Wildwood Boys (7 page)

For her part, Martha Anderson commended Mary for her choice
of husband and was unfailingly polite to Arthur Baker. Among themselves the other four Anderson siblings believed their mother secretly
saw Baker for the same stiff-collar bore they did.

One evening while Mary sat out on the porch in Baker’s company, the rest of the family was indoors preparing to make music,
Will Anderson and his sons and daughters whispering jokes about
Baker’s collars and bowler hats and his ridiculous dancing. Finally,
Martha made a shushing gesture at them and said, “Stop it, all you.
The heart can’t help what it wants.”

The remark brought them up short in their tittering—and
prompted a glance between Bill and Josie that did not escape Jim’s
notice. They all knew she was right. Mary had not lacked for
prospects before meeting Baker but none of the suitors had struck
her fancy. Yet neither was it in her nature to marry someone simply
for the comfort of his holdings. There was no question she loved this
man and no matter she hardly knew him. That none of them could
understand why she loved him was no argument against the truth of
it. The wedding was set for the second Sunday in June.

Yankee caveat
April 21, 1862

 

It is represented on reliable authority . . . that
bands of . . . guerrillas, marauders, murderers, and
every species of outlaw are infesting to an alarming
Rumors of Quantrill

extent all the southeastern portion of Jackson
County. . . . Murders and robberies have been committed; Union men threatened and driven from their
homes; the U.S. mails have been stopped; farmers
have been prohibited planting by the proclamation of
a well-known and desperate leader of these outlaws by the name of Quantrill, and the whole county
designated reduced to a state of anarchy. This state
of things must be terminated and the guilty punished. All those found in arms and opposition to the
laws and legitimate authorities, who are known
familiarly as guerrillas . . . murderers, marauders,
and horse-thieves, will be shot down by the military
upon the spot when found perpetrating their foul
acts.

James Totten

 

Brigadier General

 

Central District, Commanding

The larger war was now more than a year under way and the bushfighting along the Missouri border was reported to have grown
meaner. The Berrys occasionally rode to the Anderson place of an
early evening and joined them on the porch to share in a jug and the
latest news before taking supper together. On this occasion they were
speaking of the new company of border scouts the Federals had
formed, the redlegs, so named for the color of their Moroccan leggings. The outfit’s captains were George Hoyt—a lawyer who had
vainly defended John Brown at his trial—and the hated Doc Jennison, who’d recruited many of his old jayhawker comrades to the
redlegs with him.

“I never thought I’d hear of a worse pack of bastards than those
reivers of Jim Lane’s,” Will Anderson said. “But I’ll kiss all your
asses if these goddam redlegs ain’t the ones.”

“It was redlegs hung Ellsworth Mallory in front of his wife and
children down in Cass County last month because he wouldn’t tell
where Quantrill was hiding,” Jim Anderson said. “In the past two
weeks they burned a half-dozen farms in Jackson for the same reason. I can’t help but wonder if those farmers just wouldn’t tell on
Quantrill even if they knew where he was, or if they were just more
scared of what

he’d
do to them if they did.”

They had first heard of this man Quantrill two months ago and
heard much more of him since. Of the various guerrilla bands harrying the Federals and jayhawkers along the border, his had been the
most effective, his name become the most widely revered by Missouri rebels, the most despised by Union loyalists. Bushwhackers
they were called, because the bush, the wildwood, was their hideaway, and their preferred tactic the ambush.

“I heard he ain’t even from Missouri,” Ike Berry said. “From

Maryland is what I heard.”

 

“I recent heard how come he hates the damn jayhawkers so

 

much,” Butch Berry said. “You all know why?”

 

Will Anderson snorted and said, “That’s like asking do we know

 

how come somebody don’t like the smell of shit.”

 

“Him and his big brother were headed for California when jayhawkers fell on them on the Santa Fe,” Butch said. “Montgomery

 

men. They shot him up bad and killed his brother and robbed them

 

of everything, including their clothes and boots. Left him for dead,

 

they did. But some old Indian come along and found him and saved

 

his life. After he healed up he grew a beard for a disguise and took a

 

false name. Pretended to be a Unionist and searched out Montgomery’s party and joined up with them. He recognized those among

 

them who killed his brother and he found out the rest of them over

 

time. They say it took him months, but he killed every last one of

 

them sonofabitches one by one when there was no witnesses about.

 

More than twenty all told. That’s how I heard it. Then he went on

 

back to Missouri and started his band of raiders and been giving the

 

Feds hell ever since.”

 

Will Anderson spat over the porch rail. “I’ve heard that story.

 

Sounds sham to me.” He turned to Bill Anderson who sat puffing his

 

pipe. “You reckon?”

 

Bill shrugged and stared out into the gathering gloom and at the

 

first visible winks of starlight. His favorite dog Raven lay at his feet.
“Well, it’s for sure no sham that neither the Federal regulars nor

 

the jayhawkers have been able to run him to ground for all their trying,” Jim said.

 

“He rode into Independence with not more than a dozen men

 

and that town just full of Yankee soldiers,” Ike said. “He took a ball

 

in the leg and they shot his horse from under him and
still
he got

 

away. Now that’s a fact. A month later he had near sixty men in his

 

company.”

 

“For a fact he’s raided into
Kansas,
” Jim said. “Rode into

 

Aubrey and shot up the place and stripped it clean and then took

 

breakfast before he rode out again.”

 

“I bet he didn’t ask for hardboiled eggs,” Butch said. “He

 

already got him two goodsize ones.”

 

“I’ve heard tell the Feds three or four times got him surrounded

 

and were sure they had him and he gave them the slip every time,”

 

Ike said. “He and his boys have made off into the wildwood afoot as

 

often as ahorse but they got away just the same.”

 

“They ain’t about to catch him,” Butch said, “not out in the

 

bush, and not with all them farmers helping to hide him and his

 

boys. Feeding them, keeping them posted on where the Feds are.”
“They’re paying for it, though, them folks helping him,” Will

 

Anderson said. “The goddam Feds are coming down harder on them

 

all the time.”

 

“Momma believes Aunt Sally and Uncle Angus are maybe helping him,” Jim said. “Aunt Sally doesn’t come right out and say it, but

 

I guess she’s got to be careful what she puts in a letter. Can’t know

 

for sure who might read it sometime.”

 

“Those Parchmans be damn fools to mix with bushwhackers,”

 

Will Anderson said.

 

“The harder the Feds come down on them who help Quantrill,

 

the more run off to join him,” Butch said. “Hell, they’re singing

 

songs about him.”

 

“You all know he was a teacher?” Ike said. “They say he can

 

speak in Latin. He can give a big long speech of Shakespeare as easy

 

as you can sing ‘Sweet Betsy From Pike.’ ”

 

“I know it,” Jim said. “But I never knew a teacher who can shoot

 

like they say he can. They say he can throw up four bottles at once
and pull his pistols and bust all four before they hit the ground. I’d

 

say that’s some shooting.”

 

“
I’d
say it’s no damn wonder he’s captain of that bunch of long

 

riders,” Butch said. “I mean, hell, the smartest, the best shot. Can

 

ride like a damn Comanche they say.”

 

“He’s been a regular soldier too,” Ike Berry said. “Before he

 

become a bushwhacker. He was at Wilson’s Creek with Pap Price. At

 

Lexington too. They say he handled himself real admirable in both

 

of them bad fights.”

 

“Bad is the least thing those battles were,” Jim said. “Wilson’s

 

Creek always did sound like windblown hell the way I’ve heard it.”
Bill Anderson stood up and stretched hugely and gave a great

 

yawn. He looked down at Raven who sat up and fixed his eyes on

 

him. “I believe you are correct,” he said to the black dog. He smiled

 

around at the others and said, “Raven says all you boys sound like

 

you found
religion
.”

 

For a moment they simply stared at Bill looming over them tall

 

and lean in the thin yellow light from the porch window and then

 

they all looked to the Raven dog that sat openmouthed with a dog

 

grin. And then Will Anderson let out a great guffaw—and then they

 

were all of them laughing and making jokes about a religion called

 

the Sacred Church of Quantrill.

A few evenings later when the Berrys made their next visit and while
the sky was yet daylit Bill Anderson left the porch and went around
behind the house and then returned with two empty bottles in one
hand and two in the other. He was wearing his Navies on his belt.

He stood well away from the porch so they all might have clear
witness. He flung up his arms and all four bottles sailed high in the
air and he drew the revolvers and there was a quick sequence of pistol cracks echoed by bursts of glass and no bottle did hit the ground
whole.

The men cheered and whistled, stomped their boots on the
planks. Behind them the Anderson girls had come out to watch and
they applauded wildly while their mother stood in the shadowed
doorway behind them unsmiling and with her arms crossed tightly
over her breast.

Bill Anderson swept off his hat and bowed like a cavalier, then
grinned around at them all and intoned, “The Holy Order of
William T. Anderson welcomes ye one and all.”

Requiescat

Came an April daybreak when Martha Anderson was beset by a pain
in her stomach and the affliction worsened through the morning. In
the late forenoon Mary noted the strain in her mother’s face and
asked what was wrong. Martha gestured irritably and said she felt
like she had a big bubble of gas in her belly she couldn’t get shed of.
Josie joked that she sure hoped for a warning before that gas came
loose so she could quick scoot out of the kitchen. Mary gaped and
said, “

Jo
-
sie!
You
aw
ful thing!”

Young Jenny giggled and Josie grinned at her and then said to her
mother, “You reckon all that gas might come busting out so loud
Daddy and the boys’ll hear it at the corral and think it’s a Yankee
cannon firing at them?”

Jenny squealed with mirth behind her hands and Martha gave
Josie a look of mock outrage and took a playful swipe at her with a
dishrag and they all giggled even as they blushed.

Martha’s pain persisted and by that afternoon she was sick at her
stomach and began to feel weak and feverish. Her joints hurt. She
had never been ill in her life and was as much vexed as distressed by
this sudden malady. At supper that evening she ate but two bites
before rushing from the table and out the door to throw up over the
porch rail. The girls put her to bed and bathed her face by candlelight with a cool washcloth. Jenny offered to read to her from the
Bible or a volume of poems but Martha waved away the idea. They
placed a bowl close to hand and she was sick into it several more
times that evening before she finally fell into a sweaty and fitful sleep.

They could fix on no cause for her sickness but the cup of milk
she had taken that morning shortly after rising. No one else had
drunk of that morning’s milking. Now Will Anderson wondered if
their cow might have fed on snakeroot.

“We ain’t hunted out that damned snakeroot in a while,” he
said. “Could be some sprouted since we last cleared it. Son of a

bitch
!”

He went out to the barn and closely inspected the cow by the
light of a lantern and determined that the animal was indeed
infected, its milk poisoned. In the house they heard the shotgun
blast. Will reappeared at the door and told Bill and Jim to bury the
animal first thing in the morning. In order that his wife might rest
more comfortably with the bed to herself he would sleep in the barn
that night.

Martha began to moan in the later hours and the girls took turns
sitting at her bedside and mopping the fever sweat off her face and
neck. When Bill and Jim came into the room at daybreak she looked
ghastly. Her mouth was tight with pain and she lay with her eyes
closed and her hands pressed to her stomach. Her breathing was
strained. The girls were redeyed and Bill and Jim offered to tend their
mother through the morning so they might get some rest but the girls
said they could manage all right. Will Anderson came in the house
and stood over the bed and looked down at Martha for a time without saying anything and then he went out again.

She nevermore opened her eyes nor spoke another word. Just
before noon she died.

 

Will took the front door off its hinges and set it on a pair of sawhorses in the center of the room and the brothers raised their
mother’s body from the bed and gently laid it on the cooling board.
The men then went out and the girls set to washing and preparing
their mother. They put her best dress on her and smoothed her features and brushed her hair and folded her hands on her breast. The
brothers took turns digging the grave in the shade of a sycamore
while Will constructed a coffin in the barn.