Enemy Women (5 page)

3

But in general, and whenever they wished, Union troops shot or hanged their prisoners, as did their guerilla foes. Many soldiers alluded to this widespread practice, but few so matter-of-factly as Private Edward Hansen . . .who had joined the Union Second Missouri Light Artillery. On July 19, 1864, near Patterson [southeastern] Missouri, Hansen noted in his diary, “Up to this day we had done but little skirmishing and catched several fellows, very mistrusting figures, which we had orders to take with us as prisoners, but no sooner did we find one in arms we just hung them to the next best tree.”

—
FROM
Inside War: The Guerilla Conflict in Missouri, 1861-1865,
BY
M
ICHAEL
J. F
ELLMAN,
O
XFORD
U
NIVERSITY
P
RESS,
N
EW
Y
ORK,
1989

The Federals came to our home two or three days later and began to try to persuade Mother to have Father come in and surrender and go to Pilot Knob [Iron Mountain] and take the oath of allegiance. Meantime, while mother was discussing the matter with them, two of them took me up on a hill west of the house and out of sight of mother, and one of them took a belt from around his pants and buckled it around my neck, then bent a small sapling over and tied the end of the belt around it and hung me up for a minute or so. I had told them where father was, as mother had told them, and when they let me down I told them he was down in the field, which they knew was not so for they had
come by the field. The hanging hurt my throat so that it was sore for several days. I was seven years old at the time.

—J. J. C
HILTON, FROM THE
Current Local,
May 26, 1932,
REPRINTED IN
The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties

A give-and-take war developed between Reeves’ 15th Missouri Cavalry, CSA, and the Missouri Union Militia units in the area. Many families were forced to refugee, some as far north as St. Louis.

—
FROM
A History of the 15th Missouri Cavalry Regiment,
CSA,
BY
J
ERRY
P
ONDER,
P
ONDER
B
OOKS,
D
ONIPHAN,
MISSOURI,
1994

T
HEIR FATHER WAS
taken on november 16, 1864.

Well, here they come, said Savannah. She stood at the door with a handful of quills and the penknife. I don’t know why we thought they’d keep on missing us.

John Lee, go on, said her father. Cut the horses loose and get up the hill.

Her brother John Lee ran, going straight up Copperhead without bothering about the path, for they were taking prisoner all young men of military age whether they were crippled or no.

Then Savannah ran to the fields to chase Dolly into the hills. The ground was hard frozen as stone and she fell down and then got up again and kept running. Adair shoved the clothes trunk out the front door and threw the washing over it.

They wore dark blue. They were young men from St. Louis or from the river towns. Their horses were ganted, rake thin, and the blue coats torn and faded, for they had been long in the field and the Ozark mountains were a geography that could beat men and equipment and horses all to pieces. The fenders and girths of their saddles were scarred and repaired with whang leather. They were hungry-looking and cold and rank, jangling loose in their saddles at a hard trot. They watched from one side to the other in a nervous, habitual searching stare, as if looking for the rebel bullet that might strive toward them
out of the deep woods of the southeastern Ozarks and blow them out of their saddles.

Their father stood at the front-yard rails to meet them.

A captain on a sorrel horse pulled up and asked Marquis Colley what unit he had joined.

He said he had never joined any military unit and that they had no business messing with him.

The captain asked him who taught the common school, and Adair’s father said that he himself did, except it had been burnt down and a new one had not been built because of the war and the hard times that had come on everybody.

What were you teaching them? asked the captain.

Geography and the structure of the Constitution, he said. And their arithmetic and their spelling.

Adair and Little Mary stood behind their father. Adair could not see Savannah but she was fairly certain that Savannah had come back from chasing Dolly away, to the back of the house to run the pigs out over John Lee’s tracks.

I bet you are teaching them about the advantages of human bondage, said the captain. You are instructing them in disloyal thoughts.

I am not instructing anybody in anything, said Judge Colley. At present.

Where’s your boy? Ain’t you got a boy?

He’s gone to Cape for flour.

Well, we are levying a tax on you for the war effort, said the captain.

The Militia took everything the Colley girls had garnered and spun and sheared and gathered into casks. They took the butternuts in their split-oak baskets, they loaded their commissary wagon with the corn. A sergeant cut ten yards of jeans twill out of the loom. They shot the dogs and took as many chickens and geese and pigs as they could catch. They tied the chickens and geese by their legs to the ringbolts of the wagon. The gander and several hen geese got away by taking to the air. The rooster beat his way into the blackberry thickets; two soldiers kicked at the brambles and thrashed at them with their rifle butts but
they could not dislodge him. Another came out of the barn pen leading the milk cow and her calf. Two other soldiers seized the horses, including Whiskey.

Adair fought with the soldier who had Whiskey and tried to wrench his hands loose from Whiskey’s halter. His fingers were very hairy, and they locked hands and turned and turned in the wintry front yard. They tore through the red honeysuckle vines. It was sensual and cruel, and Adair would not let go. She held on even when he slammed her knuckles up against the yard rails.

They fell over the soap-boiling fireplace, Whiskey was snorting with such force he was whistling like a stag and he flung his head up and down, and backed up away from them, dragging them with him. Finally another soldier came up behind her and struck her across the shoulders with something, and knocked her down.

When she got to her feet, she saw other soldiers setting the house on fire. They threw as many objects as they could into the fireplace and then shoveled coals all over the floor and table. The smoke expanded inside, thick and yellow. Adair let go of Whiskey in order to help her sisters drag things out of the house. So the soldiers tied Whiskey and Gimcrack and Highlander to the back of their wagon. One soldier had set the barn on fire and it was well on its way to making a great November bonfire, the smoke pouring upward into the oaks and the crows flying overhead.

The Union Militiamen also dragged things out of the house and went through the kitchen to take what seemed to them desirable or valuable. They smashed the Tennessee looking glass just to be smashing it. They took her mother’s cut-glass decanter. They threw the girls’ bonnets in the fire and the family Bible as well. They took a nail bar to the spring wagon and jacked the swivel off the striker plate, and knocked the wheels off their hubs. Adair began to scream that the house was afire, as the outside walls of the house took on a layer of flames, rippling upward in the increasing wind.

Then the rain came in sheets. It stormed through the open windows and soaked
The Horse Fair
in its frame, and the fire began to sizzle like frying bacon and then the flames diminished.

The captain and a sergeant bent Marquis Colley’s hands behind him, tied them with rope. They said they were taking her father in for disloyalty. A man was never too old to be disloyal. The captain struck Marquis Colley several times in the face with a wagon spoke. Adair and Little Mary tried to put themselves between the captain and their father, but the sergeant kicked Little Mary’s legs out from under her and then kicked her again in the ribs when she was down.

Don’t touch my girls, said Marquis. Leave my girls alone.

The captain grabbed Adair by the hair and threw her to one side.

If you keep on, I’ll shoot him right here, he said.

I know you, Tom Poth, her father said to the captain.

And I know you, Marquis Colley, said the captain. He was a redheaded man. I don’t know how you got elected justice of the peace. Tom Poth had teeth that were very white and small. You gave aid and information to Price, didn’t you?

I never spoke to any of his men or officers, said her father.

Yes you did, said Captain Poth and raised the wagon spoke and struck Marquis Colley in the face again and again, and then began to beat him in the head and the sound of it was as if he were striking a melon. Blood sprayed. Adair ran to the tailgate and tried to climb over it. Her father’s head fell forward and began to drain blood all down the front of his coat and striped shirt. A soldier shoved her off the tailgate.

We’re back, said one of the others. Several men laughed. We’re just cleaning up the last few here. You all are about all that’s left.

The driver of the wagon raised the long reins and slapped them on the horse’s rumps and they surged forward into their collars.

Adair and Little Mary ran after the Union Militiamen in the rain, holding to the gunnel of the wagon where Marquis Colley sat with his arms bound, his face looking like a mask made of red stuff that began to run pinkish in the heavy cold rain. Gimcrack and Whiskey and the tall, dark Highlander were being dragged behind and their long necks stretched out in resistance. Whiskey’s changeable coat had turned a sodden tobacco color in the rain and he kept trying to turn his head to see where Adair was, and called out furiously to her.

Then Little Mary’s skirts grew heavy in the rain and she had to let go of the gunnels. Adair tried to climb up on the running board to lay hold of the brake and throw off its catch, but one of the men guarding her father banged her fingers with the butt of his rifle, and Adair had to let go and fall back.

JOHN LEE CAME
back down the mountain after the militia were gone. They all stood inside the house among the wreckage and the smoke. Savannah and Little Mary ran around and closed the shutters again. The barn was still burning for some reason, taking with it the girls’ sidesaddles and the harnesses.

John Lee said he had best get clear of the house before they came back again. He sat with the smoothbore in his good hand and the withered arm tucked in his belt.

I’ll get Pa loose from them, he said. I think you should head north toward the Yankee garrison. At least they ain’t fighting up there. I don’t think they will hurt women. That’s what Father said. I will be looking for you on the road. Just get moving.

Adair said, Can’t we follow them and talk to their commander? Let’s go and speak with their superior officer. That’s what the Laphams did. Adair fastened her bruised hands together in a hard grip. She wiped her face on her shoulder and her shoes gritted on the broken glass. They got Mr. Lapham back.

John Lee, can’t you follow them and shoot them? Savannah said. You could lay up somewhere and get that captain in the head.

I don’t have the firepower, said John Lee. And I’m on foot. I will try to get to Doniphan Courthouse and get old Mrs. Carter to enquire for Father. If they see me they’ll take me. He wiped his right hand across both eyes to sear off his tears. Where’s Dolly?

Savannah said, I ran her up Copperhead.

All right. I’m going, girls.

He struck off on foot with the old smoothbore. He carried it as
always in the crook of his right arm. He was bent against the driving winter rain, and his hat brim was drooped and streaming water.

So Adair and Little Mary and Savannah gathered what they could from what was left in the house. They couldn’t do anything about the barn, it was burning despite the rain. As they stood there part of the hayloft floor came down on the barrels of pitch and lard below, and crushed the big barn loom and the hand gin.