Wreaths of Glory

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “I am hunted, but I hunt my hunters. I am outlawed, but I outlaw my enemies. They have made my name blacker than two dozen devils, but I will blacken the names and the bodies of men like Senator James Lane and Doc Jennison. My plan, sir? It is simple. Meet torch with torch, pillage with pillage, slaughter with slaughter, subjugation with extermination. I will lay Kansas to waste. That, Mister Secretary, is how you win a war.” He retrieved his gauntlets and kepi from Beans, setting the cap on his head, pulling on his gloves, and, turning, he snapped to attention and saluted.

  “Come along, lads.” He grabbed his cane from Alistair’s hand. “I dare say that Secretary Seddon has heard enough for one afternoon.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Back in the hotel room, they sat in silence, Quantrill staring out the open window despite the cold, watching snow accumulate on the sill, on the sidewalks below. Beans Kimbrough rested on the divan, holding a copy of W. H. Ainsworth’s The Combat of the Thirty. Alistair had just turned the page on George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, but, if anyone had asked him what he had just read, he couldn’t have even guessed.

  The decanter on the chest of drawers had been emptied, but a street vendor had remedied that. Quantrill filled a stein with the last of the first bottle, which he tossed toward a brass cuspidor, but missed.

  “I heard on the streets this evening that another battle is being engaged somewhere in Tennessee, south of Nashville, I believe. I had hoped to return to Missouri via Tennessee.”

  Quantrill’s voice sounded lonely, distant, cold as the weather outside. He had not spoken much since leaving the War Department, and it surprised Beans and Alistair, who quickly closed the books they hadn’t really been reading.

  “Mayhap we shall journey through Kentucky.” Quantrill sipped his liquor. He kept staring outside.

  “Maybe you could see your folks,” Beans offered. “Your ma and pa.”

  Quantrill spun so quickly, he splashed bourbon on the drapes. “My father!” The stein slammed on the table beside him. “My father burns in perdition’s hottest flames, or so is my fervent desire. A brute, a drunkard, a rapscallion with an iron hand, it was a beautiful day in Dover, Ohio, when consumption claimed his sorry life.”

  Beans eyed Alistair, then, before Alistair could warn him not to ask, said: “Thought you said you hailed from Kentucky.”

  Quantrill hadn’t heard. With a snigger, he sipped bourbon, spilling more down his unbuttoned shell jacket. “Would have been beautiful, except for the poverty he left us in. My ma, without a penny to her name or brain in her head, and Mary my sister, she and that curved spine. A cripple, and a cripple is no help when you are dirt poor.” Another laugh and another drink. “Perhaps it was for the best. I had to go earn money. So west I went. Yes, here’s to you, Pa, for dying. Wish you had done it sooner.” He mockingly toasted the mirror. This time, he drained the stein. “But, Father, you did teach me a few things, reprobate and swindler that you were. Yes.” He uncorked the second and last bottle. “Yes, to Missouri we must return. George Todd is not one to be trusted with command for too long. Pack. We leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Alistair said uneasily.

  “Yes, confound it. Tomorrow. A battle is being fought in Tennessee, but a war is being waged in Missouri. We must return to the fight.”

  Alistair remembered the wounded soldiers scattered across the vast city of Richmond. A war, a brutal war, was being fought here, too.

  “I thought …” Here, he stumbled. Quantrill suddenly appeared sober, but Alistair knew that to be far from the case. Yet his eyes chilled him, held him.

  “You thought what?”

  “Well, the secretary … Seddon, he hasn’t answered …”

  “He sha’n’t respond.” Quantrill drank greedily. “Did you see the look he gave me.” Moving unsteadily and laughing, Quantrill fetched a rolled newspaper from the pocket of his greatcoat. “Oh, I forgot. You remember how Seddon appeared to recognize your name, Beans.” He dropped the wet Dispatch in Alistair’s lap, instead of Beans’, and retreated to the bottle.

  Beans came off the divan to look over Alistair’s shoulder. The Dispatch had reprinted Beans’ letter published in the St. Louis Republican.

  “They shall remember your name, Beans Kimbrough,” Quantrill said, laughing as he splashed bourbon into his stein. “And remember it well.”

  Beans turned into a lamb, straightening, blurting out: “I’m sorry, sir. If that letter has cost you …”

  “It cost me nothing, Kimbrough.” Quantrill drank. “Wars are not won or lost by words in newspapers, either, Beans. No, that is not why Seddon will refuse to see me again, refuse to hear me out, or grant any request.” Another swig. “Did you see how he looked at me?”

  Staring out the window, he spoke in a voice so low, Alistair could just barely make out the words.

  “He thinks me mad. Yet, I will show him madness. They think there are rules of war that must be followed, but the only rule there is … is to kill your enemy, kill his friends, kill his cattle, kill his pigs, kill his dignity.” He looked up, ran his fingers through his hair, tried not to stagger, but failed, stepping toward Alistair and Beans, but stopping a few feet from the boys, swaying. “You know why I did this, don’t you, boys? I did it for you. I care not for the commission as a colonel. I just want you to be treated humanely if, God forbid, you should ever be captured by our bloodthirsty enemy. Not for me. I have no intention of surrendering. But you … You see? That’s why we came here. For you.”

  Beans said: “Thank you, Captain.”

  “It’s colonel!” Quantrill stood erect, rigid. “I care not a whit what James Seddon says. From here on out, you shall address me as colonel. I deserve that rank.” After another drink, he refilled the stein.

  “Colonel,” Alistair said uneasily, but he had to say something, get one point across no matter how drunk Quantrill was getting. “I thought maybe … well … those girls … the ones the Yanks have arrested and are holding in that prison in Kansas City?”

  “What of them?”

  “Maybe President Davis … maybe Secretary Seddon … I thought maybe we came here to do something about them? For them?”

  “Women?” Quantrill had taken both stein and bottle back to the window to resume staring into the blackness of night and the whiteness of snow. “Do something for women? Like my mother, who nags for money because she has no sense whatsoever? ‘Willie, please, I beg of you, we are so poor, any copper or silver would do … gold if you have it.’ And while I was starving in the Colorado and Utah Territories, hard and scaly times to be sure, or while I was trying to teach Kansas sodbusters how to read and write, while I knew the true meaning of dire straits … did my mother, my brother, my invalid sister give me anything?” He paused and pushed back the curtain, grinning. “Why, there’s a lovely lass now. Alone at this time of night. I dare say, she must not have heard about the villainy running amok in this fair city.”

  He placed the stein on the table, grabbed his kepi, forgetting greatcoat and gauntlets, and hurried to the door, buttoning his shell jacket as he strode across the room.

  The door closed, and Alistair and Beans looked at each other, struck dumb. A gust of wind brought Alistair to his feet, and he went to close the window.

  “Whiskey got to him tonight,” he said, staring outside. He could see no lass, no Quantrill, could see nothing but the occasional mule-drawn hack cutting tracks in the snow.

  “Whiskey my arse.” Beans grabbed the stein and the bourbon. “That ol’ boy’s mad as a hatter.”

  * * * * *

  Quantrill showed no ill effects of his foray with bourbon the next morning. Alistair hadn’t even heard Quantrill return to the room, but woke up as the colonel washed his face in the basin, scrubbing himself furiously dry with a towel.

  “Good morning, lads,” Quantrill greeted.

  Alistair crawled fr
om underneath the quilt. Beside him, a groaning Beans pulled a pillow over his head.

  “Captain … er, Colonel,” Alistair began while pulling on his pants.

  “The bellman will send a boy up after we take our breakfast,” Quantrill interrupted. “I have arranged transportation via railroad to Atlanta, and, from thence, on to Memphis. After that, we shall have to finish our route piecemeal, as we did on our journey here, via carriage, horse, and, as Beans aptly put it, ‘the ankle express.’” He opened a grip, and began packing it with clothes from the chest of drawers.

  “What about approaching Secretary Seddon about those girls imprisoned?” Alistair knew he was risking another verbal assault, but, criminy, he had truly believed they had traveled more than a thousand miles to Richmond specifically to get those girls out of that dungeon.

  “‘Those girls,’ Mister Durant … or do you mean your sister and your concubine?” Quantrill’s tone was one of bemusement. He kept filling his grip while Alistair’s face crimsoned.

  “Lucy’s not anyone’s concubine!” He balled his fists.

  Quantrill fastened the grip, tossed it onto his bed, and snapped: “Mister Kimbrough, if you do not get out of that bed this instant, I shall have you flogged.” Then, smoothing his mustache, he walked toward Alistair. “Do you truly think a letter from that lame old war horse, Seddon, would accomplish anything, Alistair? Honestly? Do you?” His hand touched Alistair’s tensed shoulder, and squeezed gently. Alistair’s fists unclenched, and he felt himself slump.

  “You mean well,” Quantrill continued. “You have a kind heart, perhaps too kind in these dark days. President Davis signed into law an act that legitimizes our forces, irregular as we are. Yet the Yankees ignore that, and they have taken their war to our fairer sex.”

  Alistair stared at his stocking feet. “We haven’t treated Yankee prisoners with much civility, either, sir.”

  With a pat on Alistair’s shoulder, Quantrill moved back to finish his luggage. “Very well, Alistair,” he said after a moment. “I admire a man who stands his ground, who must do something, and you have done more than your share in battle. Write your letter. I will personally deliver it to the War Department on our way to the depot. No, write two letters. One I shall deliver to Secretary Seddon and the other to President Davis. But, afterward, we must depart, and we haven’t the time to wait to hear their reply.”

  Part of that excited Alistair. He would have preferred to learn how President Davis or Secretary Seddon would respond, but, no, maybe this would be better. A letter from him, not Quantrill, not Beans. Seddon and Davis were civilized men. They would see the injustice of imprisoning young women. They might get those girls released.

  He finished dressing, found writing paper in a drawer, and sat down at the table to draft a letter, first to Secretary Seddon.

  By that time, Beans Kimbrough had risen, dressed, and washed his face. Neither he nor Alistair had much to pack. Alistair figured he could roll all of his in his bedroll, even with the expensive wardrobe Quantrill had bought him.

  “You hear any news from Missouri, Colonel?” Beans asked.

  Quantrill tossed his last bag on the bed. “No. The fools here think the war … nay, the world … begins and ends in northern Virginia. But we must get back. I don’t trust giving George Todd too much rein.”

  “Do you think the War Department will let you raise a regiment?”

  Laughing, Quantrill shook his head. “You were in that room with Alistair and me, were you not, Mister Kimbrough?”

  “So this trip was a failure?”

  “Far from it.” Quantrill moved from the beds to the desk, where Alistair scribbled on the paper, pausing long enough to collect his thoughts. “There are two ds in Seddon,” Quantrill corrected, pointing. “And secretary is r-e, not e-r.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alistair scratched through the mistakes, but Quantrill removed the pen from his hand.

  “No. You start over. This must have a professional touch. You have nice handwriting, young man, easy to read, when you don’t rush.”

  Grumbling, Alistair found new paper.

  “Think before you write, young man. Choose your words carefully. It is just like aiming your revolver in battle. Make it count.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After patting Alistair’s shoulder, Quantrill turned away from the desk. “No, Mister Kimbrough, this trip was successful. You got great clothes, as did Alistair. We have new weapons, and I have a new idea. A glorious campaign that if it does not end this war, it will at least make our Partisan Rangers remembered longer than Napoleon.”

  Even Alistair stopped writing, craning his neck for a better look at his commander.

  “You two will play important parts in this campaign, but it will be one of great risk. You have been to Kansas before, right, Beans?”

  “Yeah.”

  Turning: “And you, Alistair?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I was with y’all in Olathe.” He wished he hadn’t been, though.

  “That’s all right.” Excitedly Quantrill went to help Beans finish packing. “You are educated. You are young, but experienced. No, they sha’n’t question young men. Older men would be off to war. Yes, yes. I see it clearly. You now have proper attire that befits gentlemen, say, cattle buyers. You will assume new names, new identities. You both can talk like educated men, not Missouri ruffians.”

  “You mean …?” Beans shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re talkin’ about usin’ us as spies?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Where?” Alistair asked.

  That faraway gleam began brightening in Quantrill’s eyes. “Torch with torch, pillage with pillage, slaughter with slaughter, subjugation with extermination,” he whispered, raising his voice. “I will lay Kansas to waste.” Here, he slapped Beans joyfully on the arm, and turned back to Alistair. “Finish those letters, Alistair. We waste time standing idly here.”

  He donned his kepi, and walked to the window. “To kill a rattlesnake, you must cut off its head. The same is true with redlegs and Abolitionists. I will lay Kansas to waste.” Again his voice fell into an almost lifeless whisper. “That, Mister Secretary, is how you win a war.”

  Lawrence

  Chapter Thirteen

  Keeping dust off one’s clothes, or even out of one’s mouth, proved impossible. It was only April, but the weather had turned hot, and the wind unbearable, blowing so hard Alistair had to reach up and hold his hat on his head inside the stagecoach.

  “Is it always this windy?” he managed to ask.

  “Har!” The drummer sitting across from him laughed. “Sonny, you have yet to see a Kansas zephyr.”

  The coach lurched up, down, the hoofs of the mules clopping rhythmically. Beside him, Beans Kimbrough snored, his head resting on Alistair’s shoulder. He wanted to move, and often fought the urge to jostle Beans awake, because they had jammed so many bodies inside the coach—and several more rode up top. Alistair could barely breathe.

  “You and your partner are from …?” was pleasantly asked by the man beside the drummer, wearing a straw hat and linen duster—an experienced wayfarer, Alistair could tell.

  “We are cattle buyers from the Dover Yards. Dover, Ohio.” Alistair had to fish a handkerchief from his vest pocket, and wipe the grime off his lips and cheeks.

  “You did not find any satisfactory beef in Saint Louis. That is where we picked you up, isn’t it?”

  Alistair smiled. “Yes, sir. Oh, we found beef in Saint Louis. Purchased quite a number. But my owner, Mister O’Rourke, thinks he can command a better price, make a better margin, on selling Free-State cattle to butcher shops and restaurants.” He widened his grin.

  “Har!” The drummer laughed again. “Sounds like your employer is a war profiteer.”

  Alistair’s smile vanished. “He’s my uncle, sir. With two sons serving in the Fifty-First I
nfantry, and another buried at Perryville, Kentucky.”

  “Mister White,” a bespectacled lady sitting by the window next to Beans scolded. “Really.”

  The drummer, Mr. White, looked properly chagrined. “My apologies, lad. I meant no disrespect. ’Twas a poor attempt at humor on my part.”

  “Uncle Patrick is a good man, sir. An Abolitionist of the highest order. That is why he has sent my partner”—he tilted his head slightly toward Beans, who now drooled onto his coat—“and me to Lawrence.”

  He thought he had erred, calling that fictitious cattle buyer “Mister O’Rourke” moments earlier and “Uncle Patrick” just now, but if he had made a mistake, it appeared to have slipped past those awake in the crowded coach.

  “Why aren’t you and your partner in the Fifty-First Infantry?” the man in the straw hat asked.

  “Mister Shea!” the woman scolded. “Of all the nerve.” She was becoming Alistair’s defender.

  “John”—Alistair indicated again the slumbering Beans, and let bitterness creep into his voice—“and I were invalided out after Perryville. Would you like to see my scar, sir?” He reached for his side.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the woman said.

  He had a scar, too, an ugly one from the Minié ball. It looked a lot worse than it had been.

  “And why aren’t you fighting for the Union?” Alistair asked.

  “Har!” The drummer had the most annoying damnyankee laugh. “Shea here is. Isn’t that right, Conor?”

  Conor Shea tilted his head slightly, his eyes never leaving Alistair’s.

  “As far as myself, young man, I saw my share of fighting before the fire-breathers ever took aim at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. Border ruffians, slave stealers, Missouri scum. I knew and admired John Brown, helped him free Missouri chattel at Stokesbury in ’58. I—”

  “Yes.” The lady, Alistair’s defender, cut off the Kansan. “You need not bore our young visitor.” She smiled pleasantly at him. “What is Dover like, Mister …?”