Wildwood Boys

by James Carlos Blake

  They rode on, driving the horses before them, using outriders to keep a sharp eye for anyone closing on them from any direction. But their luck held well. They’d seen no sign of military or civilian posse as they came to the station at Black Jack, where the stage had arrived only minutes ahead of them and carrying several prosperous passengers. From one man they took $1,500 and a diamond stickpin. This man’s wife was the only woman among the passengers and she was apologetically robbed of her gold necklace, diamond wedding ring, and small music box.

  Jimmy Vaughn was the one to relieve her of the music box, and when he opened the lid and heard the opening notes of “Für Elise,” he knew it was a gift for Mary Anderson. But a halfwit bushwhacker named Roach wanted the music box too, and tried to grab it from him. There was a cursing scuffle and the lid was accidentally wrenched off and the music mechanism ruined. Jimmy Vaughn put his hand to his pistol but Yeager stepped between them and said he wouldn’t stand for men of his band killing each other over gimcrack loot. Jimmy picked up the broken music box and turned it over and saw that the bottom was stamped: “Throckmorton Novelties, City of Kansas.”

  It was nearly midnight when they fell on Gardner, less than twenty miles now from Missouri. They robbed the express office and rousted the guests in the hotel and herded them into the lobby and took all money and jewelry they found on their persons or in their rooms. One of the women was exceptionally pretty, and Bill Anderson offered to return all of her husband’s property—nearly $400, a fine watch, and a heavy gold ring—in exchange for one kiss from her. Dick Yeager laughed and told Bill he was crazy, no kiss was worth that much. The woman recoiled and said she would never permit a lawless brute to touch her. Bill thought she was even prettier in her indignation. “What about it?” he asked the man.

  The woman was appalled when her husband agreed to the bargain. The ring had belonged to his granddaddy, the man plaintively explained to her. Couldn’t she please be reasonable? It was only a kiss the man wanted.

  “Then you kiss him!” she said—and slapped him so hard she left the pink imprint of her fingers on his cheek. The wildwood boys whooped and one of them yelled, “Damn right, girl!” She put her face in her hands and cried.

  Bill Anderson looked at the man and said, “You’re a fool, mister.” He turned to go but the woman said, “Wait!” She wiped angrily at her tears and stepped up to him and said he could have the kiss on one condition—that he wouldn’t give anything of her husband’s back to him.

  “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. “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.

  AN ARREST AND AN OFFER

  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 fro
m 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 MILITARY 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.

  They took no breakfast but coffee, wanting to be on their way before sunup. Finley had saddled the girls’ horses and Black Josh tied their grips to the cantles. There were hugs and kisses all around and Jim gave Hazel’s rump a parting fondle
. Then they were mounted and hupping their horses into the woods and gone, Bill in the lead, Josephine right behind him.

  Forty minutes later the eastern sky was showing long low streaks the color of raw meat when a Federal cavalry patrol came through the front gate in a clatter of hooves and armament and headed up the wagon track toward the house. Annette peered through the front window curtains and said, “Oh Lord, honey, they’re here.”

  Hazel put down her teacup and went to the window to look. “I guess somebody in the sewing club wasn’t all that stalwart,” she said. “Jim would say he told us so.” She looked around the room as if rushing to memorize it.

  The dogs raced out from under the porch, snarling, napes roached, and met with a crackling salvo of pistolfire that knocked them asprawl, writhing and yelping. The patrol lieutenant leaned from the saddle as he rode up on the Boo dog struggling to rise on a shattered leg and with a swipe of his saber took the muzzle off him. Then the dogs were under the trampling hooves and done with.

  Finley ran out of the stable with a rifle in hand and was shot twice and sent sprawling. A sergeant veered off the column and rode up to him and saw that his eyes yet fluttered and gave him a coup bullet in the head.

  Black Josh came out of the stable with his hands up high, waggling his arms like a man at a revival, saying, “I’se sure glad to see you, Cap’n, I’se shorely is.” But the Federals had been informed about him too, and the sergeant shot him in his false grin.