as good as accomplished. Cunningham and Clayton were to saunter
carelessly up to the table where the two players sat, and Todd,
Younger and Taylor up to the table where the four sat. The signal
to get ready was to be, “Come, boys, another drink,” and the
signal to fire was, “Who said drink?” Cole Younger was to give the
first signal in his deep resonant voice and Todd the last one.
After the first each Guerrilla was to draw a pistol and hold it
under the cape of his cavalry coat and after the last he was to
fire. Younger, as a special privilege, was accorded the right to
shoot the sixth man. Cole Younger’s deep voice broke suddenly in,
filling all the room and sounding so jolly and clear. “Come, boys,
another drink.” Neither so loud nor so caressing as Younger’s,
yet sharp, distinct, and penetrating, prolonging, as it were, the
previous proposition, and giving it emphasis, Todd exclaimed, “Who
said drink?” A thunderclap, a single pistol shot, and then total
darkness. The barkeeper dum in the presence of death, shivered and
stood still. Todd, cool as a winter’s night without, extinguished
every light and stepped upon the street. “Steady,” he said to his
men, “do not make haste.” So sudden had been the massacre, and so
quick had been the movements of the Guerrillas, that the pursuers
were groping for a clue and stumbling in their eagerness to find
it. At every street corner an alarm was beating.
Past the press in the streets, past the glare and the glitter of
the thicker lights, past patrol after patrol, Tod had won well his
way to his horses when a black bar thrust itself suddenly across
his path and changed itself instantly into a line of soldiers. Some
paces forward a spokesman advanced and called a halt.
“What do you want?” asked Todd.
“The countersign.”
“We have no countersign. Out for a lark, it’s only a square or two
further that we desire to go.”
“No matter if its only an inch or two. Orders are orders.”
“Fire; and charge men!” and the black line across the streets as
a barricade shrivelled up and shrank away. Four did not move,
however, nor would they ever move again, until, feet foremost,
their comrades bore them to their burial place. But the hunt was
hot. Mounted men were abroad, and hurrying feet could be heard
in all directions. Rallying beyond range and reinforcements,
the remnant of the patrol were advancing and opening fire. Born
scout and educated Guerrilla, Traber--judging from the shots
and shouts--knew what was best for all and dashed up to his
hard-pressed comrades and horses. Thereafter the fight was a
frolic. The picket on the Independence road was ridden over and
through, and the brush beyond gained without an effort; and the
hospitable house of Reuben Harris, where a roaring fire was blazing
and a hearty welcome extended to all was reached.
[Illustration: TODD AND YOUNGER WENT TO KANSAS CITY TO HAVE A
LITTLE FUN]
In a week or less it began snowing. The hillsides were white with
it. The nights were long, and the days bitter, and the snow did
not melt. On the 10th of February, 1863, John McDowell reported
his wife sick and asked Younger permission to visit her. The
permission was granted, the proviso attached to it being the order
to report again at 3 o’clock. The illness of the man’s wife was
a sham. Instead of going home, or even in the direction of home,
he hastened immediately to Independence and made the commander
there, Colonel Penick, thoroughly acquainted with Younger’s camp
and all its surroundings. Penick was a St. Joseph, Missouri, man,
commanding a regiment of militia. The echoes of the desperate
adventure of Younger and Todd in Kansas City had long ago reached
the ears of Colonel Penick, and he seconded the traitor’s story
with an eagerness worthy the game to be hunted. Eighty cavalry,
under a resolute officer, were ordered instantly out, and McDowell,
suspected and closely guarded, was put at their head as a pilot.
Younger had two houses dug in the ground, with a ridge pole to
each, and rafters. Upon the rafters were boards, and upon the
boards straw and earth. At one end was a fireplace, at the other a
door. Architecture was nothing, comfort everything.
The Federal officer dismounted his men two hundred yards from
Younger’s huts and divided them, sending forty to the south and
forty to the north. The Federals on the north had approached to
within twenty yards of Younger’s cabins when a horse snorted
fiercely and Younger came to the door of one of them. He saw the
approaching column on foot and mistaking it for a friendly column,
called out: “Is that you, Todd?” Perceiving his mistake, in a
moment, however, he fired and killed the lieutenant in command
of the attacking party and then aroused the men in the houses.
Out of each the occupants poured, armed, desperate and determined
to fight but never to surrender. Younger halted behind a tree
and fought fifteen Federals for several moments, killed another
who rushed upon him, rescued Hinton and strode away after his
comrades, untouched and undaunted. Fifty yards further Tom Talley
was in trouble. He had one boot off and one foot in the leg of the
other, but try as he would he could get it neither off nor on. He
could not run, situated as he was, and he had no knife to cut the
leather. He too called out to Younger to wait for him and to stand
by him until he could do something to extricate himself. Without
hurry, and in the teeth of a rattling fusilade. Younger stooped
to Talley’s assistance, tearing literally from his foot by the
exercise of immense strength the well-nigh fatal boot, and telling
him to make the best haste he could and hold to his pistols. Braver
man than Tom Talley never lived, nor cooler. As he jumped up in his
stocking feet, the Federals were within twenty yards, firing as
they advanced, and loading their breech loading guns as they ran.
He took their fire at a range like that and snapped every barrel of
his revolver in their faces. Not a cylinder exploded, being wet by
the snow. He thus held in his hand a useless pistol. About thirty
of the enemy had by this time outrun the rest and were forcing the
fighting. Younger called to his men to take to the trees and drive
them back, or stand and die together. The Guerrillas, hatless and
some of them barefoot and coatless, rallied instantly and held
their own. Younger killed two more of the pursuers here--five since
the fighting began--and Bud Wigginton, like a lion at bay, fought
without cover and with deadly effect. Here Job McCorkle was badly
wounded, together with James Morris, John Coger and five others.
George Talley, fighting splendidly, was shot dead, and Younger
himself, encouraging his men by his voice and example, got a bullet
through the left shoulder. The Federal advance fell back to the
main body and the main body fell back to their horses.
A man by the name of Emmet Goss was now beginning to have it
whispered of him that he was a tiger. He would fight, the
Guerrillas said, and when in those savage days one went out upon
the warpath so endorsed, be sure that it meant all that it was
intended to mean. Goss lived in Jackson County. He owned a farm
near Hickman’s mill, and up to the fall of 1861, had worked it
soberly and industriously. When he concluded to quit farming and
go fighting, he joined the Jayhawkers. Jennison commanded the
Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry, and Goss a company in this regiment.
From a peaceful thrifty citizen he became suddenly a terror to
the border. He seemed to have a mania for killing. Twenty odd
unoffending citizens probably died at his hand. When Ewing’s
famous General Order No. 11 was issued--that order which required
the wholesale depopulation of Cass, Bates, Vernon and Jackson
Counties--Goss went about as a destroying angel, with a torch in
one hand and a revolver in the other. He boasted of having kindled
the fires in fifty-two houses, of having made fifty-two families
homeless and shelterless, and of having killed, he declared, until
he was tired of killing. Death was to come to him at last by the
hand of Jesse James, but not yet.
Goss had sworn to capture or kill Cole Younger, and went to the
house of Younger’s mother on Big Creek for the purpose. She was
living in a double log cabin built for a tenant, by her husband
before his death, and Cole was at home. It was about eight o’clock
and quite dark. Cole sat talking with his mother, two little
sisters and a boy brother. Goss, with forty men, dismounted back
from the yard, fastened their horses securely, moved up quietly and
surrounded the house.
Between the two rooms of the cabin there was an open passageway,
and the Jayhawkers had occupied this before the alarm was given.
Desiring to go from one room to another, a Miss Younger found the
porch full of armed men. Instantly springing back and closing the
door, she shouted Cole’s name, involuntarily. An old negro woman--a
former slave--with extraordinary presence of mind, blew out the
light, snatched a coverlet from the bed, threw it over her head and
shoulders.
“Get behind me, Marse Cole, quick,” she said in a whisper.
And Cole, in a second, with a pistol in each hand, stood close up
to the old woman, the bed spread covering them both. Then throwing
wide the door, and receiving in her face the gaping muzzles of a
dozen guns, she querously cried out:
“Don’t shoot a poor old nigger, Massa Sogers. Its nobody but me
going to see what’s de matter. Ole missus is nearly scared to
death.”
Slowly, then, so slowly that it seemed an age to Cole, she strode
through the crowd of Jayhawkers blocking up the portico, and out
into the darkness and night. Swarming about the two rooms and
rumaging everywhere, a portion of the Jayhawkers kept looking for
Younger, and swearing brutally at their ill-success, while another
portion, watching the movements of the old negress, saw her throw
away the bed-spread, clap her hands exultantly and shout: “Run,
Marse Cole; run for your life. The debbils can’t catch you dis
time!”
Giving and taking a volley that harmed no one, Cole made his
escape without a struggle. As for the old negress, Goss debated
sometime with himself whether he should shoot her or hang her.
Unquestionably a rebel negro, she was persecuted often and often
for her opinion’s sake, and hung up twice by militia to make her
tell the whereabouts of Guerrillas. True to her people and her
cause, she died at last in the ardor of devotion.
The Trip North in 1863
On the return from Texas in the spring of 1863, Quantrell’s journey
in detail would read like a romance. The whole band, numbering
thirty, were clad in Federal uniforms, Quantrell wearing that of
a captain. Whenever questioned, the answer was, “A Federal scout
on special service.” Such had been the severity of the winter, and
such the almost dead calm in military quarters, that all ordinary
vigilance seemed to have relaxed and even ordinary prudence
forgotten.
South of Spring River a day’s march, ten militia came upon
Quantrell’s camp and invited themselves to supper. They were fed,
but they were also killed. Quantrell himself was the host. He
poured out the coffee, supplied attentively every little want,
insisted that those whose appetites were first appeased should eat
more, and then shot at his table the two nearest to him and saw the
others fall beneath the revolvers of his men, with scarcely so much
as a change of color in his face.
North of Spring River there was a dramatic episode. Perhaps
in those days every country had its tyrants. Most generally
revolutions breed monsters.
On the way to Missouri, they fell in with Marmaduke, who was
commanding a bunch of Bushwhackers in St. Claire County, Missouri.
He also had been wintering in Texas, and they camped one night near
us. Marmaduke was telling Quantrell about an old Federal captain
named Obediah Smith--what a devil he was and how he was treating
the Southern people. Quantrell laughed and asked:
“Why don’t you kill him?”
Marmaduke said he was too sharp and cunning for him.
Quantrell said, “If you will detail one or two of your men to come
with me and show me where he lives, I will kill him with his own
gun.”
It being agreed upon, the next morning Marmaduke called on Oliver
Burch to pilot Quantrell to where Smith lived. The following
morning all marched up to within about a mile or so of where
Captain Smith lived. Quantrell called his men together, chose Wash
Haller, Dick Burns, Ben Morrow, Dick Kenney, Frank James and myself
of his own command, and Oliver Burch of Marmaduke’s command. They
rode up to Captain Smith’s house, all dressed in Federal uniforms,
and called at the gate, “Hello.” Smith came walking out and
Quantrell saluted him and told him he was a scout for the Federals
from Colonel Penick’s army. Smith saw them in the same uniform as
himself and did not once think of their betraying him. They talked
for a few minutes when Quantrell said:
“Captain, that is a fine gun you have there; why don’t you furnish
us scouts with a gun like that.”
“This is a fine gun,” replied Smith, “it has killed lots of d----d
bushwhackers.”
Quantrell said, “Captain, would you mind letting me see that gun?”
Taking it from him, Quantrell began to look it over, and turning to
his pals, said, “Ain’t that a dandy?”
They all answered, “Yes, wish I had one.”
Quantrell kept fooling with the gun and, catching Captain Smith’s
eye off him, fired it at him, shooting him through the heart and
killing him instantly. Killing Smith was getting rid of one of the
worst men in Cedar County.
That day about ten o’clock, three militiamen came to the column and
were killed. A mile from where dinner was procured, five more came
out. These also were killed. In the dusk of the evening two more
were killed, and where we bivouacked, one was killed. The day’s
work counted eleven in the aggregate, and nothing of an exertion to
find a single soldier made, at that.
Evil tidings were abroad, however--evil things that took wings
and flew as birds. Some said from the first that Quantrell’s men
were not Union men and some swore that no matter what kind of
clothing they wore, those inside of said clothing were wolves. Shot
evenly; that is to say, by experienced hands, in the head, the
corpses of the first discovered ten awakened from their sleep the
garrison along the Spring River. Smith’s execution stirred them to
aggression, and the group of dead militiamen crossed continually
upon the roadside, while it enraged it also horrified every
cantonment or camp. Two hundred cavalrymen got quickly to horse and
poured up from the rear after Quantrell. It was not difficult to
keep on his track. Here a corpse and there a corpse, here a heap
and there a heap--blue always, and blue continually--what manner of
a wild beast had been sent out from the unknown to prey upon the
militia?
At the Osage River the Federal pursuit, gathering volume and
intensity as it advanced, struck Quantrell hard and brought him to
an engagement south of the river. Too much haste, however, cost
him dearly. The advance, being the smaller, had outridden the main
army and was unsupported and isolated when attacked. Quantrell
turned upon it savagely and crushed it at a blow. Out of sixty-six
troopers he killed twenty. In those days there were no wounded.
Before the main body came up he was over the Osage and away, and
riding fast to encompass the immense prairie between the river and
Johnstown. When scarcely over it, a flanking column made a dash at
him coming from the west, killed Blunt’s horse and drove Quantrell
to timber. Night fell and he rode out of sight and out of hearing.
When he drew rein again it was at the farm of Judge Russell Hicks
on the Sni, in Jackson County. The next morning at David George’s
he disbanded for ten days, sending messengers out in all directions
to announce his arrival and make known the rendezvous.
The ten days allotted by Quantrell for concentration purposes
had not yet expired, but many of the reckless spirits, rapacious
for air and exercise, could not be kept still. Poole, Ross and
Greenwood made a dash for the German settlement of Lafayette
County, and left some marks there that are not yet obliterated.
Albert Cunningham, glorying in the prowess of a splendid manhood,
and victor in a dozen combats against desperate odds, fell before
the spring came, in an insignificant skirmish on the Harrisonville
and Pleasant Hill road.
In the lull of military movements in Jackson County, Cass was to
see the inauguration of the heavy Guerrilla work of 1863. Three
miles west of Pleasant Springs, Younger and his comrades struck
a blow that had the vigor of the olden days in it. The garrison
at Pleasant Hill numbered three hundred, and from the garrison of
Lieutenant Jefferson took thirty-two cavalrymen and advanced three
miles towards Smith’s, on a scouting expedition. While Hulse and
Noah Webster, two Guerrilas who seemed never to sleep and to be
continually hanging about the flanks of the Federals, discovered
Jefferson and reported his movements to the main body encamped at
Parson Webster’s. Taking with him eight men, Joe Lee hurried to
cut Jefferson off from Pleasant Hill. Younger, with eight more,
was close up from the west. Lee had with him John Webster, Noah
Webster, Sterling Kennedy, David Kennedy, William Hays, Perry
Hays, Henry McAninch, James Marshall, Edward Marshall and Edward
Hink. He was to gain the east end of the lane and halt there until
Younger came up at its western extremity. Jefferson discovered
Lee, however, and formed a line of battle in front of Smith’s,
throwing some skirmishers forward and getting ready apparently for
a fight, although afterwards it was reported that Lee’s men were
mistaken for a portion of the garrison left behind at Pleasant
Hill. Younger had further to go than he at first supposed, but
was making all the haste possible, when Lee, carried away by the
uncontrolable impulse of his men, charged down the lane from the
east, at a furious rate. Jefferson held his troopers fair to their
line, until the Guerrillas reached a carbine range, but could hold
them no longer. A volley and a stampede and the wild race was on
again. About a length ahead and splendidly mounted, William Hays
led the Guerrillas. Shot dead, his horse fell from under him and
crushed his senses out for half an hour. John and Noah Webster took
Hays’ place through sheer superiority of horse flesh and forced
the fighting, John killing three of the enemy as he ran and Noah,
four. Noah’s pistols were empty, but he dashed alongside of the
rearmost trooper and knocked him from his saddle with the butt
of one of them, and seized another by the collar of his coat and
dragged him to the ground. Both were dispatched. Too late to block
the western mouth of the lane, Younger joined in the swift pursuit
as it passed him to the left and added much to the certainty of
the killing. Of the thirty-two, four alone escaped, and Jefferson
was not among them. Hulse shot him running at a distance of fifty
yards, and before he got to him he was dead.
Pleasant Hill was instantly evacuated. Not a Federal garrison
remained in Cass, outside of Harrisonville, and the garrison there
was as effectively imprisoned as if surrounded by the walls of a
fortress. The Guerrillas rode at ease in every direction.
Younger and Lon Railey hung about the town for a week killing its
pickets and destroying its foraging parties. Other bands in other
directions gathered up valuable horses for future service and
helped onward to the southern army troops of recruits who needed
only pilots and protection to the Osage River.
Like Cunningham, the man who had fought as a lion in twenty
different combats, was destined to fall in a sudden and unnoted
skirmish. Returning northward in the rear of Quantrell, Lieutenant
William Haller was attacked at sunset and fought till dark. He
triumphed, but he fell. His comrades buried him and wept for him,
and left him.
The battle of the year 1863 had commenced; formidable men were
coming to the surface in every direction. Here and there sudden
Guerrilla fires leaped up from many places about the State, and
burned as if fed by oil, until everything in their reach had been
consumed. It was a year of savage fighting and killing; it was the
year of the torch and the black flag; it was the year when the
invisible reaper reaped sorest in the ranks of the Guerrillas and
gathered into harvest sheaves, the bravest of the brave.
Anderson, newly coming into sight, was flashing across the military
horizon as a war comet. Left to himself and permitted to pursue
his placid ways in peace, probably the amiable neighbor and
working man would never have been developed into a tiger. But see
how he was wrought upon! One day late in 1862, a body of Federal
soldiers, especially enrolled and uninformed to persecute women
and prey upon non-combatants, gathered up in a half day’s raid a
number of demonstrative Southern girls whose only sin had been
extravagant talk and pro-Confederacy cheering. They were taken to
Kansas City and imprisoned in a dilapidated tenement close upon a
steep place. Food was flung to them at intervals, and brutal guards
sang ribald songs and used indecent language in their presence.
With these women, tenderly nurtured and reared, were two of Will
Anderson’s sisters. Working industriously in Kansas with his
father, Anderson knew nothing of the real struggles of the war, nor
of the imprisonment of his sisters. A quiet, courteous, fair-minded
man who took more delight in a book than in a crowd, he had a most
excellent name in Randolph County, Missouri, where he was born, and
in Johnson County, Kansas, where he was living in 1862. Destiny had
to deal with him, however. The old rickety, ramshackle building in
which were the huddled women, did not fall down fast enough for
the brutes who bellowed about it. At night and in the darkness it
was undermined, and in the morning when a little wind blew upon
it and it was shaken, it fell with a crash. Covered up, the faces
disfigured, the limp, lifeless bodies were past all pain! Dead to
touch, or kiss, or passionate entreaty, Anderson’s eldest sister
was taken from the ruins a corpse. The younger, badly injured
in the spine, with one leg broken and her face bruised and cut
painfully, lived to tell the terrible story of it all to a gentle,
patient brother kneeling before her at her bedside and looking up
above to see if God were there.
Soon a stir came along the border. A name new to the strife was
beginning to pass from band to band and about the camp fires to
have a respectful hearing.
“Anderson?” “Anderson?” “Who is this Anderson?” The Guerrillas
asked one of another. “He kills them all. Quantrell spares now and
then, and Poole and Blunt, and Yager, and Haller, and Jarrette, and
Younger, and Gregg, and Todd, and Shepherd, and all the balance;
but Anderson, never. Is he a devil in uniform?”
Jesse James Joins Command