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The March South in
1862
Winter had come and
some snow had fallen. There were no longer any leaves;
nature had nothing more to do
with the ambuscades. Bitter nights, with a foretaste
of more bitter nights to follow,
reminded Quantrell that it was time to migrate. Most
of the wounded men were well
again. All the dismounted had found serviceable
horses. On October 22, 1862, a
quiet muster on the banks of the Little Blue revealed
at inspection nearly all the old
faces and forms, with a sprinkling here and there of
new ones. Quantrell counted them
two by two as the Guerrillas dressed in line, and
in front rank and rear rank there
were just seventy-eight men. On the morrow they
were moving southward. That
old road running between Harrisonville and Warrensburg was always to the Guerrillas a road of fire, and
here again on their march toward
Arkansas, and eight miles east of Harrisonville, did Todd in the
advance strike a Federal scout of
thirty militia cavalrymen. They were Missourians
and led by a Lieutenant
Satterlee. To say Todd is to say Charge. To associate him
with something that will
illustrate him is to put torch and powder
magazinetogether. It was the old,
old story. On one side a furious rush, on the other panic and
imbecile flight. After a
four-mile race it ended with this for a score: Todd, killed, six;
Boon Schull, five; Fletch Taylor,
three; George Shepherd, two; John Coger, one; Sim Whitsett, one; James
Little, one; George Maddox, one; total, twenty; wounded, none. Even in
leaving, what sinister farewells these Guerrillas were
taking!
The second night out Quantrell stopped over beyond
Dayton, in Cass County, and ordered a bivouac for the evening. There came
to his camp here a good looking man, clad like a citizen, who had business
to transact, and who knew how to state it. He was not fat, he was not
heavy. He laughed a good deal, and when he laughed he showed a perfect set
of faultlessly white teeth. He was young. An aged man is a thinking ruin;
this one did not appear to think—he felt and enjoyed. He was tired of
dodging about in the brush, he said, arid he believed he would fight a
little. Here, there and everywhere the Federals had hunted him and shot at
him, and he was weary of so much persecution. "Would Quantrell let him
become a Guerrilla?" "Your name?" asked the chief. The recruit winced
under the abrupt question slightly, and Quantrell saw the start. Attracted
by something of novelty in the whole performance, a crowd collected.
Quantrell, without looking at the newcomer, appeared yet to be analyzing
him. Suddenly he spoke up: "I have seen you before." "Where?" "Nowhere."
"Think again. I have seen you in Lawrence, Kansas." The face was a
murderer's face now, softened by a woman's blush. There came to it such a
look of mingled fear, indignation and cruel eagerness that Gregg, standing
next to him and nearest to him, laid his hand on his revolver. "Stop,"
said Quantrell, motioning to Gregg; "do not harm him, but disarm him." Two
revolvers were taken from his person and a pocket pistol—a Derringer.
While being searched the white teeth shone in a smile that was almost
placid. "You suspect me," he said, so calmly that his words sounded as if
spoken under the vault of some echoing dome. "But I have never been in
Lawrence in my life."
Quantrell was lost in thought again,
with the strange man—standing up smiling in the midst of the band—watching
him with eyes that were blue at times and gray at times, and always
gentle. More wood was put on the bivouac fire, and the flames grew ruddy.
In their vivid light the young man did not seem quite so young. He had
also a thick neck, great broad shoulders, and something of sensuality
about the chin. The back of his skull was bulging and prominent. Here and
there in his hair were little white streaks. Because there was such bloom
and color in his cheeks, one could not remember these. Quantrell still
tried to make out his face, to find a name for that Sphinx in front of
him, to recall some time or circumstance, or place, that would make
obscure things clear, and at last the past returned to him in the light of
a swift revealment. "I have it all now," he said, "and you are a
Jayhawker. The name is immaterial. I have seen you at Lawrence; I have
seen you at Lane's headquarters; I have been a soldier myself with you; we
have done duty together—but I have to hang you this hour, by G—d."
Uabashed, the threatened man drew his breath hard and strode a step nearer
Quantrell. Gregg put a pistol to his head. "Keep back. Can't you talk
where you are? Do you mean to say anything?"
The old smile
again; could anything ever drive away that amile—anything ever keep those
teeth from shining? "You ask me if I want to talk, just as if I had
anything to talk about. What can I say I tell you that I have been hunted,
proscribed, shot at, driven up and down, until I am tired. I want to kill
somebody. I want to know what sleeping a sound night's sleep means."
Quantrell's grave voice broke calmly in: "Bring a rope." Blunt brought it.
"Make an end fast." The end was made fast to a low lying limb. In the
firelight the noose expanded. "Up with him, men." Four stalwart hands
seized him as a vice. He did not even defend himself. His flesh beneath
their grip felt soft and rounded. The face, although all the bloom was
there, hardened viciously—like the murderer's face it was. "So you mean to
get rid of me that way? It is like you, Quantrell. I know you but you do
not know me. I have been hunting you for three long years. You killed my
brother in Kansas, you killed others there, your comrades. I did not know,
till afterwards, what kind of a devil we had around our very messes—a
devil who prowled about the camp fires and shot soldiers in the night that
broke bread with him in the day. Can you guess what brought me
here?"
The shifting phases of this uncommon episode
attracted all; even Quantrell himself was interested. The prisoner—threw
off all disguise and defied those who meant to hang him. "You did well to
disarm me," he said, addressing Gregg, "for I intended to kill your
captain. Everything has been against me. At the Tate house he escaped; at
dark's it was no better; we had him surrounded at Swearington's and his
men cut him out; we ran him for two hundred miles and he escaped, and now
after playing my last card and staking everything upon it, what is left to
me? A dog's death and a brother unavenged." "Do your worst," he said, and
he folded his arms across his breast and stood stolid as the tree over his
head. Some pity began to stir the men visibly. Gregg turned away and went
out beyond the firelight. Even Quantrell's face softened, but only for a
moment. Then he spoke harshly to Blunt, "He is one of the worst of a band
that I failed to make a finish of before the war came, but what escapes
today is dragged up by the next tomorrow. If I had not recognized him he
would have killed me. I do not hang him for that, however, I hang him
because the whole breed and race to which he belongs should be
exterminated. Sergeant, do your duty." Blunt slipped the noose about the
prisoner's neck, and the four men who had at first disarmed him, tightened
it. To the last the bloom abode in his cheeks. He did not pray, neither
did he make plaint nor moan. No man spoke a word. Something like a huge
pendulum swung as though spun by a strong hand, quivered once or twice,
and then swinging to and fro and regularly, stopped forever. Just at this
moment three quick, hot vollies, and close together, rolled up from the
northern picket post, and the camp was on its feet. If one had looked then
at the dead man's face, something like a smile might have been seen there,
fixed and sinister, and beneath it the white, sharp teeth. James Williams
had accepted his fate like a hero. At mortal feud with Quantrell, and
living only that he might meet him face to face in battle, he had joined
every regiment, volunteered upon every scout, rode foremost in every raid,
and fought hardest in every- combat. It was not to be. Quantrell was
leaving Missouri. A great gulf was about to separate them. One desperate
effort now, and years of toil and peril at a single blow, might have been
rewarded. He struck it and it cost him his life. To this day the whole
tragic episode is sometimes recalled and discussed along the
border.
The bivouac was rudely
broken up. Three hundred Federal cavalry, crossing Quantrell's trail late
in the afternoon, had followed it until the darkness fell, halted an hour
for supper, and then again, at a good round trot, rode straight upon
Haller, holding the rear of the movement southward. He fought at the
outpost half an hour. Behind huge trees, he would not fall back until his
flanks were in danger. All the rest of the night he fought them thus,
making six splendid charges and holding on to every position until his
grasp was broken loose by sheer hammering. At Grand River the pursuit
ended and Quantrell swooped down upon Lamar, in Barton County, where a
Federal garrison held the courthouse and the houses near it. He attacked
but got worsted, and attacked again and lost one of his best men. He
attacked the third time and made no better headway. He finally abandoned
the town and resumed, unmolested, the road to the south. From Jackson
County to the Arkansas line the whole country was swarming with militia
and but for the fact that every Guerrilla was clad in Federal clothing,
the march would have been an incessant battle. As it was, it will never be
known how many isolated Federals, mistaking Quantrell's men for comrades
of other regiments not on duty with them, fell into a trap that never gave
up their victims alive. Near Cassville in Barry County, twenty-two were
killed thus. They were coming up from Cassville and were meeting the
Guerrillas, who were going south. The order given by Quantrell was a most
simple one, but a most murderous one. By the side of each Federal in the
approaching column a Guerrilla was to range himself, engage him in
conversation, and then, at a given signal, blow his brains out. Quantrell
gave the signal promptly, shooting the militiaman assigned to him through
the middle of the forehead, and where, upon their horses, twenty-two
confident men laughed and talked in comrade fashion a second before,
nothing remained of the unconscious detachment, which was literally
exterminated, save a few who straggled in agony upon the ground, and a
mass of terrified and plunging horses. Not a Guerrilla missed his
mark.
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