The Yankee party must have thought them a smaller bunch, because when the full company of more than sixty guerrillas was in view and galloping toward the woods, howling and shooting, the Federals fled. Jim Anderson led two dozen men in chase for a mile or so before reining up and watching them vanish over a distant rise.
Their forward scouts—Sock Johnson and Fulton the Sailor—had sent back no word of lurking Yankee troops, and so Bill had posted only a single vidette at the treeline, a boy named Robinson. They found him throatcut in the underscrub.
They bore his body back to the Marlowe place and were quick about burying him and Oz Swisby in the soft earth behind the house. Bill gave Marlowe money and told him if they ever disturbed the remains buried there or reported them to Union troops he would know it and he would come back and roast the entire family alive. Marlowe and his wife swore they would keep the graves a secret, but the daughters made no show of fear at Bill’s threat. He supposed that they had already seen so much of the world’s meanness—even in their own faces—to have grown inured to its timbre. Nether one of them had seemed much affected by the sight of a dead man who had politely thanked them for dinner a half-hour earlier.
They found their scouts two miles away where the road passed through a dense tree hollow. The head of Fulton the Sailor rested on a knee-high tree stump at the side of the road and his body hung by its feet from a branch of a nearby elm. Some waggish Yank had inserted a corncob pipe between Fulton’s teeth so that he appeared to be grinning around it in spite of the flies trafficking in his mouth and eyes.
But Fulton could not hold their attention against the spectacle of Socrates Johnson. The things they had seen in the course of this war had made quaint the notion of shock, but here the Yankees did succeed in capturing their attention. From four different trees dangled Johnson’s quartered portions. The bolder crows had persisted at their clustered feedings on the rent and dripping flesh until Butch Berry fired a shot to disperse them into the higher branches, where they perched and glowered at the intruders and squalled their protests.
“That’s how they used to kill people back in the olden days,” Frank James said. “When they wanted to make a lasting impression on anybody who might be thinking to follow a wayward path.”
“Looks like it makes a pretty lasting impression on the fella who gets it done to him too,” Hi Guess said.
Fulton the Sailor had been popular with the company, Sock Johnson fairly venerated. Sock had been Jenny’s great favorite, Bill remembered, and had doted on her like a darling daughter. His hands began to pain, and he eased his grip on the saddlehorn.
“That’s four good men we lost today and two of them butchered and we’ve put down not one goddam Fed in return,” Butch Berry said. He spat hard and his off eye looked wild. “I say we got a big bill to collect.”
They buried the men deep among the trees and then found heavy broken branches to put on the graves to keep off the larger scavengers.
Darling wife—
I am weary with my own rage, from which there is no respite but my dreams of you. How I miss you, my lovely girl! In my dreams the scents of your skin and your hair are so real that I am shocked, on waking, to discover I am not with you. Shocked,—and remanded to my fury….
They crossed down into Boone County, every man of them aching to encounter Federals or any man who did support the Union, but by sundown they had met none. Bill was about to call a halt for the night when Butch and his scouts reported that George Todd and Dave Pool were encamped with their companies on the farm of a man named Singleton a few miles to southward. Butch had taken a drink with them, and they sent word that Bill’s company was welcome to put down in their camp.
They sat around the fires under a starbright sky showing a skullwhite shard of moon in the west. Todd had no news of Price’s Army of Missouri, but was as curious as Bill about where Pap might be and what he would have the guerrillas do in service of his invasion. He gave no sign of still being disgruntled with Bill, but he made no mention of Quantrill, which Bill took as evidence of his persisting displeasure toward the man. Todd was saddened to learn of the men Bill had lost at Marlowe’s farm, and was wroth to hear of their mutilations. Dave Pool had been close friends with Sock Johnson and was almost tearful in his sulfurous cursing of the Yanks. At every fire in the camp, the wildwood boys spoke in hard voices of the barbarities committed on their fellows.
They passed a restless night, tossing in their blankets, cursing low, muttering their maledictions to imagined auditors. Bill slept not at all but stared at the stars all night and felt his heart like some becrazed creature banging on the bars of its cage.
In the morning their mood was still smoldering. Feeling restless and craving to know where Price and his army might be, Bill mounted up with thirty men and asked Todd where the nearest town lay. Todd pointed down the southward trail. “About three miles yonderway. Place called Centralia.”
VAE VICTUS
The town stood on a stretch of rolling prairie three miles from the Singleton farm. It was little more than a stageline waystation and a whistle stop on the North Missouri Railroad, a hamlet of some hundred residents, comprising a depot, a freight house, a general store, some two dozen houses, and two hotels. On this late Tuesday morning of bright sun and few clouds, the smell of dust on the air, thirty men of the Kansas First Guerrillas, all of them dressed in Federal blue, trotted their horses down the street.
A dog barked nearby. A rooster crowed. People on the sidewalks paused to watch the horsemen pass. Those in the street hastened out of their way.
Arch Clement glanced around with a scowl and said, “Look at them. I’ll wager the war’s never touched this place.”
Behind him, Jim Anderson said, “They probably think the war’s but a rumor.”
“Todd says the place is Unionist to a man,” Butch said.
Bill reined up in the middle of the street and studied the town. A small group of men was gathered on the porch of the Eldorado House, the nearest of the two hotels, and all of them were regarding the arrivals in Union blue. One of them stepped up to the porch rail and called out, “What outfit are ye boys with?”
Bill made no answer but only stared at the man until he made an awkward shrug and turned away. Some of the others retreated into the hotel.
“That’s all they do, the likes of them, gawk and talk,” Bill said. He spat. “I don’t see a man of them missing an eye or arm or leg, but I’ll wager there’s not a pair of balls on that porch.” He thought of Sock Johnson suspended from the various trees, of Fulton the Sailor’s disembodied head made an object of jest. His anger of the day before had not at all eased in the night, and now, sleepless and raw-eyed, he squinted against the risen sun’s tormenting glare off the glass windows and the pale street.
“Damn them,” he said. “Sack the place.”
Jim and Arch gave quick orders and the morning was shattered with rebel yells. Some of the men dismounted and ran into the freight house while others heeled their horses into a gallop and raced through the town, taking possession of every good horse they came on, shooting in the air and at everything of glass in sight, laughing at the people scattering like spooked chickens, at the shrieks of the women yanking their children to them and fleeing into their houses. Some went straight for the general store and made short work of looting it, smashing out the front windows with flung bolts of cloth, overturning shelves of goods, cutting open tins of peaches and apple sauce, oysters and salmon, slurping the contents on the spot. They stomped into the two hotels and robbed every guest. One man offered to protest and Frank James broke his nose with a pistol barrel and no one else even thought to resist.
Bill Anderson cantered Edgar Allan up and down the street, relishing the feel of a proper meanness toward this town that had the audacity to think itself exempt from the war.
There came gleeful whoopings from the freight house, where the men had discovered an untapped barrel of whiskey. They rolled it out on the platform, s
et it upright and broke open the top. A carton of tin cups was produced from one of the stores and the bushwhackers were shoving each other aside in their eagerness to dip into the barrel and gulp the whiskey like water. Somebody found a case of new boots and Dave Pool had the clever idea to tie a pair together by the straps and hang them over his saddle and then fill them with whiskey. “Bedamn if that ain’t a sage use of bootleg,” Buster Parr said. Others were already putting the rest of the boots to the same use.
Now an outcry at the end of the street announced the arrival of the stagecoach from Columbia. As it rolled up to the Boone Hotel, it was surrounded by bushwhackers ordering the passengers to alight. The terrified driver pled not to be shot as a pair of bushwhackers clambered aboard and began rummaging through the topside luggage. The passengers stepped down and were quickly relieved of their pocketbooks. When they learned who was robbing them, one man said, “Why steal from us? We’re southern men, same as you.”
“Bullshit you are,” Hi Guess said. “If you were good southern men, you’d be wearing the gray or riding with us.”
Even as they went about their plunder, they kept a steady traffic to the whiskey barrel. Bill sat his horse and accepted a cup of spirits handed up by Arch Clement. They were toasting each other when there sounded a high keen whistle from down the track.
Archie’s teeth showed hugely. “Bedamn if our luck ain’t made of gold!”
It was the noon train from Saint Louis headed for Saint Joe—three passenger coaches and an express and baggage car. As it rounded into view of the depot, the guerrillas had already converged on the track and were heaving heavy wooden ties across the rails. The train came to a shrilling, steaming halt a dozen yards shy of the barrier. The wildwood boys swarmed aboard and kicked off the engineer and brakemen and stormed into the coaches, shooting into the ceilings, demanding everyone’s money and jewelry.
Accompanied by Butch and the James brothers, Bill went directly to the express car and ordered the agent to open the safe. It yielded more than three thousand dollars, which Bill handed in a sack to young Jesse for guardianship. Breaking open the baggage in the car, Frank James discovered a suitcase holding more than ten thousand dollars in greenbacks. When Bill and the others looked to see what he was laughing at, they too had to grin.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” Jesse said, beaming at the others. “I ain’t never had no fun!”
Arch Clement appeared at the car door, showing his peculiar smile. “Captain Bill, you’ll want to see this.”
Bill followed him past the passengers who’d been forced off the train and stood in fearful clusters in front of the stationhouse. They went up the steps of one of the coaches, and the pair of bushwhackers posted at the door stepped aside for them. Arch swept a hand into the coach like he was presenting a stage act and said, “Behold!”
In the coach were twenty-three Federal soldiers with not a gun among them and every face hanging like a mourner’s. Two bushwhackers stood at the far end of the coach, holding Colts in both hands and grinning at Bill.
“These gents are on furlough,” Arch told Bill. “They were bold enough to admit they are men of General Sherman. They were with him in Atlanta.”
“Houseburners and well poisoners,” Bill said. “Killers of mules and dogs and old men. Violators of women. Silverware thieves. That’s what I hear about the bummers of crazy Sherman’s outfit. The only thing of worth about you sonsofbitches is your uniforms. Get them off.”
The Yanks stood up and began to strip.
Watching them jostling each other as they shed their uniforms, Bill Anderson felt a sudden and discomfiting tiredness that had nothing to do with muscle and bone. More a weariness of purpose. A faltering of tenacity. How many? Bush had asked. For how long? He had a momentary vision of shooting each man of them in the knee and letting it go at that.
And then one of the Federals said, “Dammit, Wallace, watch your elbow!”
A short soldier was rubbing his eye and glaring at the big Yank beside him. A big man with a thick brown beard.
Wallace. With a beard.
“Say now, Wallace,” Bill said, “you ever been in the Nations, nearabouts the Red?”
Wallace gawked at him in surprise at being addressed by name. “No sir, I never.”
Wallace with a beard. Bill’s incipient uncertainty gave way to revived rage.
“Get them outside,” he said to Arch. “Over by the store.”
Townfolk and passengers watched the Yanks file off the train in their underwear. Arch ordered them to form a double rank alongside the general store.
“We need one for Wyatt,” he said, and Bill nodded. One of their comrades, Cave Wyatt, was a Federal prisoner in Columbia, and Bill wanted to trade for him.
Bill mounted Edgar Allan and hupped the horse up in front of the double rank of Federals and asked if there was a sergeant among them. No man spoke up. Bushwhackers had formed up to either side of him, most of them with a pistol in one hand and a cup of whiskey in the other, all of them well drunk now and cursing the prisoners in rankly obscene terms—calling them fuckers of their own mothers, cornholers of their sisters, practiced suckers of pizzles, avid eaters of shit. Mothers covered their children’s ears.
“Are you sure none of you is a sergeant?” Bill said.
A Federal stepped forward and gave his name as Sergeant Tom Goodman. “If you’re gonna shoot the sergeants, there’s only me. So do it and be damned.”
Bill smiled. “Brave last words, Sergeant. But save them for another day.” He motioned for Jim to take the man aside.
Seeing that Goodman was not going to be harmed the other Federals became more hopeful. Even the locals and the train passengers breathed more easily.
“Wallace, step out!” Bill called, and the bearded man hastened forward, face brightly expectant that he would be put aside with Goodman. “Right here, Captain,” he said.
“Here’s your parole,” Bill said—and drew his Navy and shot him through the eye.
Before the others could even start to beg for their lives, Arch Clement shot one in the heart—and then the other guerrillas opened fire.
Federals spun and staggered and left their feet as they were hit by bullets. They sprawled kicking and writhing. They fell against the building wall and slid to the ground, painting red streaks on the clapboard. Some of the wounded tried to crawl from the scene, though where they might be thinking to go defied all speculation. Whatever dream of life yet clung in their heads was ended at pointblank range.
The prolonged crackling of revolvers raised a great cloud of white gunsmoke to waft on the easy breeze which carried too the screams of the perishing Yankees and the shrieks of women standing witness to their slaughter.
A single Yank was able to get away from the execution ground, breaking through the line of guerrillas and absorbing no fewer than seven bullets as he went. He made it to the depot and scrambled so far under the low crawlspace that the guerrillas could not make him out in its darkness. They took turns hunkering and coaxing at the crawlspace, assuring him that if he came out they would not harm him further. Archie Clement promised they would write to Lincoln himself and say he deserved a damn medal, deserved to be a general. The man made no answer. So they set the building afire and after some minutes he came crawling out, his underwear sagging with blood. They loudly cheered his pluck. And then shot him dead.
They ordered the train crew to pull the ties off the tracks, then torched the coaches and made the engineer get the locomotive rolling and hop off, letting the train go on its own, the smoke of the flaming cars churning high and black to mingle with the smoke of the blazing depot.
And then they departed, laughing and singing, taking with them a small collection of good horses, boots of sloshing whiskey hanging from their saddles, new Federal uniforms rolled behind their cantles, wallets crammed with tins of foodstuff.
They would never make the trade of Goodman for Wyatt. The Yankee sergeant would be their prisoner for ten days, and then, dur
ing a crossing of the Missouri River near Boonville, effect his escape. He was the only Federal ever taken prisoner by Bloody Bill Anderson who lived to tell of it, and for years afterward he would rarely have to pay for his own drinks
Two hours later a pall of smoke still hung over Centralia and its litter of executed Federals when Union Major A.V.E. Johnson arrived at the head of his mounted infantry troop. He found residents and stranded travelers alike still gawking on the dead or wandering about like halfwits displaced into an alien geography.
The major was horrified and outraged in equal parts by the slaughter of the Federals. On learning that there had been but thirty men in the guerrilla band and that its leader was Bill Anderson—the very man he was under orders to hunt for in Boone County—he was determined to run them to ground immediately, never mind the warnings of those who’d heard the bushwhackers say there were many more of their fellows in a nearby camp. Johnson left twenty-five men in town and led the rest in the direction the guerrillas had fled.
They’d been back at the Singleton farm less than three hours when scouts brought warning of Yankees coming from Centralia—125 men armed with muzzleloaders and riding plug horses. Even those who’d been sleeping off the whiskey and labors of the morning leapt up at the call to arms despite their throbbing heads and were pistoled and horsed in minutes. Dave Pool was furious in his whiskey haze, cursing the Yanks for giving him no rest. Bill too was still half-drunk, his head howling with pain, as he and Todd quickly shaped a plan.
Arch Clement sat his horse and waited. The late afternoon light aggravated the dull whiskey pain behind his eyes, and the crows in the trees were carrying on with such a clatter he wanted to shoot them all. He wished he had some whiskey left to take the edge off his hangover. The six men of his party were all suffering in like manner and their ill moods carried into their horses, the animals stamping and snorting with malicious urge.
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