat of Price. By this time, however, he had recruited his own command to several hundred, and had joined to it a detachment of regular Confederates, guiding and guarding to the South a motley aggregation of recruits, old and young. Halting one day to rest and to prepare for a passage across the Missouri River, close to Missouri City, Anderson found one thousand Federals--eight hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry. He made haste to attack them. His young lieutenant, Arch Clements, advised him urgently against the attack, as did Captain A. E. Asbury, a young and gallant Confederate officer, who was in company with him, commanding fifty recruits. Others of his associates did the same, notably Colonel John Holt, a Confederate officer, and Colonel James H. R. Condiff. Captain Asbury was a cool, brave, wary man who had had large experience in border fighting, and who knew that for a desperate charge raw recruits could not be depended upon.

Anderson would not be held back. Ordering a charge, his horse ran away with him and he was seventy-five yards ahead of his followers when he was killed. Next to him was William Smith, a veteran Guerrilla of four years’ service. Five balls struck him, and three struck Anderson. Next to Smith was John Maupin, who was wounded twice, and next to Maupin, Cundill, who was also hit, and next to Cundill, Asbury, who got four bullets through his clothes. John Holt, Jim Crow Chiles and Peyton Long had their horses killed. The three Hill brothers and Dick West and ten others of Anderson’s old company fought their way up to Anderson’s body and sought to bring it out. Tuck Hill was shot, so was his brother Woot and Dick West. Their wounds were severe, but not mortal. Once they succeeded in placing it upon a horse; the horse was killed and fell upon the corpse and held it to the ground. Still struggling heroically over the body of his idolized commander, Hank Patterson fell dead, not a foot from the dead Guerrilla. Next, Simmons was killed, and then Anson Tolliver, and then Paul Debonhorst, and then Smith Jobson, and then Luckett, then John McIlvaine, and finally Jasper Moody and William Tarkington. Nothing could live before the fire of the concealed infantry and the Spencer carbines of the cavalry.

A single blanket might have covered the terrible heap of dead and wounded who fought to recover all that remained of that tiger of the jungle. John Pringle, the red-headed giant of the Boonville scalps, far ahead of his company, was the last man killed, struggling even to the death to bear back the corpse. He was a captain of a company, and a veteran of the Mexican war, but he did what he would not order his men to do--he rushed up to the corpse heap and fastened about the leg of Anderson a lariat that he might drag the body away. The Federals killed his horse. Shot once, he tugged at the rope himself, bleeding pitifully. Shot again, he fell, struggled up to his feet, fired every barrel of three revolvers into the enemy, and received as a counter blow two more bullets.

This time he did not rise again or stir, or make a moan. All the wild boar blood in his veins had been poured out, and the bronzed face, from being rigid, had become august.

Joseph and Arch Nicholson, William James, Clell Miller and John Warren, all young recruits in their first battle, fought savagely in the melee, and all were wounded. Miller, among those who strove to rescue the corpse of Anderson, was shot, and Warren, wounded four times, crawled back from the slaughter pen with difficulty. A minie ball had found the heart of Anderson. Life, thank God, was gone when a rope was put around his neck and his body dragged as the body of a dog slain in the woods.

Many a picture was taken of the dead lion, with his great flowing beard, and that indescribable pallor of death on his bronzed face. The Federals cut his head off and stuck it on a telegraph pole.

Going South, Fall of 1864

Todd’s death fell upon the spirits of his men as a sudden bereavement upon the hearts of a happy and devoted family. Those who mourned for him mourned all the more tenderly because they could not weep. Nature, having denied to them the consolation of tears, left them the infinite intercourse and remembrances of comradeship and soldierly affection.

The old bands, however, were breaking up. Lieutenant George Shepherd, taking with him Matt Wyman, John Maupin, Theo. Castle, Jack Rupe, Silas King, James and Alfred Corum, Bud Story, Perry Smith, Jack Williams, Jesse James and Arthur Devers, Press Webb, John Norfolk and others to the number of twenty-six, started south to Texas, on the 13th of November, 1864. With Shepherd also were William Gregg and wife, Richard Maddox and wife, and James Hendrix and wife. These ladies were just as brave and just as devoted and just as intrepid in peril or extremity as were the men who marched with them to guard them.

Jesse and Frank James separated at White River, Arkansas, Frank to go to Kentucky with Quantrell, and Jesse to follow the remnant of Todd’s still organized veterans into Texas.

Besides killing isolated squads of Federals and making way for every individual militiaman who supposed that the roads were absolutely safe for travelers because General Price and his army had long been gone, Shepherd’s fighting for several days was only fun. On the 22nd, however, Captain Emmett Goss, an old acquaintance of the Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry, Jennison’s, was encountered, commanding thirty-two Jayhawkers.

Of late Goss had been varying his orgies somewhat. He would drink to excess and lavish his plunder and money on ill-famed mistresses, who were sometimes Indians, sometimes negresses, and but rarely pure white. He was about thirty-five years old, square built, had broad shoulders, a swaggering gait, stood six feet when at himself, and erect, had red hair and a bad eye and a face that meant fight when cornered--and desperate fight at that.

November 22, 1864, was an autumn day full of sunshine and falling leaves. Riding southward from Missouri Lieutenant Shepherd met Captain Goss riding northward from Cane Hill. Shepherd had twenty-six men, rank and file. It was an accidental meeting--one of those sudden, forlorn, isolated, murderous meetings not rare during the war--a meeting of outlying detachments that asked no quarter and gave none. It took place on Cabin Creek, in the Cherokee Nation. Each rank arrayed itself speedily. There were twenty-six men against thirty-two. The odds were not great--indeed they never had been considered at all. There came a charge and a sudden and terrible storm of revolver bullets.

Nothing so weak as the Kansas detachment could possibly live before the deadly prowess and pistol practice of the Missourians. Of the thirty-two, twenty-nine were killed. One, riding a magnificent race horse, escaped on the wings of the wind--one, a negro barber, was taken along to wait upon the Guerrillas, and the third, a poor emaciated skeleton, as good as dead of consumption, was permitted to ride on northward, bearing the story of the thunderbolt.

Among the Missourians four were killed. In the melee Jesse James encountered Goss and singled him out from all the rest. As James bore down upon him, he found that his horse, an extremely high-spirited and powerful one, had taken the bit in its teeth and was perfectly unmanageable. Besides, his left arm being left weak from a scarcely healed wound, it was impossible for him to control his horse or even to guide him.

Pistol balls were as plentiful as the leaves that were pattering down. However, James had to put up his revolver as he rode, and rely upon his right hand to reinforce his left. Before he could turn his horse and break its hold upon his bit, Goss had fired upon him four times. Close upon him at last James shot him through and through. Goss swayed heavily in his saddle, but held on.

“Will you surrender?” Jesse asked, recocking his pistol and presenting it again.

“Never,” was the stern reply. Goss, still reeling in the saddle and bleeding dreadfully.

When the blue white smoke curled up again there was a riderless steed among the trees and a guilty spirit somewhere out in the darkness of the unknown. It took two dragoon revolver bullets to finish this one, and yet James was not satisfied with his work.

There was a preacher along who also had sat himself steadfast in the saddle, and had fought as the best of them did. James rode straight at him after he had finished Goss. The parson’s heart failed him at last, however, and he started to run. James gained upon him at every step. When close enough for a shot, he called out to him:

“Turn about like a man, that I may not shoot you in the back.” The Jayhawker turned, and his face was white and his tongue voluble.

“Don’t shoot me,” he pleaded, “I am the chaplain of the Thirteenth Kansas; my name is U. P. Gardner, I have killed no man, but have prayed for many; spare me.” James did not answer. Perhaps he turned away his head a little as he drew out his revolver. When the smoke lifted, Gardner was dead upon the crisp sere grass with a bullet through his brain.

Maddox, in this fight, killed three of Goss’ men, Gregg five, Press Webb three, Wayman four, Hendrix three, and others one or two each.

The march through the Indian country was one long stretch of ambushments and skirmishes.

Wayman stirred up a hornet’s nest one afternoon, and though stung twice himself quite severely, he killed four Indians in single combat and wounded the fifth who escaped.

Press Webb, hunting the same day for a horse, was ambushed by three Pins and wounded slightly in the arm. He charged singlehanded into the brush and was shot again before he got out of it, but he killed the three Indians and captured three excellent ponies, veritably a god-send to all.

The next day about noon the rear guard, composed of Jesse James, Bud Story, Harrison Trow and Jack Rupe, was savagely attacked by seventy-five Federal Cherokees and driven back upon the main body rapidly. Shepherd, one of the quickest and keenest soldiers the war produced, had formed every man of the command in the rear of an open field through which the enemy must advance and over which in return a telling charge could be made. The three heroic women, mounted on excellent horses and given shelter in some timber still further to the rear of the Guerrilla line, bade their husbands, as they kissed them, fight to the death or conquer. The Indians bore down as if they meant to ride down a regiment. Firing their pistols into their very faces with deadly effect, the rear guard had not succeeded in stopping them a single second, but when in the counter-charge Shepherd dashed at the oncoming line, it melted away as snow in a thaw. Shepherd, Maddox, Gregg, the two Corums, Rupe, Story, James, Hendrick, Webb, Smith Commons, Castle, Wayman and King fought like men who wanted to make a clean and a merciless sweep.

John Maupin, not yet well from the two ugly wounds received the day Anderson was killed, insisted on riding in the charge, and was shot the third time by the Indian into whom he had put two bullets and whose horse he rushed up to secure.

Jesse James had his horse killed and a pistol shot from his hand. Several other Guerrillas were wounded but none killed, and Williams, James Corum and Maddox lost horses.

Of the sixty-five Indians, fifty-two were counted killed, while some, known to be wounded, dragged themselves off into the mountain and escaped.

During the battle Dick Maddox’s wife could not keep still under cover, and commenced to shoot at the enemy, and had a lock of her hair shot off just above the ear.

The Surrender

Early in the month of March, 1865, Captain Clements, having been reinforced by ten men under the command of Captain David Poole, marched from Sherman, Texas, to Mount Pleasant, Titus County, Arkansas. From Mount Pleasant, on the 14th of April, the march began once more and for the last time into Missouri. Forming an advance of David Poole, John Poole, John Maupin, Jack Bishop, Theo. Castle, Jesse James and Press Webb, Clements pushed on rapidly, killing five militiamen in one squad, ten in another, here and there a single one, and now and then as many together as twenty. In Benton County, Missouri, a Federal militiaman named Harkness, was captured, who had halted a brother of Clements and burnt the house of his mother. James, Maupin and Castle held Harkness tightly while Clements cut his throat and afterwards scalped him.