Chapter VI: Part 6

At Kingsville, in Johnson County, something of a skirmish took place and ten Federals were killed. A militiaman named Duncan, who had a bad name locally and who was described as being a highwayman and a house burner, also was captured at the same time. Being fifty-five years of age and gray headed did not save him. But before he surrendered he fought a desperate battle. Knowing instinctively what his fate would be if he fell alive into the hands of any hostile organization, much less a Guerrilla organization, he took a stand behind a plank fence, armed with a Spencer rifle and two revolvers, and faced the enemy, now close upon him. Arch Clements, Jesse James and Jack Bishop dashed at Duncan. The first shot killed his horse, and in falling the horse fell upon the rider. At the second fire Clement’s horse also was killed, but James stopped neither for the deadly aim of the old man nor for the help of his comrades who were coming up as fast as they could on foot. He shot him three times before he knocked him from his feet to his knees, but the fourth shot, striking him fair in the middle of the forehead, finished the old man and all his sins together.

The last of April a council was held among the Guerrillas to discuss the pros and cons of a surrender. Virtually the war was over. Everywhere the regular Confederate armies had surrendered and disbanded, and in no direction could any evidences be discovered of that Guerrilla warfare which many predicted would succeed to the war of the regular army and the general order. All decided to do as the rest of the Southern forces had done.

Anxious, however, to give to those of the command who preferred a contrary course the dignity and the formality of official authority, Captain Clements entered Lexington, Mo., on the fifteenth, with Jesse James, Jess Hamlet, Jack Rupe, Willis King and John Vanmeter, bearing a flag of truce. The provost marshall of Lexington, Major J. B. Rogers, was a liberal officer of the old regime, who understood in its fullest and broadest sense that the war was over, and that however cruel or desperate certain organizations or certain bodies of men had been in the past, all proscription of them ceased with their surrender.

Shortly after the surrender, and as Jesse James was riding at the head of a column with the white flag, eight Federals were met who were drunk and who did not see the flag of truce or did not regard it. They fired point blank at the Guerrillas, and were charged in turn and routed with the loss of four killed and two wounded. These eight men were the advance of a larger party of sixty, thirty Johnson County militia, and thirty of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry. These in the counter attack drove back the Guerrillas and followed them fiercely, especially the Second Wisconsin. Vanmeter’s horse was killed but Jack Rupe stopped under fire for him and carried him to safety. James and Clements, although riding jaded horses--the same horses, in fact, which had made the long inhospitable trip up from Texas--galloped steadily away in retreat side by side, and fighting as best they could. Mounted on a superb black horse, a single Wisconsin trooper dashed ahead of the balance and closed in swiftly upon James, who halted to court the encounter. At a distance of ten feet both fired simultaneously and when the smoke cleared away the brave Wisconsin man was dead with a dragoon ball through his heart. Scarcely had this combat closed before another Wisconsin trooper rushed at James, firing rapidly, and closing in as he fired. James killed his horse, and the Federal in turn sent a bullet through James’ right lung. Then the rush passed over and past him. Another volley killed his horse, and as the Johnson County militia galloped by, five fired at him as he lay bleeding under the prostrate horse.

Clements, seeing horse and rider going down together, believed his beloved comrade was killed, and strove thereafter to make good his own escape.

Extricating himself with infinite toil and pain, Jesse James left the road for the woods, pursued by five Federals, who fired at him constantly as they followed. At a distance of two hundred yards he killed the foremost Federal and halted long enough under fire to disencumber himself of his heavy cavalry boots, one of which was a quarter full of blood. He fired again and shattered the pistol arm of the second pursuer, the other three closing up and pressing the maimed Guerrilla as ravenous hounds the torn flanks of a crippled stag. James was getting weaker and weaker. The foremost of the three pursuers could be heard distinctly yelling: “Oh! g----d----n your little soul, we have you at last! Stop, and be killed like a gentleman!”

James did not reply, but when he attempted to lift his trusty dragoon pistol to halt the nearest trooper, he found it too heavy for his hand. But reinforcing his right arm with his left, he fired finally at the Wisconsin man almost upon him and killed him in the saddle.

Perhaps then and there might have been an end made to the career of the desperate Guerrilla if the two remaining pursuers had been Wisconsin Cavalry instead of Johnson County militia; but terrified at the prowess of one who had been so terribly wounded, and who killed even as he reeled along, the militiamen abandoned the chase and James, staggering on four or five hundred yards further, fell upon the edge of a creek and fainted. From the 15th to the 17th he lay alongside the water, bathing his wound continually and drinking vast quantities of water to quench his burning thirst and fever. Towards sunset, on the evening of the 17th, he crawled to a field where a man was plowing, who proved to be a Southern man and a friend.

That night he rode fifteen miles to the house of a Mr. Bowman, held upon a horse by his new-found friend, where he remained, waited upon by Clements and Rupe, until the surrender of Poole, on the 21st, with one hundred and twenty-nine Guerrillas.

Major Rogers was so well satisfied that James would die that he thought it unnecessary to parole him, and so declared. To give him every chance, however, for his life, and to enable him to reach his mother, then a fugitive in Nebraska, Rodgers furnished him with transportation, money and a pass.

A good many of my men surrendered with Poole, while others planned to go to Old Mexico with me and not surrender at all. However, when I came up from the South, planning to go back to Old Mexico and join General Shelby with his old command, some of my best citizen friends insisted on my surrendering and going home, and through their influence arrangements were made with Major Rodgers to meet me at the Dillard farm, on Texas Prairie. There we held a consultation, he and I, for about half a day, regarding my surrender. He promised me protection and my side arms, and the horse that I had, and I surrendered, receiving the protection he had promised me.

I went home and went to work and took my part in trying to make peace with the Federal soldiers, some of whom proved to be very good friends to me, and we lived very peacefully after the war.

I very much opposed and tried to put a stop to the robbery, thieving and horse stealing that was so prominent after the war, and advised the boys that got into trouble to leave the country time and time again, and go to Old Mexico while it was yet time to get away.

I returned home with no money and no means at all, but found plenty of friends who were ready to help me and who furnished me money to start with.

I advise all who read this book to appreciate character above money.

Death of Quantrell

Quantrell, with forty-eight of the most daring of his old band, accompanied Shepherd as far south as White River, Arkansas. He left them there to go to his old home in Maryland. He passed all Federal camps, had no trouble staying in Federal camps, eating with Federal soldiers, playing Federal himself until he reached Upton Station, in Hart County, Kentucky, where he crossed the Louisiana & Nashville Railroad, still representing himself and his men as Federal soldiers.

Near Marion County he entered the Lebanon and Campbellville turnpike at Rolling Fork and traveled north to New Market, thence east to Bradford, and from Bradford towards Hustonville, camping for the night preceding the entrance into this place at Major Dray’s, on Rolling Fork. Thirty Federal soldiers were at garrison at Hustonville, possessed of as many horses in splendid condition, and these Quantrell determined to appropriate. No opposition was made to his entrance into the town. No one imagined him to be other than a Union officer on a scout.

He dismounted quietly at a hotel in the place and entered at once into a pleasant conversation with the commander of the post. Authorized by their chieftain, however, to remount themselves as speedily as possible and as thoroughly as possible, the Guerrillas spread quickly over the town in search for horses, appropriating first what could be found in the public stables and later on those that were still needed to supply the deficiency, from private places.

As Quantrell conversed with the commander, a Federal private made haste to inform him of the kind of work the newcomers were doing, and to complain loudly of the unwarranted and outrageous appropriation.

Enraged and excited, the commander snatched up a brace of revolvers as he left his headquarters and buckled them about him and hurried to the nearest livery stable where the best among the animals of his men had been kept. Just as he arrived, Allen Parmer was riding out mounted on a splendid horse. The Federal major laid hands upon the bridle and bade Parmer dismount. It was as the grappling of a wave with a rock.

No Guerrilla in the service of the South was cooler or deadlier; none less given to the emotion of fear. He looked at the Federal major a little curiously when he first barred the passageway of his horse and even smiled pleasantly as he took the trouble to explain to him the nature of the instructions under which he was operating.

“D----n you and d----n your instructions,” the major replied fiercely. “Dismount!”

“Ah,” ejaculated Parmer, “has it really come to this?” and then the two men began to draw. Unquestionably there could be but one result. The right hand of the Federal major had hardly reached the flap of his revolver, before Parmer’s pistol was against his forehead, and Parmer’s bullet had torn half the top of his head off.

In June, 1865, Quantrell started from Bedford Russell’s, in Nelson County, with John Ross, William Hulse, Payne Jones, Clark Hockinsmith, Isaac Hall, Richard Glasscock, Robert Hall, Bud Spence, Allen Parmer, Dave Helton and Lee McMurtry. His destination was Salt River.

At Newel McClaskey’s the turnpike was gained and traveled several miles, when a singularly severe and penetrating rain storm began. Quantrell, to escape this, turned from the road on the left and into a woods pasture near a postoffice called Smiley. Through this pasture and for half a mile further he rode until he reached the residence of a Mr. Wakefield, in whose barn the Guerrillas took shelter. Unsuspicious of danger and of the belief that the nearest enemy was at least twenty miles away, the men dismounted, unbridled their horses, and fed them at the racks ranged about the shed embracing two sides of the barn.

While the horses were eating the Guerrillas amused themselves with a sham battle, choosing sides and using corncobs for ammunition. In the midst of much hilarity and boisterousness, Glasscock’s keen eye saw through the blinding rain a column of cavalry, one hundred and twenty strong, approaching the barn at a trot.

He cried out instantly, and loud enough to be heard at Wakefield’s house sixty yards away: “Here they are! Here they are.” Instantly all the men were in motion and rushing to their horses.

Captain Edward Terrell, known well to Quantrell and fought stubbornly once before, had been traveling the turnpike from the direction of Taylorsville, as completely ignorant of Quantrell’s proximity as Quantrell had been of his, and would have passed on undoubtedly without a combat if the trail left by the Guerrillas in passing from the road to the pasture had not attracted attention. This he followed to within sight of the barn, understood in a moment the character of the men sheltered there, and closed upon it rapidly, firing as he came on.

Before a single Guerrilla had put a bridle upon a horse, Terrill was at the main gate of the lot, a distance of some fifty feet from the barn, and pouring such a storm of carbine bullets among them that their horses ran furiously about the lot, difficult to approach and impossible to restrain.

Fighting desperately and deliberately, and driving away from the main gate a dozen or more Federals stationed there, John Ross, William Hulse, Allen Parmer, Lee McMurtry, and Bud Pence, cut their way through, mounted and defiant. The entire combat did not last ten minutes. It was a fight in which every man had to do for himself and do what was done speedily.

Once above the rattling of musketry, the neighing of horses and the shouting of combatants, Quantrell’s voice rang out loud and clear: “Cut through, boys, cut through somehow! Don’t surrender while there is a chance to get out.”

The fire upon the Guerrillas was furious. Quantrell’s horse, a thoroughbred animal of great spirit and speed, could not be caught. His master, anxious to secure him, followed him composedly about the lot for several minutes, trying under showers of bullets to get hands upon his favorite.

At this moment Clark Hockingsmith, who was mounted and free to go away at a run, saw the peril of his chief, and galloped to his rescue. Quantrell, touched by this act of devotion, recognized it by a smile, and held out his hand to his comrade without speaking. Hockingsmith dismounted until Quantrell took his own place in the saddle, and then sprang up behind him.

Another furious volley from Terrill’s men lining all the fence about the great gate, killed Hockingsmith and killed the horse he and Quantrell were upon. The second hero now gave his life to Quantrell. Richard Glasscock also had secured his own horse as Hockingsmith had done and was free to ride’ away in safety as he had been.

Opposite the main entrance to the barn lot there was an exit uncovered by the enemy and beyond this exit a stretch of heavy timber. Those who gained the timber were safe. Hockingsmith knew it when he deliberately laid down his life for his chief, and Glasscock knew it when he also turned about and hurried up to the two men struggling there--Quantrell to drag himself out from under the horse and Hockingsmith in the agonies of death.

The second volley from the gate mortally wounded Quantrell and killed Glasscock’s horse. Then a charge of fifty shouting, shooting men swept over the barn lot. Robert Hall, Payne Jones, David Helton, and Isaac Hall had gone out some time before on foot. J. B. Tooley, A. B. Southwick and C. H. Southwick, wounded badly, escaped fighting. Only the dead man lying by his wounded chief, and Glasscock, erect, splendid, and fighting to the last, remained as trophies of the desperate combat. Two balls struck Quantrell. The first, the heavy ball of a Spencer carbine, entered close to the right collar bone, ranged down along the spine, injuring it severely, and hid itself somewhere in the body. The second ball cut off the finger next to the little finger of the left hand, tearing it from its socket, and lacerating the hand itself badly. The shoulder wound did its work, however, for it was a mortal wound. All the lower portion of Quantrell’s body was paralyzed and as he was lifted and carried to Wakefield’s house his legs were limp and his extremities cold and totally without sensation.

At no time did he either make complaint or moan. His wonderful endurance remained unimpaired to the end. His mind, always clear in danger, seemed to recognize that his last battle had been fought and his last encounter finished. He talked very little. Terrill came to him and asked if there was any good service he might do that would be acceptable.

“Yes,” said Quantrell quietly, “have Clark Hockingsmith buried like a soldier.”

After he had been carried to the house of Wakefield and deposited upon a pallet, he spoke once more to Terrell:

“While I live let me stay here. It is useless to haul a dying man about in a wagon, jolting out what little life there is left in him.”

Terrell pledged his word that he should not be removed, and rode away in pursuit of those who had escaped.

Some of the fugitive Guerrillas soon reached the well known rendezvous at the house of Alexander Sayers, twenty-three miles from Wakefield’s, with tidings of the fight.

Frank James heard the story through with a set face, strangely white and sorrowful, and then he arose and cried out: “Volunteers to go back. Who will follow me to see our chief, living or dead?”

“I will go back,” said Allen Parmer, “and I,” said John Ross, and “I,” said William Hulse.

“Let us ride, then,” rejoined James, and in twenty minutes more--John Ross having exchanged his jaded horse for a fresh one--these four devoted men were galloping away to Wakefield’s.

At two o’clock in the morning they were there. Frank James dismounted and knocked low upon the door. There was the trailing of a woman’s garments, the circumspect tread of a watching woman’s feet, the noiseless work of a woman’s hand upon the latch and Mrs. Wakefield, cool and courtly, bade the strange armed men upon the threshold to enter.

Just across on the other side of the room from the door a man lay on a trundle bed. James stood over the bed, but he could not speak. If one had cared to look into his eyes they might have seen them full of tears.

Quantrell, by the dim light of a single candle, recognized James, smiled and held out his hand, and said to him very gently, though a little reproachfully: “Why did you come back? The enemy are thick about you here; they are passing every hour.”

“To see if you were alive or dead, Captain. If the first, to save you; if the last, to put you in a grave.”

“I thank you very much, Frank, but why try to take me away? I am cold below the hips. I can neither ride, walk nor crawl; I am dead and yet I am alive.”

Frank James went to the door and called in Parmer, Ross and Hulse. Quantrell recognized them all in his old, calm, quiet fashion, and bade them wipe away their tears, for they were crying visibly.

Then Frank James, joined in his entreaties by the entreaties of his comrades, pleaded with Quantrell for permission to carry him away to the mountains of Nelson County by slow and easy stages, each swearing to guard him hour by hour until he recovered or died over his body, defending it to the last. He knew that every pledge made by them would be kept to the death. He felt that every word spoken was a golden word and meant absolute devotion. His faith in their affection was as steadfast and abiding as of old. He listened until they had done talking, with the old staid courtesy of victorious Guerrilla days, and then he silenced them with an answer which, from its resoluteness, they knew to be unalterable.

“I cannot live. I have run a long time; I have come out unhurt from many desperate places; I have fought to kill and I have killed; I regret nothing. The end is close at hand. I am resting easy here and will die so. You do not know how your devotion has touched my heart, nor can you understand how grateful I am for the love you have shown me. Try and get back to your homes, and avoid if you can the perils that beset you.”

Until 10 o’clock the next day these men remained with Quantrell. He talked with them very freely of the past, but never of the earlier life in Kansas. Many messages were sent to absent friends, and much good advice was given touching the surrender of the remnant of the band. Again and again he returned to the earlier struggles in Missouri and dwelt long over the recollections and the reminiscences of the first two years of Guerrilla warfare.

Finally the parting came, and those who looked last upon Quantrell’s face that morning as they stooped to tell him goodbye, looked their last upon it forever.

Terrill had promised Quantrell positively that he should not be removed from Wakefield’s house, but in three days he had either forgotten his promise or had deliberately broken his pledge. He informed General Palmer, commanding the department of Kentucky, of the facts of the fight, and of the desperate character of the wounded officer left paralyzed behind him, suggesting at the same time the advisability of having him removed to a place of safety.

General Palmer sent an ambulance under a heavy escort to Wakefield’s house and Quantrell, suffering greatly and scarcely more alive than dead, was hauled to the military hospital in Louisville and deposited there.

Until the question of recovery had been absolutely decided against him, but few friends were permitted into his presence. If any one conversed with him at all, the conversation of necessity was required to be carried on in the presence of an official. Mrs. Ross visited him thus--Christian woman, devoted to the South, and of active and practical patriotism--and took some dying messages to loved and true ones in Missouri.

Mrs. Ross left him at one o’clock in the afternoon and at four the next afternoon the great Guerrilla died.

His passing away, after a life so singularly fitful and tempestuous, was as the passing of a summer cloud. He had been asleep, and as he awoke he called for water. A Sister of Charity at the bedside put a glass of water to his lips, but he did not drink. She heard him murmur once audibly--“Boys, get ready.” Then a long pause, then one word more--“Steady!” and then when she drew back from bending over the murmuring man, she fell upon her knees and prayed. Quantrell was dead.

Before his death he had become a Catholic and had been visited daily by two old priests. To one of these he made confession, and such a confession! He told everything. He was too serious and earnest a man to do less. He kept nothing back, not even the least justifiable of his many homicides.

As the priest listened and listened, and as year after year of the wild war work was made to give up its secrets, what manner of a man must the priest have imagined lay dying there.

Let history be just. On that hospital bed, watched by the calm, colorless face of a Sister of Charity, a dead man lay who, when living, had filled with his deeds four years of terrible war history. A singularly placid look had come with the great change. Alike was praise or censure, reward or punishment. Fate had done its worst and the future stood revealed to the spirit made omniscient by its journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He had done with summer’s heat and winter’s cold, with spectral ambuscades and midnight vigils. There would never be any war in the land of the hereafter. The swoop of cavalry, the roar of combat, the agony of defeat, white faces trampled by the iron hoofs of horses, the march--the bivouac, the battle; what remains of these when the transfiguration was done and when the river called Jordan rolled between the shores of the finite and the infinite? Nothing! And yet by those, standing or falling, must the great Guerrilla be judged.

Quantrell differed in some degree from every Guerrilla who was either a comrade or his contemporary. Not superior to Todd in courage and enterprise, nor to Haller, Poole, Jarrette, Younger, Taylor, Anderson, Frank James, Gregg, Lea, Maddox, Dan Vaughn, or Yager, he yet had one peculiar quality which none of these save Gregg, Frank James, Thrailkill, Lea and Younger possessed to the same pre-eminent degree--extraordinary resource and cunning.

All the Guerrillas fought. Indeed, at certain times and under certain conditions fighting might justly have been considered the least of their accomplishments. A successful leader requires coolness, intrepidity, robust health, fine horsemanship, expert pistol practice, quick perception in peril, great rapidity of movement, immense activity, and inexorable fixedness of purpose.

Those mentioned excelled in these qualities, but at times they were too eager to fight, took too many desperate chances, or rushed too recklessly into combats where they could not win. Quantrell counted the cost of everything; watched every way lest an advantage should be taken of him; sought to shield and save his men; strove by much strategy to have the odds with rather than against him; traveled a multitude of long roads rather than one short one once too often; took upon himself many disguises to prevent an embarrassing familiarity; retreat often rather than fight and be worsted; kept scouts everywhere; had the faculty of divination to an almost occult degree; believed in young men; paid attention to small things; listened to every man’s advice and then took his own; stood by his soldiers; obeyed strictly the law of retaliation; preferred the old dispensation to the new--that is to say, the code of Moses to the code of Jesus Christ; inculcated by precept and example the self abnegation and devotion to comrade; fought desperately; carried a black flag; killed everything; made the idea of surrender ridiculous; snapped his fingers at death; was something of a fatalist; rarely drank; trusted few women, but these with his life; played high at cards; believed in religion; respected its ordinances; went at intervals to church; understood human nature thoroughly; never quarreled; was generally taciturn and one of the coolest and deadliest men in a personal combat known to the border. He rode like he was carved from the horse beneath him. In an organization where skill with a pistol was a passport to leadership he shot with a revolver as Leatherstocking shot with a rifle. He drilled his men to fight equally with either hand. Fairly matched, God help the column that came in contact with him.

As to the kind of warfare Quantrell waged, that is another matter. Like the war of La Vendee, the Guerrilla war was one rather of hatred than of opinion. The regular Confederates were fighting for a cause and a nationality--the Guerrilla for vengeance. Mementoes of murdered kinsmen mingled with their weapons; vows consecrated the act of enlistment and the cry for blood was heard from homestead to homestead. Quantrell became a Guerrilla because he had been most savagely dealt with, and he became a chief because he had prudence, firmness, courage, audacity and common sense. In personal intrepidity he was inferior to no man. His features were pleasing without being handsome, his eyes were blue and penetrating. He had a Roman nose. In height he was five feet, eleven inches, and his form was well knit, graceful and sinewy. His constitution was vigorous, and his physical endurance equal to an Indian. His glance was rapid and unerring. His judgment was clearest and surest when the responsibility was heaviest, and when the difficulties gathered thickest about him. Based upon skill, energy, perspicacity and unusual presence of mind, his fame as a Guerrilla will endure for generations.

Quantrell died a Catholic and was buried in a Catholic cemetery at Louisville, Kentucky.

The Youngers and Jameses After the War

The end of the war also brought an end to armed resistance by the Guerrillas. As an organization, they never fought again. The most of them kept their weapons; and a few of them had great need to keep them. Some were killed because of the terrible renown won in the four years’ war; some were forced to hide themselves in the unknown of the outlying territories, and some were persecuted and driven into desperate defiance and resistance because they were human and intrepid. To this latter class the Jameses and Youngers belonged.

No men ever strove harder to put the past behind them. No men ever submitted more sincerely to the results of a war that had as many excesses on one side as on the other. No men ever went to work with a heartier good will to keep good faith with society and make themselves amenable to the law. No men ever sacrificed more for peace, and for the bare privilege of doing just as hundreds like them had done--the privilege of going back again into the obscurity of civil life and becoming again a part of the enterprising economy of the commonwealth. They were not permitted so to do, try how they would, and as hard, and as patiently.

After the death of Quantrell and the surrender of the remnant of his Guerrillas, Frank James was not permitted, at first, to return to Missouri at all, much less to his home in Clay County.

He lingered in Clay County as long as possible, very circumspect in his actions and very conservative in his behavior. Tempted one day by his beardless face and innocent walk and to bear upon him roughly, four Federal soldiers set upon Frank James in Brandenburg and made haste to force an issue. For a moment the old fire of his earlier and stormier days flared up all of a sudden from the ashes of the past and consumed as with a single hot blast of passion prudence, accountability, caution and discretion. He fought as he had fought at Centralia. Two of the Federals were killed instantly, the third was desperately wounded, while the fourth shot Frank badly in the joint of the left hip, inflicting a grievous hurt and one which caused him afterwards a great deal of pain and trouble.

Staunch friends hid him while the hue and cry were heaviest, and careful surgical attention brought him back to life when he lay so close to death’s door that by the lifting of a hand he also might have lifted its latch.

This fight, however, was not one of his own seeking, nor one which he could have avoided without the exhibition of a quality he never had known anything about and never could know anything about--physical cowardice.

Jesse James, emaciated, tottering as he walked, fighting what seemed to everyone a hopeless battle--of “the skeleton boy against skeleton death”--joined his mother in Nebraska and returned with her to their home near Kearney, in Clay County. His wound would not heal, and more ominous still, every now and then there was a hemorrhage.

In the spring of 1866 he was just barely able to mount a horse and ride a bit. And he did ride, but he rode armed, watchful, vigilant, haunted. He might be killed, waylaid, ambuscaded, assassinated; but he would be killed with his eyes open and his pistols about him.

The hunt for this maimed and emaciated Guerrilla culminated on the night of February 18th, 1867. On this night an effort was made to kill him. Five militiamen, well armed and mounted, came to his mother’s house and demanded admittance. The weather was bitterly cold, and Jesse James, parched with fever, was tossing wearily in bed. His pistols were under his head. His step-father. Dr. Samuels, heard the militiamen as they walked upon the front porch, and demanded to know what they wanted. They told him to open the door. He came up to Jesse’s room and asked him what he should do. “Help me to the window,” was the low, calm reply, “that I may look out.” He did so.

There was snow on the ground and the moon was shining. He saw that all the horses hitched to the fence had on cavalry saddles, and then he knew that the men were soldiers. He had but one of two things to do--drive them away or die.

Incensed at the step-father’s silence, they were hammering at the door with the butts of their muskets and calling out to Jesse to come down stairs, swearing that they knew he was in the house, and that they would have him out, dead or alive.

He went down stairs softly, having first dressed himself, crept close up to the front door and listened until from the talk of the men he thought he was able to get a fairly accurate pistol range. Then he put a heavy dragoon pistol to within three inches of the upper panel of the door and fired. A man cried out and fell. Before the surprise was off he threw the door wide open, and with a pistol in each hand began a rapid fusillade. A second man was killed as he ran, two men were wounded severely, and surrendered, while the fifth marauder, terrified, yet unhurt, rushed swiftly to his horse and escaped in the darkness.

What else could Jesse James have done? In those evil days bad men in bands were doing bad things continually in the name of the law, order and vigilance committees.

He had been a desperate Guerrilla; he had fought under a black flag, he had made a name for terrible prowess along the border; he had survived dreadful wounds; it was known that he would fight at any hour or in any way; he could not be frightened out from his native county; he could be neither intimidated nor robbed, and hence the wanton war waged upon Jesse and Frank James, and this is the reason they became outlaws, and hence the reason also that--outlaws as they were and proscribed in county, or state or territory--they had more friends than the officers who hunted them, and more defenders than the armed men who sought to secure their bodies, dead or alive.

The future of the Youngers after the war was similar to the Jameses. Cole was in California when the surrender came, and he immediately accepted the situation. He returned to Missouri, determined to forget the past, and fixed in his purpose to reunite the scattered members of his once prosperous and happy family, and prepare and make comfortable a home for his stricken and suffering mother.

Despite everything that has been said and written of this man, he was, during all the border warfare, a generous and merciful man. Others killed and that in any form or guise or fashion; he alone in open and honorable battle. His heart was always kind, and his sympathies always easily aroused. He not only took prisoners himself, but he treated them afterwards as prisoners, and released them to rejoin commands that spared nothing alive of Guerrilla associations that fell into their hands.

He was the oldest son, and all the family looked up to him. His mother had been driven out of Cass County into Jackson, out of Jackson into Lafayette, and out of Lafayette into Jackson again. Not content with butchering the father in cold blood, the ravenous cut-throats and thieves followed the mother with a malignity unparalleled. Every house she owned or inhabited was burnt, every outbuilding, every rail, every straw stack, every corn pen, every pound of food and every store of forage. Her stock was stolen. Her household goods were even appropriated. She had no place to lay her head that could be called her own, and but for the kindness and Christianity of her devoted neighbors, she must have suffered greatly.

At this time Coleman and James returned to Missouri and went hopefully and bravely to work. Their father’s land remained to them. That at least had neither been set fire to nor hauled away in wagons, nor driven into Kansas.

Western Missouri was then full of disbanded Federal soldiers, organized squads of predatory Redlegs and Jayhawkers, horse thieves disguised as vigilance committees, and highway robbers known as law and order men.

In addition, Drake’s constitution disfranchised every property owner along the border. An honest man could not officially stand between the helpless of his community and the imported lazzaroni who preyed upon them; a decent man’s voice could not be heard above the clamor of the beggars quarreling over stolen plunder; and a just man’s expostulations penetrated never into the councils of the chief scoundrels who planned the murders and the robberies.

Coleman Younger’s work was like the work of a pioneer in the wilderness, but he did it as became the hardy descendants of a stalwart race of pioneers. He cut logs and built a comfortable log house for his mother. He made rails and fenced in his land. In lieu of horses or mules, he plowed with oxen. He stayed steadfastly at home. He heard rumors of threats being made against his life, but he paid no attention to them. He took part in no political meetings. He tried to hide himself and be forgotten.

The bloodhounds were on his track, however, and swore either to kill him or drive him from the country. A vigilance committee composed of skulking murderers and red-handed robbers went one night to surprise the two brothers and end the hunt with a massacre. Forewarned, James and Coleman fled. The family were wantonly insulted, and a younger brother, John, a mere boy, was brutally beaten and then hung until life was almost extinct. This was done to force him to tell the whereabouts of James and Coleman.

Mrs. Younger never entirely recovered from the shock of that night’s work, lingering along hopelessly yet patiently for several months and finally dying in the full assurance of the Christian’s blessed hereafter.

The death of this persecuted woman, however, did not end the persecution. Cole Younger was repeatedly waylaid and fired at. His stock was killed through mere deviltry, or driven off to swell the gains of insatiable wolves. His life was in hourly jeopardy, as was the life of his brother James. They plowed in the fields as men who saw suspended above them a naked sword blade. They permitted no light to be lit in the house at night. They traveled the public highway warily. They were hunted men and proscribed men in the midst of their own people. They were chased away from their premises by armed men. Once Cole was badly wounded by the bullet of an assassin. Once, half dressed, he had to flee for his life. If he made a crop, he was not permitted to gather it and when something of a success might have come to him after the expenditure of so much toil, energy, long-suffering and forbearance, he was not let alone in peace long enough to utilize his returns and make out of his resources their legitimate gains.

Of course there could be but one ending to all this long and unbroken series of malignant persecutions, lying-in-wait, midnight surprises, perpetual robbings, and most villainous assaults and attempted murders--Coleman and James Younger left home and left Jackson County. They buckled on their pistols and rode away to Texas, resolved from that time on to protect themselves, to fight when they were attacked, and to make it so hot for the assassins and the detectives who were eternally on their track that by and by the contract taken to murder them would be a contract not particularly conducive to steady investments. They were hounded to it.

They endured every species of insult and attack, and would have still continued to endure it in silence and almost non-resistance if such forbearance had mitigated in any manner the virulence of their enemies, or brought any nearer to an appeasement the merciless fate which seemed to be eternally at their heels. The peaceful pursuits of life were denied them. The law which should have protected them was overridden. Indeed, there was no law. The courts were instruments of plunder. The civil officers were cutthroats. Instead of a legal process, there was a vigilance committee. Men were hung because of a very natural desire to keep hold of their own property. To the cruel vigor of actual war, there had succeeded the irresponsible despotism of greedy highwaymen buttressed upon assassination. The border counties were overrun with bands of predatory plunderers. Some Confederate soldiers dared not return home and many Guerrillas fled the country. It was dark everywhere, and the bravest held their breath, not knowing how much longer they would be permitted to remain peacefully at home, or suffered to enjoy the fruits of the labors they had endured.

Fortunately for all, however, the well nigh extinct embers of a merciless border war were not blown upon long enough and persistently enough to kindle another conflagration.

But neither the Jameses nor the Youngers had been permitted to rest long at any one time since the surrender of the Confederate armies. Some dastardly deeds had been done against them, too, in the name of the law. Take for example, Pinkerton’s midnight raid upon the house of Mrs. Zerelda Samuels, mother of the James boys. The family was wrapped in profound sleep. Only women and children were about the premises, and an old man long past his prime. The cowards--how many is not accurately known, probably a dozen--crept close to this house through the midnight, surrounded it, found its inmates asleep, and threw into the kitchen where an old negress was in bed with her children, a lighted hand grenade, wrapped about with flannel saturated with turpentine. The lurid light from this inflammable fluid awakened the negro woman and she in turn awakened the sleeping whites. They rushed to subdue the flames and save their property. Children were gathered together in the kitchen, little things, helpless and terrified. All of a sudden there was a terrible explosion. Mrs. Samuels’ right arm was blown off above the elbow, a bright little boy, eight years old, had his bowels torn out. Dr. Samuels was seriously cut and hurt, the old negro woman was maimed, and several of the other children more or less injured. The hand grenade had done its work, and there had been a tragedy performed by men calling themselves civilized, in the midst of a peaceful community and upon a helpless family of women and children and what would have disgraced Nero or made some of the monstrous murders of Diocletian was as white is to black. Yet Pinkerton’s paid assassins did this because his paid assassins knew better how to kill women and children than armed men in open combat.

Dear Reader, what would you have done under the same circumstances? Put yourself in the Jameses’ and Youngers’ places, and think it over.

When Jesse James was killed at St. Joseph, Missouri, Governor Crittenden, then governor of the state of Missouri, wired me to know if I would go up and identify him.

I wired him I would, providing I could go armed.

He answered, “Perfectly satisfactory to me. Meet me at Union Station, Kansas City, Missouri, tomorrow morning.”

I secured several of my old Guerrilla friends to accompany the Governor and myself to St. Joseph, Missouri, unbeknown to the Governor, however, for I did not know how I stood with the people at St. Joseph. I was just playing safety first. I met the Governor at the depot. He asked me what attitude I thought Frank James would take towards him for offering a reward and having Jesse killed. I told him “If Frank wanted to kill him for revenge, he surely would.”

He looked pale, but not half so pale as he did the day Frank surrendered. A heavy reward hanging over Frank James’ head, he made his way past the guards and sergeant-at-arms, stationed at the Governor’s mansion at Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri, and surrendered to Governor Crittenden in his office. On entering his office, Frank said:

“Is this Governor Crittenden?”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“This is Frank James. I came to surrender,” at the same time pulling two heavy dragoon pistols and handing them to the Governor. “Here are arms, Governor, but not all I have, nor will I give them up until I know you will give me protection.”

Frank told me afterwards that “Governor Crittenden’s face will never be whiter when he is dead than it was the day I surrendered.”

I identified Jesse James at St. Joseph, Missouri, to the Governor’s entire satisfaction. Since then it has been said that Jesse was still alive and that it was a wax figure that was buried, but this is all a lie.

There is one good act the James boys did while they were outlaws.

A southern widow woman some time soon after the war had mortgaged her farm to an old Redleg who had moved from Lawrence, Kansas, to Kansas City.

When the loan expired he drove out to see her and informed her that if she did not have the money by ten o’clock the next morning he would foreclose.

Soon after he had left, up rode Jesse and Frank James, and found the lady crying and taking on. They inquired what was wrong, and she related the whole story.

Frank said, “You send your son in the morning and tell the old Federal to bring all releases and all papers fully signed and you will pay him in full. Jesse and I will let you have the money.”

Next morning the boy went with the message, and in the evening out came the old Federal in his bus with his negro driver, drove up to the house, went in, and the lady paid him in full with cash, getting all releases and papers fixed up. The old man bowed and scraped and, tipping his hat, said, “Goodbye, lady,” and he and his “nigger” driver started back to Kansas City. When but a few hundred yards or so from the house and close to a ravine, Jesse and Frank held him up and relieved him of the money they had loaned the lady, together with all the rest he had for interest.

* * * * *

During the World War, in conversation with friends, I told them to take away from Germany her airplanes, gases and machine guns, and if it were possible to call Quantrell’s old band together, of which at no time were there over three hundred and fifty men, all told, under Todd, Poole, Yager, Anderson, Younger, Jarrett, Haller, Quantrell and myself, I could take these three hundred and fifty men and go to Berlin in a gallop, for history does not now and never will know the power there was in the Quantrell band. It has been given up long ago that they were the most fighting devils the world has ever known or ever will know.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Transcriber added six missing chapter references to the Table of Contents.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Many simple typographical errors were silently corrected, but several words that today would be considered misspelled have not been changed.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations.