Wildwood Boys (22 page)

Charley Hart

One morning the Vaughns invited the Anderson girls to accompany
them to Kansas City to get supplies and they excitedly accepted. Not
until they’d gone did it occur to Bill that the Vaughns might intend to
instruct his sisters in the arts of smuggling. He thought about catching up to their wagon and safeguarding them through the day, but
when he shared the idea with Finley, the man smiled and shook his
head.

“I used to argue with them girls they ought have a man along,”
Finley said, “but they won’t hear of an escort. They say a man only
attracts the wrong kind of Yank attention to them. I reckon they’re
right. They anyhow seem to know what they’re doing, don’t they?
I’ll wager there’s nobody, woman

or
man, has snuck more powder
and ball out of K.C. than them.”

Finley’s assurance did not fully ease Bill’s misgiving but he
decided against going after them. To occupy himself he saddled Edgar
Allan and rode with the dogs out to the woodland clearing to practice
with the Navy. The sun was high and hot and a thin haze of yellow
dust hung over the grass. Honeybees hovered at the wildflowers.

He’d been shooting for half an hour when the dogs suddenly
jumped to their feet where they’d been lying under an oak. Their
napes roached and they growled deep and stared hard into the dense
woods on the far side of the clearing. A rider emerged from the trees,
putting his roan horse forward at a walk. Bill had just reloaded the
Colt and held it loosely by his leg. Not until the man came into the
brighter light away from the high trees did Bill see he was wearing
Federal blue.

The dogs were growling and pacing from side to side—and then the
big Boo dog went streaking out toward the approaching horseman.
The other dogs stood fast. The rider reined up as Boo closed in, barking and harrying the horse from one side and then the other. The horse
stood under tight rein and seemed altogether indifferent. The rider
regarded Boo as if considering his degree of nuisance. Then the reins
abruptly slackened and the horse struck like a snake—clamping its
teeth in the dog’s hide and snatching him up and slinging him
through the air. The Boo dog lit in a yelping tumble and scrabbled to
his feet, legs splayed. He shook his head—perhaps to clear it, perhaps to rid it of any foolish notion to try another attack—and then
made his limping way back to Bill.

The fur on Boo’s back was dark with blood where he had been
bitten and his eyes were largely white. The other dogs smelled his
blood and fear and whimpered lowly. “I don’t blame you all,” Bill
said. “That’s a killer.”

The bluecoat had put the horse forward again and the dogs
growled and drew back as he closed to within a few yards of Bill.

A surgery

 

“I should have hallooed you and told you to keep those curs off
Charley,” the bluecoat said. “The last dog that tried to bite him got
his head kicked open. I’d say yours is lucky he can still walk.”

 

“I’d say he’s probably not feeling all that lucky,” Bill said.

 

The big roan had a crooked yellow blaze on its face. The animal
blew hard and stamped the ground and regarded Bill with fierce
amber eyes. Bill had never known a horse to snatch up a dog and
throw it. The bluecoat carried a holstered Army Colt and a smaller
Navy tucked into his belt. He wore a black Kossuth hat with one
side of the brim pinned up and a bright U.S. Cavalry badge of
crossed swords fixed to the front of the crown. His shoulder straps
showed captain’s bars. He was lean and youthful, cleanshaven but
for a sparse mustache. Lank brown hair hung from under his hat.

 

Bill Anderson did not for a moment suspect that the Yankee was
alone. “I’m surprised that horse ain’t killed you and ate you,” he
said. “Hope you didn’t pay a whole lot for him.” He was squinting
so the Fed might not see his eyes scouting the woods beyond for sign
of the other soldiers.

 

“Oh, the price was right,” the captain said. He patted the animal’s neck. “Got him from a man in Independence who’d been bit by
him once too often and was ready to shoot him for stewmeat. He’s
pretty good with me, though.” His eyes cut over to Edgar Allan
where the black grazed under the hickory he was tethered to. “I used
to have a black myself. Real pretty mare. Only had one eye but she
could run like a scalded dog and she was brave as a lion.”

 

“Why’d you get rid of her?” Bill said. He could think of no reason for Yankee cavalry to be in this part of the woods except they
suspected the Vaughn property for a guerrilla station.

 

“Somebody shot her,” the captain said. He seemed amused with
this game of showing himself alone while his men hid in the trees.

 

“Name’s Hart,” the bluecoat said. “Captain Charley Hart. May
I inquire after yours, sir?”

 

“Anderson,” Bill said. “William T. Gave your horse your own
name, hey?”

 

The bluecoat smiled. “Vanity. Damnable fault.”

 

“Don’t often see anybody this far off the main road,” Bill said.
He was glad for the ready Colt in his hand.

 

“Guess you don’t,” Hart said. “But then if you go seeking after
bushwhackers, you have to go where the bushwhackers are said to
be.” He cast a slow look around. “You wouldn’t happen to know of
any bushwhackers hiding out nearabouts, would you?”

 

Bill shook his head. “Surely don’t.”

 

Hart appraised him from hat to boot toes. “I’ve been hunting
guerrillas the best part of a year and I’ve come to have a sense about
them. I can tell a bushwhacker just by looking at him.” He leaned
out from the saddle and spat. Then fixed Bill with a direct look.
“And I have to say . . . my sense tells me you’re not one.”

 

Bill affected an amused chuckle, releasing a held breath. “Well,
you got a good sense there, because I ain’t.”

 

“When I heard shooting over here I thought it might be bushwhackers waylaying innocents.”

 

“Nope—just me waylaying knotholes.”

 

Hart looked at the tree twenty yards away whose several knots
had been serving as Bill’s targets. One of the knots was big as a dinner plate, the others about the size of saucers—and all of them now
battered to pulpy splintery depressions in the tree trunk. “It would
appear you’re a marksman, William T.”

 

“I sometimes hit what I aim at,” Bill said.

 

Hart smiled. “I wonder now, would you be interested in some
quick sport before I take my leave?” He pointed at a persimmon tree
a few yards to the side of the oak. “A dollar, even odds, says you
miss one before I do.” He drew the Navy and held it uncocked on his
thigh. “Six shots to a turn. What say you?” The man’s mien was
entirely amiable.

 

Bill turned to regard the persimmon tree and give himself a
moment to consider things. If he agreed to the match, he’d soon
enough be standing there with an empty gun. If he refused, he’d
rouse the Yank’s suspicions. Then he realized the folly of his reasoning. If they wanted to kill him they could have done it already. Marksmen in the trees surely had their sights on him this minute and were
just waiting for the captain’s signal. But the captain hadn’t given it.
Most likely the man simply fancied himself a deadeye and wanted to
show off for his hidden troopers.

 

“Silver dollar,” Bill said, turning back to the Yankee. “No
paper.”

 

“It’s a bet,” Hart said, and grinned wide. He gestured for Bill to
shoot first.

 

Bill squared himself and cocked the Navy. The orange persimmons were easy enough to see but much smaller targets than the oak
knots. A persimmon vanished off the tree with each of his first five
shots, the flat reports absorbing into the dense woods and the high
indifferent sky. But his sixth round left a visible portion of fruit on
the stem. Bill looked at Hart and asked if it was a hit or a miss. Hart
asked what he wanted to call it. “Half a hit,” Bill said, and the bluecoat laughed and said that was all right with him.

 

Hart didn’t even dismount. He leveled the Navy and fired six
rounds just as fast as he could cock and shoot and six persimmons
vanished from their stems entirely. He smiled down on Bill from
under the rising pall of gunsmoke and said, “That’s one silver dollar
somebody owes me.”

 

Bill dug out a dollar and handed it up to him. Hart slipped the
coin into his jacket and tucked the emptied Navy back in his belt.

 

Bill flicked the burnt primer from the Navy’s chambers and blew
out the residue ash of the cartridge paper. He took several cartridges
from his coat pocket and was about to begin reloading when he
heard the double-cock of a revolver hammer. He looked up to see
the Army Colt pointed squarely at his face and Hart glowering
behind it.

 

“Thought you had me fooled, didn’t you, bushwhacker?” Eyes,
voice, everything of Hart now exuding malice.

 

“Hey Captain, I already said, I ain’t no guerrilla.”

 

“Liar!”
Hart said. “God abhors a liar and so do I. I knew you for
a bushwhacker the minute I laid eyes on you.”

 

A sudden tightness in his belly, a furious need to piss. “I swear to
you I’m not,” he said.

 

“You
swear,
” Hart said sardonically. “You’ll die with the lie on
your lips, damn your soul. Suck your last breath, bushwhacker.”

 

He gaped into the black pistolmouth and raised his hands as if he
would fend the bullet.

 

The Colt flinched.
“Bang!”

 

He staggered backward, so fully expecting to be shot that for an
instant he was sure he had been.

 

Hart was swaying in the saddle with laughter. He waved the Colt
over his head and horsemen materialized from the shadowed woods
and hupped their mounts forward at a lope, a dozen of them, some
in Federal blue and the others wearing the unmistakable guerrilla
shirt, all of them laughing, and he saw that among them were his
brother and the Berry boys.

 

Jim Anderson swung down off his mount and slapped him on the
shoulder, grinning under his thick mustache. He raised a hand
toward Hart and said, “Well Billy, I guess you’ve met Captain
Quantrill.”

The Yankee uniforms had come from prisoners taken two weeks ago
at Independence. They’d proved a fine means for uncovering false
southern sympathizers among the citizenry. Some of the local farmers who professed to be secessionist would gladden at the sight of
bluejackets and immediately proffer food and information. The
bushwhackers delighted in the look on a man’s face in the moment
he realized he was confessing his perfidy to the very men he would
betray. Minutes later the traitor would be hanging from a tree
branch and done forever with duplicity.

Bill learned these things as they rode to the Vaughn place. His
brother introduced him to Jimmy Vaughn, brother to Annette and
Hazel, and Bill took a fast liking to him. The dogs trotted close by
Edgar Allan, familiar with most of these men from past acquaintance
but still growling nervously whenever the distance narrowed
between them and Quantrill’s fearsome horse. Bill himself was still
chagrined over the joke Quantrill played on him at the clearing. He’d
been trying not to let it show, but his brother had detected his pique
and whispered to him not to be blackassed, that these men were
always pulling tricks on each other, and anybody who chafed too
much at being the butt of a joke today would surely be the butt of
another one tomorrow.

Among the men of this small party was seventeen-year-old Tyler
Burdette, whose elbow had been shattered by a Fed rifle ball during
a skirmish ten days ago. His comrades had done what they could for
the wound, but it was a bad one and had worsened in the following
days. The nearest doctor to them was in Westport, so Quantrill had
set out to take the boy there, leaving the company under George
Todd’s command. The boy’s elbow was now black and bloated bigger than a knee. It smelled of rot and Burdette was afire with fever
and every man knew there was nothing for it but amputation.
Quantrill had decided on the Vaughn place for doing it. They had
been feeding the boy on whiskey all morning and he was now stupendously drunk. He rode with his head lolling, softly singing “Barbara Allen.”

Finley and Black Josh greeted them with backslaps and japes. They
helped to ease Burdette off his horse but the whiskey had made rubber of the boy’s legs and they had to carry him into the stable.
Quantrill asked after the girls and Black Josh said they had not yet
come back from Kansas City and likely wouldn’t until late afternoon.
Finley set an iron poker in the fire and bellowed up the heat. Burdette still singing in a slur as they laid him on the floor and placed a
flat oak slab under his arm and stripped the wound of its filthy
bandage. Black Josh produced a broadax sharpened to a shining
edge. Quantrill was prepared to do the job himself, but Dave Pool—
a big-shouldered man whose mouth was wholly obscured in the wild
black growth of his beard and who’d been a hewer for a time—said
he was better practiced for the task, and Quantrill deferred to him.

As Pool rolled up his sleeves he carefully examined Burdette’s
arm and agreed with Quantrill that the infection had spread so much
that no portion of the limb could be saved. The detachment would
have to be made as near to the shoulder as possible. When Finley
said the iron was ready, a beefy redhaired man named Coleman
Younger, cleanshaved but for chinwhiskers, tightened his grip on the
doomed arm stretched across the oak slab. Butch Berry held fast to
Tyler’s head, Jimmy Vaughn sat his full weight on the boy’s legs, and
a moonfaced man named Will Haller held down his good arm. Pool
set his feet and spat into his palms and hefted the ax amid the smells
of stock droppings and mansweat and Burdette’s necrotic wound,
amid the sounds of Tyler’s drunken singing and horse snortings and
the huff of the firebellows where Finley stood watching and ready
with a rag-wrapped grip on the poker.