by John Babb
“I’ll leave it to you to decide who we can trust. I don’t have any way of knowing who’s connected to who.”
In his letter to Crocia that week, he wrote, “Right now is not a good time for you and your ma to come to visit. There’s a gang of bushwhackers in the area, and I wouldn’t want the two of you to be riding on the stage while they’re still around. They are men of the lowest kind and capable of most anything. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
Forty-Six
You’re Gonna Get Everybody Kilt
Keetsville, Missouri 1865
That Saturday, the raffle went off as usual, with no unexpected interruption. The crowd and the ticket count were a bit smaller than the previous week but still respectable. All of the businesses were feeling a little better about their situation.
At almost five o’clock, B. F. had already secured the majority of his money in the safe and was ready for the day to wind to a close. A man entered the store, or at least an older boy entered, but it was doubtful he could have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. He appeared to be unshaven, but mainly because he didn’t have enough facial hair to make it worth his while to even try to shave. Like a majority of men in the county, he wore a pistol on his leg, but he also carried a rifle inside the store. B. F. instinctively put his hand on his own pistol underneath his jacket, wondering if he was about to be robbed. “What can I do for you?”
The boy put the rifle on the counter. “I’m looking for a scabbard to fit this rifle. It’s shaped sorta different from most, and I suppose it needs its own.”
It was a Spencer rifle. “Yes, sir. This rifle requires a Spencer-made scabbard. I used to own one or two of these myself. Mind if I look at it?”
“No, go ahead. It’s practically brand new, but I’m gettin’ it all scuffed up with no proper scabbard.”
B. F. was looking at the serial number—#24027. His hand shook for a second. His initial instinct was to pull out his pistol. This very rifle had been aboard the Rei on its last voyage. He saw his fingers turning white as he squeezed the stock and tried to compose himself to speak casually. “Yeah, I see where the brass is really starting to scuff up—particularly around the trigger guard—and then at the base of the stock too. I think I can get a scabbard for you within two weeks with no problem.”
“Well, I reckon that’s all right.”
“Say, you wouldn’t know where I could buy a brand new Spencer would you? I’d like to have one of these again.”
The boy looked thoughtfully at the store owner for a moment. “I think I just might know somebody. I’ll try and bring one in when I pick up that scabbard.”
“That would be real fine. What’s your name so I can hold it for you?”
“Bob . . . uh, Bob Watson.”
“OK Bob. I’ll see you in two weeks.”
B. F. noticed when the boy left that his pant legs and boots appeared to have fresh mud on them. He thought that a bit strange. It had not rained in at least two weeks. He watched the kid untie his horse and ride south down Main Street. On the spur of the moment, he locked up the store, ran across the street to the stable, threw a bridle and saddle on his horse, and took off after the boy.
When he reached the Wire Road he looked to the south and could see no sign of a horse for three-quarters of a mile, so he turned to the north. He passed the Durham house, but saw nobody in the yard who he might at least tell what he was doing, so he kept riding. Again, he saw no sign of the horse and rider, but when he reached the crossroads with the Cemetery Road, he noticed what looked like dust in the air at the top of the hill. That was his only hope, so he turned to the east toward the burial ground.
As he topped the hill, he saw a horse and the kid turning to the southeast down a rutted wagon track. He had not been down that way before, but remembered Matt Durham telling him there was a road down this way leading to Roaring River by way of Dry Hollow. B. F. kicked his horse. He couldn’t afford to get so far behind that he couldn’t keep the kid in sight, particularly since there was little light left in the sky. Suddenly Mr. Finnerty’s voice came out of nowhere. “Best not interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.”
After about a half mile, the track turned downhill to a significant degree, so B. F. held his horse back a bit, realizing that the rider ahead would probably not try to ride at any speed down this grade. The woods on both sides of the road seemed to close in on the narrow track, and going down into a valley meant that what sunlight there had been on the hilltop would be obscured the further down the hill he traveled.
He saw a light on the left at the bottom of the hill, coming from a cabin back in the trees, and wondered if the rider had stopped there. But he looked ahead, and there, crossing a rocky creek bed out in the narrow valley, was the rider again, still headed in a southeasterly direction. He seemed to be staying in the valley on the wagon track, but the light was so faint now that he felt sure he would lose the connection before the rider stopped.
This time he heard the horse ahead, making racket as he crossed the dry creek again. He couldn’t have been more than fifty or sixty yards away from the rider. B. F. knew he couldn’t afford to cross that same creek bed on his horse, as the noise would surely give him away. He found a place in the trees, away from the track, tied his horse, and continued on foot. He just hoped the destination was not too far ahead. He didn’t want to try and keep up with the horse for any distance.
He walked for about twenty-five steps, then paused to listen, then walked again, and listened again. But no more than two hundred yards from where he left his horse, he saw a small light about half way up the ridge on his left, and then the light flared into what appeared to be a lantern. He crept close enough that he could see the kid holding the lantern in front of him as he walked.
The kid stopped. “Say Mac . . . you down there? It’s me, Bob.”
“Put out that damned light.”
Bob blew out the lantern. “I’m scared of falling in this hole in the dark.”
“Hold your water. I’ll put the ladder up.”
Within a minute, B. F. could see that Bob had disappeared into some kind of hole in the ground. He decided to move closer to see if he could hear anything. He had a general idea of where the hole was, based on where Bob had been standing when he blew out his lantern, but he decided to get on his hands and knees just in case he had miscalculated.
Just before he put his right hand out into bare space, he recovered in time to lean back on his knees. He was looking at a hole in the ground that was about eight or ten feet across, and encircled a ladder sticking up out of the earth. He had no way of knowing how deep the hole was, nor what was down there. However, there was a faint glow of light when he looked into the cave. Undoubtedly, they had no fear of a lantern giving them away down there. He guessed that the bottom must be at least fifteen feet below where he now knelt.
He could barely hear conversation, but it was too indistinct to make out any more than bits and pieces of what was being said. About all that was understandable was “Tuck . . . Keetsville . . . tomorrow . . . Yankee lovers . . . gunpowder . . . safe”
He just couldn’t fill in the empty spaces except with guesses. All of a sudden, the voices became more distinct, and the light was brighter. The men were moving close to the base of the ladder. B. F. backed slowly away from the cave.
“Just be sure ye get Tuck and the boys here at daybreak—then we’ll see about that town.”
“You sure about all that black powder?”
“Don’t you worry none about me doin’ what needs doin’.”
Bob emerged from the hole, got his bearings, and moved off toward his horse. B. F. noticed that the end of the ladder then disappeared down into the hole. Apparently, they only raised the ladder when they had company. Something about the man in the hole sounded familiar to B. F., but he just couldn’t figure out why.
One thing was certain, he wasn’t about to try to follow Bob any further in the dark, par
ticularly if he was headed to meet Tuck Smith and his gang. Mr. Finnerty spoke to him again. “Don’t corner somethin’ that you know is meaner than you.” Despite this added advice, he decided his best chance to figure this out was to get down that ladder.
He waited a good ten minutes until he could no longer hear Bob’s horse clattering away down Dry Hollow Creek, then walked back over to the opening in the ground. He hoped he could pull this off. “Hey Mac . . . it’s Bob again.”
“What the hell you want?”
“Forgot to tell ye something.”
“Dammit.”
There was a scraping sound as the end of the ladder rose up out of the hole. B. F. pulled the collar up on his coat. He would have his back to the man when he climbed down the ladder, but he needed the element of surprise if possible. He made sure his pistol was resting loosely in its holster, took a deep breath, and started down the ladder.
When he was still two steps from the floor below, he could tell the man was no more than eight or ten feet behind him when he said. “What the shite is it?”
B. F. took one more step, held on with his left hand, and turned his body halfway around. The hammer on his pistol suddenly sounded very loud when he cocked it back. “Don’t move your hands, Mister.”
“Who the hell are . . . Mistuh Windes! What’re you doin’ here?”
B. F. stared at the man, and realization took hold. “John McCorkle. I’ll be asking you the same question!”
McCorkle glanced behind him, calculating the distance to cover. “Why, I’m hiding out from the Yankees. They’re still trying to catch some of us.”
“McCorkle. Don’t waste your breath. You’re going to have to convince me not to shoot you tonight.” He took the final step off the ladder and squared himself away, with the big pistol pointed dead level at the man’s chest.
“Why would you want to do a thing like that? We’re on the same side.”
“Tell me about my shipload of rifles and ammunition.”
“Major Anderson told me your ship was sunk.”
“If you lie to me again, I’m going to shoot you in the knee. Kind of like you did to Mose Simpson.”
McCorkle’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”
“My ship and the rifles.”
“It was Major Anderson. He cut a deal with that ship captain. He took the guns and the captain got the ship.”
“Where are the guns?”
“I reckon with the Texas Third Cavalry.”
B. F. took a step forward and sighted the pistol at the man’s knee. “That’s a lie.”
“No, no. Don’t do that. Anderson sold some of the rifles and cartridges to Colonel Quantril, some to Captain Todd, and he kept the rest for his own troops.”
“Quantril—that makes me sick just to think about it. And Todd . . . he was in it too! How many guns are left, and where are they?”
“I expect they’re all gone. Major Anderson been dead over a year now, and Captain Todd was kilt the week before when he was up in Independence.”
B. F. redirected his pistol toward his knee again. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know, honest. I don’t know.”
“Tell me exactly what you and Tuck Smith are planning tomorrow.”
“We’re just gonna go scare some boys over at Keetsville that’s done turned into Yankees.”
“McCorkle. That’s not right either. I make that at least three lies. You’re going to be walking with a crutch for the rest of your life.”
The man jerked his head quickly to the left, and B. F. took the bait, turning to look himself. At that instant, McCorkle lunged for his gun hand, something flashing bright in his own hand. B. F. blocked him with his left arm, feeling a sudden burning sensation in his forearm, but was able to swing his pistol at McCorkle’s head as hard as he could, considering he had limited room to maneuver. He heard and felt the trigger guard as it smashed into the cartilage on the bridge of the man’s nose. McCorkle hit the ground and did not move, a bright pool of blood forming under his head.
B. F. held the pistol in readiness and turned him over. Blood was running down his face, and his nose was angled in an almost complete right turn. He was still breathing—though in a decidedly sideways direction. B. F. holstered his gun and searched him for weapons. He pulled a pistol from McCorkle’s boot and picked up a knife on the floor. When he bent over, he saw a dark liquid dripping down his own left sleeve and into the palm of his hand. Blood. His coat was wet with it.
There was a roll of baling twine on a wooden chest, and B. F. tied McCorkle securely, making no apologies for the rope cutting into his flesh. First his hands, then his feet, and finally hog tying him face down. He drug him out of the way, and smelling an extremely strong, acrid area directly under the highest ceiling in the cave, he placed him on his stomach in the middle of what was hundreds of years of accumulation of bat guano.
B. F. took off his jacket and tore his shirt sleeve into strips and tied them over the long gash on his arm, then began systematically looking through the gear and supplies in the cave. It really only consisted of one large room of about forty by fifty feet. There were three tunnels leading off in different directions, but they quickly appeared to peter out to impassable crawl space.
He thought he recognized a long wooden box, and was glad to see twelve new Spencer rifles nesting inside. They were still greased and apparently had not been disturbed since he saw them last on the Reis. Another wooden case held 2500 cartridges, and a box about eighteen inches square contained a fifty-pound canvas bag of gunpowder. They were certainly capable of blowing up something very substantial the next morning.
He also found boxes of Union Army uniforms, tentage, cooking gear, and a small amount of food. Stuffed under this gear were two sets of saddlebags, one contained some written messages, a hand-drawn map of Pittsburg, Kansas, and some moldy hardtack. The other had several thousand dollars in Confederate currency and just over six hundred dollars in U.S. greenbacks. B. F. stuffed the American money in his pockets, assuming that it was all he was ever going to see of the $70,000 in goods and $20,000 ship he had lost to McCorkle, Anderson, and Captain Pesca in Texas.
Then he began carrying the Spencer rifles up the ladder in sets of three, followed by the case of ammunition and then the black powder. With this exertion, he could tell his bandage had become soaked with blood. When he went back down into the cave, he found that McCorkle had roused and rolled over on his side.
“Say, what is this stuff? I cain’t hardly breathe.”
“If you’re lucky, I’ll let you loose in a little while.”
“You know you ain’t gonna get away with this. You cain’t run far enough.”
B. F. knelt beside the man and pulled his old Army knife from the scabbard in his boot. But rather than cut the rope, he cut off a large piece of McCorkle’s shirt. He then dropped it in the bat guano and looked at McCorkle. “Now look what you made me do.” He picked up the now-fouled cloth, wadded it up, and forced it in McCorkle’s mouth between his teeth and the side of his cheek. Then he cut another piece of shirt and tied the gag securely around his head. He paused for a minute, satisfied to see the man’s eyes starting to water before he stood up. “Be glad you’re still alive.”
He stopped at the foot of the ladder, thinking about the implication that Todd had been part of the charade. That would mean that around half of his trade had been for the benefit of bushwhackers. It shook him to realize what he had been involved in. He resolved to never mention his blockade running again, as long as he lived.
He blew out the lantern, climbed back up to moonlight, pulled the ladder up after him, and hid it well away from the entrance in brush. Then he carried the rifles, ammunition, and powder half way down the hill and concealed them as best he could in a honeysuckle thicket in the darkness. He took one of the Spencers with him back to town.
As he walked back toward where he had tied his horse, it struck him that he was now in an extreme
ly precarious position. He had left an eyewitness back in the cave that could identify him to Tuck Smith and his gang. McCorkle was right about one thing, there really was no place he could run to.
He stopped walking and stood there thinking in the middle of the creek bed for almost five minutes. If McCorkle were dead, there would be no witness, no identification, no way to connect him to this, and no reason to hide. He fingered the hammer on the Spencer as he mulled over his only two options.
He found his horse quickly enough with the moon now just above the tree line and rode back to Keetsville. It was already after eight o’clock when he knocked on the Durham door. Both John and Matt answered the door, each with a pistol in hand. “Oh, sorry B. F. You can’t be too careful these days. Come on in.”
“I need your help. I. . . .”
John Durham stepped forward and grabbed his arm. “Is that blood? Minnie, bring a pan of water and some rags in here, quick. Sit down, boy. What happened to you?”
He told them the basics of what had happened. “I need to round up Squire Cave, A.J. Stewart, John Burton, John Cureton, James Andrews, and maybe Lem Simpson, but I don’t know where they live. I need them before dawn, and I need to ask them to go back down to that cave and get the drop on Tuck Smith and his gang. It sounds like they’re planning to blow up the whole town tomorrow morning.”
“Only three of those men saw any duty in the war. The rest are just shopkeepers. They won’t stand a chance against Tuck and his boys.”
“If we catch them by surprise and we’re armed with repeating rifles, I think we can do it. They’ve got to be stopped. We’ll never have a safe town with those men on the loose.”
“You need to get the law from over at Cassville.”
“It’s too far to get there and back before dawn. Besides, there’s only two lawmen up there, and I’d have to find them.”