Wildwood Boys (23 page)

The axhead described a smooth overhead arc and

whunked
into
the board and Tyler Burdette screamed as his arm came off in Cole
Younger’s hands. Quick bright blood snaked from the sudden stump
and Finley swooped with the blazing poker and slapped it to the
wound with a great smoking hiss that reeked of searing flesh and
sealed off the arteries. Burdette passed out in mid-shriek.

They coated the raw stump with grease and carefully bandaged it
and then several men carried Burdette off to the house to put him in
an upstairs bedroom. Quantrill clapped Pool on the back for a job
well done. Cole Younger combed his chinwhiskers with his fingers,
said it damn sure was a good job. He said he’d once known a man to
amputate a friend’s mangled arm with an ax, but he was so nervous
about doing it that for every drink he gave his friend to get him ready
he took a drink himself. “Man got so drunk,” Younger said, “that
when he finally went to chop the arm off he chopped off a good part
of the shoulder too. His friend just laid there cussing him for the
half-minute it took him to bleed to death. It wasn’t the handiest
show of doctorfying I ever saw.”

He passed the severed arm to Black Josh and told him to get rid
of it. Joshua said he’d bury it in the garden. “It help the flowers grow
pretty on its own grave,” he said.

Tales of Independence

The guerrillas built cookfires behind the stable, killed and dressed a
dozen chickens and roasted them on spits, baked yams in a covered
pit of coals. Bill and Jim Anderson and the Berry boys were joined by
Jimmy Vaughn as they sat to their dinner in the shade of a tree. Jim
and the Berrys were avid to tell Bill of their adventures with the
bushwhackers these past weeks.

They’d gone with Todd and Gregg to join Quantrill near Independence where a Confederate cavalry company had enlisted the
guerrillas’ help to assault the Federals occupying the town. The main
Yankee camp was just outside the town, but the Fed headquarters
was in a bank building on the main square and Quantrill’s company
was assigned to take it.

“We hit the town before sunup,” Butch Berry said. “Went galloping down the street shooting at everydamnthing and howling to
raise hell.”

“This whitehair bucko is a God-gifted rebel yeller, I mean to tell
you,” Jimmy Vaughn said to Bill, pointing his thumb at Ike. “I was
riding next to him and his yells almost made me dirty my pants. I
thought some wild Indian had snuck up beside me.”

Ike Berry grinned proudly. “Raised some neck hairs, didn’t I?
Gregg says there ain’t a Yankee been born who can do a right rebel
yell. Says it has to raise from a southern soul.”

The Yankees in the bank knew they were trapped, but the building was a solid fortress and for a time they made a fight of it.

Of truth and Quantrill

 

“We must of fired a thousand rounds into that damn bank,” Ike
said. “The powdersmoke in the streets was thick as fog. The Yanks
were on the second floor and shooting with muzzleloaders. They
could only get off about one round for every dozen of ours, and they
couldn’t take any aim at all, we were pouring so much fire at them.
But they were tucked in that building like a turtle in its shell and all
we were doing was tapping on it.”

 

Quantrill got frustrated by the waste of ammunition, by the need
to dismount and take cover. “He doesn’t like it when we have to get
off the horses,” Jimmy Vaughn said. “The captain’s way is to fall on
the enemy fast and hard and then make away into the wildwood just
as quick.”

 

Quantrill finally called out to the Fed commander to surrender or
he’d burn the building and every man in it. “The Yanks waved a
white flag from a window and hollered out that they didn’t want to
burn but they didn’t want to surrender to us either,” Ike said.
“Quantrill looked around at us like he couldn’t believe his ears. So
he hollers up at the Fed, ‘Well then, I guess all that’s left is
we
surrender to
you
? How would
that
be?’ ”

 

The Yanks were willing to surrender, Jimmy Vaughn explained,
but only to an officer of the regular army. They were afraid Quantrill
would shoot them if they gave up to him. Back in spring the Feds had
declared a no-quarter war and had been executing most of the guerrillas who fell into their hands, so they naturally expected Quantrill
to do to them in kind.

 

“
Would
he have killed them?” Bill said.

 

Jimmy Vaughn shrugged. “Sometimes he does and sometimes he
doesn’t. When his blood’s up he’ll quick enough fly the black flag,
but sometimes he takes prisoners to try to trade for some of our boys
the Feds are holding.”

 

On this occasion Quantrill wasn’t of a mind to argue terms of
surrender with a bunch of trapped Yankees. He told them they had
two minutes to come out with their hands high or he’d put torches to
the place. Then a Confederate colonel named Thompson showed up
and promised the Yanks they wouldn’t be shot, so they gave up to
him and were marched off to a holding pen.

 

Not so lucky was the Yankee officer who’d tried to hide in a
hotel down the street. Butch Berry and Jimmy Vaughn were crossing
to the hotel when they heard somebody yell “Look out below!” and
a body landed two feet in front of them. “It was a damned Federal
captain,” Butch said. “Some of the boys were searching the place to
see what they might find worth taking and they found him. His
throat been cut and both his ears gone and the most part of his belly
was missing.

 

“The men who’d flung him from the upstairs window were looking down and laughing and drinking from whiskey jugs. A graybeard
named Larkin Skaggs—the company elder—was at their center. He
bellowed, ‘And the great Jehovah shall maketh it to rain dead Federals on the land!’ ” The men around him laughed like Jehovah Himself had told a joke.

 

“Skaggs is one more of them old-time preachers so crazy for
blood nowadays,” Jimmy Vaughn said. “He goes back to the first
troubles in Kansas. Fought with a gang of ruffians under Atchison
and claims he personally cut the throat of one of John Brown’s
nephews. He’s got a big German carbine fires a ball the size of a
lemon. What he does, he cuts a bunch of deep crosses into every ball.
Says he does it to convey the touch of Jesus, but what those cuts do
is make the ball bust apart like a little bomb when it hits. He calls
that old piece Armageddon and the damage it’ll do a man is something to see.”

 

“That’s so,” Butch Berry said. “I saw the hole in that Yank’s
belly.”

 

The Confederates counted three dozen Yankee dead and took
more than one hundred and fifty prisoners, half of them wounded.
They were all morning at burning and looting, and the guerrillas
joined them at it. They put the torch to buildings belonging to
Unionists but spared those owned by secessionist folk. The regulars
rustled every good horse in town and loaded a train of twenty wagons with Federal weapons and quartermaster stores. The rest of the
booty—furniture, tools, tack, dry goods, all the wagons and teams
the army didn’t take—went to Quantrill as reward for his help. Just
before the Confederates departed, Colonel Thompson paroled the
captured Feds.

 

The only horse none of the Confederates laid claim to was a
meantempered yellow-blazed roan corraled by itself and pacing
around with its ears laid back, snapping at any of the rebs who got
too close to the rails. A Yankee corporal who’d served as the company wrangler told his captors he’d found the horse tied to the corral
one morning about two weeks ago and had no idea who’d left it
there, but it was soon clear enough why its owner got rid of it. The
corporal boasted of being the best broncbuster in the regiment but
this horse threw him every time—and every time tried to stomp him
as he scrabbled out of the corral. Then the animal wouldn’t even let
him mount up. It would kick at him and snap at him and one time
bit him so bad on the shoulder he couldn’t raise his arm for days
after. He’d long since quit trying to break it and said he dearly hoped
somebody would steal it or shoot it and he didn’t care which.

 

The rebs at the corral were daring each other to try to ride the
beast when Quantrill showed up. “The minute that horse saw him,
its ears perked and it wouldn’t look at nobody else,” Jim Anderson
said. Quantrill climbed into the corral and went up to the animal and
stroked its muzzle. He whispered something in its ear and blew soft
on its nose and the horse rubbed its yellow blaze against his chest
like a cat.

 

“Not a man there could believe it,” Jim Anderson said. “It was
like that damned thing had been waiting for Quantrill to show up
and claim it for his own.”

 

“I believe you know the horse your brother’s talking about,”
Jimmy Vaughn said, grinning at Bill.

 

“That I do,” Bill said. “One of the dogs made its acquaintance
and got the bite marks to prove it.”

 

The guerrillas bore their plunder from Independence to the farm
of a supporter named Ingraham. Some of the booty would go to
guerrilla kinfolk or to families who regularly helped the bushwhackers, but most would be sold to agents of various Kansas City and
Saint Louis businessmen whose only interest was in profits and never
mind which side in the war provided them on a given day.

 

Some days later a Confederate colonel arrived at Ingraham’s and
with the authority of the Richmond government officially mustered
Quantrill’s company into rebel service as partisan rangers. The men
held an election of officers and Quantrill was chosen as captain, Will
Haller as first lieutenant, George Todd and W. J. Gregg as second
lieutenants.

 

“Todd wanted to be first lieutenant but lost it by two votes,”
Jimmy Vaughn said. He looked around to be sure they were not
being overheard. “George was mad enough to spit bullets. There’s
never been love lost between him and Haller. He calls Haller punkinhead. Haller hates him but he’s scared of him. I think some who
voted for Haller thought it’s what Quantrill wanted because Will’s
been with him the longest. Thing is, Quantrill and Haller ain’t all
that close, and I do believe the captain himself would’ve preferred
Todd for first lieutenant. Todd thought so too, and he called for
another vote, but Quantrill said no. He said if they took a new vote
every time somebody didn’t like the outcome of the last one there’d
be no end to it.”

 

Jimmy Vaughn took another quick glance around. “Truth to tell,
I don’t believe George has got over it. He’s real unhappy the captain
didn’t back him for a new vote. And the looks he keeps giving Haller,
I’d have to say the results of the election might not be all that final,
not just yet.”

W. J. Gregg and his scouting party of six arrived in midafternoon. He
and Quantrill moved off toward the woods to talk while the scouts
fed on what chicken and yams remained on the fires. Jim Anderson
and the Berrys introduced Bill to each of the new arrivals. The scouts
had brought newspapers with them and jugs of busthead whiskey
and it was no contest which commodity was in greater demand by
their fellows.

After a time Bill went to the vegetable garden and pulled several
large carrots and took them to the stable to feed to Edgar Allan,
whom he had not properly tended since the morning’s adventures.
Cole Younger’s gray mare and several of the Vaughn horses were
installed there too, all of them made nervous by Quantrill’s horse,
even though it was standing quietly in a barred stall and paying heed
to none of them.

Charley’s stall was opposite Edgar Allan’s, and Bill stood with
his back to the big roan as he fed the carrots to the black. But the
Charley horse caught scent of them and began snorting and stamping, bobbing his big head. His sudden agitation unnerved the other
horses, and they whickered and stepped about in their stalls. Edgar
Allan rolled his eyes and bolted the last of the carrots as if fearful the
roan might break free of its stall and come lunging for them.

Bill patted the black and spoke soothingly to him, told him to
pay no attention to the creature across the way. “You’re just smelling
the meanness off that thing,” he said softly. “Meanness and craziness. But

you
now—you’re a noble genius is what you are. Why, I bet
if you could hold a pen you’d write a poem so grand it would break
the heart of every mare to hear it read. I bet you could do arithmetic.
That crazy thing behind me can’t tell you two letters of the alphabet
is how damn dumb it is. But I’ll bet if you—”

“You shouldn’t fault Charley so freely, William T. You might
hurt his feelings.”

 

Bill turned to see Quantrill leaning on Charley’s stall, arms
crossed, hat pushed back on his head. He had shed the Federal jacket
and wore a guerrilla shirt and a black slouch hat. A Navy was holstered on each hip, another under his arm, a fourth tucked in his
belt. “You know how to talk to a horse, though,” he said. “Horse
likes a low voice. It’s what makes him a naturalborn guerrilla. You
have to talk low in the bush.”

 

“You’re some quiet yourself with them cat feet,” Bill said. “Can’t
but wonder if you’re part Indian—no offense.”

 

“Wouldn’t bother me a bit if I were,” Quantrill said. His eyes
were half-closed, making him look sleepy, but Bill Anderson knew
the look was deceptive. The man’s eyes missed nothing. “I lived with
Indians for a time. An Indian saved my life once.”

 

“I heard that story,” Bill said. “About your big brother being
murdered by jayhawks and the Indian saving you and you joining
the Montgomery men and one by one killing all of them who’d killed
your brother.”

 

Quantrill smiled.

 

“I’ve always wondered is it true.”

 

The smile faded. “That’s a brave thing to ask, William T.”

 

“Well, I didn’t hear the story from you, so it’s not like I’m questioning anything