Wildwood Boys (27 page)

Olathe Herald
saw his cache of thirteen thousand
dollars, the savings of his life, discovered by a bushwhacker and
handed to George Todd, he broke into tears and cried, “Oh God, I
am
ruined
!” George Todd told him he shouldn’t take it so hard, he
should count his blessings, because things could always be worse. To
the amusement of his comrades, he proved his point by shooting the
man in the foot.

The Berrys reappeared with sixteen finebred horses they galloped
through the street and added to the herd of stolen stock. Ike’s pale
hair hung from under a flatbrimmed hat of Californio fashion. The
hat had belonged to one Harrison Porter, whose last words had been,
“I don’t know

what
gray horse you’re talking about and I sure as hell
don’t know you boys.”

By dawn the company had acquired a train of loot fourteen wagons long. The wagons they didn’t use they set afire in the street.
Quantrill’s mood was ebullient. He dispatched the plunder train and
the rustled herd toward Missouri with half the company as escort
and George Todd in command. He released the captive townsmen
from the square and they hurried into the arms of their waiting
women and clung to them as they shambled home.

The risen red sun cast lean shadows through the streets. Not a
horse or mule was left to the town, not a wagon left uncharred nor a
windowpane unshattered. Shop doors hung askew and the sidewalks
were littered with glass and broken furniture. But only three men
had been killed and the town had been spared the torch. As George
Todd might have advised the Olathans, it could have been worse. For
other towns to either side of the border, it yet would be.

The bushwhackers mounted up and Quantrill called for the prisoners to be brought forth in a column of twos. None of the soldiers
wore more than hat and underwear and boots and some wore less
than that. Some stepped gingerly in their stockinged feet as the guerrillas led them out to eastward.

“Where are you taking us?” the major called to Quantrill. “You
promised parole!”

 

George Maddox told him to shut up or he’d shoot him where he
stood.

 

The town fell away behind them. Two miles farther on, Quantrill
called a halt. Some of the prisoners now fell to weeping and some to
prayer. One boy clutched Andy Blunt’s stirrup and said, “
Please
don’t shoot me—I got a mother, I got a baby sister.”

 

Blunt was at once embarrassed and outraged. He kicked the boy
away and said, “Quit it, for God’s sake!” Cole Younger made a
sound of disgust and spat.

 

“Listen to me!” Quantrill said. “I promised parole and parole
you now have. Be men of your word and stay out of the ranks.”

 

He hupped the Charley horse forward and the point riders hastened out ahead of him and the rest of the company fell in behind,
some chuckling and others grumbling over bets won and lost on the
question of whether he would execute the prisoners.

 

The militiamen watched them go, every man of them feeling
gratitude and relief—and rising fear of a terrible joke to be sprung on
them at any moment when the bushwhackers turned back to reveal
their grins and kill them all. They watched the guerrillas until they
were out of sight before they started back to town, and even then
they kept looking over their shoulders.

Bill Anderson’s prize spoil of the night was a fine gold bracelet he’d
envisioned on Josephine’s wrist the moment he saw it. “I’ll have that
if you please,” he’d said to the fairfaced woman wearing it. She
handed it to him with the accusation, “You are a shameless brigand.” To which he said, “I expect you’re right, mam” and kissed her
hand—and smiled at the rosiness raised to her cheeks by both dander
and delight. He’d also come to possess a pair of fobbed watches of
excellent manufacture, a match cylinder of pure silver, a man’s ruby
ring, and cash money that bulged his every pocket. His brother and
the Berrys too had enriched themselves with cash, had reaped pocket
pistols and watches, jewelry true and false, fancy shirts and boots,
gimcrackery of every sort. All in all, it had been a night of such
license as none of them had ever thought to possess save in dreams.
They could not stop grinning at each other and at the passing world.
***

The plunder train was slow and ponderous and they caught up to it
before it made the border. Todd had sent Fletch Taylor and a crew
ahead with the stock, and the herd’s dust bloomed low on the forward sky. Quantrill posted lookouts well back of the company to
keep a sharp eye for pursuers, but there was still no sign of anyone
coming behind them when they crossed the border that afternoon.
They were well into Jackson County when they put down for the
night. Fletch Taylor had pastured the herd a mile forward of their
camp.

They passed a celebrant evening drinking and joking and raising
their rebel yells, telling and retelling anecdotes of the raid. Quantrill
took Bill Anderson aside and said he’d heard that he and his boys
had goodly experience in wrangling horse herds. Bill asked where
he’d heard that. Quantrill said it was one of those things you hear
and he was just wondering if it was true. Bill smiled. Quantrill said,
“I thought so.”

He charged Bill and his boys, including Jimmy Vaughn, with
delivering the Olathe horses to the Cass County ranch of a man
named Dropo, who’d long done business with the guerrillas. They
were to take the payment to Annette Vaughn to use toward the purchase of powder and ball in Kansas City. “I’ll send word to you at
the Vaughn place,” Quantrill said, “when I’m ready to bring the
company together again.”

Shortly before daybreak, Bill’s bunch relieved Fletch Taylor’s
crew of the herd and got it moving south. The rest of the company
pushed eastward with the plunder train, headed for neighboring
Johnson County where an entrepreneur of Quantrill’s acquaintance
would pay in gold coin for their load of loot.

A bathing incident

Some days later Bill’s bunch was back at the Vaughn place and stepping down from their horses and into the girls’ hugs and kisses. In the
flurry of happy greetings, Josephine embraced Butch Berry in his turn
and pecked him on the cheek. For an instant Butch felt like he’d been
hit on the head—then tried to hold her to him and kiss her back, but
she ducked out of his grasp and flung herself on Bill once more. Mary
Anderson gave them each a welcome hug too, but they could see that
her spirit was still sore with the memory of Tyler Burdette.

“Whooo, lordy!” Annette Vaughn loudly declared. “These boys
smell like something crawled into their clothes and died. Let’s get
some tubs filled.”

A short time later the five of them were soaking in sudsy wooden
tubs clustered in a ragged circle in the stable, scrubbing the trail
grime out of their pores, joking and laughing, recounting the Olathe
raid to Finley and Black Josh, passing around jugs of the busthead
whiskey Josh brewed out in the woods. They’d been at these pleasures the better part of an hour when Annette and Josephine came
into the stable with armfuls of fresh towels and clean clothes and
prompted outcries of indignation.

“Sweet Jesus, Annie!” Jimmy Vaughn hollered. “It’s nekkid men
taking baths here!”

Report of a chase

 

Annette made a face of mock shock and handed the clothes and
towels to Josh. “As if any of you got something we never saw
before,” she said.

 

Finley sniggered. Bill gave Josephine a scolding look and she
smiled with exaggerated sweetness.

 

“Get out of here—both you!” Jim Anderson said. He slung a
handful of water at them.

 

“They sure seem awful ashamed of whatever it is they think we
might see, don’t they?” Annette said to Josie. “Look at them all
scrunched down in those tubs like turtles in their shells.”

 

“Dammit to hell!” Ike Berry shouted. He sat up so abruptly that
water sloshed over the sides of his tub. He was rose-eyed with drink
and his white hair was plastered to his skull. “Putting on like you’re
so bold!” He looked around at his fellows and said, “What say we
stand up and let em have a good gawk? See how bold they are
then
?”

 

“I dare you,” Annette said. “Doubledog dare you.”

 

“Yeah, doubledog dare you!” Josephine said. She laughed and
sidestepped the sopping washrag Bill threw at her.

 

“I’m with Ike,” Jim Anderson said. He took another pull of
whiskey and set the jug beside his tub. “Let’s just see how bold they
are. On the count of three. Ready, boys?”

 

“One . . .” Jimmy Vaughn said. He braced himself on the sides of
the tub in readiness to stand.

 

“Two . . .” Bill Anderson said, his beard dripping, himself positioned to push up to his feet.

 

“Three
!
”
Ike Berry bellowed—and he stood up in a cascade of
gray soapy water, throwing his arms out wide like some stage
celebrity in the spotlight, his torso and legs shining white. And in the
next horrifying instant realized he was the only one who’d risen.

 

The other men broke out laughing and the girls squealed and
blushed behind their hands and Annette pointed at Ike but Josephine
was already looking where she pointed and both girls were bent with
laughter. Ike looked down and saw his privates shriveled into their
nest of pale hair and jerked his hands over himself and sat down fast.
The girls now cackling so hard they had to hold to each other, the
men guffawing. Black Josh showed an expanse of yellow teeth.

 

“You low sons of bitches,” Ike muttered, glaring around at the
other men in a furious blush. Even his brother in the tub beside him
was grinning.

 

“Think it’s funny, do you?” Ike said. He leaned out and grabbed
the edge of Butch’s tub with both hands and pushed hard and the tub
tilted and then crashed over on its side, depositing Butch on the floor
in a rush of water and a chorus of cheers, sprawling him on his back,
arms flailing and legs flung wide—and for an instant the stable fell
mute as every watching eye seized on his stark erection. Then the
men were yowling with harder laughter yet and the girls were fleeing
for the house in redfaced shrieks of hilarity.

 

Butch scrambled to his feet and snatched a towel from Josh and
whipped it around himself, grabbed up his clean clothes and stalked
into one of the horse stalls to get dressed—all the while cursing
everybody for no-account bastards, his ears flaming.

 

The men were choking on their laughter, weeping with it. “Now
he’s gone all
shy
on us,” Jim Anderson managed to say.

 

“Yeah,” Bill Anderson said, wiping at his eyes, gasping, “but say
now, don’t that boy know how to deal with a doubledog dare!”

 

“You
see
them girls go flying?” Jimmy Vaughn said.

 

“Hellfire,” Finley said with a skewed grin, “when I saw that ugly
thing standing up like that and looking like it didn’t care what it
went after,
I
about ran away!”

 

Another swell of guffawing and hooting.

 

Ike looked over at his brother, whose face seemed carved of
strawberry stone. “Damn, boy, the
things
going on in your head.”

Word of the company came to Finley by way of some secret informant and he passed it on to Bill and the boys. A force of Federals had
tracked Quantrill and the plunder train out of Olathe and over the
border and caught up to them a mile into Johnson County. The company made a run for it but they were slowed by the loot wagons. The
guerrillas fought a constant rear action as they went, but every time
they stopped to fight before running again, they had to abandon a
wagon or two. The Federals kept after them for ten days and didn’t
quit their pursuit until the guerrillas made it into the rugged Sni-abar region of Jackson County, just south of the Missouri River. This
was the bushwhackers’ home country—densely forested and cut
with deep ravines, the hills rugged and covered with thickets, the
bluffs near the river pocked with caves and sliced through with narrow passes. Quantrill’s boys knew every deer trace and hog trail in
the region and could move through it like creatures of the wild. To
the Feds the Sni-a-bar was a terra damnata; no detachment of Yankees ever entered that wildwood and came out again with as many
men as it took in—and now they rarely ventured there at all.

According to Finley’s informant, only a single bushwhacker had
been killed in the ten-day running fight, and only a few had been
wounded. But by the time they made it to the Sni-a-bar, they’d given
up every wagon of their loot to the Yanks.

Dancers

While they waited for word from Quantrill they tended to their
horses and gear and helped Finley and Josh with some of the rougher
chores around the place. They hewed dead trees at the edge of the
forest and trimmed them and with horses and ropes dragged the
trunks up near the firewood cribs and axed and stored cords for
the coming winter—which some of the local farmers were predicting
would be early in arriving and colder than usual. They were into
October and the meadow grasses and pasturelands already going
purple and brown, the leaves coloring like fire and some already
falling.

Every night, after the house had fallen silent and all the bedroom
doors were shut, Josephine tiptoed barefoot down the hall, silent as
a secret, and slipped into Bill’s room. Sometimes he was fast asleep
and wouldn’t know she was with him until he woke in the deeper
night to her breath on his neck and her arms around him. And, as
had become her practice, she would wake in the last dark hour
before dawn, kiss his sleeping face, and slip back to her own bed.

One Saturday evening they ventured into Westport for supper and
the weekly dance, the ten of them together. Each man carried a
pocket revolver under his suit coat, and Josephine thrilled to the feel
of the gun against her elbow when she clutched to Bill’s arm. She
wore the bracelet he’d brought her from Olathe, and she couldn’t
keep from admiring its rich glimmer on her wrist, nor from kissing
him on the cheek every now and again.