Wildwood Boys (54 page)

The man sensed the stillness around him and opened his eyes and
saw their faces, but he played on, and they let him finish the number.
Then he handed the instrument and bow to his wife and kissed her
cheek and she began crying without sound.

“A fine valediction,” Bill said, and gestured to Arch Clement.

They left him hanging from a branch of the maple tree in his
dooryard, the wife and children kneeling at his dangling feet and
weeping their prayers to Jesus, whom the man had quit waiting for,
but to whom he was now departed.

My darling wife—

The days blur one onto the other in their sameness. The
evenings in camp sometimes seem to me as unreal as dreams,
the men laughing and singing and telling jokes at the campfires, who only hours before were hard at killing. I confess to
you that the pleas and the death cries of Federals and their
informers, the wailings of their widows and children, are
grown tiresome to me for their monotony. But such “music”
remains, after all, the most popular tune of this war. O my
sweet girl, I cannot but wonder sometimes at the uncertain
nature of my thoughts. . . .

Beloved husband—

My dreams of you are longer and more frequent than
ever. I see you standing before me and smiling in your handsome wicked way and I run to your arms and we laugh and
do the most wonderfully sinful things!—how I hate to wake
from them! The tune I hear most often anymore is the sad
refrain in my heart pining for your return. . . .

Reprisals and a revenant

 

Into September and the bloodtide rises.

Ambushes and daily skirmish. Scalpings, dockings of ears and
noses. The Federals decapitate two guerrillas on the bank of the
Chariton and leave the heads on the dead men’s chests.

Two days after, Arch Clement flays a Union lieutenant’s face,
then carefully arranges it on the ground, remarks that the fellow
looks a little glum, and places an empty ammunition box over it to
keep the crows off until the Yanks have their look. In the nosehole of
the flensed skullface, he wedges a wild carrot.

They make the rounds of friendly havens through central Missouri,
now taking a meal at this farm, now getting fresh horses at that one,
now spending a night on a bed of hay at this other. They engage in
several scattered skirmishes with random Federal units, inflicting
many more casualties than they take. When they arrive at the familiar Rudd place in Carroll County, a hollow-eyed specter shambles
out onto the porch to greet them, his skeletal frame hung with an
overlarge Federal uniform and a quartet of revolvers.

“I thought you all would never get back,” he says in his thin
strained voice. “I thought the war would be ancient history and I’d
still be waiting on you.”

Frank James beholds his younger brother like something risen
from the grave. Bill Anderson grins and says, “Sorry we took so long
to come collect you, but we’ve been somewhat occupied.” Then
laughs. “Damn boy, I don’t believe anything can kill you unless
maybe it sneaks up from behind.”

Quantrill and a debacle

They joined now with Todd and Pool, and in their combined
strength of two hundred men they struck at larger Federal patrols
and encampments, inflicted greater casualties, and drew still larger
numbers of Yankee troops into the pursuit of them—well serving
Sterling Price’s strategy as his Army of Missouri began its move up
from Arkansas and into eastern Missouri.

In Howard County they made a camp in the red cedars on Bonnefemme Creek a few miles south of Fayette and debated whether to
try an assault on the Federal post in that town. They’d been told that
the garrison had been reduced to a mere two dozen men, but the
Yanks were well fortified in a log blockhouse atop a low rise. Todd
was leaning toward the attack, but Bill thought the post might prove
impregnable and cost them dearly. Todd took a party of men and
went on a wide scouting mission to ensure there were no other Federals in proximity to come to the garrison’s aid.

The company was already at breakfast when Todd returned at
dawn—and with him was William Clarke Quantrill and a band of
two dozen men, all of them in Federal blue. Bill was in the company
of his brother and Butch and Arch under an oak atop a low rise,
feeding on hardtack and jerky. They watched the arrivals step down
from the saddle and turn their mounts over to the horse pickets—
except for vicious Charley, whom Quantrill tethered to a tree at a
distance from the other horses. There was much loud salutation
between men who had not seen each other since late spring. Todd
and Quantrill accepted cups of coffee at one of the fires and stood
talking together. They both looked to Bill a bit stiff in their posture,
and he thought that if they’d put aside their differences they had not
put them aside very far.

Todd pointed in Bill’s direction and Quantrill came up the low
rise and said hello to them all. He looked leaner than when Bill had
last seen him, near to gaunt. The violet halfmoons under his eyes
bespoke too many sleepless nights. Bill gestured for him to sit down.
The others got up and moved off beyond earshot of them.

Quantrill settled himself crosslegged with a tired sigh and smiled
wryly. “ ‘Christ, if my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.’
Don’t you agree, William T.?”

“I do,” Bill said. “But I also agree that if a frog had wings he
wouldn’t bump his ass so much.”

 

“Ah, but you have a new name, don’t you?” Quantrill said. He
raised his cup. “Here’s to Bloody Bill—the most feared man in Missouri.”

 

“Damn newspapers,” Bill said. “They’ve made me out so fearsome it’s a chore to keep from scaring myself.”

 

“Actually, there’s another Missourian even more fearsome than
yourself,” Quantrill said. “Name’s Holcomb. Lives in Burton.
Knows more about dealing pain than any man I ever met. Had me
howling and begging for mercy, I tell you true. The very thought of
ever meeting him again makes me all weak in the bladder.”

 

“That dentist I hear you went to?”

 

“He will instruct you in whole new notions of pain.”

 

“I’ve never been myself, but I witnessed Yeager in a dentist chair
one time. Wasn’t pretty.”

 

Quantrill’s smile fell away at the mention of Yeager. “I heard
about the unpretty things the Yanks did to Dick in Saline.”

 

“George squared things for him with the fellow who sold him
out.”

 

“Is that so? Well, I’m sure Dick’s glad to know he’s all squared.”

 

His tone carried a note of mockery that reminded Bill of the last
time they’d spoken—when Quantrill had advised against marriage to
Bush—and the memory roused the resentments that attached to it.
“What are you doing here?” Bill said.

 

Quantrill’s brow rose slightly at his tone. “Old Pap has called for
bushwhackers to distract the Feds while he pushes for Saint Louis,”
he said. “I thought we should get together and decide how we could
use our companies to draw the most Fed troops away from the east
and do Old Pap the most good. I took Kate to her daddy’s place in
Blue Springs and I’ve been hunting you boys since. Finally ran into
Todd last night.” He grinned. “We came this close to shooting each
other for Yankees in our bluecoats.”

 

“I thought you and George had a parting of the ways.”

 

Quantrill shrugged. “That’s done with. Helping Price is more
important than any disagreement between us, and George knows it.
Actually, it’s a good thing I’ve come along. Last night George said he
was thinking of attacking the blockhouse in Fayette—if you can
imagine that. That’s folly and I told him so.”

 

As they talked, George Todd started up the rise toward them.
They watched him come. Quantrill grinned and said, “I was just
telling William T. how near to shooting each other we came last
night.”

 

Todd’s face was tight in the way Bill knew it to get whenever he
was spoiling for a fight. He stood over them and stared hard at
Quantrill and said he’d decided to attack the Yank post at Fayette
this morning.

 

Quantrill stared up at him. “That’s unwise, George.”

 

Todd spat. “If you’re too scared,” he said, “don’t join us in it. I
wouldn’t ride with a fearful man anyhow.”

 

Quantrill and Bill got to their feet “It’s not a matter of being fearful, George,” Quantrill said. “It’s a question of good sense.”

 

Todd squared himself. “You saying I don’t have good sense?”

 

Quantrill sighed and turned to Bill. “Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

 

Todd cut his eyes to Bill, his gaze demanding to know who he
sided with.

 

He thought Quantrill was likely right, no cavalry outfit could
breach that highground blockhouse. You only had to look at it to see
its invulnerability. Still, everything that had ever nettled him about
Quantrill was roused and thumping angrily in his veins—the presumptuousness of the man, his condescension, his subtly mocking
manner. He remembered Quantrill’s sly nuance to Todd about Bush’s
past.

 

“Hell, we outnumber them at least four to one,” Bill said. “If we
don’t fight with odds like that on our side, we ought to just put up
our hands and surrender, let them shoot us against a wall.”

 

Todd grinned hugely. Quantrill looked from one to the other, and
then turned up his palms in resignation.

It was over in fifteen minutes. Bill and Todd led the first two assaults,
but there were twice as many Federals in the fort as they had
thought, and the first Yank volley put down a dozen mounts and riders. The guerrillas never saw anything of the Yankees except their
rifle muzzles jutting from the loopholes and issuing smoke, heard
nothing from them but rifleshots and great rocking cheers each time
a handful of horsemen went down in the risen dust and drifting haze
of powdersmoke.

Bill circled back to the treeline where Quantrill was supposed to
be ready to lead the next charge, but just as he got there, he saw
Quantrill and his twenty boys cresting a hill a quarter-mile away at
full gallop and then dropping out of sight beyond it. He would not
see any of them again.

Quantrill had given a folded note to Sock Johnson for relay to
Bill and Todd. Bill had already read it by the time George came riding up—wild-eyed and gasping, only half his men still horsed, the
rest coming off the field on foot or lying wounded or dead on it. The
note was a single line: “I won’t ride with fools.”

Todd cursed and balled the paper in his fist. “If that cowardly
son of a bitch hadn’t run away,” he said, “we might’ve had the day!
I’ll kill him, by God!” He drew a revolver and called for Bill to ride
with him after Quantrill and his bunch.

But Bill was looking at the horseless bushwhackers staggering off
the field and into the cover of the trees, most of them wounded, some
of them badly, and he knew they couldn’t have won the day with
even a hundred more men. He heard the cries of dying comrades and
animals still out in the open, heard the Yankee rifles as they kept firing on whatever yet moved out there, and he felt the folly of the
attack like a weight in his chest, felt himself made small by his own
willfulness.

All these men down because you didn’t want to say he
was right. Well, he was right about that and right about you being a
fool.

He argued against going in pursuit of Quantrill, saying they had
too many wounded to gather up and get to someplace safe where
they could be tended. Dave Pool and others agreed, and Todd reluctantly capitulated. But he was still in a rage, and even as they
dragged their wounded off the field and doubled them up on the
horses still serviceable, he pointed at Bill and said, “You’re wrong if
you think he’s your friend. He’s nobody’s fucken friend! Next time I
see him I’ll kill him where he stands without a damn hello, and woe
to the man who tries to keep me from it.”

“Let’s go, George,” Bill said.

They left fifteen dead at Fayette and carried off forty wounded,
and five of these died in the saddle and were hastily buried in the
roadside woods. They navigated northward the afternoon long, distributing the most badly wounded at the farms of various Howard
County friends, leaving them there to recover or not as they would.

Todd remained in sullen temper through the day, and Bill knew
George was still rankled at him for refusing to chase after Quantrill.
When they reached the Randolph County line that evening, he was
not surprised by Todd’s announcement that he thought they could do
a better job of distracting the Feds if they operated as smaller bands,
so he was going his own way with his company. Dave Pool shrugged
apologetically at Bill and took his bunch with Todd’s. Holtzclaw and
his boys stayed with Bill.

Marlowe’s farm and a higher meanness

Into Monroe County and wide fields of goldenrod, lush meadows of
rose mallow, through dense green woodlands showing the first hints
of amber. The men remark on the difference between the lingering
greenness of these late September days and last year’s early leaffall.

At the farm of a family named Marlowe that swore they were
secessionist, they took a noon meal of roasted potatoes and gravy,
some of the men sitting on the floor of the crowded house, others out
in the barn, some few with the horses hidden in a brushy ravine
behind the house. The Marlowes’ two pubescent daughters were
both afflicted with the skin disease called Saint Anthony’s fire, their
faces so badly ravaged that some of the bushwhackers gaped in open
revulsion while others politely averted their eyes.

Oz Swisby was the first to finish eating and went out on the
porch to wait on the others. He had earlier taken off his Federal
bluecoat and tucked it under his cantle, and the guerrilla shirt he
wore was bright red. He took out his pipe and was in the midst of
lighting it, humming the tune to “Come All Ye Fair and Tender
Ladies,” when he was slammed backward by a Yankee rifleball that
made instant ruin of his heart even as the gunshot was still on the air.