“You’ve got yourself in a pickle, Sue Mundy,” Wilson said. “You’re surrounded and cut off from any help. This barn may keep you dry but it won’t keep you whole. It’s indefensible.”
Jarom nodded to affirm the essential truth of what he said.
“Under the circumstances,” Wilson asked, “wouldn’t it be wise for you to surrender?”
“You will kill me if I do.”
“That isn’t true,” said Wilson matter of factly.
“Then your men will,” said Jarom, gesturing toward the open door.
“That isn’t so. My men won’t shoot you unless I order them to, and I have just promised that I won’t do that.”
“How many of you are there?”
“One hundred cavalry and fifty infantrymen,” Wilson said, not averting his eyes or blinking. Jarom assumed that Wilson overstated his number to bolster his position so Jarom and Medkiff would surrender without a fight, knowing they couldn’t hope to escape unscathed.
He felt Wilson’s stare as an auger boring into his forehead. A stinging sensation in his index finger told him the ash of his cigarette was burnt to the nub. As he snubbed it into the dust, a lazy ribbon of smoke still wafted toward Medkiff in the loft. He fixed his gaze on Wilson, weighing their chances. Their possibilities were fading, their predicament setting like wet plaster into something solid and permanent as anything could be in the flux of things. Despite his pretense of steadiness, he felt himself growing desperate as he moved on to the next phase.
“If we decide to surrender,” he asked, “where will you take us?”
“To Louisville,” Wilson said. Just as Jarom reckoned.
“Then you will kill me there,” he said, his mind stepping to the next phase as if each was a slippery stone in a stream he was trying to cross without wetting his feet.
“Probably so,” Wilson said, since there was no denying the forces that demanded his blood. “But,” he added, “consider the alternatives. If you surrender today, you’ll be alive tonight. If you don’t, you’ll have one chance in a thousand, in ten thousand, of seeing noon tomorrow.”
Jarom glanced over to Magruder on his pallet ten feet away. He was propped up on one elbow, clearly taking everything in.
“Don’t fight on my account,” Magruder said. “I don’t expect to live. I’ve been a bad boy and I expect to die. But you,” he said, “shot now or shot later is a poor choice, but a choice still. And who knows?”
“Don’t push me, Billy,” Jarom said, feeling more than a little pushed. Despite his efforts to control it, he could feel his face drawing into a pout. He felt the muscles in his jaw setting up their own authority. “When I’m ready, I’ll let you know, but please don’t hurry me, please.”
He was irked, though he knew Billy was trying to do the generous thing, freeing Jarom to do what seemed best for himself rather than feeling constrained by what was best for Billy Magruder. He sensed himself wavering, and he knew that Wilson sensed it too. Which, he thought, is probably why Wilson turned his attention to Medkiff, who’d been listening from the loft.
“What do you think ought be done?” said Wilson, looking up now at Medkiff, even more jumpy now and obviously confused.
For answer, Medkiff, not much on words, simply shrugged, turning his attention to a crevice in the planking.
Jarom, running his possibles, knew he had no choice where he’d imagined one, that all he might salvage was a little dignity and some precious time. Escaping fifteen or twenty was possible though unlikely. But a hundred and fifty? Even if he and Medkiff left Magruder, the odds were too steep. One shot could bring down a horse. Even if he had inflated the numbers, Wilson clearly had a sizable force to their two. He considered his chances in taking Wilson hostage but knew he couldn’t break his word under a flag of truce. That would only confirm what his enemies believed, that he was rogue to the bone. Only one question remained to ask.
“Will we be treated as prisoners of war?” he asked. This was a discreet way of asking whether they would be treated as soldiers within the usages of war or as guerrillas, another word for outlaws.
“You will be treated as Confederate prisoners of war,” Wilson said, though Jarom knew that he couldn’t make such a guarantee. Sensing the full weight of his predicament, Jarom believed for a moment he would cry.
And then Jarom surprised himself, moving as if controlled by some force beyond him, by putting his hands on the buckle of the belt that held his pistols. From what seemed like a great distance away, he watched himself unbuckle, putting down the three and putting aside the fourth, still where he’d placed it by his side.
He then motioned for Medkiff, wide-eyed in the loft, to do the same. After hesitating some moments, Medkiff put his pistols aside and sighed an expansive sigh that seemed a distillation of all the winds.
Wilson still stared as Jarom felt his own concentration break. Releasing himself from Wilson’s stare, he tried to focus on the abstract patterns of leaf and litter on the barn floor. He could hear some movement outside, the Coxes’ dog still barking, birds twittering in the trees.
“Where did I leave my boots?” was the last thing he could remember saying, addressed to no one in particular.
PRISONER
Even after they put leg irons on him and shackled his wrists, Jarom did not learn who played them false. When he asked why irons were necessary, Wilson told him that the papers had described him as a very dangerous fellow. Jarom did his best to persuade him that he and Medkiff posed no great threat, surrounded by guards and played out as both were. He told him that half the stuff printed about him in the newspapers was untrue, the rest exaggerated. To make his point, he told Wilson that there was even a story about his dressing up as a woman to fool General Morgan and to act as a female spy. All damn stuff, Jarom assured him, the stuff of campfires, wanting to set the record straight.
Magruder had been carried to a wagon for the trip back to Brandenburg, a ride that must have banged him up considerably along roads rough as a creek bed. Captain Marshall, Wilson’s second in command, had heard that at least three other guerrilla bands were in the area. As a precaution he ordered his men to bolster themselves for an attack, since all of them seemed to believe that once the capture became known, no effort would be spared to spring the captives loose. The citizen who imparted this information warned Marshall that the guerrillas would “hit them like wildfire.” Jarom also learned that Marshall questioned Wilson’s judgment in permitting Dr. Lewis, a civilian of doubtful loyalty, to visit the barn under a flag of truce. Marshall’s own preference had been to incinerate the whole building if its inmates didn’t surrender. Along the way Jarom remembered a scriptural text—was it a psalm?—wherein he looked to the hills from whence cometh his help. He scanned the ridgeline, but help didn’t come.
Though gawkers gathered along the way, especially in the river town of Brandenburg where the sternwheeler put in, no one raised a hand in protest or anger. No one, in fact, said anything, staring in silence. A large crowd of Sunday afternoon loafers congregated to see them board. Magruder’s litter was placed on the floor of the captain’s quarters beside the four wounded federals, resting places memorialized by stains of blood on the floorboards. When they boarded the Morning Star, a steamer similar to the one on which Company B of the Thirtieth Wisconsin had come down the Ohio from Louisville, Jarom pieced together the events leading to his capture, mostly from what he picked up talking to Wilson. He also noticed that not once did Wilson let him out of his sight. The last time he saw Memphis, one of Wilson’s men was leading her away, her long tail switching, the muscles of her tan rump working indifferently, distracted by the strange company after three weeks of solitude and inactivity.
He learned that Cyrus Wilson, a miller in Larue County retired from service in the Twenty-sixth Kentucky Cavalry, had been promoted to major and called back to special duty to capture the guerrilla Sue Mundy. On Saturday Wilson and his Wisconsin troops had left the wharf at Louisville on a river steam
er named Grey Eagle. They had cleared the falls and passed Shippingport, heading west downriver to Brandenburg. From there they had marched southeast ten miles at night to the hamlet of Webster, where they pressed Dr. Lewis into service to lead them to the Cox farm. Who had informed the federals Jarom didn’t know.
The trip back to Louisville took longer since the Morning Star now pushed upstream against the current, and they didn’t arrive until Monday morning. The wires carried the message of his capture to Louisville, where a large crowd assembled by the wharf at the foot of Fourth Street to see him debark. Under heavy guard they proceeded to the military prison at Ninth and Broadway. Guards raised Jarom and Medkiff, still chained, to government horses, their hands and legs secured by chains that girded the horses’ underbellies. The soldiers formed a hollow square around them and marched them up the street from the dock, Magruder bringing up the rear in an army ambulance. All the way to the prison their captors paraded them through crowds that stopped to ogle the unfortunate duo trussed in chains. Many received word that the prisoners were expected and had waited to get a view of the banditti princess they had been reading about for months. Jarom noticed that many women came out to see a member of their sex who had given herself over to violent excess and vile impersonation. Jarom felt relieved to escape the prying eyes when the little caravan reached the prison’s walled enclosure. The last time he saw Medkiff they nodded before guards led them to different cells. Medkiff shrugged his shoulders, then winked at him.
The guards conducted Jarom to a cell at the far end of a long corridor of cells in a brick building that resembled a factory, one that produced nothing more useful than suffering and wretchedness. Cold, sterile, depressing—Jarom discovered a place of unforgiving metal and unscaleable walls where misery seemed the currency, and hope, as poet Prentice might put it, had not one friend. He fought to keep his “lamp from burning low.”
The next day, one of his jailers, thinking Jarom might like to read about himself, brought him the papers, and he read an account of his own capture in the Daily Democrat:
Louisville Daily Democrat
March 14, 1865
CAPTURE OF THREE NOTORIOUS OUTLAWS—SUE MUNDY, CAPTAIN MAGRUDER, AND CAPTAIN MEDKIFF IN LIMBO—The notorious outlaws, Sue Mundy, Jerome Clark, Captain Billy Magruder, and Henry Medkiff have been captured and are now securely lodged in the Military Prison of this City. It will be recollected that Magruder was severely wounded about twenty days ago in an encounter with Federal troops. Colonel D. Dill, the Post Commandant, a few days ago received information that the outlaw was lying in a tobacco barn on the place of Mr. Cox, near a little village known as Webster, about ten miles south of Brandenburg, being nursed by Sue Mundy and Captain Medkiff. On Saturday evening he despatched a detachment of fifty men of the 30th Wisconsin volunteers down the river, on the steamer Grey Eagle, to make an effort to capture the illustrious trio. About sunrise on Sunday morning the soldiers arrived at the place, and quietly surrounded the barn.
The door was broken open, and Sue Mundy, as they approached, with a pistol in each hand, fired two shots in quick succession at the boys in blue.
The aim was true, and four of them fell wounded, one mortally. She remained bold and defiant after this desperate exhibition of her prowess with firearms, and refused to surrender only as a prisoner of war. The terms were agreed to, and the three notorious guerillas were taken prisoners. The scout returned to the city yesterday morning, with the prisoners securely guarded. Magruder is in a weak condition and suffering greatly from the effects of his wound. It is thought he will yield up the ghost before morning dawns.
Sue Mundy, or Jerome Clark, is a rosy-cheeked boy, with dark eyes and scowling brow. Medkiff is a fine, stalwart specimen of humanity. He was confined in the Military Prison here about one year ago, but escaped from the guard while on his way, with other prisoners, to Camp Douglas. He has led a wild life, and we trust that he will expiate his many crimes upon the gallows before many days. Clark and Medkiff are now ironed, and closely confined in cells in the Military Prison. Magruder is receiving medical attention in the Military Prison Hospital.
The Daily Democrat, a rival of Prentice’s Louisville Journal, had provided its readers a fairly straightforward account of the capture, but again the writer hadn’t bothered to get the facts straight. Someone who didn’t know the facts might conclude, for example, that he and Medkiff managed to wound four Union soldiers with two shots. Twelve or more would have been a more accurate count. The most remarkable error, however, was the transformation of gender that Sue Mundy underwent between the beginning and the end of the article. “She remained bold and defiant” became “rosy-cheeked boy” in the space of two paragraphs. Jarom thought a rival editor had called Prentice’s bluff, that in fact George Prentice could call Sue Mundy a woman only when she, or he, was not before the public eye. With Jarom in custody, Prentice would be forced to concede the game he’d been playing and put the best face on it without acknowledging his persistent lie.
From the March 14 number of the Daily Journal he found two notices relating to his capture:
The four soldiers of the 30th Wisconsin who were wounded by Sue Mundy, were sent to the Barracks Hospital yesterday. Their names are John A. Robbins, company H, gunshot wound in the bowels, which passed through; John G. White, company F, wounded upper part of the right lung, ball still in his body; W. A. Wadsworth, company A. wounded in left ankle; another of the 30th Wisconsin was slightly wounded.
Jarom studied the names as curiosities. Seldom had he known the names of the men he’d shot, nor had he read a description of their wounds. Did this intimate knowledge loose arrows of compunction and guilt? Not one. Set in the printer’s font were names of men out to kill him. Had it been otherwise, they would have been raising congratulatory toasts in a Louisville saloon by now. In the same number he found a notice that arrested his attention to a greater degree:
All persons having any evidence against the captured outlaws, Sue Mundy, Captain Magruder, and Captain Medkiff, are requested to call at the Provost Marshal’s office today or to-morrow, and file their affidavits. The authorities will give the scoundrels a speedy trial, and we trust that they will receive their just deserts—hanging.
Prentice’s story of the capture didn’t come until the following day when the august editor had sufficient time to study the other papers and put his own rhetorical spin on events. Unlike the account of the day before, it was, as Jarom saw it, part news account, part editorial, with little indication where one ended and the other began:
THE CAPTURE OF SUE MUNDY, &C.—Some individuals have waxed exceedingly wrothy over a statement published in the Journal in relation to the capture of Sue Mundy and her or his confederates. We said that the outlaws refused to surrender only as prisoners of war, which terms were agreed to. Our amiable friends assure us that we are greatly mistaken. They say that the guerillas surrendered to be held as prisoners of war until they should be delivered up to the authorities at Louisville.
We omitted the proviso, and we are extremely sorry for the omission. When we look at the question fairly the mistake is not such a monstrous one after all. The outlaws did surrender as prisoners of war, and on board the steamer, from Brandenburg to Louisville, they were treated as such. We trust that we offend nobody by asking why this was so. Who ever heard of Sue Mundy, Magruder, or Medkiff extending a privilege of the kind to a Federal soldier? Who ever knew of three desperate cutthroats treating a prisoner in a kind and humane manner? Sue and Medkiff made a desperate fight, yet, certainly, they were not invincible. Magruder was lying upon a bed of pain in a weak, tottering condition, therefore unable to offer any defence. Fifty Federal soldiers, fully armed, surrounded the house, yet the two outlaws kept them at bay, and were permitted to dictate terms for surrender. They were guerillas, deeply steeped in blood and crime—they were recognized as outlaws—a price was upon their heads, yet they were allowed to surrender as prisoners of war.
We are at a loss to under
stand how a Federal officer, knowing all of these facts, could accept such terms. Military usage and military law do not sanction such a proceeding. An outlaw cannot be permitted to surrender as a prisoner of war, even with stipulated conditions. To accede to such a proposition is to acknowledge the individual as being engaged in waging a legitimate warfare.
We rejoice at the capture of the cut-throats, and freely say that the planning of the expedition reflects great credit upon the officers connected with it.
THE TRIAL
After breakfast on Tuesday morning, to the sounds of drays and wagons on the cobbles outside, guards transported Jarom from his cell in the military prison at Ninth and Broadway. His legs chained, he scooted, with the assistance of two guards, to a hackney and was conveyed to the headquarters of Colonel William C. Coyl, judge advocate, the man designated to officiate at his court-martial. The building was a handsome, two-story residence built of salmon-colored brick with a small but immaculate graveled yard, rake marks clearly inscribing its surface. Before the army acquired it, Jarom heard one of the guards say, the house belonged to a prosperous tanner. It stood on Chestnut above Third Street, a block or two north of Broadway.
As the guards lifted Jarom from the hackney, he faced twenty or so onlookers collected in the yard and along the street. To the extent that he could read their faces, they seemed curious, having somehow heard or divined when and where the court would convene. The irons on his arms and legs made it awkward for him to get down from the closed carriage, and two neatly uniformed privates stepped over to help. They escorted him past a few old men and a menace of brats, up the walk, and through the front door into what had been a large drawing room, now set up for the trial.
From the moment he climbed to the stoop he felt a sinking in his stomach. The eyes of the curious didn’t sicken him but rather the sense that he was living the most important day of his life, that the outcome of this trial would determine whether he lived or died, survived the war or entered the list of its casualties. He looked at the impassive figures around the room and knew he couldn’t count one friend among them. At one end he saw a long table with six seats drawn up to it and a furled United States flag standing to one side in a metal sconce. Along the outer wall sat several officers and four or five common soldiers standing.
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