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Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
bond for $50,000 to report at headquarters every two hours during
the day and be locked up at night.
“About the third day after I gave bond and after I was
thoroughly acquainted with the location of the soldiers I made my
escape through the back way, through the guard, and found my way
to a near-by friend by the name of Sullivan and got a horse and
saddle, went by Webb’s and got my pistols out of a hollow log back
of the barn where Mrs. Webb had hid them, and rode on to
Quantrell’s camp, arriving there about eleven o’clock that night. After
telling Quantrell how the soldiers and camps were located, and as
Younger had told him about six hours before, it was decided to make
the charge the next morning, and after a hard night’s riding we
struck Independence just a little before daylight on the morning of
August 11, 1862, surprised the camp, and nine hundred soldiers,
with the exception of the colonel, who was in command,
surrendered to two hundred and fifty of us. Colonel Buell was
quartered in a brick building with his body guard and it was not until
about nine o’clock that he surrendered. Buell lost about three
hundred killed, besides three hundred and seventy-five wounded.
We had a loss of only one man killed and four wounded. In
attempting to take the provost marshal, who tortured me so when I
was in prison, Kitt Child was shot and killed, making two men lost in
the attack, all told.
“In the skirmish I was badly cut up by a saber, but I got away
from them on foot, and so did Quantrell. While the colonel was
slashing at me I struck him with a heavy dragoon pistol and burst
his knee cap and he fell off his horse. This ended the fight. That
night we got together at camp and Quantrell came in on foot, and I
had to remount.
“If Quantrell’s men could have been decorated for that day’s
fight, and if at review some typical thing that stood for glory could
have passed along the ranks, calling the roll of the brave, there
would have answered modestly, yet righteously, Trow, Haller, Gregg,
Jarrette, Morris, Poole, Younger, James Tucker, Blunt, George
Shepherd, Yager, Hicks, George, Sim Whitsett, Fletch Taylor, John
Ross, Dick Burns, Kit Chiles, Dick Maddox, Fernando Scott, Sam
Clifton, George Maddox, Sam Hamilton, Press Webb, John Coger,
Dan Vaughn, and twenty others, some dead now, but dead in vain
for their country. There were no decorations, however, but there was
a deliverance. Crammed in the county jail, and sweltering in the
midsummer’s heat, were old men who had been pioneers in the
land, and young men who had been sentenced to die. The first
preached the Confederacy and it triumphant; the last to make it so,
enlisted for the war. These jailbirds, either as missionaries or
militants, had work to do.”
 The Lone Jack Fight

O NCE there stood a lone blackjack tree, taller than its

companions and larger than any near it. From this tree the
town of Lone Jack, in the eastern portion of Jackson
County, was named. On the afternoon of the 13th of August clouds
were seen gathering there. These clouds were cavalrymen.
Succoring recruits in every manner possible, and helping them on to
rendezvous by roads, or lanes, or water courses, horsemen
acquainted with the country kept riding continuously up and down. A
company of these on the evening of the 15th were in the village of
Lone Jack.

Major Emory L. Foster, doing active scouting duty in the region

round about Lexington, had his headquarters in the town. The
capture of Independence had been like a blow upon the cheek; he
would avenge it. He knew how to fight. There was dash about him;
he had enterprise. Prairie life had enlarged his vision and he did not
see the war like a martinet; he felt within him the glow of generous
ambition; he loved his uniform for the honor it had; he would see
about that Independence business—about that Quantrell living there
between the two Blues and raiding the West—about those gray
recruiting folks riding up from the South—about the tales of
ambuscades that were told eternally of Jackson County, and of all
the toils spread for the unwary Jayhawkers. He had heard, too, of
the company which halted a moment in Lone Jack as it passed
through, and of course it was Quantrell.
 COLE YOUNGER GOING TO INDEPENDENCE

It was six o’clock when the Confederates were there, and eight
o’clock when the Federal colonel, Colonel Foster, marched in, leading
nine hundred and eighty-five cavalrymen, with two pieces of Rabb’s
Indiana battery—a battery much celebrated for tenacious gunners
and accurate firing. Cockrell, who was in command, knew Foster
well; the other Confederates knew nothing of him. He was there,
however, and that was positive proof enough that he wanted to
fight. Seven hundred Confederates—armed with shotguns, horse
pistols, squirrel rifles, regulation guns, and what not—attacked nine
hundred and eighty-five Federal cavalrymen in a town for a position,
and armed with Spencer rifles and Colt’s revolvers, dragoon size.
There was also the artillery. Lone Jack sat quietly in the green of
emerald prairie, its orchards in fruit and its harvests goodly. On the
west was timber, and in this timber a stream ran musically along. To
the east the prairies stretched, their glass waves crested with
sunshine. On the north there were groves in which birds abounded.
In some even the murmuring of doves was heard, and an infinite
tremor ran over all the leaves as the wind stirred the languid pulse
of summer into fervor.
In the center of the town a large hotel made a strong
fortification. The house from being a tavern, had come to be a
redoubt. From the top the Stars and Stripes floated proudly—a
tricolor that had upon it then more of sunshine than of blood. Later
the three colors had become as four.
On the verge of the prairie nearest the town a hedge row stood
as a line of infantry dressed for battle. It was plumed on the sides
with tawny grass. The morning broke upon it and upon armed men
crouching there, with a strange barred banner and with guns at trail.
Here they waited, eager for the signal.
Joining Hays on the left was Cockrell and the detachments of
Hays, Rathburn and Bohannon. Their arms were as varied as their
uniforms. It was a duel they were going into and each man had the
gun he could best handle. From the hedgerow, from the green
growing corn, from the orchards and the groves, soldiers could not
see much save the flag flying skyward on the redoubt on the Cave
House.
 At five o’clock a solitary gunshot aroused camp and garrison,
and all the soldiers stood face to face with imminent death. No one
knew thereafter how the fight commenced. It was Missourian
against Missourian—neighbor against neighbor—the rival flags
waved over each and the killing went on. This battle had about it a
strange fascination. The combatants were not numerous, yet they
fought as men seldom fight in detached bodies. The same fury
extended to an army would have ended in annihilation. A tree was a
fortification. A hillock was an ambush. The cornfields, from being
green, became lurid. Dead men were in the groves. The cries of the
wounded came in from the apple orchards. All the houses in the
town were garrisoned. It was daylight upon the prairies, yet there
were lights in the windows—the light of musket flashes.
There is not much to say about the fight in the way of
description. The Federals were in Lone Jack; the Confederates had
to get them out. House fighting and street fighting are always
desperate. The hotel became a hospital, later a holocaust, and over
all rose and shone a blessed sun while the airy fingers of the breeze
ruffled the oak leaves and tuned the swaying branches to the sound
of a psalm.
The graycoats crept nearer. On east, west, north or south. Hays,
Cockrell, Tracy, Jackman, Rathburn or Hunter gained ground. Farmer
lads in their first battle began gawkies and ended grenadiers. Old
plug hats rose and fell as the red fight ebbed and flowed; the
shotgun’s heavy boom made clearer still the rifle’s sharp crack. An
hour passed, the struggle had lasted since daylight.
Foster fought his men splendidly. Wounded once, he did not
make complaint; wounded again, he kept his place; wounded a third
time he stood with his men until courage and endurance only
prolonged a sacrifice. Once Haller, commanding thirty of Quantrell’s
old men, swept up to the guns and over them, the play of their
revolvers being as the play of the lightning in a summer cloud. He
could not hold them, brave as he was. Then Jackman rushed at
them again and bore them backward twenty paces or more.
Counter-charged, they hammered his grip loose and drove him down
the hill. Then Hays and Hunter—with the old plug hats and wheezy
rifles—finished the throttling; the lions were done roaring.
Tracy had been wounded. Hunter wounded. Hays wounded,
Captains Bryant and Bradley killed, among the Confederates,
together with thirty-six others and one hundred and thirty-four
wounded. Among the Federals, Foster, the commander, was nigh
unto death; his brother, Captain Foster, mortally shot, died
afterwards. One hundred and thirty-six dead lay about the streets
and houses of the town, and five hundred and fifty wounded made
up the aggregate of a fight, numbers considered, as desperate and
bloody as any that ever crimsoned the annals of a civil war. A few
more than two hundred breaking through the Confederate lines on
the south, where they were weakest, rushed furiously into
Lexington, Haller in pursuit as some beast of prey, leaping upon
everything which attempted to make a stand between Lone Jack and
Wellington. Captain Trow, who was in this battle, narrates that at
one time during the battle, “I was forced to lie down and roll across
the street to save my scalp.”
A mighty blow seemed impending. Commanders turned pale,
and lest this head or that head felt the trip-hammer, all the heads
kept wagging and dodging. Burris got out of Cass County; Jennison
hurried into Kansas; the Guerrillas kept a sort of open house; and
the recruits—drove after drove and mostly unarmed—hastened
southward. Then the Federal wave, which had at first receded
beyond all former boundaries, flowed back again and inundated
Western Missouri. Quantrell’s nominal battalion, yielding to the
exodus, left him only the old guard as a rallying point. It was
necessary again to reorganize.
After the Guerrillas had reorganized they stripped themselves for
steady fighting. Federal troops were everywhere, infantry at the
posts, cavalry on the war paths. The somber defiance mingled with
despair did not come until 1864; in 1862 the Guerrillas laughed as
they fought. And they fought by streams and bridges, where roads
crossed and forked and where trees or hollows were. They fought
from houses and hay stacks; on foot and on horseback; at night
when the weird laughter of owls could be heard in the thickets; in
daylight, when the birds sang as they found sweet rest. The black
flag was being woven, but it had not yet been unfurled.
Breaking suddenly out of Jackson County, Quantrell raided
Shawneetown, Kansas, and captured its garrison of fifty militia. Then
at Olathe, Kansas, the next day, the right hand did what the left one
finished so well at Shawneetown; seventy-five Federals surrendered
there. Each garrison was patrolled and set free save seven from
Shawneetown; these were Jennison’s Jayhawkers and they had to
die. A military execution is where one man kills another; it is
horrible. In battle, one does not see death. He is there, surely—he is
in that battery’s smoke, on the crest of that hill fringed with the
fringe of pallid faces, under the hoofs of the horses, yonder where
the blue or the gray line creeps onward trailing ominous guns—but
his cold, calm eyes look at no single victim.
The seven men rode into Missouri from Shawneetown puzzled;
when the heavy timber along the Big Blue was reached and a halt
made, they were praying. Quantrell sat upon his horse looking at the
Kansans. His voice was unmoved, his countenance perfectly
indifferent as he ordered: “Bring ropes; four on one tree, three on
another.” All of a sudden death stood in the midst of them, and was
recognized. One poor fellow gave a cry as piercing as the neighing
of a frightened horse. Two trembled, and trembling is the first step
towards kneeling. They had not talked any save among themselves
up to this time, but when they saw Blunt busy with some ropes, one
spoke up to Quantrell: “Captain, just a word: the pistol before the
rope; a soldier’s before a dog’s death. As for me, I’m ready.” Of all
the seven this was the youngest—how brave he was.
The prisoners were arranged in line, the Guerrillas opposite to
them. They had confessed to belonging to Jennison, but denied the
charge of killing and burning. Quantrell hesitated a moment. His
blue eyes searched each face from left to right and back again, and
then he ordered: “Take six men, Blunt, and do the work. Shoot the
young man and hang the balance.”
The oldest man there, some white hair was in his beard, prayed
audibly. Some embraced. Silence and twilight, as twin ghosts, crept
up the river bank together. Blunt made haste, and before Quantrell
had ridden far he heard a pistol shot. He did not even look up; it
affected him no more than the tapping of a woodpecker. At daylight
the next morning a wood-chopper going early to work saw six stark
figures swaying in the river breeze. At the foot of another tree was a
dead man and in his forehead a bullet hole—the old mark.

QUANTRELL HANGS SIX MEN ON THE SNI

“After Quantrell hanged these men, the only time I was ever
scared during the war,” relates Captain Trow, “I had left camp one
night to visit a lady friend of mine, and a company of Federals got
after me, and in the chase I took to the woods and it was at the
place where Quantrell had hanged these men. My saddle girth broke
right there, but I held on to my horse. I thought the devil and all his
angels were after me, but I made it to the camp.”
 The March South in 1862

W INTER had come and some snow had fallen. There were
no longer any leaves; nature had nothing more to do
with the ambuscades. Bitter nights, with a foretaste of
more bitter nights to follow, reminded Quantrell that it was time to
migrate. Most of the wounded men were well again. All the
dismounted had found serviceable horses. On October 22, 1862, a
quiet muster on the banks of the Little Blue revealed at inspection
nearly all the old faces and forms, with a sprinkling here and there
of new ones. Quantrell counted them two by two as the Guerrillas
dressed in line, and in front rank and rear rank there were just
seventy-eight men. On the morrow they were moving southward.
That old road running between Harrisonville and Warrensburg was
always to the Guerrilas a road of fire, and here again on their march
toward Arkansas, and eight miles east of Harrisonville, did Todd in
the advance strike a Federal scout of thirty militia cavalrymen. They
were Missourians and led by a Lieutenant Satterlee. To say Todd is
to say Charge. To associate him with something that will illustrate
him is to put torch and powder magazine together. It was the old,
old story. On one side a furious rush, on the other panic and
imbecile flight. After a four-mile race it ended with this for a score:
Todd, killed, six; Boon Schull, five; Fletch Taylor, three; George
Shepherd, two; John Coger, one; Sim Whitsett, one; James Little,
one; George Maddox, one; total, twenty; wounded, none. Even in
leaving, what sinister farewells these Guerrillas were taking!

The second night out Quantrell stopped over beyond Dayton, in

Cass County, and ordered a bivouac for the evening. There came to
his camp here a good looking man, clad like a citizen, who had
business to transact, and who knew how to state it. He was not fat,
he was not heavy. He laughed a good deal, and when he laughed he
showed a perfect set of faultlessly white teeth. He was young. An
aged man is a thinking ruin; this one did not appear to think—he felt
and enjoyed. He was tired of dodging about in the brush, he said,
and he believed he would fight a little. Here, there and everywhere
the Federals had hunted him and shot at him, and he was weary of
so much persecution. “Would Quantrell let him become a Guerrilla?”
“Your name?” asked the chief. The recruit winced under the abrupt
question slightly, and Quantrell saw the start. Attracted by
something of novelty in the whole performance, a crowd collected.
Quantrell, without looking at the newcomer, appeared yet to be
analyzing him. Suddenly he spoke up: “I have seen you before.”
“Where?” “Nowhere.” “Think again. I have seen you in Lawrence,
Kansas.” The face was a murderer’s face now, softened by a
woman’s blush. There came to it such a look of mingled fear,
indignation and cruel eagerness that Gregg, standing next to him
and nearest to him, laid his hand on his revolver. “Stop,” said
Quantrell, motioning to Gregg; “do not harm him, but disarm him.”
Two revolvers were taken from his person and a pocket pistol—a
Derringer. While being searched the white teeth shone in a smile
that was almost placid. “You suspect me,” he said, so calmly that his
words sounded as if spoken under the vault of some echoing dome.
“But I have never been in Lawrence in my life.”
Quantrell was lost in thought again, with the strange man—
standing up smiling in the midst of the band—watching him with
eyes that were blue at times and gray at times, and always gentle.
More wood was put on the bivouac fire, and the flames grew ruddy.
In their vivid light the young man did not seem quite so young. He
had also a thick neck, great broad shoulders, and something of
sensuality about the chin. The back of his skull was bulging and
prominent. Here and there in his hair were little white streaks.
Because there was such bloom and color in his cheeks, one could
not remember these. Quantrell still tried to make out his face, to find
a name for that Sphinx in front of him, to recall some time or
circumstance, or place, that would make obscure things clear, and at
last the past returned to him in the light of a swift revealment. “I
have it all now,” he said, “and you are a Jayhawker. The name is
immaterial. I have seen you at Lawrence; I have seen you at Lane’s
headquarters; I have been a soldier myself with you; we have done
duty together—but I have to hang you this hour, by G—d.”
Unabashed, the threatened man drew his breath hard and strode a
step nearer Quantrell. Gregg put a pistol to his head. “Keep back.
Can’t you talk where you are? Do you mean to say anything?”
The old smile again; could anything ever drive away that smile—
anything ever keep those teeth from shining? “You ask me if I want
to talk, just as if I had anything to talk about. What can I say? I tell
you that I have been hunted, proscribed, shot at, driven up and
down, until I am tired. I want to kill somebody. I want to know what
sleeping a sound night’s sleep means.” Quantrell’s grave voice broke
calmly in: “Bring a rope.” Blunt brought it. “Make an end fast.” The
end was made fast to a low lying limb. In the firelight the noose
expanded. “Up with him, men.” Four stalwart hands seized him as a
vice. He did not even defend himself. His flesh beneath their grip felt
soft and rounded. The face, although all the bloom was there,
hardened viciously—like the murderer’s face it was. “So you mean to
get rid of me that way? It is like you, Quantrell. I know you but you
do not know me. I have been hunting you for three long years. You
killed my brother in Kansas, you killed others there, your comrades. I
did not know, till afterwards, what kind of a devil we had around our
very messes—a devil who prowled about the camp fires and shot
soldiers in the night that broke bread with him in the day. Can you
guess what brought me here?”
The shifting phases of this uncommon episode attracted all;
even Quantrell himself was interested. The prisoner—threw off all
disguise and defied those who meant to hang him. “You did well to
disarm me,” he said, addressing Gregg, “for I intended to kill your
captain. Everything has been against me. At the Tate house he
escaped; at Clark’s it was no better; we had him surrounded at
Swearington’s and his men cut him out; we ran him for two hundred
miles and he escaped, and now after playing my last card and
staking everything upon it, what is left to me? A dog’s death and a
brother unavenged.” “Do your worst,” he said, and he folded his
arms across his breast and stood stolid as the tree over his head.
Some pity began to stir the men visibly. Gregg turned away and
went out beyond the firelight. Even Quantrell’s face softened, but
only for a moment. Then he spoke harshly to Blunt, “He is one of
the worst of a band that I failed to make a finish of before the war
came, but what escapes today is dragged up by the next tomorrow.
If I had not recognized him he would have killed me. I do not hang
him for that, however, I hang him because the whole breed and race
to which he belongs should be exterminated. Sergeant, do your
duty.” Blunt slipped the noose about the prisoner’s neck, and the
four men who had at first disarmed him, tightened it. To the last the
bloom abode in his cheeks. He did not pray, neither did he make
plaint nor moan. No man spoke a word. Something like a huge
pendulum swung as though spun by a strong hand, quivered once or
twice, and then swinging to and fro and regularly, stopped forever.
Just at this moment three quick, hot vollies, and close together,
rolled up from the northern picket post, and the camp was on its
feet. If one had looked then at the dead man’s face, something like
a smile might have been seen there, fixed and sinister, and beneath
it the white, sharp teeth. James Williams had accepted his fate like a
hero. At mortal feud with Quantrell, and living only that he might
meet him face to face in battle, he had joined every regiment,
volunteered upon every scout, rode foremost in every raid, and
fought hardest in every combat. It was not to be. Quantrell was
leaving Missouri. A great gulf was about to separate them. One
desperate effort now, and years of toil and peril at a single blow,
might have been rewarded. He struck it and it cost him his life. To
this day the whole tragic episode is sometimes recalled and
discussed along the border.
The bivouac was rudely broken up. Three hundred Federal
cavalry, crossing Quantrell’s trail late in the afternoon, had followed
it until the darkness fell, halted an hour for supper, and then again,
at a good round trot, rode straight upon Haller, holding the rear of
the movement southward. He fought at the outpost half an hour.
Behind huge trees, he would not fall back until his flanks were in
danger. All the rest of the night he fought them thus, making six
splendid charges and holding on to every position until his grasp was
broken loose by sheer hammering. At Grand River the pursuit ended
and Quantrell swooped down upon Lamar, in Barton County, where a
Federal garrison held the courthouse and the houses near it. He
attacked but got worsted, and attacked again and lost one of his
best men. He attacked the third time and made no better headway.
He finally abandoned the town and resumed, unmolested, the road
to the south. From Jackson County to the Arkansas line the whole
country was swarming with militia and but for the fact that every
Guerrilla was clad in Federal clothing, the march would have been an
incessant battle. As it was, it will never be known how many isolated
Federals, mistaking Quantrell’s men for comrades of other regiments
not on duty with them, fell into a trap that never gave up their
victims alive. Near Cassville in Barry County, twenty-two were killed
thus. They were coming up from Cassville and were meeting the
Guerrillas, who were going south. The order given by Quantrell was
a most simple one, but a most murderous one. By the side of each
Federal in the approaching column a Guerrilla was to range himself,
engage him in conversation, and then, at a given signal, blow his
brains out. Quantrell gave the signal promptly, shooting the
militiaman assigned to him through the middle of the forehead, and
where, upon their horses, twenty-two confident men laughed and
talked in comrade fashion a second before, nothing remained of the
unconscious detachment, which was literally exterminated, save a
few who straggled in agony upon the ground, and a mass of terrified
and plunging horses. Not a Guerrilla missed his mark.
Younger Remains in Missouri With a
Small Detachment—Winter of 1862
and 1863

T HE remaining part of this chapter is the escapades of Cole

Younger, who stayed in Missouri the winter of 1862 and
1863, with quite a number of the old band who were not in
condition to ride when Quantrell and Captain Trow went south. But I
know them to be true.

Younger was exceedingly enterprising, and fought almost daily.

He did not seem to be affected by the severity of the winter, and at
night, under a single blanket, he slept often in the snow while it was
too bitter cold for Federal scouting parties to leave their comfortable
cantonments or Federal garrisons to poke their noses beyond the
snug surroundings of their well furnished barracks.
The Guerrilla rode everywhere and waylaid roads, bridges, lines
of couriers and routes of travel. Six mail carriers disappeared in one
week between Independence and Kansas City.
In a month after Quantrell arrived in Texas, George Todd
returned to Jackson County, bringing with him Fletch Taylor, Boon
Schull, James Little, Andy Walker and James Reed. Todd and
Younger again came together by the bloodhound instinct which all
men have who hunt or are hunted. Todd had scarcely made himself
known to the Guerrilla in Jackson County before he had commenced
to kill militiamen. A foraging party from Independence were
gathering corn from a field belonging to Daniel White, a most worthy
citizen of the vicinity, when Todd and Younger broke in upon it, shot
five down in the field and put the rest to flight. Next day, November
30, 1862, Younger, having with him Josiah and Job McCockle and
Tom Talley, met four of Jennison’s regiment face to face in the
neighborhood of the county poor house. Younger, who had an
extraordinary voice, called out loud enough to be heard a mile, “You
are four, and we are four. Stand until we come up.” Instead of
standing, however, the Jayhawkers turned about and rode off as
rapidly as possible, followed by Younger and his men. All being
excellently mounted, the ride lasted fully three miles before either
party won or lost. At last the Guerrillas began to gain and kept
gaining. Three of the four Jayhawkers were finally shot from their
saddles and the fourth escaped by superior riding and superior
running.
Todd, retaining with him those brought up from Arkansas, kept
adding to them all who either from choice or necessity were forced
to take refuge in the brush. Never happy except when on the war
path, he suggested to Younger and Cunningham a ride into Kansas
City west of Little Santa Fe, always doubtful if not dangerous
ground. Thirty Guerrillas met sixty-two Jayhawkers. It was a prairie
fight, brief, bloody, and finished at a gallop. Todd’s tactics, the old
yell and the old rush, swept everything—a revolver in each hand, the
bridle reins in his teeth, the horse at a full run, the individual rider
firing right and left. This is the way the Guerrillas charged. The sixty-
two Jayhawkers fought better than most of the militia had been in
the habit of fighting, but they could not stand up to the work at
revolver range. When Todd charged them furiously, which he did as
soon as he came in sight of them, they stood a volley at one
hundred yards and returned it, but not a closer grapple.
It was while holding the rear with six men that Cole Younger was
attacked by fifty-two men and literally run over. In the midst of the
melee bullets fell like hail stones in summer weather. John
McDowell’s horse went down, the rider under him and badly hit. He
cried out to Younger for help. Younger, hurt himself and almost
overwhelmed, dismounted under fire and rescued McDowell and
brought him safely back from the furious crash, killing as he went a
Federal soldier whose horse had carried him beyond Younger and
McDowell who were struggling in the road together. Afterwards
Younger was betrayed by the man to save whose life he had risked
his own.
Divided again, and operating in different localities, Todd,
Younger and Cunningham carried the terror of the Guerrilla name
throughout the border counties of Kansas and Missouri. Every day,
and sometimes twice a day, from December 3rd to December 18th,
these three fought some scouting party or attacked some picket
post. At the crossing of the Big Blue on the road to Kansas City—the
place where the former bridge had been burned by Quantrell—Todd
surprised six militiamen and killed them all and then hung them up
on a long pole, resting it, either end upon forks, just as hogs are
hung in the country after being slaughtered. The Federals, seeing
this, began to get ready to drive them away from their lines of
communication. Three heavy columns were sent out to scour the
country. Surprising Cunningham in camp on Big Creek, they killed
one of his splendid soldiers, Will Freeman, and drove the rest of the
Guerrillas back into Jackson County.
Todd, joining himself quickly to Younger, ambuscaded the
column hunting him, and in a series of combats between Little Blue
and Kansas City, killed forty-seven of the pursuers, captured five
wagons and thirty-three head of horses.
There was a lull again in marching and counter marching as the
winter got colder and colder and some deep snow fell. Christmas
time came, and the Guerrillas would have a Christmas frolic. Nothing
bolder or braver is recorded upon the records of either side in the
Civil War than this so-called Christmas frolic.
Colonel Henry Younger, father of Coleman Younger, was one of
the most respected citizens of Western Missouri. He was a stalwart
pioneer of Jackson County, having fourteen children born to him and
his noble wife, a true Christian woman. A politician of the old school,
Colonel Younger was for a number of years a judge of the county
court of Jackson County, and for several terms was a member of the
state legislature. In 1858, he left Jackson County for Cass County
where he dealt largely in stock. He was also an extensive farmer, an
enterprising merchant and the keeper of one of the best and most
popular livery stables in the West, located at Harrisonville, the
County seat of Cass County. His blooded horses were very superior,
and he usually had on hand for speculative purposes amounts of
money ranging from $6,000 to $10,000. On one of Jennison’s
periodical raides in the fall of 1862, he sacked and burned
Harrisonville. Colonel Younger, although a staunch Union man, and
known to be such, was made to lose heavily. Jennison and his
officers took from him $4,000 worth of buggies, carriages and hacks
and fifty head of blooded horses worth $500 each. Then the balance
of his property that was perishable and not movable, was burned.
The intention was to kill Colonel Younger, on the principle that dead
men tell no tales, but he escaped with great difficulty and made his
way to Independence. Jennison was told that Colonel Younger was
rich and that he invariably carried with him large amounts of money.
A plan was immediately laid to kill him. Twenty cut-throats were
organized as a band, under a Jayhawker named Bailey, and set to
watch his every movement. They dogged him from Independence to
Kansas City and from Kansas City down to Cass County. Coming
upon him at last in an isolated place within a few miles of
Harrisonville, they riddled his body with bullets, rifled his pockets
and left his body stark and partially stripped by the roadside.
Eight hundred Federals held Kansas City, and on every road was
a strong picket post. The streets were patrolled continually, and
ready always for an emergency. Horses saddled and bridled stood in
their stalls.
Early on the morning of December 25th, 1862, Todd asked
Younger if he would like to have a little fun. “What kind of fun?” the
latter inquired. “A portion of the command that murdered your
father are in Kansas City,” said Todd, “and if you say so we will go
into the place and kill a few of them.” Younger caught eagerly at the
proposition and commenced at once to get ready for the enterprise.
Six were to compose the adventuresome party—Todd, Younger, Abe
Cunningham, Fletch Taylor, Zach Traber and George Clayton. Clad in
the uniform of the Federal cavalry, carrying instead of one pistol,
four, they arrived about dusk at the picket post on the Westport and
Kansas City road. They were not even halted. The uniform was a
passport; to get in did not require a countersign. They left the
horses in charge of Traber, bidding him do the best he could do if
the worst came to the worst.
The city was filled with revelry. All the saloons were crowded.
The five Guerrillas, with their heavy cavalry overcoats buttoned
loosely about them, boldly walked down Main Street and into the
Christmas revelry. Visiting this saloon and that saloon, they sat knee
to knee with some of the Jennison men, some of Jennison’s most
blood-thirsty troopers, and drank confusion over and over again to
the cut-throat Quantrell and his bushwhacking crew.
Todd knew several of the gang who had waylaid and slain
Colonel Younger, but hunt how he could, he could not find a single
man of them. Entering near onto midnight an ordinary drinking place
near the public square, six soldiers were discovered sitting at two
tables playing cards, two at one and four at another. A man and a
boy were behind the bar. Todd, as he entered, spoke low to Younger.
“Run to cover at last. Five of the six men before you were in
Bailey’s crowd that murdered your father. How does your pulse feel?”
“Like an iron man’s. I feel like I could kill the whole six myself.”
They went up to the bar, called for whiskey and invited the card
players to join. They did so.
If it was agreeable, the boy might bring their whiskey to them
and the game could go on.
“Certainly,” said Todd, with purring of a tiger cat ready for a
spring, “that’s what the boy is here for.”
Over their whiskey the Guerrillas whispered. The killing now was
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.

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

O N 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

J ESSE 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
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