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 guerrilas 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 magazine together. 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;98 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, and 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’s99 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,100 “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.” unabashed, 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 smile—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, you101 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 clark’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, i102 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.
103 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 were104 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.
