went to Singleton’s barn, where Anderson camped, came back to say
that the Guerrillas had been there, had fed there, had rested
there, and had gone down into the timber beyond to hide themselves.
It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon.
Back from the barn, a long, high ridge lifted itself up from the
undulating level of the more regular country and broke the vision
southward. Beyond this ridge a wide, smooth prairie stretched
itself out, and still beyond this prairie, and further to the
south, was the timber in which the scouts said Bill Anderson was
hiding.
As Johnson rode towards the ridge, still distant from it a mile
or so, ten men anticipated him by coming up fair to view, and in
skirmishing order. The leader of this little band, Captain John
Thrailkill, had picked for the occasion David and John Poole, Frank
and Jesse James, Tuck Hill, Peyton Long, Ben Morrow, James Younger,
E. P. DeHart, Ed Greenwood and Harrison Trow. Next to Thrailkill
rode Jesse James, and next to Jesse, Frank. Johnson had need to
beware of what might be before him in the unknown when such giants
as these began to show themselves.
The Guerrillas numbered, all told, exactly two hundred and
sixty-two. In Anderson’s company there were sixty-one men, in
George Todd’s forty-eight, in Poole’s forty-nine, in Thomas Todd’s
fifty-four, and in Thrailkill’s fifty--two hundred and sixty-two
against three hundred.
As Thrailkill went forward to skirmish with the advancing enemy,
Todd came out of the timber where he had been hiding, and formed
a line of battle in an old field in front of it. Still further
to the front a sloping hill, half a mile away, arose between
Johnson and the Guerillas. Todd rode to the crest of this, pushing
Thrailkill well forward into the prairie beyond, and took his
position there. When he lifted his hat and waved it the whole
force was to move rapidly on. Anderson held the right, George Todd
joined to Anderson, Poole to George Todd, Thomas Todd to Poole, and
Thrailkill to Thomas Todd--and thus were the ranks arrayed.
The ten skirmishers quickly surmounted the hill and disappeared.
Todd, as a carved statue, stood his horse upon its summit. Johnson
moved right onward. Some shots at long range were fired and some
bullets from the muskets of the Federals reached to and beyond the
ridge where Todd watched, Peyton Long by his side. From a column of
fours Johnson’s men galloped at once into line of battle, right in
front, and marched so, pressing up well and calmly.
The advanced Guerillas opened fire briskly at last, and the
skirmishing grew suddenly hot. Thrailkill, however, knew his
business too well to tarry long at such work, and fell back towards
the ridge.
As this movement was being executed, Johnson’s men raised a shout
and dashed forward together and in a compact mass order formation,
ranks all gone. This looked bad. Such sudden exultation over a
skirmish wherein none were killed exhibited nervousness. Such a
spontaneous giving way of the body, even beyond the will of their
commander, should have manifested neither surprise nor delight and
looked ominous for discipline.
Thrailkill formed again when he reached Todd’s line of battle, and
Johnson rearranged his ranks and went towards the slope at a brisk
walk. Some upon the right broke into a trot, but he halted them,
cursed them, and bade them look better to their line.
Up the hill’s crest, however, a column of men suddenly rode into
view, halted, dismounted and seemed to be busy or confused about
something.
Inexperienced, Johnson is declared to have said to his adjutant:
“They will fight on foot--what does that mean?” It meant that the
men were tightening their saddle girths, putting fresh caps on
their revolvers, looking well to bridle reins and bridle bits,
and preparing for a charge that would have about it the fury of
a whirlwind. By and by the Guerrillas were mounted again. From a
column they transformed themselves into a line two deep and with a
double interval between all files. At a slow walk they moved over
the crest towards Major Johnson, now advancing at a walk that was
more brisk.
Perhaps it was now five o’clock. The September sun was low in the
west, not red nor angry, but an Indian summer sun, full yet of
generous warmth and grateful beaming. The crisp grass crinkled
under foot. A distance of five hundred yards separated the two
lines. Not a shot had been fired. Todd showed a naked front, bare
of skirmishers and stripped for a fight that he knew would be
murderous to the Federals. And why should they not stand? The black
flag waved alike over each, and from the lips of the leaders of
each there had been all that day only threats of extermination and
death.
Johnson halted his men and rode along his front speaking a few
calm and collected words. They could not be heard in Todd’s ranks,
but they might have been divined. Most battle speeches are the
same. They abound in good advice. They are generally full of such
sentences as this: “Aim low, keep cool, fire when you get loaded.
Let the wounded lie till the fight is over.”
But could it be possible that Johnson meant to receive the charge
of the Guerrillas at a halt! What cavalry books had he read?
Who had taught him such ruinous and suicidal tactics? And yet,
monstrous as the resolution was in a military sense, it had
actually been made, and Johnson called out loud enough to be heard
by the opposing force: “Come on, we are ready for the fight!”
The challenge was accepted. The Guerillas gathered themselves
together as if by a sudden impulse, and took the bridle reins
between their teeth. In the hands of each man there was a deadly
revolver. There were carbines, too, and yet they had never been
unslung. The sun was not high, and there was great need to finish
quickly whatever had need to be done. Riding the best and fastest
horses in Missouri, George Shepherd, Oll Shepherd, Frank Shepherd,
Frank Gregg, Morrow, McGuire, Allen Parmer, Hence and Lafe Privin,
James Younger, Press Webb, Babe Hudspeth, Dick Burnes, Ambrose
and Thomas Maxwell, Richard Kinney, Si and Ike Flannery, Jesse
and Frank James, David Poole; John Poole, Ed Greenwood, Al Scott,
Frank Gray, George Maddox, Dick Maddox, De Hart, Jeff Emery,
Bill Anderson, Tuck Hill, James Cummings, John Rupe, Silas King,
James Corum, Moses Huffaker, Ben Broomfield, Peyton Long, Jack
Southerland, William Reynolds, William and Charles Stewart, Bud
Pence, Nat Tigue, Gooly Robertson, Hiram Guess, Buster Parr,
William Gaw, Chat Rennick, Henry Porter, Arch and Henry Clements,
Jesse Hamlet, John Thrailkill, Si Gordon, George Todd, Thomas Todd,
William and Hugh Archie, Plunk Murray, Ling Litten, Joshua Esters,
Sam Wade, Creth Creek, Theodore Castle, John Chatman and three
score men of other unnamed heroes struck fast the Federal ranks as
if the rush was a rush of tigers. Frank James, riding a splendid
race mare, led by half a length, then Arch Clements, then Ben
Morrow, then Peyton Long and then Harrison Trow.
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.