Wildwood Boys (57 page)

As the bushwhackers rode off down the street, Bill presented
Price with a pair of silver-mounted revolvers he had acquired from a
Federal wagon train earlier in the summer. The general was appreciative and invited him into his private office for brandy and a cigar.
They exchanged a few brief compliments and then Price told of his
plan to advance on Kansas City. He needed the guerrillas to disrupt
Yankee rail transport and to distract Federals from K.C. He had
already given Quantrill and Todd their assignments. He wanted Bill
to continue harassing the Federals throughout central Missouri and
to inflict all the damage he could to the Northern Missouri rail line.
He gave him a copy of a special order that specified exactly that mission. Bill read it and folded it and put it in his jacket. There was an
awkward pause; then Price cleared his throat and consulted his
pocket watch and said he regretted to cut short their meeting, but . . .

As they left Boonville behind them, somebody joked that Price probably weighed more than twice as much as Arch.

“He maybe weighs twice more than me, but he ain’t any more
man than me,” Archie said. “Looked a little too tender about our
prizes, you ask me.”

Butch asked Bill what Old Pap had to say.

“Said if he had ten thousand like us he could take Missouri and
hold it forever.”

A pledge

 

“Ten thousand!” Hi Guess said. “Shoot, we had ten thousand
like us, Bill would be the general and Price maybe be a sergeant.”

 

Bill had to grin.

 

“If we had ten thousand like us,” Butch said, “we wouldn’t need
Price nor anybody else to own the whole damn state ourselves. To
win the whole damn war!”

 

“If Fletch Taylor was here,” Jim said, “you know what he’d say.”

 

They laughed, and several of them intoned together, “If a frog
had wings . . .”

 

Beloved husband—

Poor Lamar sees me talking in agitation to myself and
must think I am quite mad. He does not know I am addressing you, pleading my argument that you come home. I can
say it no plainer: DAMN the war. Please, Bill, be quit of it.
Come home. Think of us in our lovely tub, our own little
boat out on the wide sea and away from all this troubled
world. . . .

Dearest wife—

I still kill the enemy where he presents himself to me, but
oh my love, I am so sick of killing them! I would quit this
war on the instant, but I cannot quit my men,—and for all
their disappointment in Price, they will not abandon him. Yet
only a fool will deny that if Price is defeated in his next
engagement he will be finished,—and Missouri finished with
him. Therefore have I made a bargain with myself which I
present to you as a pledge: I swear to you that on the day Pap
is beaten, I will be shed of my duties of captaincy and will
come home to you. May resolutions come quickly, so I may
fly to your embrace. . . .

Resolutions

They ambushed Union patrols nearly every day, made Union informers to know the terrible error of their ways. Unloosed storms of gunfire on every steamboat they spotted, shot apart telegraph lines.
Ranged over the hills and all along the bottoms of the wildwoods of
central Missouri.

In the course of a skirmish with a large militia force in Howard
County, Hi Guess received a bullet in the chest and one in the belly.
Frank James cradled him in his arms and others stood and watched
Hi’s legs weakly kick in the dirt, his eyes wide but seeing none of
them as he addressed a woman named Clarissa, telling her he loved
her truly and wanted to marry her and to please wait for him. Then
he was dead and they made haste in putting him in the earth.

A week later they were traversing an open stretch of country in
Chariton County when a Federal cavalry company four times their
size loomed over a hill and charged them. The guerrillas raced for the
wildwood just beyond a low rise, and once again their superior
horses easily outdistanced the Yankee mounts. Most of the company
was already on the high ground when Buster Parr’s horse was shot
from under him. Buster had been bringing up the rear and was still
on the prairie and none of them knew he’d gone down until Butch
Berry looked back and saw him a hundred yards behind and the
Yankees closing on him.

Butch brought his horse about and watched as the Yankees drew
up around Buster and some of them dismounted and pulled him to
his feet. Buster was favoring a leg and Butch heard his distant scream
when one of the Yanks kicked it. The horse was screaming too, lying
on its side and kicking awkwardly, and a Federal dispatched it with a
bullet.

The other bushwhackers had now seen Butch halted and realized
the Yanks had left off the chase. Bill told Arch Clement to stay with
the men and be ready to lead them away fast, then he and Jim rode
back to where Butch sat his horse at the rim of the rise.

The Feds had formed a battle line to either side of the dismounted soldiers clustered around Buster and holding him upright.
Some of the Yanks were spitting on him and punching him. One hit
him in the head with a rifle butt.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Butch Berry said.

 

The Federals were waving to them now, beckoning, pointing at

Buster as if daring them to come for their man.

 

Butch drew his Colt and turned to Bill, his face wild. “Let’s
do

 

something!”

 

“Do
what,
goddammit!” Jim Anderson said. “You so one-eyed

 

blind you can’t see there’s two hundred fucken Feds down there?

 

We’re not fifty.”

 

“Bill!”
Butch said.

 

Bill Anderson looked at him. Then looked back to Buster among

 

the Yankees. “I can’t risk the whole company for one man,” he said.
The Federal commander moved his horse up behind Buster and

 

drew his saber. He raised it high for the watching guerrillas to see.

 

The blade caught the sun and flashed as the officer brought it down

 

and Buster’s head slumped sideways, and even at this distance they

 

saw the bright glint of blood that arced from his severed neck.
The soldiers let him fall and some of them kicked him even as he

 

lay dying or already dead. They tied his feet to the end of a rope

 

attached to a saddle and they waved at the spectating guerrillas once

 

more and rode away, dragging Buster’s remains behind them.
“Let’s go,” Bill said, reining Edgar Allan around.

The man was lost, he tells himself, lying in his blanket that night.
There was nothing to be done for it.

 

You were his captain.

 

It would have been worse than folly. The circumstance was clear.
Ah, the circumstance. Of course. But tell me, Captain: was it that
The company is my chief charge. I cannot risk the entire company for one man.

 

you did not dare to risk your own life, now you’ve told the lady

 

you’ll return to her on Price’s imminent defeat? Tell me true.

 

Yes, of course. Quantrill always said you were a sly debater. Do
his

 

you not recall your upbraiding of him for placing circumstance

 

above
man? More to the point, Captain, I ask you this: if not the
will

 

entire company, how many
you risk for one man? Half the company? Ten men? One? And I ask you, sir: if a man of the company is
you,

 

not worth the risk of at least one of his comrades—and if that one is

 

not
the captain of them, then what are you captain of? And still
are

 

more to the point: what
you?

 

Maybe I never was but a damned horse thief.

 

He stares at the utterly uninterested stars and berates himself in a

 

howling silence, curses himself for an irresolute weakling and for

 

being the sort of pathetic fool who wishes he could have a moment

 

back again so he might use it properly.
Fool!
A man takes an action

 

or he does not—and then the moment is fled to wherever all

 

moments in relentless succession do irretrievably flee.

 

***

 

The Federals had retreated through Independence street by street,
giving way and breaking apart before Jo Shelby’s relentless rebels
and the guerrillas spearheading for him. In a small clearing in a stand
of sycamores at the edge of town, a dozen bloodsmeared Kansas cavalrymen led by redbearded Doc Jennison—once the jayhawking
scourge of the borderland and now a Federal colonel—hastily tied
off their wounds and cursed the God that ever permitted the notion

 

of Missouri to enter the mind of man.

 

“Colonel, look there!” A trooper pointed to a ridge about a

 

quarter-mile distant, where a rider sat his horse and surveyed the

 

town below. There were no trees behind him and he made a stark silhouette against the sky.

 

“The cheek of the bastard!” Jennison said. “Out in the open as

 

bold as you please. Got an angel on his shoulder, don’t you know.”

 

He turned to one of the men and said, “Hand me that Spence.”
The man passed over the Spencer carbine and said, “I’m not real

 

sure, Captain, but looks like he’s in blue.”

 

“He’s a bushwhacker,” Jennison said, levering a .56-caliber

 

round and cocking the hammer and bracing the barrel on a sycamore

 

stump. “I can tell a bushwhacker from a mile off.”

 

“What if he’s not?“ another man said. “What if he’s really one of

 

ours?”

 

“Then he’s got this coming for being such a damned fool,” Jennison said.

 

As Jennison took aim, the horseman stood up in the stirrups for

 

a better view and made an even sharper target of himself. “Good

 

Christ, boy,” Jennison said softly. “you might as well whistle for it.”

 

He held a breath and squeezed off the round.

“Captain Todd stood up in the stirrups to have a better look, and

bang,
his neck pops open. He never made a sound, he just fell. There
was no stopping the blood. He couldn’t talk, but his eyes were moving over all of us like he was looking for somebody. Then he gives
this big grin like he found him, only it was like he was looking at
something the rest of us couldn’t see. He died smiling, no telling at
what.”

Relating this report was Charley Webb, who’d ridden with Todd
until two days ago. He’d then sought out Bill Anderson’s company in
Carroll County to join with them.

“Captain Pool said he wasn’t about to bury Captain Todd out in
the woods when there was a perfectly good cemetery right there in
the town. So we carried him down and got us a couple of shovels
from a livery and started digging a hole for him. Next thing we
know, here comes this fella in a suit and tie who says his name’s Beattie and we’re digging in his family plot and he won’t stand for some
stranger buried there. Said as soon as we were gone he was going to
have his man dig up the body and throw it in the river. Captain Pool
told him he lived in Kansas City and intended to come to Independence every few weeks to put flowers on his friend’s grave, and if he
ever heard so much as a rumor that George had been dug up, he
would find Beattie and put

him
in a grave and all his family in there
with him. Well, that shut up Mr. Beattie fast enough, but just to ease
the matter for him, Captain Pool gave him a fistful of money and
that
seemed to improve the fella’s disposition a whole lot. By the
time we were patting down the dirt on Todd’s grave, Mr. Beattie had
brought some flowers from somewhere to put on it.”

The following day came the news of Price’s defeat at Westport. Pap
was in retreat with the remnants of his army, heading back to
Arkansas. Dave Pool and his guerrillas had gone with him. The word
was that Quantrill had departed to Kentucky with his meager band.

Dearest—

Price is finished. Many of the best of us are killed.
Quantrill is gone. My war is done. I shall take leave of my
forty good men in the morning and follow this notice to you
by a day. Then we shall evermore be Texans and sail love’s
sea in our sturdy tub.

October 26, 1864

It has rained in the night and on this chill dawn he wakes rolled in an
oilskin under a dripping hilltop maple and in each hand holds a Colt.
He has slept more soundly this night than he has in months, and he
stretches with great satisfaction. A few feet away Jim sleeps on, nothing of him showing from under the enveloping slicker but the thick
tangle of his hair.

He rises and tucks the pistols into his belt, fits himself with the
rest of his armament, then picks up his slicker and rolls it up and
regards the Ray County countryside. Pools of pale mist linger in the
swales and hollows. The trees to the east are afire with the rising sun.
A ragged white arrowhead of geese wings to southward in the reddening sky. At his back the distant woods are still steeped in lingering night shadows. He hears the call of a solitary crow. Below the hill
the camp is already roused, the men gathering at the cookfires. The
air is scented with raw earth and woodsmoke, the rising aromas of
coffee and bacon, the smell of moldering leaves. He recognizes Butch
Berry as one of the riders heading out to relieve the night pickets.

Jim comes awake and stretches with a groan, then throws off his
slicker and gets up. He buckles on his gunbelt and stands by his
brother to look down at the camp.

“Let’s get down there,” Bill says. “I got something to tell the
bunch of you.”

 

Jim arches his brow in curiosity, then grabs up his oilskin and
hurries after him.

 

Arch Clement sees them descending the hill and readies a cup of
coffee for Bill. At their ropeline tethers, the horses are saddled and
stamping, eager to be about the day’s business.

 

At the central cookfire Bill says, “Listen up, boys,” and the men
converge around him.