Part 7

“Why don’t you kill him?”

Marmaduke said he was too sharp and cunning for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evil tidings were abroad, however--evil things that took wings and flew as birds. Some said from the first that Quantrell’s men were not Union men and some swore that no matter what kind of clothing they wore, those inside of said clothing were wolves. Shot evenly; that is to say, by experienced hands, in the head, the corpses of the first discovered ten awakened from their sleep the garrison along the Spring River. Smith’s execution stirred them to aggression, and the group of dead militiamen crossed continually upon the roadside, while it enraged it also horrified every cantonment or camp. Two hundred cavalrymen got quickly to horse and poured up from the rear after Quantrell. It was not difficult to keep on his track. Here a corpse and there a corpse, here a heap and there a heap--blue always, and blue continually--what manner of a wild beast had been sent out from the unknown to prey upon the militia?

At the Osage River the Federal pursuit, gathering volume and intensity as it advanced, struck Quantrell hard and brought him to an engagement south of the river. Too much haste, however, cost him dearly. The advance, being the smaller, had outridden the main army and was unsupported and isolated when attacked. Quantrell turned upon it savagely and crushed it at a blow. Out of sixty-six troopers he killed twenty. In those days there were no wounded. Before the main body came up he was over the Osage and away, and riding fast to encompass the immense prairie between the river and Johnstown. When scarcely over it, a flanking column made a dash at him coming from the west, killed Blunt’s horse and drove Quantrell to timber. Night fell and he rode out of sight and out of hearing. When he drew rein again it was at the farm of Judge Russell Hicks on the Sni, in Jackson County. The next morning at David George’s he disbanded for ten days, sending messengers out in all directions to announce his arrival and make known the rendezvous.

The ten days allotted by Quantrell for concentration purposes had not yet expired, but many of the reckless spirits, rapacious for air and exercise, could not be kept still. Poole, Ross and Greenwood made a dash for the German settlement of Lafayette County, and left some marks there that are not yet obliterated. Albert Cunningham, glorying in the prowess of a splendid manhood, and victor in a dozen combats against desperate odds, fell before the spring came, in an insignificant skirmish on the Harrisonville and Pleasant Hill road.

In the lull of military movements in Jackson County, Cass was to see the inauguration of the heavy Guerrilla work of 1863. Three miles west of Pleasant Springs, Younger and his comrades struck a blow that had the vigor of the olden days in it. The garrison at Pleasant Hill numbered three hundred, and from the garrison of Lieutenant Jefferson took thirty-two cavalrymen and advanced three miles towards Smith’s, on a scouting expedition. While Hulse and Noah Webster, two Guerrilas who seemed never to sleep and to be continually hanging about the flanks of the Federals, discovered Jefferson and reported his movements to the main body encamped at Parson Webster’s. Taking with him eight men, Joe Lee hurried to cut Jefferson off from Pleasant Hill. Younger, with eight more, was close up from the west. Lee had with him John Webster, Noah Webster, Sterling Kennedy, David Kennedy, William Hays, Perry Hays, Henry McAninch, James Marshall, Edward Marshall and Edward Hink. He was to gain the east end of the lane and halt there until Younger came up at its western extremity. Jefferson discovered Lee, however, and formed a line of battle in front of Smith’s, throwing some skirmishers forward and getting ready apparently for a fight, although afterwards it was reported that Lee’s men were mistaken for a portion of the garrison left behind at Pleasant Hill. Younger had further to go than he at first supposed, but was making all the haste possible, when Lee, carried away by the uncontrolable impulse of his men, charged down the lane from the east, at a furious rate. Jefferson held his troopers fair to their line, until the Guerrillas reached a carbine range, but could hold them no longer. A volley and a stampede and the wild race was on again. About a length ahead and splendidly mounted, William Hays led the Guerrillas. Shot dead, his horse fell from under him and crushed his senses out for half an hour. John and Noah Webster took Hays’ place through sheer superiority of horse flesh and forced the fighting, John killing three of the enemy as he ran and Noah, four. Noah’s pistols were empty, but he dashed alongside of the rearmost trooper and knocked him from his saddle with the butt of one of them, and seized another by the collar of his coat and dragged him to the ground. Both were dispatched. Too late to block the western mouth of the lane, Younger joined in the swift pursuit as it passed him to the left and added much to the certainty of the killing. Of the thirty-two, four alone escaped, and Jefferson was not among them. Hulse shot him running at a distance of fifty yards, and before he got to him he was dead.

Pleasant Hill was instantly evacuated. Not a Federal garrison remained in Cass, outside of Harrisonville, and the garrison there was as effectively imprisoned as if surrounded by the walls of a fortress. The Guerrillas rode at ease in every direction.

Younger and Lon Railey hung about the town for a week killing its pickets and destroying its foraging parties. Other bands in other directions gathered up valuable horses for future service and helped onward to the southern army troops of recruits who needed only pilots and protection to the Osage River.

Like Cunningham, the man who had fought as a lion in twenty different combats, was destined to fall in a sudden and unnoted skirmish. Returning northward in the rear of Quantrell, Lieutenant William Haller was attacked at sunset and fought till dark. He triumphed, but he fell. His comrades buried him and wept for him, and left him.

The battle of the year 1863 had commenced; formidable men were coming to the surface in every direction. Here and there sudden Guerrilla fires leaped up from many places about the State, and burned as if fed by oil, until everything in their reach had been consumed. It was a year of savage fighting and killing; it was the year of the torch and the black flag; it was the year when the invisible reaper reaped sorest in the ranks of the Guerrillas and gathered into harvest sheaves, the bravest of the brave.

Anderson, newly coming into sight, was flashing across the military horizon as a war comet. Left to himself and permitted to pursue his placid ways in peace, probably the amiable neighbor and working man would never have been developed into a tiger. But see how he was wrought upon! One day late in 1862, a body of Federal soldiers, especially enrolled and uninformed to persecute women and prey upon non-combatants, gathered up in a half day’s raid a number of demonstrative Southern girls whose only sin had been extravagant talk and pro-Confederacy cheering. They were taken to Kansas City and imprisoned in a dilapidated tenement close upon a steep place. Food was flung to them at intervals, and brutal guards sang ribald songs and used indecent language in their presence. With these women, tenderly nurtured and reared, were two of Will Anderson’s sisters. Working industriously in Kansas with his father, Anderson knew nothing of the real struggles of the war, nor of the imprisonment of his sisters. A quiet, courteous, fair-minded man who took more delight in a book than in a crowd, he had a most excellent name in Randolph County, Missouri, where he was born, and in Johnson County, Kansas, where he was living in 1862. Destiny had to deal with him, however. The old rickety, ramshackle building in which were the huddled women, did not fall down fast enough for the brutes who bellowed about it. At night and in the darkness it was undermined, and in the morning when a little wind blew upon it and it was shaken, it fell with a crash. Covered up, the faces disfigured, the limp, lifeless bodies were past all pain! Dead to touch, or kiss, or passionate entreaty, Anderson’s eldest sister was taken from the ruins a corpse. The younger, badly injured in the spine, with one leg broken and her face bruised and cut painfully, lived to tell the terrible story of it all to a gentle, patient brother kneeling before her at her bedside and looking up above to see if God were there.

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

“Anderson?” “Anderson?” “Who is this Anderson?” The Guerrillas asked one of another. “He kills them all. Quantrell spares now and then, and Poole and Blunt, and Yager, and Haller, and Jarrette, and Younger, and Gregg, and Todd, and Shepherd, and all the balance; but Anderson, never. Is he a devil in uniform?”

Jesse James Joins Command

Jesse James, younger brother of Frank James, had now emerged from the awkwardness of youth. He was scarcely thirteen years of age, while Frank was four years older. The war made them Guerrillas. Jesse was at home with his stepfather, Dr. Reuben Samuels, of Clay County. He knew nothing of the strife save the echoes of it now and then as it reached his mother’s isolated farm. One day a company of militia visited this farm, hanged Dr. Samuels to a tree until he was left for dead, and seized upon Jesse, a mere boy in the fields plowing, put a rope about his neck and abused him harshly, pricking him with sabers, and finally threatening him with death should they ever again hear of his giving aid or information to the Guerrillas. That same week his mother and sisters were arrested, carried to St. Joseph and thrown into a filthy prison, where the hardships they endured were dreadful. Often without adequate food, insulted by sentinels who neither understood nor cared to learn the first lesson of a soldier--courtesy to women--cut off from all communication with the world, the sister was brought near to death’s door from a fever which followed the punishment, while the mother--a high spirited and courageous matron--was released only after suffering and emaciation had aged her in her prime. Before Mrs. Samuels returned to her home, Jesse had joined Frank in the camp of Quantrell, who had preceded him a few years, and who had already, notwithstanding the briefness of his service, made a name for supreme and conspicuous daring. Jesse James had a face as smooth and innocent as the face of a school girl. The blue eyes, very clear and penetrating, were never at rest. His form, tall and finely moulded--was capable of great effort and great endurance. On his lips there was always a smile, and for every comrade a pleasant word or a compliment. Looking at the small white hands with their long, tapering fingers, it was not then written or recorded that they were to become with a revolver among the quickest and deadliest hands in the West. Frank was four years older, and somewhat taller than Jesse. Jesse’s face was something of an oval; Frank’s was long, wide about the forehead, square and massive about the jaw and chin, and set always in a look of fixed repose. Jesse laughed at many things; Frank laughed not at all. Jesse was light hearted, reckless, devil-may-care; Frank sober, sedate, a splendid man always for ambush or scouting parties.

Scott had to come back from the South and, eager for action, crossed the Missouri River at Sibley May 20, 1863, taking with him twelve men. Frank James and James Little led the advance. Beyond the river thirteen miles, and at the house of Moses McCoy, the Guerrillas camped, concocting a plan whereby the Federal garrison at Richfield, numbering thirty, might be got at and worsted.

Captain Sessions was in command at Richfield, and his grave had already been dug. Scott found a friendly citizen named Peter Mahoney who volunteered to do the decoy work. He loaded up a wagon with wood, clothed himself in the roughest and raggedest clothes he had, and rumbled away behind as scrawny and fidgety a yoke of oxen as ever felt a north wind in the winter bite their bones, or deceptive buckeye in the spring swell their body.

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

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

Mahoney did well, but Scott did better. He secreted his men three miles from Richfield, and near the crossing of a bridge. If an enemy came the bridge was a sentinel--its resounding planks, the explosion of a musket. Scott, with eight men, dismounted and lay close along the road. Gregg, with Fletch Taylor, James Little and Joe Hart, mounted and ready to charge, kept still and expectant fifty yards in the rear in ambush. Presently at the crossing a dull booming was heard, and the Guerrillas knew that Sessions had bit at the bait Mahoney offered. A sudden clinking along the line--the eight were in a hurry.

“Be still,” said Scott; “You cock too soon. I had rather have two cool men than ten impatient ones.”

The Federals came right onward; they rode along gaily in front of the ambuscade; they had no skirmishers out and they were doomed. The leading files were abreast of Scott on the right when he ordered a volley, and Sessions, Lieutenant Graffenstein and seven privates fell dead. What was left of the Federal array turned itself into a rout; Gregg, Taylor, Little, and Hart thundered down to the charge. Scott mounted again, and altogether and away at a rush, pursuers and pursued dashed into Richfield. The remnant of the wreck surrendered, and Scott, more merciful than many among whom he soldiered, spared the prisoners and paroled them.

House Occupied by Women Light of Love

Four miles from Independence, and a little back from the road leading to Kansas City, stood a house occupied by several women light of love. Thither regularly went Federal soldiers from the Independence garrison, and the drinking was deep and the orgies shameful. Gregg set a trap to catch a few of the comers and goers. Within the lines of the enemy much circumspection was required to make an envelopment of the house successful. Jesse James was chosen from among the number of volunteers and sent forward to reconnoiter the premises. Jesse, arrayed in coquettish female apparel, with his smooth face, blue eyes, and blooming cheeks, looked the image of a bashful country girl, not yet acquainted with vice, though half eager and half reluctant to walk a step nearer to the edge of its perilous precipice. As he mounted, woman fashion, upon a fiery horse, the wind blew all about his peach colored face the pink ribbons of a garish bonnet and lifted the tell-tale riding habit just enough to reveal instead of laced shoes or gaiters, the muddy boots of a born cavalryman. Gregg, taking twelve men, followed in the rear of James to within a half a mile of the nearest picket post and hid in the woods until word could be brought from the bagnio ahead. If by a certain hour the disguised Guerilla did not return to his comrades, the pickets were to be driven in, the house surrounded, and the inmates forced to give such information as they possessed, of his whereabouts.

Jesse James, having pointed out to him with tolerable accuracy the direction of the house, left the road, skirted the timber rapidly, leaped several ravines, floundered over a few marshy places and finally reached his destination without meeting a citizen or encountering an enemy. He would not dismount, but sat upon his horse at the fence and asked that the mistress of the establishment might come out to him. Little by little, and with many gawky protests and many a bashful simper, he told a plausible story of parental _espionage_ and family discipline. He, ostensibly a she, could not have a beau, could not go with the soldiers, could not sit with them late, nor ride with them, nor romp with them. She was tired of it all and wanted a little fun. Would the mistress let her come to her house occasionally and bring some of the neighborhood girls with her, who were in the same predicament? The mistress laughed and was glad. New faces to her were like new coin, and she put forth a hand and patted the merchantable thing upon the knee, and ogled her smiling mouth and girlish features gleefully. As the she-wolf and venturesome lamb separated, the assignation was assured. That night the amorous country girl, accompanied by three of her female companions, was to return, and the mistress, confident of her ability to provide lovers was to make known among the soldiers the attractive acquisition.

It lacked an hour of sunset when Jesse James got back to Gregg; an hour after sunset the Guerrillas, following hard upon the tracks made by the boy spy, rode rapidly on to keep the trysting place. The house was aglow with lights and jubilant with laughter. Drink abounded, and under cover of the clinking glasses, the men kissed the women. Anticipating the orgy of unusual attraction, twelve Federals had been lured out from the garrison and made to believe that barefoot maidens ran wild in the woods and buxom lasses hid for the hunting. No guards were out; no sentinels posted. Jesse James crept close to a window and peered in. The night was chilly and a large wood fire blazed upon a large hearth. All the company were in one room, five women and a dozen men. Scattered about, yet ready for the grasping, the cavalry carbines were in easy reach, and the revolvers handy about the persons. Sampson trusting everything to Delilah, might not have trusted so much if under the old dispensation there had been anything of bushwhacking.

Gregg loved everybody who wore the gray, and what exercised him most was the question just now of attack. Should he demand a surrender? Jesse James, the boy, said no to the veteran. Twelve men inside the house, and the house inside their own lines where reinforcements might be hurried quickly to them, would surely hold their own against eleven outside, if indeed they did not make it worse. The best thing to do was to fire through the windows and kill what could be killed by a carbine volley, then rush through the door and finish, under the cover of the smoke, horror and panic, those who should survive the broadside.

Luckily the women sat in a corner to themselves and close to a large bed fixed to the wall and to the right of the fireplace. On the side of the house the bed was on, two broad windows opened low upon the ground, and between the windows there was a door, not ajar, but not fastened. Gregg, with five men, went to the upper window, and Taylor, with four, took possession of the lower. The women were out of immediate range. The house shook; the glass shivered, the door was hurled backward, there was a hot stifling crash of revolvers; and on the dresses of the women and the white coverlet of the bed great red splotches. Eight out of the twelve fell dead or wounded at the first fire; after the last fire all were dead. It was a spectacle ghastly beyond any ever witnessed by the Guerrillas, because so circumscribed. Piled two deep the dead men lay, one with a glass grasped tightly in his stiffened fingers, and one in his shut hand the picture of a woman scantily clad. How they wept, the poor, painted things, for the slain soldiers, and how they blasphemed; but Gregg tarried not, neither did he make atonement. As they lay there heaped where they fell and piled together, so they lay still when he mounted and rode away.

* * * * *

In the three months preceding the Lawrence massacre, over two hundred citizens were killed and their property burned or stolen. In mid-winter houses were burned by the hundred and whole neighborhoods devastated and laid waste. Aroused as he had never been before, Quantrell meditated a terrible vengeance.

Lawrence Massacre

In the spring of 1863, Quantrell issued a proclamation to the Federal forces of Kansas that if they did not stop burning and robbing houses, killing old men and women, he would in return come to Lawrence at some unexpected time and paint the city blacker than hades and make its streets run with blood.

On Blackwater, in Johnson County, and at the house of Captain Purdee, Quantrell called the Guerrillas together for the Lawrence massacre. Todd, Jarrette, Blunt, Gregg, Trow, Anderson, Yager, Younger, Estes and Holt, all were there, and when the roll was called three hundred and ten answered promptly to their names. Up to the mustering hour Quantrell had probably not let his left hand know what his right hand had intended. Secrecy necessarily was to be the salvation of the expedition, if indeed there was any salvation for it. The rendezvous night was an August night--a blessed, balmy, mid-summer night--just such a night as would be chosen to give force to reflections and permit the secrets of the soul to escape. The sultry summer day had lain swarthily in the sun and panting; the sultry summer winds had whispered nothing of the shadowy woods, nothing of the babble of unseen brooks. Birds spoke goodbye to birds in the tree tops, and the foliage was filled with twilight. Quantrell sat grave and calm in the midst of his chieftains who were grouped about him. Further away where the shadows were, the men massed themselves in silent companies or spoke low to one another, and briefly. Something of a foreboding, occult though it was, and undefinable, made itself manifest. The shadow of a great tragedy was impending.