Hard Way Out of Hell

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Thus read the Yankees’ General Orders Number 3. No trial, no jury, no mercy. The only crime my mother or sisters ever committed was being blood kin to Thomas Coleman Younger.

  Little wonder then that my brother Jim made his way to our camp in February. His clothes were in shreds, and his body was covered with scratches, dirt, dried blood, and mud. Little Archie Clement, my nursemaid assistant, had found him hiding in the brush and brought him to our makeshift hospital ward.

  “Cole,” Jim said after I gave him some water to reduce the swelling of his tongue, and corn liquor to warm his half-frozen body. “They done it.”

  For, you see, there was this other part to that order.

  The houses at which these persons receive food, protection, or assistance in any way, shall be destroyed.

  Growing numb, I squatted by the fire and listened to Jim’s story.

  February 9th, a short while after the $1,000 bounty had been posted on my head, Jim and Bob were helping Ma into our house when several scum in blue jumped Bob, not even ten years old, while Jim, just turned fifteen, was dragged to the barn where he was to be lynched, just as had been done to Doc Samuel, Frank James’ stepfather.

  Ma screamed. John and my sisters cried for mercy, but none was shown.

  “You deny that you have assisted your son and the blackhearts who ride with him?” the bluebelly captain demanded.

  “I deny nothing, young man,” Ma sang out, having done enough crying and begging till gall rose in her throat. “I fed my son. I gave another poor boy fresh socks and unmentionables, for his were covered with filth.”

  “That, you Secessionist witch, is aid and comfort.”

  “I am no Secessionist,” Ma sang right back at him. “Ask anyone in this or any neighboring county and they will verify my statement. But aid and comfort? Gladly. Gladly I would provide those to my sons, or the lads who ride with him. And, with a kind heart, I would have done the same to you and your men. It is the duty of a Christian.”

  Unmoved by my mother’s charity, the captain held out his hand to one of his men. A private brought a torch, which the captain snatched. With a cruel grin, he offered the fiery brand to my mother.

  “If you want your sons here to live, you will burn down your house, your barn, and all the surrounding buildings.”

  As Jim related that dreadful tale to me, I could almost see the reflection of the burning in his eyes. Not one action of the war sickened me as much as when I pictured Bursheba Leighton Fristoe Younger, our mother, carrying that torch, burning our home, our barn, our memories. Turning our world, already a nightmare, into hell.

  “They could’ve killed Bob and John,” Jim said. “Could’ve killed me. Or Ma. Guess we were lucky in that regard.”

  Maybe. But, the way I see it, the bluebellies killed Bob, Jim, John, and Ma that night. Killed any chance I had of living in peace.

  * * * * *

  On a frosty morning two days later, I crawled out of my cave, pulled on the blue greatcoat, and made my way to the fire. Oh, it is not that I had forgotten Frank James’ teachings—that a good soldier waited till some other soldier had the fire going, the coffee boiling, and the bacon frying—it’s just that in this camp, I was the only one capable of such duties. Jim lay asleep, and Little Archie Clement’s only skill was killing Yankees.

  As I squatted by the fire, stoking the coals, a horse’s whinny was answered by another. Instantly, I froze, and stared into the woods. Twigs snapped, leather creaked, but eventually a form appeared riding a brown horse with a white star crowned on its forehead.

  “It’s all right, Cole. We’re friends,” said a voice.

  It was John McDowell, waving his left hand in a friendly greeting. A few months earlier, in a fight across the border near New Santa Fe, while riding with George Todd and Albert Cunningham, I had saved McDowell’s life. As we had retreated to the timbers, McDowell’s horse had been killed, throwing him into the grass.

  Hearing McDowell’s cry for help, I had wheeled my roan around, emptied one revolver into the bodies of two of the closest bluecoats, and galloped back to where McDowell was climbing to his feet. “Up here!” I had yelled, and kicked my left boot out of the stirrup. Reins held in my teeth, I holstered the empty Colt, and drew two other revolvers, one in each hand. McDowell had swung up behind me, and we galloped back toward Missouri.

  So into our camp rode McDowell to repay his debt. But in a manner of speaking, he had already been rewarded with thirty pieces of silver. And no one trusts a Judas, not even the Yanks he had led to our camp, for I noticed muskets trained on him as he made it through the clearing. That’s when I understood he was no friend. McDowell’s voice, which faltered as he tried to smile, also gave him away.

  “Cole, it’s good to …”

  I shot him dead.

  Then, standing, I killed the riders on either side of him. The others, that I could not see, began shooting. The men I had been nursing or guarding came to my assistance. And we answered the bluebellies in kind. Brother Jim found a Colt revolving carbine and fired away. Dragoon in his right hand, Navy in his left, Little Archie Clement walked boldly toward the Yanks, whose sneaky assault was faltering rapidly. Calmly, Clement aimed, fired, never saying a word, so dedicated was he to his duty.

  The bodies of twelve Yanks and one Judas Iscariot littered the ground, but how many others had whipped their horses into frenzy as they hurried through the dense forest, no one could say for sure. But four more died somewhere in the woods at the hands of Brother Jim, Clement, and three of our walking wounded. As he walked back into camp, Clement stopped long enough to replace his revolvers with a Bowie knife before proceeding to take McDowell’s scalp.

  “They’ll return,” I said, casting a sad glance at what had been my home that winter. “They know where we are.”

  “We can walk, Bud,” said one of the wounded. “Or ride.”

  They would have to.

  “All right. Saddle up. Pack what we can, leave what we can’t, and take any revolvers or weapons you can find off the dead.” Clement and Jim went to help the wounded who could not walk, as others brought litters to help carry them out of the woods to … where? That I had to figure out, but it soon struck me that the burned remains of our farm lay not far from here. I didn’t think bluebellies would figure that we would camp there, but I feared such a place would fuel my hatred of the Yanks.

  Before we went anywhere, I had to go to the cave where Deacon Salzer lay. Due to gangrene, his right leg below the knee had had to be amputated—with an axe—and bullets still remained in his chest and right arm. As I entered I saw he had propped himself up against the rock wall and fired up his pipe. He smiled with relief when I came into the light.

  “Good fight?” he asked.

  “Fair. Sorry you missed it.”

  I let him smoke and hide the pain in his chest.

  “We’re moving out,” I said. “Some of the bluecoats got away.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere, Bishop Cole, and you know it.”

  “We’ll take you with us. Got litters ready.”

  “The hell you will,” he said angrily, which made him cough. “Think I want to watch my own pallbearers tote me off to glory? Hell’s fire, Bud …”

  “Deacon,” I said wearily, “I can’t leave you here.”

  “Damn right you can’t. Because I’m a sick old man.” He was nineteen, but looked to be in his fifties. “And if Yanks catch me alive,” he continued, “I’ll tell them all I know. Won’t like it, but I know I will. Been talkin’ to myself already. Gone crazy, I am. So, no, Bishop Cole, you can’t leave me here … alive.” He pointed the pipe’s stem at one of my revolvers.

  “Deacon, I can’t kill you,” I said.

  “You have to. On account I ain’t got the guts to do it myself.”

  We stared at each other, long and hard. “Maybe …” I underst
ood my cowardice. “Little Archie,” I offered.

  “Bullshit!” Deacon Salzer bellowed. “That pip-squeak runt. Be damned if he’ll be the one to pop a cap on me … besides, Clement is crazy as a loon. He’d enjoy it. I’m a deacon, you’re a bishop … we’re men of God. God forgives.”

  “I’m no bishop,” I whispered. “Haven’t been to church in …”

  “God forgives. Yankees don’t.” The pipe returned to his mouth momentarily, before Deacon Salzer pitched it aside and started whistling “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”

  It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, Parson, and I don’t like to speak of it all these years later. But the hell that was 1863 had only just begun.

  Chapter Thirteen

  This came from Yankee President Lincoln himself, as General Orders Number 100, in April of 1863:

  All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.

  I guess no bluebelly officer in Missouri must have seen those “Laws of War.”

  Jim Lane and Doc Jennison continued their raids, and other Union outfits followed suit. When one of our boys died in an ambush, he was left to rot. We reciprocated.

  Jim Vaughn, a red-blooded, coldhearted bushwhacker, was captured and hanged in Leavenworth by General James Blunt’s boys. So Ben Parker, one of our partisan brothers, hanged five Union prisoners.

  No compromise. No quarter. No retreat. No surrender.

  We hit hard, and ran harder, finding shelter in the brush. Dick Yeager led a few raids into Kansas, and George Todd and his crew shot down maybe twenty Kansas horse soldiers near Westport.

  Since the Yankees had trouble finding our camps, or setting up ambushes for us, they decided to make war on our women. Ignoring Mr. Lincoln’s commands, General Ewing issued Orders Number 10, which allowed for the arrest of men and women “who willfully aid and encourage guerrillas.” The order also said:

  The wives and the children of known guerrillas, and also women who are heads of families and are willfully engaged in aiding guerrillas, will be notified by such officers to move out of this district and out of the State of Missouri forthwith.

  Ewing sent his bluebellies to round up our womenfolk, labeling them prisoners for aiding and comforting the enemy. Is that what the mothers and sisters did, aided and comforted their sons, brothers, and husbands? Armed soldiers rode up on horses and wagons, with no warrants, no writs, nothing but Springfield muskets and vile curses. Two of my cousins, Charity Kerr and Nannie Harris, were arrested. Bill Anderson’s young sisters, Josephine, Jenny, and Mary, were taken. Can sixteen– and ten-year-old girls—which is what Jenny and Mary were—be a threat to society, even in a time of war? Should they be arrested while walking on a public road on their way to school? Susan Vandiver, Susan Womacks, Armenia Gilvey, Mollie Cranstaff, and Sue Mundy were shoved out of their homes and into the wagons. Mollie was arrested as she came out of a mercantile. Her crime? She had a bolt of cotton, from which the Yanks said she planned to make a bushwhacker shirt.

  Those wagons made their way to the last standing farmhouse built by Henry Washington Younger.

  There, the Yanks stopped around suppertime, and, with bayonets, forced my sisters Josie (twenty-three years of age), Duck (twenty-one), and Sally (eighteen) from the table to the wagon. I guess they considered arresting eleven-year-old Emilly and six-year-old Retta, too, and even Ma, but decided three would do the job. Besides, had they tried, Bob, not quite ten, and John, twelve, would have fought them.

  These most desperate characters found themselves hauled to Kansas City, where the bluebellies had turned a three-story building in McGee’s Addition at No. 13 Metropolitan Block into a jail. They put the women on the third floor, telling them that they would be transported to St. Louis, Yankee territory, for trial. No bail would be offered, and no bond allowed.

  Seventeen women prisoners and one boy—whose name or crime I do not recall, and who was put on the second floor—sweated in the brick warehouse in sweltering Kansas City. Oh, but the guards showed mercy. Jenny Anderson, whose temper matched her older brother’s, railed and clawed so much that her jailers shackled her onto a bed. Such is a fitting punishment for a girl sixteen years old.

  Quantrill planned a raid to rescue those brave, young ladies, but this was never implemented, because on the fourteenth of August, the building collapsed. Three stories of bricks crushed seventeen defenseless women. Suffocating them with dust and dirt. A hell I could never imagine.

  Yeah, I have heard the lies. That the women were tunneling their way out, and that is what caused the disaster. Tell me, Parson, how do you dig a tunnel when you are thirty-six feet off the ground? Here’s the truth, sir. The day before the tragedy, dust and debris fell like October rains from the ceiling above the first floor. A guard saw this, told his lieutenant, who reported this with alarm to Ewing. Ah, but our gallant general ignored any warning. Want more evidence? After treating the women prisoners, a Yankee sawbones named Thorne also complained to the deaf fools that the building was unsafe, especially after soldiers had removed columns from the first floor. George Caleb Bingham owned that building, and we knew Bingham to be a Union-loving diehard. Yet even Bingham would damn General Ewing, writing fifteen years later in a Yankee newspaper that the death of these poor women crushed beneath the ruins of their prison was a deliberately planned murder.

  Did Ewing bring our women to Kansas City to die?

  Perhaps we’ll never know the answer. Murder? An accident? Fate? No charges were ever filed. What we knew then, and what I know to this day, is this. Susan Vandiver, Armenia Gilvey, Josephine Anderson, and my cousin Charity McCorkle Kerr, lay dead. Josephine, witnesses said, kept crying out: “Please, please, somebody get this brick off my head.” No one could reach her. Eventually, her pleading ceased. She was fourteen years old. Chained to the bed, sweet Jennie suffered from a crushed back and broken legs. She never walked again.

  Quantrill sent my brother Jim to Kansas City with John T. Noland, a Negro who scouted and spied for us. Noland had just returned from Lawrence, Kansas, and Quantrill believed that Jim could pass himself off as our younger brother John, because no man of color dare ride with bushwhackers.

  You don’t believe me, either, do you, Parson? I’m used to that. Two other Negroes rode with us, John Lobb and Henry Wilson, but they were slaves. Noland did things of his own accord. A freedman about my age, he rode, he spied, and he battled alongside us. He served with distinction at Lone Jack, and when he died in 1888, six white bushwhackers served as his pallbearers.

  Jim and Noland were to meet us at Pardee’s farm along the Blackwater River. They returned on the evening of the 18th. And after this, others, both men and boys who had never fought amongst us, began finding their way to our camp.

  “Bud …” Jim said as he walked toward me, but, before he could make it to me, his knees buckled and he fell, sobbing. I hurried over to him. “Bud …” He sniffed, trying not to bawl, fearing what others might say about him. Hell, John McCorkle could barely get out what had happened to his sister, he was crying so hard.

  “What is it?” I asked Jim as I held him close to me.

  “It’s Duck, Bud,” he said, and began crying even harder.

  My stomach knotted, and I let out a bitter curse. “Is she …?”

  “I never … never seen her cry … Bud … never … but …” His whole body shook as he wiped his snotty nose on the sleeve of his shirt.

  Thinking back, I realized that Jim was right. I had never seen our sister Caroline cry. Caroline, who rode harder than most boys, including me.

  “Sally?” I asked. “Josie?”
r />   “They’re alive. But … I guess … shock … is that the right word?”

  “I reckon.”

  “It’s just …”

  “Hell,” I said.

  “Damn right.” Somehow, he suddenly willed his tears to disappear, and I pulled him to his feet.

  Standing on a stump, Quantrill beckoned us over. I walked past Bill Anderson, and if those blue-gray eyes had been unfathomable before this night, now they had turned vacant, almost dead. I knew then that all reason, any humanity, he may once have held had slipped away. If he were not already insane, the death of one sister, the maiming of two more, had driven him mad.

  * * * * *

  Looking back on things, I believe that William Quantrill had been planning to destroy Lawrence for some time. Why else would he have sent John T. Noland to spy on that city? A few times the previous year, he had broached the subject with his captains, but we had always told him such activity would be a fool’s errand. Fate, and that cold bastard Ewing, had given him another chance to lay waste to a city where he had once lived.

  “Lawrence or no?” was all he said, and first he addressed his captains.

  Instantly, Bloody Bill Anderson spoke. “Lawrence or hell,” he said. “With one proviso … we kill every male thing.”

  “Todd?” Quantrill asked.

  “Lawrence, if I knew that not a man would return to Missouri alive.”

  Added William Gregg: “We make sure Jim Lane is butchered.” Lane, the worst of the Redlegs, lived in Lawrence.

  John Jarrette, George Shepherd, Dick Maddox all agreed. At length, Quantrill jutted his jaw at me.

  “No.” My head shook. “The Yanks will be on guard. We would have to ride through Yankees, in Yankee country, and then retreat through Yankees. The risk is too great. The danger is too much.”

  “You are a snivelin’ damned coward,” said Bill Anderson as he strode toward me, putting his hand on the butt of one of his revolvers.