Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  

  The Bigelow gang had a ten-day head start, the trail old but clear. After hitting Lick Creek, they murdered two men in Mound City, then burned their way east over the prairie. Billy, James and Ramsey, joined by a dozen men from B Company, followed them through a countryside lovely with meadowlarks and warblers, wild strawberry, shooting star and vetch. At dawn, they rode to the faint peent of the woodcock and the booming of courting prairie chickens. At noon, red-tails soared overhead, and at dusk the owls began to call, trumpeting a kill. The prairie lived on, oblivious to the doings of men, intent on rebirth, unmindful of blood spilled, heedless of fire and death. And in turn, Billy and his men galloped through its beauty without seeing it, noticing only the ravished homesteads, the unplanted fields, the unburied corpses.

  By the time they crossed the Thompson River into Mercer County, exhausted after twelve hours of hard riding, they’d encountered no enemy. They reined in at Modena, a raw settlement not far from Princeton where Billy and Roecker had operated earlier in the month. Bigelow had passed through three days ago, revenging the shooting of George Vandever and his sons by gunning down the mayor of Princeton, his son and his nephew. According to one source they’d ridden south toward Trenton. According to another maybe it was east into Sullivan County. The people of Mercer County appeared indifferent to the militia’s search. They looked up out of eyes weary and glazed, from shoulders that slumped. They were dog-tired, the proprietor of the general store told Billy, and wanted no more part of a conflict that made no sense, that no longer concerned them. They wanted to be left alone.

  Billy’s men slept through the night and ate courtesy of the reluctant Modena storekeeper, then saddled up and headed south. In Chillicothe, they rode up to a farmhouse south of town where Bigalow’s gang had apparently been welcomed by the farm wife. Billy’s sergeant wanted to arrest the woman for harboring bushwhackers, but Billy eyed the bigger prize, and he pushed on to Carrollton.

  As dusk fell they topped a rise on the north bank of the Missouri. The river flowed to the southeast, the setting sun lighting up its surface as if a lake of fire nestled between the high bluffs. To the northeast the early evening lights of Carrollton glowed through smoke from a hundred chimneys. To the west, across a basin not more than a half-mile wide, a thicket of trees ran up the slope of the opposite hill, steeped in the dimness of coming night. At its crown, firelight flickered and men moved around a campsite, finishing the chores of evening bivouac. Billy and Barney Holland sprawled on their bellies, watching.

  “That’s them,” Billy said and Holland grunted. They slithered backwards off the crest and re-joined their men, clustered out of sight on the down slope. Billy whispered his orders, and Marcus Degroat led three men into the dusk on foot, revolvers in one hand, Bowie knives in the other. They’d take the sentries first. Billy wanted Bigelow alive.

  “You’re with me,” Billy said to James, and the boy, eyes glinting and face flushed, didn’t argue.

  Billy waited ten minutes, unsheathed his sword and spurred his mount straight up the front of the slope. The rest of the company spread out across the valley and curved into a crescent as they rode, sweeping up the flanks of the hill. Their quarry froze in the firelight for an instant, then the hilltop erupted in confusion, oaths, a wild shot. DeGroat appeared across the clearing. Rebels burst from the trees on foot, mounted militia ran them down. A pistol shot exploded next to Billy, and he whirled to see Ora Juwitt pitch face first into the dust. Billy’s men pounded through the campsite now, scattering cooking gear and bedrolls, clubbing and slashing with saber and rifle.

  It was over in moments, the forest floor littered with dented pots and torn clothing, bodies stretched out unmoving or huddled and moaning. Holland and Ramsey dismounted and herded the conscious into a cluster in the flickering light of a campfire, while DeGroat and his men slipped off to collect the bodies of the sentries they’d killed. Six bushwhackers were dead. Billy dismounted, slid his boot beneath Juwitt and rolled him onto his back. His mouth grimaced in death, his eyes partially open. Billy spat and strode off to view the rest of the dead.

  The Holt County men recognized Harlan Little and Alfred Zerbin among the four yet living. Billy examined the bodies twice, holding a fire brand to each face, then threw it down, fuming.

  “Not here,” he said. “Bigelow’s not here. Either he slipped out when we came in, or he wasn’t here to start with.”

  Little spoke up. “You ain’t going to get him. He’s too smart for you fuckers.”

  Billy kicked Zerbin in the chin where he sat, hands tied behind him, and the simple man crashed back with a howl. He turned on Little. “You’re next, boy,” he said. “Where’s Bigelow?”

  “Gone off,” Little said, refusing to raise his eyes to Billy. “Been gone for couple of days.”

  “Gone off where?” Billy glared at the other prisoners. Each shook his head and glared back.

  “Not going to get anything out of this lot,” he said. “Load up the prisoners. Leave the dead.”

  

  They rode into Jefferson City at noon the next day, and Billy surrendered his prisoners to Colonel Hall. Before two in the afternoon all four were convicted by court-martial of treason and murder and sentenced to death. Harlan Little cried. Alfred Zerbin appeared dazed and without understanding. Billy’s Holt County men won the privilege of leading them to the gallows, erected early in the war along the river below Capitol Hill, nooses dangling in anticipation of multiple executions. Zerbin, Charles Skelton, from Andrew County, and the fourth man, who refused to give his name, were prodded up the stairs, hoods drawn over their heads, nooses settled about their necks. Billy grasped Little by the elbow.

  “One more time. Where’s Bigelow? You’ve got nothing to lose,” he said.

  Little, hands bound behind him, twisted out of Billy’s grip and shook his head.

  Billy slashed his pistol butt across Harlan’s face, bloodying his nose.

  “I don’t know,” Little said, his voice rising into a squeak.

  Billy jammed his pistol into his holster. “Get him out of here,” he said, and Little was yanked up the stairs, his feet dragging, his trousers wet and stinking where he’d pissed himself.

  Zerbin keened in a singsong voice, swaying as if the gentle breeze stirred him. Skelton muttered, the nameless man shouted curses muffled by the heavy hood, each oath punctuated by a mad giggle.

  Every man in Billy’s company vied to be a member of the shooting squad. “You,” Billy said and jabbed a finger at Marcus Degroat. Degroat whooped and grabbed a rifle out of the teepee stack. “You and you. You.” Charlie Koch, Emil Haas, Joe Weber. Four more. He stopped in front of Ramsey. “Jim?”

  “Yes sir, Captain,” Jim said, his face bland, and he chose a rifle.

  “James.” Billy eyed his cousin. The boy stood tall and lanky, a head above Billy. His arrowhead hung from a leather thong outside his jacket. “No one’ll think any less of you if you don’t do this.”

  “I want to.”

  “Grab a rifle.” James chose a Burnside.

  The men raised their rifles to their shoulders. Billy lifted a hand to the hangman, slashed it down, and all four bodies dropped. The gargling of choking men sounded loud in the sudden silence. The drop, set intentionally so the prisoners’ plunge wouldn’t break their necks, left the bushwhackers alive, kicking and gagging.

  Billy raised his voice. “Ready! Fire!”

  Ten carbines exploded in smoke and flashes of fire, and the bodies twitched and jerked as bullets plowed in and through. By the time the last shot sounded, Harlan Little’s body hung so riven with the broad wounds of Minié balls that one arm dangled by a shred of coat sleeve, and Billy swore light shone through the man’s midsection. Skelton and the fourth man swayed, but Zerbin moaned, until a single shot boomed from the firing squad, and the moaning stopped. A sudden swirl of wind caught the acrid smell of powder and the
reek of filth—the dead men’s bowels voided at the end—and blew the stench into Billy’s face.

  James lowered his weapon and looked back at Billy. “For Pa,” he said.

  39

  Autumn 1863

  Billy never did track down Bigelow that spring. James enlisted in the regular Union army and boarded a train for St. Louis and points east, and Jim Ramsey returned to Lick Creek silent and hard-eyed, unwilling to talk about what happened, saying only that Bigelow’s gang was dead. Willard Bigelow himself vanished like the smoke demon. His mother, the Widow Bigelow, packed up and moved to Texas with the younger children, and that, Agnes thought, marked the end of the Bigelows in Holt County.

  The second week in July, reports filtered in of a massive battle in Pennsylvania, a battle that repulsed the southern army’s invasion of the north and killed unspeakable numbers of men. And immediately after, the news arrived that Vicksburg had fallen to the Yankees, and they began to hope the end was near.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Jabez said late one evening. The heat stifled any hope of sleep. They sat on the front porch, Jabez in his rocker, Agnes on the top step, surrounded by Rose’s citronella candles to ward off mosquitoes. “It doesn’t matter any more if the north wins. It just needs to be over.”

  Agnes said nothing because he was right. A chorus of crickets filled the quiet spaces in their conversation, punctuated by the soft creak of the rocker. She leaned against his knees and searched for Vega, the only star she knew.

  “I wonder,” he said softly and stroked her hair. “I wonder if there ever was a time when we might have avoided it.”

  “You did everything you could,” she said. She found Vega and began tracing the lines of its constellation. “Everything one man can do.”

  “No one was prepared to listen.”

  “It’s men’s nature to kill first, talk later.” A white streak sped across the blackness above, so fast she thought perhaps she’d imagined it. “Shooting star.”

  “An old miner in California told me a shooting star meant death.”

  “Maybe in California. My grandmother said it meant life. And change.”

  “I think we can take our pick.”

  Agnes swiveled so she could lay her cheek against his knee and wrap her arms about his legs. “I choose change. Let’s run away.”

  He stroked her forehead with his thumb, smoothing away the lines. “Not a bad idea. What do you think of Idaho?”

  She looked up at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Deadly serious,” he said. “Hand me my cigar case, would you please?” She reached it down from the rail.

  He chose a smoke, clipped the end and lit it at the flame of a candle. She leaned against him again and studied the profound mystery above. “Milky Way’s bright tonight.”

  “It would be primitive. Frontier living.”

  “There are gold strikes out there. I read something in the paper a few weeks ago. Poplar Gulch or something like that.”

  “Alder Gulch. And Grasshopper Creek last year.”

  She turned again to look at him. “You’ve been paying attention, haven’t you?”

  “There’s a lot of bad blood around here. I don’t think we’ll be welcome when this is over. You still can’t go back to Rozell’s church.”

  “I don’t want to go back.” She stood, and he pulled her into his lap. She lay her head in the hollow of his shoulder and took in the sweet, heady aroma of the cigar. “When the children—” She stopped a moment, let the emotion well up, and then started again. “I began to think about going west again. The way I did when my mother died. I think that’s when I first began to dream about doing it. Really doing it. And then the children. And John. And now the old itch is back.” She touched her lips to his jaw, just under his ear. “I may only be running from death, but I still wonder what’s out there.”

  His arm tightened around her shoulders, and he rubbed his beard, still soft, against my cheek. “Then let’s find out.”

  

  They next heard of Bigelow the first week in September. The town—Unionists and Confederates both—breathed a collective sigh of relief at reports of the death of Joe Hart, guerrilla chieftain of Andrew and Gentry Counties. Willard Bigelow was rumored to ride with Hart over the summer, when Hart shot and wounded Harrison Burns near Fillmore, just twelve miles from Lick Creek. They killed Burns’ son-in-law, robbed the neighbors, and ran off whooping a rebel yell. Hart swore to kill off all of Andrew County, every last devil, but he himself was shot to pieces over by Chillicothe, and Bigelow inherited his men. Witnesses reported seeing him in Daviess and Grundy counties, and south along the Missouri River. Then Quantrill burned Lawrence, Kansas, and the sentiment against guerrillas grew so ferocious that even Bigelow went underground for weeks.

  Jabez found him early in October. He returned home late one evening from a call to a family with measles, on the Mound City road, and without a word disappeared into his surgery where Agnes found him checking his revolver. He glanced up when she slipped into the room. Shadows from a single candle flickered across his features.

  “What is it?”

  “Bigelow,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Holed up at the Henderson farm south of Graham. Word is he’s alone.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “No.” He poked about in a bureau drawer.

  “You can’t go alone.”

  “Dick’s coming with me.” He dug out a box of ammunition and shoved it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll bring him back to trial. You can bear witness.”

  “Not good enough. And I don’t believe you’ll bring him back.”

  “Agnes....” He glared at her, but she lifted her chin and held his eyes.

  “I’ll just follow you.”

  He huffed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Suit yourself.”

  

  The road out of Lick Creek was wide and hard-packed from the summer’s heat, autumn rains not yet churning it to muck. It wound between gently rolling hills and through patches of woodland, lit so brightly by a half-moon that each pebble cast a shadow. They rode on the verges as much as possible, in the shadows of the hills and trees, and in the softer earth of the ditches in an attempt to muffle the sounds of the animals’ hooves. Jabez led, Agnes’s mare Juno following Jupiter placidly. Dick brought up the rear on Nellie. No one spoke. Agnes felt no fear but rather exhilaration, like a child who slips into the night when she should be tucked in bed. And a sense that finally she was accomplishing something, that this war would not pass without her making a mark, however small.

  The air carried the first chill of autumn, and Agnes was wrapped in Rose’s worn wool cloak, Jabez’s rifle resting across the saddle in front of her. She knew how to shoot it, Pa had taught all his daughters to hunt squirrel and rabbits, but she’d never pointed it at a man. She’d be able to, though, when the time came. So many things were different now.

  She couldn’t say what drove her to insist on joining Jabez. Clearly, they planned to do murder. Willard Bigelow deserved to die, and they were the ones to do it. Whether they acted as angels of a just punishment or demons bound on the simple pleasure of revenge, Agnes didn’t care. The idea that any one man’s life was sacred had become almost laughable. The bonds that tied her to that way of thinking had long ago rotted away. Their intended actions seemed to be the natural consequence of all that had gone before, the evolution, or devolution, of their lives, their thoughts, their principles, their consciences.

  The highway stretched empty ahead; they met no other night travelers. South of Maitland, they left the road to avoid the town and picked their way through a stubble field, recently harvested, then followed the line of the Noddaway River to the bridge west of Graham.

  Jabez dismounted and motioned Dick and Agnes to follow. “We walk from here,” he said. “Dick, tie t
he horses in the shadows there. We’re going up the bank and through those trees. House is just the other side.”

  They hiked into an apple orchard, the pungent, rotten smell of wind-fallen fruit sharp in the shadows under twisted branches. The Henderson farm covered the valley, a sizable white clapboard house squatting in the faint glow of the now-setting moon. Large, gracious oaks lined the path to the front porch, dead brown leaves clinging to their branches and cloaking the drive in deep shadow. They were all that remained of the once lovely plantation. Fire had gutted the west wing of the house, the barn door hung askew, heaps of rubble marked the locations of outbuildings. The Hendersons had chosen the secessionist path, and they had paid dearly for it.

  Firelight flickered through a window on the ground floor.

  “We go in from three sides,” Jabez said. “Agnes, I want you at the head of the drive, just inside the oaks. Keep the rifle trained on the front door.” He motioned to the north. “Dick, circle around to the back, cover the rear entrance. I’ll go in through the burned-out wing.”

  He turned back to Agnes, the moonlight sparking in his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here.” He took her hand and raised her fingers to his lips. “Be careful.”

  They separated. The men disappeared into the dark, and Agnes slipped back through the orchard to the road, down the road to the drive. She worked her way through deep shadow until she reached the end of the row of trees and raised the rifle to her shoulder, trained on the front door. She clenched her teeth and held her breath, listening for gunfire, for shouts, for signs they were discovered. But when a shot exploded from inside the house, she started and let loose a yelp. The gunshot seemed to bounce off the trees, to surround her, and she ran, rifle at the ready, toward the house. She heard angry voices and curses, Jabez’s among them, and she thanked God he lived and remained undamaged enough to curse. She climbed onto the veranda and tried the front door. It swung open with a squawk. Jabez’s voice boomed from a back room, issuing orders. Someone laughed, high and nervous. Out of the dimness of the interior, Bigelow pushed past her and stumbled out, hands bound behind him, falling to his knees in the dust of the yard. Jabez followed, and behind him Dick dragged a second man by the collar whose rear end bumped across the porch and down the steps. Jabez raised his arm, pistol in his fist, and Agnes waited for the shot, but instead he smashed it down on the back of Bigelow’s head. Willard fell in a heap and lay still. Jabez turned to Dick and pointed at the second man.