Wildwood Boys (31 page)

“An easy bargain,” Bill said with a smile. The husband started to
protest, but Buster Parr put a pistol to the back of his neck and he
fell mute.

The wife was anyway paying no attention to him. She took Bill’s
face between her hands and he bent to meet her upturned face. He
would never know she had not put her tongue in a man’s mouth
before, not even her husband’s, but it was evident to every man
watching that her tongue was in Bill’s mouth now, and his in hers,
and both tongues sporting lively, and the bushwhackers whistled and
clapped. The kiss lingered for a long half-minute, and when they
broke from it they were both flushed and breathless.

“Mam,” Bill said, “that’s a prize worth every gold ring in
Kansas,” and she reddened even more. He held out the gold wedding
band he’d taken from her but she shook her head and said, “Keep
it.” She glared at her husband, then retired to a chair in the corner
and sat and stared at her folded hands on her lap. The husband
looked ill. As the bushwhackers went out to their horses, Bill said to
him, “You for damn sure ain’t worth her.”

Not an hour later they were back in Missouri and heading for their
camp in the Sni-a-bar country. All of them except Jimmy Vaughn,
who’d gone to Kansas City in search of Throckmorton Novelties.

Rendezvous and rumors

Already at the Sni-a-bar camp were nearly sixty other guerrillas,
including Cole Younger and Socrates Johnson. Some of them had
just returned from Arkansas, some of them were new recruits. Even
though it was late when the Yeager bunch arrived, Cole and Sock
and a few others roused from their blankets to admire by torchlight
the horses they’d brought with them. Then they gathered round the
cookfire to drink whiskeyed coffee and hear Yeager’s account of the
raid into Kansas. Cole was much impressed and said, “You boys
done a damn wonder.”

Sock Johnson introduced various of the new men among them.
One was a gangly fellow with a prominent nose and a jaded manner.
He’d been a Confederate regular and had fought under Old Pap
Price at the battle of Wilson’s Creek and was captured by the Yanks
in Springfield six months later. He’d been paroled home to Clay
County but couldn’t endure the restrictions of a parolee’s life and
found himself in constant trouble with the Federals. When he could
take no more, he’d gone in search of Coleman Younger, who was
said to be recruiting for Quantrill. Sock introduced him as Frank
James and said he was born to bushwhack.

With so many new recruits, the company had grown too big to
keep riding as one bunch. Quantrill had broken it up into smaller
bands and named Todd, Pool, Blunt, Yeager, Gregg, and Cole as
their captains, although he remained chieftain of them all. The bands
would operate independently except when some of them might come
together for a larger raid than one bunch could undertake by itself.

Yeager thought it was a smart move. More and smaller bands
meant they could move faster and more easily disappear in the wildwood. The Federals would have to disperse their own forces to try to
hunt them all, and the smaller Yank parties would be easier to
ambush. He drank to Quantrill’s cleverness.

They’d been trading gossip and news around the fire for a while
when someone mentioned that Todd’s bunch was camped with
Quantrill’s near Blue Springs. The remark raised snickers, and somebody said, “Fletch Taylor’s bunch, you mean”—and there was more
low and knowing laughter. The Yeager men wanted to know what
was so funny, and Sock Johnson said, “Tell them, Cole.”

Well, Cole said, truth to tell, Fletch Taylor was usually in charge
of the Quantrill and Todd bunches because neither man was spending much time in the camp. As soon he got back to Missouri,
Quantrill had gone to live with his lady love, Kate, in a cabin in the
deeper woods near Blue Springs. By some accounts, they’d recently
married in opposition to Kate’s father, who thought she was too
young yet, but no one knew if the rumor was true. What everybody
did know for a fact was that a cousin of Kate’s named Frances Fry
was living at the cabin with them—everybody knew it because
Quantrill had invited Todd to come meet her. “And it would appear,”
Cole said, “that Todd and Miss Frances took a real shine to each
other, because now George is living out there too.”

“The hell you say!” said a hulking boy named Hi Guess. His grin
was utter lewdness.

An arrest and an offer
“Whooo!”

 

“I was up to the Blue Springs camp just a few days ago,” Sock
said, “and you ought to
hear
some of the suspicionings about what’s
going on at that cabin.”

 

“I don’t need to hear any such,” Buster Parr said, “I got enough
sinful notions about it smoking up my head as it is.”

 

“Well, whatever they’re doing,” Bill Anderson said with a smile,
“I’ll wager they’re having uncommon great fun at it.”

 

The comment drew sniggers from some, looks of righteous
Christian disgust from others.

Some days later, under a daybreak sky that looked carved of quartz,
they were having breakfast when a messenger arrived with the news
that Jimmy Vaughn had been arrested in Kansas City. He’d been
wearing a Missouri militia jacket while he shopped in a novelty
store, but he was recognized by a Federal informant who’d known
the Vaughns before the war and knew that Jimmy was riding with
Quantrill. From the store, Jimmy went to a barbershop. He was
leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed to receive a shave and a
haircut when four soldiers entered and pointed carbines at him and
asked the name of his Missouri outfit. A minute later, his face still
lathered, he was in manacles and being led on a chain to a prison
wagon for transport to Fort Leavenworth.

“He’s been identified by some people from Shawneetown as one
of the raiders who burned the place,” the messenger said. “The Feds
mean to hang him for it. They aim to prove to everybody just how
serious they are about dealing with bushwhackers from now on.”

A courier had taken the news of Vaughn’s arrest to Quantrill and
Todd at the cabin. They hastened back to the Blue Springs camp and
rounded up some men and the next day ambushed a Federal patrol,
killing four Yanks and capturing five. One of the prisoners died
shortly after, but Quantrill had offered the Federals at Leavenworth
his other four prisoners in exchange for Jimmy Vaughn and was
waiting on the Yankees’ answer.

Blunt choice
I have instructed the officers in command of troops
in the border country of Missouri that every rebel,
or rebel sympathizer, who gives aid, directly or indirectly, shall be destroyed or expelled from the mil

itary District. These instructions will not exempt
females from the rule. Experience has taught that
the bite of a she adder is as poisonous and productive of mischief as the bite of any other venomous
reptile. Therefore, all persons known to be in arms
against the Federal authorities of this District,
will be summarily put to death when captured. The
only Constitutional right that will be granted them,
will be the right to make choice of the quality of
rope with which they will be hung.

Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt,

 

Commanding District of the Frontier

Cole Younger read the proclamation aloud from the newspaper,
then looked around at the others and said, “I’d have to say the man
is a 360-degree son of a bitch.”

“Yep,” Frank James said. “Any way you look at him.”

 

Departing the Vaughns

Every day brought darker rumors to the guerrilla camps. The Federals claimed to know that in addition to giving them food and shelter
and medical care, the bushwhackers’ women were serving as spies
and smugglers of ammunition. The Union meant to put a stop to it.
They were said to be shaping a plan for arresting every woman in
Jackson County related to any known bushwhacker by blood or
marriage. The Yankees hoped to achieve two ends at once—to
deprive the guerrillas of the women’s help, and to hold hostages
against further bushwhacker depredations in Jackson County. They
had dozens of spies making up a list of the guerrillas’ female kin, and
rumor had it that they were about to start making arrests.

Some of the wildwood boys thought the rumor itself was a Yankee trick. “They want us to believe it so we’ll take the girls off somewhere and hide them,” Fletch Taylor said during a visit to the
Sni-a-bar camp. “We’d be doing the damn Yanks a favor, wouldn’t
we—cutting off our main help, our best supply of ball and powder
and information? Hell, they’re just bluffing.”

“What if they’re not?” a young recruit named Nestor Gates said.
His only living kin in the world was a younger sister residing with an
aunt and uncle in Sibley.

“What

if
?” Fletch Taylor echoed. “Well, what if a frog had
wings? Then he wouldn’t bump his ass so much, would he?”

 

This argument failed to impress Nestor Gates, and a short time
later he was riding hard for Sibley with the intention of putting his
sister on a riverboat to Saint Louis. His comrades would not see him
again. Just outside of Independence he would encounter a company
of state militia cavalry and be challenged for proof of his loyalty to
the Union. He would kill one soldier and wound another before
falling under a dozen musket balls. They would cut off his ears and
hang him by the neck from an elm, and a note on his chest would
read: “Crow Cafe.”

Bill Anderson was also unconvinced that the Feds were bluffing.
“Think about it,” he said to his brother. “As much help as the
women been to Quantrill, wouldn’t

you
put an end to it if you were
the Feds?” They told Yeager what they had in mind to do and then
departed the camp that afternoon.

They made their careful way through the woodland traces to
Westport and it was near midnight when they sneaked up the back
trail to the Vaughn place. They weren’t even out of the woods yet
before the dogs appeared from the darkness, jumping and whining
low all around Edgar Allan, and Bill whispered, “Happy to see you
boys too.” They emerged from the trees and saw Finley and Black
Josh standing in shirttails in the shadows outside the stable with
rifles in their hands. “Reckoned it was you,” Finley said to Bill,
“when them hounds wouldn’t bark.”

Their sisters were elated to see them, had been worried witless
since they’d left with Yeager for Kansas. They couldn’t let off from
hugging them and kissing them, and they made them sit in the
kitchen and tell them everything while they went about preparing a
big supper.

The Vaughn girls kept asking Bill and Jim what they thought the
Yanks were going to do to their brother. Would they really hang him,
like everyone was saying? Was there any chance they might just put
him in prison till after the war? Couldn’t Quantrill

do
something?

“Quantrill’s trying to make a trade for him,” Bill Anderson said.
He hoped they did not remember Perry Hoy. Mary Anderson said little, but her eyes were shouting her fear for Jimmy Vaughn.

The supper laid before them was the most sumptuous they had
eaten in weeks—pork stew, corn on the cob, greens in ham fat,
black-eyed peas, cornbread. As they wolfed it down, they told the
girls they wanted to move them all out to the Parchman farm where
they would be safer than in Westport. “Finley and Josh can stay and
take care of this place,” Bill told the Vaughns, “but you two best
come with us.”

The girls had heard the rumor of a Yankee plan to arrest the
guerrillas’ women, but they said they wouldn’t leave their home, and
anyway they didn’t think they had reason to worry. “They’ve got
Jimmy under arrest, for heaven’s sake,” Annette said. “They have no
reason to come for us. They don’t need us as hostages against him.”

“You all been smuggling powder and ball out of K.C. for more
than a year,” Bill said. “You got an ammunition factory in the cellar.
I’d say that’s plenty of good reason for them to come visit.”

“They don’t know anything about that,” Hazel said. “If they
knew about it, they would’ve come for us before now.”

 

“They got more spies now,” Jim Anderson said. “They threaten
people with jail, with burning their house if they don’t tell who’s
helping us.” He took Hazel’s hand. “You’re coming with us and
that’s an end on it.”

 

Hazel snatched her hand away. “Says
who
? Listen, Jim Anderson, just because I allow you certain pleasant liberties with my person does not give you authority over me.”

 

Jim’s face went pink and grins showed around the table. “I want
you safe is all,” he said softly.

 

Hazel’s look gentled and she stroked his arm. “I know you do.
Just make sure your sisters are safe and don’t fret about us. The Yankees have always let us alone and still will, you’ll see.”

 

“We won’t go to K.C. for a while,” Annette said. “If the Feds are
keeping an eye on the place, they’ll see we’re just a couple of helpless
girls with only a cripple and an old darky for protection. As soon as
they let off hawkeyeing us, we’ll be right back at making cartridges
for Captain Quantrill, and you be sure and tell him that.”
***

 

Next morning, Bill rose well before dawn and studied the dark sky
from the window. It had drizzled through the night and the smell of
wet earth was heavy on the air, but the clouds had since cleared and
he could tell it would be a pretty day. Josephine was still packing her
grip when he stepped into the dim hallway and saw Jim Anderson
coming out of Hazel’s room, stuffing his shirt into his pants, his
gunbelts draped over his shoulders. Hazel came to the door in a
short cotton shimmy that exposed her long wonderful legs and
showed the rest of her in stark silhouette against the lamplight. Jim
drew her close and they kissed deeply, then he patted her bottom
and she went back in the room to get dressed. He turned and saw
Bill staring, and they exchanged gentlemanly nods. And then wide
grins.