He heard a scuffing sound behind him and looked over his shoulder. The boy from the Journal was close by again, twisting the toe of his shoe in the dirt.
“Say, boy,” Sam said, “do you have a watch?”
The boy gave Sam a look of calculated contempt. “Of course I have a watch. Mister Trask gave me his old one. I got to get to the paper on time, don’t I?”
“Well, tell me what time it is,” Sam said.
“Why should I tell anything to someone who dumped a pound of burning tobacco on my head?”
Sam grinned. The boy was starting to remind him of the boys he had grown up with in Hannibal. “Maybe I’d give a cigar to someone who told me the time.”
The boy’s expression changed. “Really?”
“I said maybe.”
The boy reached into a pocket and pulled out a battered timepiece. He peered at it and said, “This has six o’clock, but it loses thirty-five minutes a day and I ain’t set it since yesterday noon. So it might be about half-past.”
Sam took a cigar from his coat and tossed it to the boy. “Much obliged, boy.”
The boy caught the cigar with his free hand, then replaced his watch in his pocket and gave Sam another look of contempt. “Stop calling me ‘boy,’” he said. “If you must speak to me at all, call me Henry.” The boy jammed the cigar into his mouth, turned, and strode up the slope to Massachusetts Street.
Sam turned back to the river. The fog was gone, and most of the soldiers were out of their tents. To be on the safe side, Sam decided, the raid would have to begin no later than five-thirty, and a detachment of bushwhackers would have to come to the river to train their guns on the ferry, just in case. He didn’t think he would have any trouble persuading Colonel Quantrill to see the wisdom in that.
He started back up the slope, but paused where the boy from the Journal had stood.
“Henry,” Sam murmured. “God damn.”
Then he went up to the street and walked to the livery stable to check on Bixby. Bixby was in a foul mood and tried to bite him, so Sam knew that the horse was fine.
* * *
That evening, Sam was in his and Taylor’s room at the Whitney House, writing down what he had learned so far, when he heard the Journal boy’s voice outside. He went to the open window, looked down, and saw the boy astride a brown mule that was festooned with bundles of newspapers. The boy dropped one of the bundles at the Whitney’s door, then looked up and saw Sam at the window.
The boy shook his finger at Sam. “That seegar was spoiled, Mister Clemens!” he shouted. “I was sick all afternoon, but Mister Trask made me work anyway!”
“Good,” Sam said. “It builds character.”
The boy gave Sam yet another contemptuous look, then kicked the mule and proceeded down the street.
As the boy left, four men wearing blue shirts and red leather leggings rode past going the other way. They all carried pistols in hip holsters, and one had a rifle slung across his back. They were unshaven and ugly, and they laughed and roared as they rode up Massachusetts Street. They would no doubt cross the river and make trouble for someone north of town tonight. Sam didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t matter. They were Kansas Red Legs, meaner and more murderous than even Jennison’s Jayhawkers had been; and if they themselves hadn’t killed Orion, they were acquainted with the men who had.
“Whoop it up, boys,” Sam muttered as they rode away. “Whoop it up while you can.”
He came away from the window and saw that Taylor was awake. Taylor had gotten up in the afternoon to meet with Noland, but then had gone back to bed.
“What’s all the noise?” Taylor asked.
“Newspapers,” Sam said. “I’ll get one.”
Taylor sneered. “Why? It’s all abolitionist lies anyway.”
But when Sam brought a copy of the Journal back upstairs and began reading, he found news. Horrifying, sickening news.
“Sons of bitches,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Taylor asked. He was at the mirror, shaving, preparing for another night out in Lawrence’s less respectable quarter.
“A building in Kansas City collapsed yesterday,” Sam said.
“Well, good.”
Sam shook his head. “No, Fletch. It was the building on Grand Avenue where the Bluebellies were holding the women they suspected of aiding bushwhackers. The paper says four women were killed, and several others hurt.”
Taylor stopped shaving. “That’s where they were keeping Bloody Bill Anderson’s sisters,” he said. “Cole Younger and Johnny McCorkle had kin there too. Does the paper give names?”
“No. But of course it suggests that the collapse might have been caused by a charge set by guerrillas ‘in a disastrous attempt to remove the ladies from Federal protection.’”
Taylor’s upper lip curled back. “As if Southern men would endanger their women!” He shook his razor at the newspaper. “I’ll tell you what, though. I was worrying that the Colonel might have trouble riling up some of the boys for this raid, especially since Noland has found out that Jim Lane’s out of town. But this news will rile them like nobody’s business. And if Bill Anderson’s sisters have been hurt, you can bet that he and his boys will shit blue fire. God help any Unionists who cross their path.” He dipped his razor in the bowl and turned back to the mirror. His eyes were bright. “Or mine, for that matter.”
When Taylor had finished shaving, he asked if Sam would like to go out and have a time. Sam declined, and Taylor left without him.
Then Sam read the rest of the newspaper, most of which he found to be worthless. But he admired the typesetting. There were few mistakes, and most of the lines were evenly spaced and straight. He wondered how many of them the boy had set.
He put the newspaper aside and wrote in his journal until the evening light failed. Then he undressed and got into bed, but lay awake for so long that he almost decided to join Taylor after all. But he had no enthusiasm for the idea. Spy-work wasn’t physically strenuous, but it took a lot out of him mentally.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed that he was a printer’s devil for Orion again. This time, though, their newspaper was not the Hannibal Journal, but the Lawrence Journal.
He was setting type about a fire in which over a hundred and fifty people had been killed, when a man burst into the pressroom. The man was jug-eared, greasy-haired, narrow-faced, and beardless. His thick lips parted to reveal crooked, stained teeth. Sam had never seen him before.
The jug-eared man pulled a revolver from his belt and pointed it at Orion.
“Henry!” Orion shouted. “Run!”
Sam, his ink-smeared hands hanging useless at his sides, said, “But I’m Sam.”
The jug-eared man shot Orion, who shriveled like a dying vine.
Then the stranger pointed his revolver at Sam. Sam tried to turn and run, but his feet were stuck as if in thick mud.
The revolver fired with a sound like a cannon going off in a church, and the jug-eared man laughed.
Then Sam was floating near the ceiling, looking down at two bleeding bodies. Orion’s face had become that of Josiah Trask, one of the editors of the Lawrence Journal. And Sam’s face had become that of the boy, Henry, to whom he had given a cigar. The cigar was still in Henry’s mouth.
Sam awoke crouched against the wall. He was dripping with sweat.
Night had fallen, and Lawrence was quiet. Taylor had not yet returned to the room. Sam crept away from the wall and sat on the edge of the bed, shivering.
“Henry,” he whispered. “God damn.”
* * *
At noon on Wednesday, August 19, Sam and Taylor were sitting on a log in southern Jackson County near the village of Lone Jack, in the midst of their fellow bushwhackers. They and Noland had returned to the Blue Springs camp two days before, and Colonel Quantrill had received their report with satisfaction. Then, on Tuesday morning, Quantrill had ordered his guerrillas to move out without telling them their objective. In order t
o fool any Federal scouts or pickets that might spot them, the Colonel had marched the bushwhackers eastward for several miles before cutting back to the southwest. En route, the band had been joined by Bill Anderson with forty men and Andy Blunt with over a hundred, almost doubling the size of Quantrill’s force.
The men all knew something big was at hand. And now, finally, the Colonel was going to tell them what. Sam thought it was about time.
Quantrill, flanked by George Todd and Bill Anderson, sat before the bushwhackers astride his one-eyed mare, Black Bess, and gave a screeching yell. Over three hundred voices responded, and a thrill ran up Sam’s spine. The sound was both the most magnificent and most terrifying thing he had ever heard. If he were the enemy and heard that sound, he would be halfway to Colorado before the echo came back from the nearest hill.
The Colonel nodded in satisfaction. He was wearing a slouch hat with one side of the brim pinned up by a silver star, a loose gray guerrilla shirt with blue and silver embroidery, and gray trousers tucked into his cavalry boots. His belt bristled with four Colt pistols, and two more hung from holsters on either side of his saddle.
“Well, boys,” Quantrill shouted, “I hope you ain’t tired of riding just yet!”
He was answered by a loud, ragged chorus of “Hell, no!”
Quantrill laughed. “That’s good,” he cried, “because come nightfall, we’re heading for Kansas Territory to see if we can pull its most rotten tooth: Lawrence!”
A moment of silence followed the announcement, and for that moment Sam wondered if the men had decided that the Colonel was out of his mind. But then the bushwhackers exploded into another shrieking cheer, and at least a hundred of them rose to their feet and fired pistols into the air.
Taylor clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Are these the best damn boys in Missouri, or ain’t they!” he yelled.
“They’re sure the loudest,” Sam said.
Quantrill raised a hand, and the cheers subsided.
“Save your ammunition,” the Colonel shouted. “You’ve worked hard to make it or steal it, so don’t waste it shooting at God. There are plenty of better targets where we’re going!”
Another cheer rose up at that, but then Quantrill’s expression changed from one of glee to one of cold, deadly intent. The bushwhackers fell silent.
“Boys,” Quantrill said, no longer shouting, “there’s more danger ahead than any of us have faced before. There could be Federals both behind and in front of us, coming and going. Now, we sent some men to spy on Lawrence, and they say the town’s ripe to be taken—but there might be pickets on the way there. So we could have General Ewing’s Bluebellies down on us from Kansas City, and some from Leavenworth as well. I doubt that we’ll all make it back to Missouri alive.” He straightened in his saddle, and it seemed to Sam that his metallic gaze fell on each bushwhacker in turn. “So if there’s any man who doesn’t want to go into the Territory with the rest of us, now’s your chance to head for home. After we leave here tonight, there will be no turning back. Not for anyone.”
Beside Quantrill, Bill Anderson drew a pistol. Anderson’s hair was even wilder than it had been when Sam had seen him in Quantrill’s tent the week before, and his eyes were so fierce that they didn’t look human. “Anyone who does turn back after we’ve started,” Anderson cried, “will wish to God he’d been taken by the Yankees before I’m through with him!”
Taylor leaned close to Sam and whispered, “I think Bloody Bill’s heard about the building in Kansas City.”
Sam thought so too. In the face of Bill Anderson he saw a hatred that had become so pure that if Anderson ever ran out of enemies against whom to direct his rage, he would have to invent more.
“But although we’ll be going through hardships,” Quantrill continued, “the result will be worth it. Lawrence is the hotbed of abolitionism in Kansas, and most of the property stolen from Missouri can be found there, ready and waiting to be taken back by Missourians. Even if Jim Lane ain’t home, his house and his plunder are. We can work more justice in Lawrence than anywhere else in five hundred miles! So who’s going with me?”
The shrill cheer rose up a fourth time, and all of the men not already standing came to their feet. Despite Quantrill’s warning to save ammunition, more shots were fired into the air.
Quantrill and his captains wheeled their horses and rode to their tent, and Sam left Taylor and went to the tree where he had tied Bixby. There, after avoiding Bixby’s attempts to bite him, he opened one of his saddlebags, took out his revolver, and replaced its caps.
When he looked up again, he saw John Noland leaning against the tree, regarding him with casual disdain.
“Ain’t gonna shoot something, are you, Mister Clemens?” Noland asked.
“I’ll do my best if it becomes necessary,” Sam said.
Noland gave a sardonic grunt. “‘If it becomes necessary,’” he repeated. “Why do you think we’re goin’ where we’re goin’?”
“I should think that would be obvious,” Sam said. “To retrieve that which belongs to Missouri, and to punish the jayhawkers and Red Legs who stole it.”
“You’ll know a jayhawker on sight, will you?” Noland asked.
“I’ll know the Red Legs on sight, I’ll tell you that.”
Noland pushed away from the tree. “I reckon you will, if they sleep in their pants.” He sauntered past Sam and tipped his hat. “Hooray for you, Mister Clemens. Hooray for us all.”
“You don’t sound too all-fired excited, Noland,” Sam said.
Noland looked back with a grim smile. “You want to see me excited, Mister Clemens, you watch me get some of that free-soil money into my pocket. You watch me then.” He tipped his hat again and walked away.
Sam watched him go. How, he wondered, could two men as different as Bill Anderson and John Noland be riding in the same guerrilla band on the same raid?
Then he looked down at the gun in his hand and remembered that he was riding with both of them.
Bixby nipped his arm. Sam jumped and cursed, then replaced his revolver in the saddlebag and gave Bixby a lump of sugar. The horse would soon need all the energy it could get.
At dusk, the Colonel had the bushwhackers mount up and proceed toward the southwest. Only thirteen men had left the raiders after Quantrill’s announcement of the target, and only two of those had been members of Quantrill’s own band. Sam marveled. Here were more than three hundred men going to what might be their deaths, just because one man had asked them to do so. True, each man had his own reasons for becoming a bushwhacker in the first place, but none of them would have dreamed of attempting a raid so far into Kansas if Quantrill had not offered to lead them in it.
In the middle of the night, the guerrillas happened upon a force of over a hundred Confederate recruits under the command of a Colonel John Holt. Holt and Quantrill conferred for an hour while the bushwhackers rested their horses, and when the guerrillas resumed their advance, Holt and his recruits joined them.
At daybreak on Thursday, August 20, Quantrill’s raiders made camp beside the Grand River. They were only four miles from the border now, and this would be their final rest before the drive toward Lawrence. Late in the morning, fifty more men from Cass and Bates counties rode into the camp and offered their services. Quantrill accepted, and by Sam’s count, the invasion force now consisted of almost five hundred men, each one mounted on a strong horse and armed with at least one pistol and as much ammunition as he could carry. A few of the men also had rifles, and many carried bundles of pitch-dipped torches.
If Federal troops did attack them, Sam thought, the Bluebellies would get one hell of a fight for their trouble. They might also become confused about who was friend and who was foe, because almost two hundred of the bushwhackers were wearing parts of blue Union uniforms.
At mid-afternoon, Captain Todd rode among the dozing men and horses, shouting, “Saddle up, boys! Lawrence ain’t gonna plunder itself, now, is it?”
The men responded
with a ragged cheer. Sam got up, rolled his blanket, and then carried it and his saddle to the dead tree where Taylor’s horse and Bixby were tied. He had spread his blanket in a shady spot and had tried to sleep, but had only managed to doze a little. Taylor, lying a few yards away, had started snoring at noon and hadn’t stopped until Todd had ridden past.
“How you could sleep with what we’ve got ahead of us, I can’t imagine,” Sam said as Taylor came up to saddle his horse.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Taylor said. “I was thinking over strategy.”
“With help from the hive of bumblebees you swallowed, no doubt.”
Taylor grinned. “We’re gonna be fine, Sam,” he said. “You know they ain’t expecting us. So there’s no need for a man to be afraid.”
“No, I suppose not,” Sam said. “Not unless a man has a brain.”
Taylor frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sam took his Colt from his saddlebag and stuck it into his belt. “Nothing, Fletch. I just want to get there, get it done, and get back, is all.”
“You and me and everybody else,” Taylor said.
As Sam and Taylor mounted their horses, a cluster of eleven men rode past, yipping and laughing. They seemed eager to be at the head of the bushwhacker force as it entered Kansas.
The man leading the cluster was jug-eared, greasy-haired, narrow-faced, and beardless.
Sam’s heart turned to ice. Slowly, he raised his arm and pointed at the cluster of men. “Who are they?” he asked. His throat was tight and dry.
“Some of Anderson’s boys,” Taylor said. “Full of piss and vinegar, ain’t they?”
“Do you know the one in front?” Sam asked.
“Sure do,” Taylor said. “I’ve even ridden with him a time or two. Name’s Frank James. You can count on him in a fight, that’s for sure.” Taylor clicked his tongue, and his horse started after the cluster of Anderson’s men.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection Page 68