Wildwood Boys (38 page)

Repercussions

 

From the New York
Daily Times:

Quantrill’s massacre at Lawrence is almost enough to
curdle the blood with horror. In the history of the war thus
far, full as it has been of dreadful scenes, there has been no
such diabolical work as this indiscriminate slaughter of
peaceful villagers. Even the rebel authorities in Richmond,
steeped in wickedness as they are, cannot yet be so dead to all
human feelings as to sanction such monstrous outrages. We
find it impossible to believe that men who have ever borne
the name of American can have been transformed into such
fiends incarnate. It is a calamity of the most heartrending
kind—an atrocity of unspeakable character.

From a message directed to Federal authorities by the governor of
Kansas:

I must hold Missouri responsible for this fearful, fiendish
raid. No body of men large as that commanded by Quantrill
could have been gathered together without the people residing in Western Missouri knowing everything about it. Such
people cannot be considered loyal, and should not be treated
as loyal citizens; for while they conceal the movements of
desperadoes like Quantrill and his followers, they are, in the
worst sense of the word, their aiders and abettors, and
should be held equally guilty.

From General Order #11, August 25, 1863:

All persons living in Jackson, Cass, and Bates Counties,
Missouri, and in that part of Vernon included in this
District . . . are hereby ordered to remove from their present
places of residence within fifteen days of the date hereof. . . .
Officers commanding companies and detachments serving in
the counties named, will see that this [order] is promptly
obeyed.

Now would this war even more earnestly afflict everyone caught
in it—soldier, guerrilla, civilian, each and all. If there had been any
doubt that the massacre at Lawrence presaged still harder days
ahead, General Order 11 did dismiss it.

The order pertained to an area of the border from the Missouri
River south to the Little Osage and encompassing nearly three thousand square miles. Its intention was to rid the border of those who
had long been providing the wildwood boys with shelter, horses,
food and information. Except for the very few who could prove their
loyalty to the Union, all residents in the region were forced to abandon everything they owned except what they could bear away, which
in most cases was very little. Most of them had already been robbed
of all money, all worthwhile stock, all good wagons, and had to
make do for conveyance with whatever worn mule or ill-used ox
they still possessed, with whatever rude cart or makeshift wagon. Or
they had to leave on foot and take only what they could carry on
their persons.

The enforcement of the order was charged to redlegs and militia
units and they attended to the duty with high zeal. They torched
every farm they came to, and where the families had not yet departed
they robbed them of everything of value and then burned the rest
together with the farm. He who objected was shot dead where he
stood—or hanged, if the enforcers were militia in a mood for sport,
or dragged to death behind a horse as a redleg entertainment.

In the span of two weeks twenty thousand people were dispossessed. Columns of refugees crowded the dusty roads and wagon
traces. Some of the pilgrims were set upon by bandits nearly as
ragged as themselves and robbed of their last small portion of
shabby goods. The countryside grew hazed with the smoke of their
burning properties and nothing would remain standing of them but
the blackened chimneys. For decades to come, this woebegone region
of Missouri would be known as the “burnt district.”

Some lucky few had kin in other parts of Missouri where they
could take refuge, and some had people in the deeper Southland. But
most of the banished had nowhere to go. What kin they had were
likely to be alongside them. Some navigated for Texas, some to the
western wildlands, some to the northern plains. But most set out
with no clear notion of where they were going except that it was
away from a home no longer standing, a place gone to ash and
smoke.

Little Archie

They sat their horses in the shadows at the edge of a wood near the
north line of Vernon County and watched a militia patrol closing up
fast behind a southbound refugee train. The exiles were more than a
week past the Order 11 deadline for clearing out of the region. Six
wagons lumbering along the borderland road under the newly risen
sun, all of them listing on unevenly-sized wheels, all of them lugged
by worn mules with ribs stark against the hides. The only man
among them was a one-legged scarecrow of a figure who rode with
the piled furniture in one of the wagons. The only other males were
boys, the eldest about thirteen. They were looking back at the soldiers, and even from this distance, watching them through field
glasses, Bill Anderson could sense the refugees’ fear. He passed the
glasses to his brother and yawned.

The train halted and the militia closed up around them. Jim
Anderson said he counted fifteen soldiers. They were making the
party unload the wagons. The women pitching out cookware, armfuls of clothes, shoving furniture off the wagonbeds to crash on the
ground. “Looking for hid money,” Jim said. Bill nodded. He was
studying a pair of crows perched on a lower branch of an elm.

A pair of soldiers dragged the one-legged man out of the wagon
and another Fed flung his crutch into the roadside brush. More soldiers were off their horses now and rummaging through the spill of
furniture and clothing. A few yet sat their mounts and seemed to be
enjoying the show.

“I believe those Union stalwarts are in need of counseling toward
a more Christian outlook,” Bill Anderson said. Arch Clement
laughed behind him, and he turned and grinned at him.

“Christian outlook,” Archie said. “That’s what they’re in need
of, all right.” He was seventeen years old and still so fair of skin his
attempt at a mustache was but a line of fine blond wisps. He was
short and hardmuscled, with thick wrists and large hands admirably
adept with most tools and every sort of weapon. He’d been with the
bunch only a month but had already proved himself utterly. . . .

He had come to them from the horde of orphans and runaways wandering the desolate border country since the advent of Order 11. As
refugee families streamed out of the region, many of the boys among
them, some as young as fifteen, broke away to go join the guerrillas.
Grown men too were still finding their way to the bushwhacker
bands—deserters from the regular army, fugitives from the law,
hardcases of every stripe. Despite Order 11’s vast dispossessions on
the border, the guerrillas suffered no shortage of recruits.

Arch Clement had found the Anderson band’s camp and sneaked
past the pickets to present himself at the main campfire before anyone even realized there was a stranger in their midst. When the boy
said he was looking for Bill Anderson, Frank James was suddenly at
his side and holding a cocked pistol to his head. Arch cut his eyes at
him and said he better shoot or take it away. Frank laughed at his
audacity and likely would have killed him where he stood except
that Bill stepped out of the shadows and told him to put up the gun.
Bill was impressed with the boy’s achievement in getting by the pickets and his bold indifference to Frank’s gun at his ear. “Say your
piece, then,” he said.

Arch told them his name and that he was from Johnson County,
that his momma and younger brother had died when he was a child.
His daddy had been hanged by redlegs and his two older brothers
shot by the Feds, and his only sister had run off a few weeks ago and
he had no notion of where to. All he desired to do anymore was kill
Union men. He made claim to have killed three men already but
didn’t care to say who except for a Kingsville liveryboy who’d been
private with his sister and thereafter ignored her as you would a
common whore. He’d lain for that one in the shadows outside the
livery one night and when the fellow headed for home he’d stepped
up to him and brained him with a brick and then brained him a few
more times to make sure he was well departed to his Maker. He
thought his sister would be properly grateful to know what he’d
done, but she only wept when he told her about it and a few days
later she was gone.

“I figure if that was all the sense she had, then to hell with her,”
Arch Clement said. He wanted to join Bill’s company above all other
guerrilla bands because he’d heard it was the only one that always
and truly flew the black flag.

Bill smiled at the boy’s smooth cherubic features and short
stature so out of keeping with the big Army Colt on one hip and the
huge bowie sheathed on his lower leg. Riley Crawford was no taller
and was skinny besides, but Riley showed broken front teeth and a
variety of scars to belie any notion of him as an untried innocent.
This Clement manikin looked like a bedraggled choirboy, never
mind his tattered hatbrim and variously ripped shirt and his boots
held together with wire. But the visible portion of his revolver shone
in its worn holster and Bill knew the bowie’s blade would gleam as
well and hold a razor edge.

A big wildbearded man sitting by the fire said, “You best just run
along back to your momma’s teat, babyboy.” His name was Holland
Peck. He grinned around at the smiles of his fellows and took
another pull off his jug.

Arch Clement showed a smile the company would come to know
well—small and privately amused, under blue eyes cool and unyielding as marble. “I already got my fill from your momma’s teat,” he
said.

Holland Peck stood two inches over six feet and weighed above
220 pounds. He gawked at five-foot-five Archie Clement for a
moment before realizing the runt was serious. “You little shit,” he
said. He put his jug aside and stood up, reached into his bushwhacker shirt and produced a foot-long Arkansas toothpick. “I’ll cut
you for crowbait.”

Arch Clement slipped the bowie from its leg sheath.
“Bladefight!”
The call rang through the camp and the company
quickly converged in a wide circle around the combatants.

 

The shouted betting begged for wagers on the boy. Archie was
backing up with the bowie held at his thigh, Peck advancing on him
in a crouch, his dagger low and forward. Then Archie feinted to right
and left and Peck was awkward in keeping with him and Archie
ducked forward and slashed the big man’s knee and sprang clear of
his counterstroke. Peck took a step after him but the ruined knee
gave way and he went down hard. Archie jumped past him, dodging
his wild flail, and backhanded the bowie through his nape and neckbone.

 

Holland Peck, paralyzed, toppled onto his back, his clove neck
gushing blood. He made an effort to speak, his aspect suggesting
sudden possession of a profound secret he would share, but his moving lips made no sound and then he was dead.

 

Arch Clement bent and wiped his blade on Peck’s pantleg and
then reset it in its sheath.

 

It was the quickest mortal knifefight any of them had witnessed,
and none was unimpressed. Knife duels to the death were rarely fast
affairs. Every man of them had seen some that endured the better
part of a hour and claimed both principals. It was commonly held
that the winner in a knifefight was the second man to fall dead. And
here Arch Clement stood without a nick.

 

Some new recruits were assigned to bear away and bury the
body, and Arch Clement was welcomed to the company with nods
and smiles and a few cautious pats on the shoulder. Because the late
Holland Peck had no outstanding debts to anyone in the company,
Bill Anderson let Arch have the man’s horse and armament and possibles. Arch also laid claim to Peck’s hat, which had fallen off in the
fight and proved only a little large. Among Peck’s possessions he
found a guerrilla shirt, which of course was hugely baggy on him,
but no matter. He regretted that Peck did not have smaller feet so he
might have acquired better boots as well.

 

The following day they were twenty miles to the north, taking a
dinner of roast corn and potatoes in the barn of a secessionist farmer.
Their talk was mostly of Larkin Skaggs, whose fate at Lawrence they
had learned of only a few days ago, and they were still in a fury
about it.

 

“Those sorry Kansans didn’t have the sand to fight when we
were there in a bunch,” Sock Johnson said. “Couldn’t do a thing but
hide behind their women’s skirts. But when it was only one drunk
man left in town—oh, they were some brave souls then! Especially
after he was dead.”

 

“Then the damn Feds go and
scalp
him,” Ike Berry said. “We
never did nothing like
that
to them.”

 

“This war can’t get mean enough for them bastards,” Hi Guess
said. “It’s always something to learn from the Feds about meanness.
Scalping
. Sweet baby Jesus.”

 

“Well hell,” Arch Clement said. “We ought to do them in kind,
don’t you all think?”

 

“Not that easy,” Bill Anderson said. He nodded at Riley Crawford. “That sprout tried to take a scalp a few days ago. Show him,
boy.”

 

Riley Crawford blushed and took from his pocket something
dark and withered and about half the size of his palm, with a few
strands of brown hair attached to it.

 

“Took him a quarter-hour to get that much,” Bill said. “By then
that sorry head looked like somebody’s been working it with a hoe.”

 

“We need us a damn Indian in this bunch, what we need,” Frank
James said. “The Feds got Indians.”

 

“Well, so happens I had an uncle rode with Jim Kirker down in
Mexico,” Arch Clement said, “and he showed me just exactly how
they lifted the hair off those red niggers.” The remark drew their full
attention. They had all heard tales of the famous Irish scalphunter
who for a time lived in Missouri.