Wreaths of Glory

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Quantrill burst through the door of the long-abandoned farm, and the door fell off its leather hinges, crashing onto the sod floor. George Todd picked up the rotting wood, propping it up against an open window. Other miserable, worn-out partisans filed into what would have to pass for shelter, Alistair among them, hearing rats scurry through holes in the rough planking. He couldn’t see them. Couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  A lucifer flared, but only briefly.

  “Douse that fire, man!” Quantrill snapped.

  “Christ, Capt’n!” It sounded like Arch Clements.

  “Haven’t we had enough Yankee surprises?” Quantrill roared.

  Alistair found a spot in the corner near the open doorway as more of the boys made their way inside. He lucked out. Water dripped on either side of him, but not on him.

  “Damned roof here holds water worser than a sieve,” Henry Wilson complained.

  “That you, Alistair?” Beans Kimbrough asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hell’s fire, I thought you was dead.”

  “Almost.” His left hand pressed against his side, which still leaked blood, though not as much as it had earlier.

  Alistair slid down the wall, which creaked against his weight, pulled his legs close to his body, and rocked slowly, trying to keep warm.

  * * * * *

  Alistair almost cried out in pain.

  “That better?” Beans asked as he tightened the knot on the strip of cloth.

  “Wouldn’t … call … it … better.” Alistair winced.

  “Don’t let this bandage stay on too long,” Beans said. “That starts to mortify, and you’ll be wishin’ that ball had kilt you outright.”

  Lightning ripped across the sky, allowing Alistair a glimpse of Beans’ face. He looked older, but, criminy, they’d all aged.

  “Feels like we have been runnin’ since January,” Beans said.

  “Only March,” Tommy Cobb said.

  “Huh?”

  “Started in March.” Although his side blistered with pain, Alistair could take regular breaths. He even managed to push the wet bangs out of his face without too much agony. “When we burned the bridge on the Little Blue.”

  “That was only last month?” Beans asked.

  “Right after the capt’n killed that Dutchy sergeant,” Tommy said from the other side of the open doorway.

  Alistair shut his eyes, but couldn’t rid his mind of the image from that day—the Yankee sergeant swinging off his horse, raising his hands in surrender. Quantrill loping Black Bess over, aiming his revolver, blowing out the Dutchman’s brains, then wheeling around his horse, yelling: “Halleck has thrown down the gauntlet, boys, but we draw the first blood!”

  It hadn’t ended there. He could picture McCoy and Kennard dragging the keeper out of the tollhouse and straight to Quantrill. Not just the old man, either, but his son, or maybe grandson, a kid not seven or eight years old.

  He could hear Clell Miller saying: “He’s a Yankee spy!” Miller was even younger than Alistair, twelve at the most, though tall for his age and already smoking a corncob pipe and one fine shot with a revolver.

  He could hear the tollkeeper crying out, “I’m a good Southern man!” and Quantrill’s immediate response: “The jury has reached its verdict.”

  He could hear the report of Quantrill’s pistol shot, could see the keeper falling dead with a bullet in his forehead, could hear the sobbing kid, see the boy kneeling by the side of the dead man. At least, he could also remember Quantrill preventing Clell Miller from putting a ball in the back of that kid’s head.

  Tommy Cobb snorted, spit, and stretched his boots across the damp floor. Rain water kept plopping on his hat.

  “March twenty-second,” Tommy said. “Then we rode to the Tate place, and that’s where the fun began.”

  Alistair remembered that, too. The Second Kansas surrounding the place. Bullets riddling the house. Last he remembered seeing there was the Tate farm in flames as they fled into the timbers, gunning at Yankees, firing at shadows, probably shooting at themselves. Having split up, they had vamoosed to some other farm. This time, a Missouri cavalry unit had surprised them, sending them running again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Forever. March 22 to April 15. Felt like forever.

  “I don’t allow as I’ll ever get my fingers cleaned,” Beans Kimbrough was saying. “Climbin’ through all that mud to reach the top of that bluff on the Little Sni.”

  “Shut the hell up,” Frank James snapped. “And get some sleep.”

  * * * * *

  Sleep had come in fits, but finally Alistair found himself far from some abandoned Jackson County farm, a million miles from a thunderstorm. He was in the hayloft with Lucy Cobb.

  “You brave boy,” Lucy was saying, feeling his bandaged side, which no longer throbbed. Something else throbbed, and Lucy was leaning over, letting her curls fall into Alistair’s face, and her lips were on his. Next thing he knew—criminy, her tongue was in his mouth—and Alistair’s hands were slipping inside her dress, touching her unmentionables, trying to get those buttons to cooperate with his fingers. Only now somebody was knocking on the door, and he could hear Mr. Cobb’s booming voice: “Lucy! Lucy! Hang your hide, Alistair Durant, I got my shotgun!” Even though Alistair and Lucy knew they were about to get killed, they didn’t stop. Not until …

  He jerked awake, hearing screams, curses. A gun roared beside him, ringing in his ears. Bullets thudded against the walls of the Jordan Lowe place. Or went through the rotting wood.

  “I’m hit!” someone cried.

  “Well,” Cole Younger said, “what did you expect? This ol’ house couldn’t keep rain out. Think it’d turn back lead?”

  Dawn, and the Yanks had found them again. Alistair’s side felt stiff, but he drew his revolver and fired through the open threshold, aiming just below the puffs of smoke coming from the timber. Tommy Cobb stood on the other side of the doorway. Beans Kimbrough lay stretched out on the floor, revolvers in either hand, using a dead Irish boy as a redoubt.

  The barrage ended, followed by a few sporadic shots, then silence. Water dripped off the roof, a frog croaked, but those natural noises were soon lost to the sounds of revolvers being reloaded and capped.

  “Hell,” Alistair said. “My powder’s wet!”

  “Here.” Beans tossed him his copper flask, and Alistair busied himself loading both of his Navy Colts.

  “Capt’n!” George Todd called down from the loft.

  “Yes.” Looking around, Alistair found Quantrill standing against the wall near a front window. They had tossed the broken old door onto the floor.

  “A Yank’s waving a flag of truce.”

  “Maybe they’s surrenderin’,” Henry Wilson quipped, and a smattering of laughter eased through the smoke and fog.

  “Be they redlegs?” Oll Shepherd asked.

  “Don’t think so!” Todd called down. “Appear to be infantry. And they gots a Missouri flag.”

  “Infantry?” Joe Gilchrist shouted in contempt. “I ain’t gettin’ killed by no damned foot soldiers.”

  “Missouri!”

  Cautiously Tommy Cobb peeked outside, the Colt in his right hand hanging by the doorjamb. “What are you Missouri boys doin’?” he yelled. “Shootin’ at Missouri boys like us?”

  A rifle roared, flinging Tommy back onto the floor. Screaming out an oath, he dropped the Colt onto the dirt, and fell across the dead body. Instantly Beans and Alistair had sprung toward him, grabbing his arms, dragging him away from the open door and to the wall. Another shot buzzed Alistair’s neck, but then came a Yankee’s shout: “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Do not shoot until I give the order, damn you!”

  Alistair could see the hole in the wall the bullet had torn out. He could also see the blood
y wound in Tommy’s stomach.

  “Blast their hides!” Tommy shook his head. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “They’ve murdered me. God …” He coughed, and the crotch of his trousers darkened. “Hell’s fire. Now I done wet myself.”

  “It’s all right, Corn Cobb,” Beans whispered. He shoved a folding knife into Tommy’s mouth. “Bite on this.”

  Alistair was already trying to plug the big hole in Tommy’s stomach with handkerchiefs, rags. He ripped off part of Tommy’s shirt, but the blood just would not stop.

  More shots rang out, but these came from inside the house, until Quantrill barked at the boys. Finally silence eased over the killing grounds.

  After a moment, a Yankee called out: “We give you bushwhackers a minute to surrender! After that time, we fire this house and kill everyone as he runs out.”

  “They’ll have a hard time getting this water-logged place a-burnin’,” someone said.

  “Oh,” Cole Younger chimed in easily, “I allow they brung plenty of coal oil to do us right.”

  “Just hold your fire.” Quantrill made his way over to Tommy, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You did well,” he said softly.

  Tears filled Tommy’s eyes. He spit out the knife he’d been biting on. “Thank you, Capt’n, but I reckon I’m done for.”

  “You are gut-shot,” Quantrill said, and a coldness swept over Alistair. “There is nothing that can be done, I am loathe to say. I wish it were me, son, and not you.”

  “Don’t say that, Capt’n.” Tommy spit out bloody phlegm, tried to wipe his mouth, but his arm fell onto his thigh.

  “Corn Cobb,” Quantrill said, “the Yanks have us in a bind, but you can do something for us.”

  Alistair stared in disbelief, his mouth falling open.

  “Name it, Capt’n.”

  “Can you walk?”

  Tommy trembled, and laughed. “Well, not very far.” Another cough, and gasp. “But I reckon I can travel a bit.”

  “I will give you a flag of truce,” he said. “Walk out there. You can wear my India rubber poncho. It will hide your wound. And your revolvers.”

  “Tommy …” Alistair began, but the dying farm boy shook his head.

  “I can do this, Alistair.” His eyes found Alistair, hard, dying, but determined.

  Alistair felt himself squeezing Tommy’s forearm. “I know you can,” he heard himself saying, but did not, could not, look at Quantrill.

  “They will meet you,” Quantrill said. “When you are as close to them as you are to me, you will drop the white flag, draw your revolvers, and kill as many of those curs as you can.”

  Tommy spit up blood again.

  “Die game,” Quantrill said.

  “I can do that.”

  “That will give us the advantage,” Quantrill said. “We will then charge out, dashing to freedom, and sending as many of your murderers as we can to the pits of Hades.”

  Tommy looked at Alistair. “Help me up.”

  * * * * * *

  Tommy practically screamed when Beans shoved two pocket Colts into Tommy’s waistband, on either side of the gaping hole. Quantrill slipped the poncho over Tommy’s head, while another gave him a ramrod to carry in his left hand. They had no white shirts—nothing that could pass for white any more, anyhow—so the best they had was a faded yellow bandanna, which Cole Younger tied onto the ramrod.

  “Your minute is up,” the Yankee called out, “and then some!”

  “We are sending a man out to discuss terms!” Quantrill yelled.

  “They are no terms to discuss!” the Yank barked. “Not for bushwhacking marauders.”

  “We are not bushwhackers, sir,” Quantrill said, “but members of the Second Arkansas Mounted Rifles. We desire to know how we will be treated upon surrender.” He squeezed Tommy’s shoulder. “We are honorable men, and will surrender only to honorable soldiers.”

  “If you got proof, we’ll treat you square. Send out your man.”

  “Here he comes.” Quantrill’s smile chilled Alistair.

  Before he began his walk, Tommy turned to Alistair. “You’ll tell Ma and Pa how I died?” Alistair barely could nod. “Tell ’em I done my best. Tell ’em I was game.”

  “You’re the biggest damned hero in all of Missouri, Corn Cobb,” Beans said.

  “You reckon?” Tommy seemed to smile.

  “I know so,” Quantrill said. “And your actions will give us a chance. That’s all we need. One chance.”

  “Don’t put on my tombstone that I was born in Chicago,” Tommy said.

  Outside, the Yankee commander demanded: “Where is your man?”

  “Alistair, make sure you treat Lucy good.” Tommy straightened, and stepped weakly, but proudly, outside.

  Chapter Eight

  “You boys let me do the talking.” Frank James reined in his dun in front of the path leading to the Cobb place. “Like as not, they sha’n’t have heard of Tommy’s death, and Missus Cobb has always been on the peaked side. Not strong stock like most Clay County farm mothers.”

  “So,” Beans said with a chuckle, “you don’t aim to tell her how the Yanks hacked off Corn Cobb’s head after they filled him with lead, stuck his noggin on a pike, and tossed the rest of his body in the burnin’ shack with Joe Gilchrist, Andy Blunt, and ’em other boys who got kilt?”

  Turning in his saddle, Frank James gave Beans the most chilling stare Alistair had ever seen. He could understand why Joe Gilchrist—before he’d gotten killed, by foot soldiers after all—had once said: “When Frank gets riled, a body see can see death in his eyes.”

  “Kimbrough,” Frank said, “there are times you ain’t nothing more than white trash.”

  Beans slumped toward his roan’s withers. “Criminy, Frank,” he said sheepishly, “I was just funnin’.”

  “No, you weren’t.” Frank kicked the dun into a walk, and Alistair followed. Beans mumbled something, and brought up the rear.

  Corn sprouts looked promising, and the rows filled with patches of water from all the recent rain, but Alistair didn’t see anyone in the fields. Likely too muddy to work right now. He could hear the thuds of an axe, and knew he’d find Mr. Cobb busy with firewood, but he was wrong.

  It was Lucy.

  When they rounded the woods, she sank the blade into the chopping stump, and raised her left hand to shield the sun from her eyes. Alistair spied a pepperbox hideaway pistol near the axe, and Lucy stepped closer to it before recognizing the riders. These days, company was scarce, and friendly visitors even more infrequent. Her face lit up in a grin, and Alistair’s stomach almost heaved. He remembered Tommy Cobb telling everyone how he’d heard that he had been killed at Wilson’s Creek. Now he came here to inform the Cobbs that their boy, Lucy’s brother, was dead.

  “Alistair!” Lucy sprinted from the woodshed, bare feet kicking up clods as she hurried to the dirt path. She wore a plain muslin dress, and her hair had been pinned up in a bun, but most of the blonde curls had escaped from swinging that axe. Her smile vanished, and she slid to a stop, her gaze moving from Alistair to Frank and finally to Beans.

  “No.” He could read her lips. Saw her wringing her hands. She turned toward the cabin and yelled: “Ma!”

  That’s when Alistair’s heart broke.

  Mrs. Cobb stepped out of the house, wiping her hands on a stained apron. Slowly she stepped off the porch, cheerful as Lucy had been for a moment, only quickly frowning. Thin as a cornstalk, she started toward them, but stopped, and had to lean against the log home for support.

  Tears streamed down Lucy’s face, cutting through the dirt and grime. She knew.

  “Where’s your pa, Miss Lucy?” Frank asked.

  With a weak gesture toward the western field, Lucy turned. “He’s … why yonder he comes. Musta heard y’all.”

  Mr. Cobb was running, his
straw hat blowing off, carrying a shotgun in both hands. He stopped, too, the double-barrel slipping from his hands and into the mud. Briefly he considered it, then left it lying there, and walked to his wife.

  * * * * *

  “Where did it happen?”

  “The Jordan Lowe place in Jackson County,” Frank told Tommy’s father. “Yankees hit us at dawn Tuesday morning. Truth be told, we were in a pickle. But Tommy charged them, must have sent five or six to Glory before they killed him.” He made himself face the sobbing Mrs. Cobb. “It was fast, ma’am, real quick. I don’t think he felt any pain.”

  “He died a hero,” Beans said. “Saved our bacon, sure enough. Fought like a wildcat.”

  With a quick nod, Mr. Cobb began fiddling with his pipe. “Well, that’s good enough for me.”

  “But not for me!” his wife wailed. “My son is dead. Our son is dead. Killed.” Lucy went to put her arms around her shoulders, but Mrs. Cobb flung them off. She waved a finger in Alistair’s face. “Only fifteen year old, Alistair Durant. Fifteen! Had all his life ahead of him.”

  “That’s enough,” Mr. Cobb said softly at first, but, when his wife yelled something else, something no one could quite catch, he snapped. “Enough, Ermintrude. That’s enough, I say!”

  Her knees buckled, and Lucy caught her. “I just want …” she sobbed as Lucy led her off the porch and into the cabin. “I just want … my baby … my baby …”

  The door closed, but Alistair could still hear those pitiful wails.

  “Good-lookin’ horses, Frank.” Mr. Cobb kept messing with his pipe, spilling more tobacco onto the porch. “All you boys ride good-lookin’ stock. Well, you know all about good stock, Alistair. You and your pa. Yes, sir.”

  Moving from the railing, Alistair took pipe and pouch from Mr. Cobb’s trembling hands. “Here, sir,” he said in a voice that sounded far, far away. “Allow me, Mister Cobb.”

  “Good-lookin’ stock. Yes, indeed.” Mr. Cobb put his hand against the column. “Yankee saddles, though.”

  “Yankee horses,” Beans said, “till we emaciated ’em. Ain’t that right, Frank?”