The Story of Cole Younger Part 7

The death list that day is variously estimated at from 143 to 216 and the property loss by the firing of the town, the sacking of the bank, and the rest, at $1,500.000.

Maj. John N. Edwards, in his _Noted Guerrillas,_ says:

"Cole Younger saved at least a dozen lives this day. Indeed, he killed none save in open and manly battle. At one house he captured five citizens over whom he put a guard and at another three whom he defended and protected. The notorious Gen. James H. Lane, to get whom Quantrell would gladly have left and sacrificed all the balance of the victims, made his escape through a corn-field, hotly pursued but too splendidly mounted to be captured."

My second lieutenant, Lon Railey, and a detachment gave Jim Lane a hot chase that day but in vain.

When I joined Brother-in-law Jarrette's company, he said:

"Cole, your mother and your sister told me to take care of you."

That day it was reversed. Coming out of Lawrence his horse was shot under him. He took the saddle off and tried to put it on a mustang that one of the boys was leading. Some of the boys say he had $8,000 in the saddle bags for the benefit of the widows and orphans of Missouri, but whether that is true or not I have no knowledge. While he was trying to saddle the mustang, he was nearly surrounded by the enemy. I dashed back and made him get up behind me. The saddle was left for the Kansas men.

One of the treasures that we did bring out of Lawrence that day, however, was Jim Lane's "black flag," with the inscription "Presented to Gen. James H. Lane by the ladies of Leavenworth".

That is the only black flag that I knew anything about in connection with the Lawrence raid.

Lawrence was followed by a feverish demand from the North for vengeance.

Quantrell was to be hanged, drawn and quartered, his band annihilated; nothing was too terrible for his punishment.

Four days after the raid, Gen. Thomas Ewing at St. Louis issued his celebrated General Order No. 11. This required that all persons living in Jackson, Ca.s.s and Bates counties, except one towns.h.i.+p, or within one mile of a military post, should remove within fifteen days. Those establis.h.i.+ng their loyalty were permitted to go within the lines of any military post, or to Kansas, but all others were to remove without the bounds of the military district. All grain and hay in the proscribed district was to be turned into the military post before Sept. 9, and any grain or hay not so turned in was to be destroyed.

It was the depopulation of western Missouri. Any citizen not within the limits of the military post after Sept. 9 was regarded as an outlaw.

Pursued by 6,000 soldiers, the Confederates in that vicinity must ultimately rejoin their army farther south, but they hara.s.sed their pursuers for weeks in little bands rarely exceeding ten.

The horrors of guerrilla warfare before the raid at Lawrence, were eclipsed after it. Scalping, for the first time, was resorted to.

Andy Blunt found Ab. Haller's body, so mutilated, in the woods near Texas Prairie on the eastern edge of Jackson county.

"We had something to learn yet," said Blunt to his companions, "and we have learned it. Scalp for scalp hereafter."

Among the brave fighters who were partic.i.p.ants in the fight at Lawrence were Tom Maupin, d.i.c.k Yager, Payne Jones, Frank Shepherd, Harrison Trow, d.i.c.k Burns, Andy McGuire and Ben Broomfield.

15. CHASING COTTON THIEVES

In the fall of 1863, in the absence of Capt. Jarrette, who had rejoined Shelby's command, I became, at 19, captain of the company. Joe Lea was first lieutenant and Lon Railey second lieutenant.

When Capt. Jarrette came north again, I again became lieutenant, but when Capts. Jarrette and Poole reported to Gen. Shelby on the Red river, they were sent into Louisiana, and I again became captain of the company, so reporting to Gen. Henry E. McCulloch in command of Northern Texas at Bonham. All my orders on the commissary and quartermaster's departments were signed by me as Capt. C.S.A. and duly honored.

Around Bonham I did scout service for Gen. McCulloch, and in November he sent me with a very flattering letter to report to Gen. E. Kirby Smith, at Shreveport, Louisiana, the headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi department. Capts. Jarrette and Poole were at Shreveport and Gen. Smith gave us minute orders for a campaign against the cotton thieves and speculators who infested the Mississippi river bottom. An expedition to get rid of these was planned by Gen. Smith with Capt. Poole commanding one company, myself the other, and Capt. Jarrette over us both.

Five miles from Tester's ferry on Bayou Macon we met a cotton train convoyed by 50 cavalry. We charged them on sight. The convoy got away with ten survivors, but every driver was shot, and four cotton buyers who were close behind in an ambulance were hung in a cotton gin near at hand.

They had $180,000 on them, which, with the cotton and wagons, was sent back to Bastrop in charge of Lieut. Greenwood.

A more exciting experience was mine at Bayou Monticello, a stream that was deeper than it looked. Observing a cotton train on a plantation across the bayou, I called to my men to follow me and plunged in.

Seeing me floundering in the deep water, however, they went higher up to a bridge, and when I landed I found myself alone. I was hard pressed for a time, till they came up and relieved me. There were 52 soldiers killed here. Other charges near Goodrich's Landing and at Omega put an end to the cotton speculation in that locality.

The Confederate army in that section was not well armed, and our company, each man with a pair of dragoon pistols and a Sharpe's rifle, was the envy of the Southern army. Gen. Kirby Smith told me he had not seen during the war a band so well armed. Consequently when, in February, 1864, Gen.

Marmaduke sent to Gen. Shelby for an officer and 40 of the best mounted and best armed men he had, it was but natural that Shelby's adjutant-general, John N. Edwards, should recommend a part of the Missouri boys, and told me to select my men and report to Gen. Shelby, who in turn ordered me to report for special service to Gen. Marmaduke at Warren, Ark.

Only twenty, and a beardless boy, Gen. Marmaduke looked me over rather dubiously, as I thought, but finally told me what he wanted-to find out whether or not it was true that Gen. Steele, at Little Rock, was preparing to move against Price at Camden, and to make the grand round of the picket posts from Warren to the Mississippi river, up the Arkansas to Pine Bluff and Little Rock, and returning by way of the western outpost at Hot Springs.

We were to intercept all messages between Price and Marmaduke, and govern our movements by their contents.

About half way between Pine Bluff and Little Rock we came up with a train of wagons, followed by an ambulance carrying several women and accompanied by mounted Federal soldiers. The soldiers got away into Pine Bluff, but we captured the wagons and ambulance, but finding nothing of importance let them proceed.

We made a thorough examination of the interior of Little Rock, and satisfied ourselves that no movement on Price was imminent, and were on our way out before we became involved in a little shooting match with the patrol, from which no harm resulted to our side, however, except a shot in my leg.

Years afterward, in prison, I learned from Senator Cushman Kellogg Davis, of Minnesota, that he was one of the officers who galloped into Pine Bluff ahead of us that day. He was at that time on the staff of the judge advocate general, and they were on their way into Pine Bluff to hold a court-martial. The women were, as they had said, the wives of some of the officers.

Senator Davis was among the prominent Minnesotans who worked for our parole, although he did not live to see it accomplished.

16. A CLASH WITH APACHES

In May, 1864, Col. George S. Jackson and a force of about 300, myself among the number, were sent across the staked plains into Colorado to intercept some wagon trains, and to cut the transcontinental telegraph line from Leavenworth to San Francisco. We cut the line and found the trains, but empty, and on our return were met at the Rio Grande by orders to detail a party to cross the continent on a secret mission for the Confederate states.

Two vessels of the Alabama type, built in British waters, were to be delivered at Victoria, B.C., and a secret service officer named Kennedy, who was entrusted with the papers, was given an escort of twenty men, including myself, Capt. Jarrette and other veteran scouts.

While on this expedition we had a brief tilt with Comanches, but in the country which Gen. Crook afterward fought over inch by inch, we had a real Indian fight with Apache Mojaves which lasted through two days and the night between practically without cessation.

We had a considerable advantage in weapons, but the reds were pestiferous in spite of that, and they kept us busy for fully 36 hours plugging them at every opportunity. How many Indians we killed I do not know, as we had no time or curiosity to stop and count them. They wounded some of our horses and we had to abandon one wagon, but we did not lose a man.

From El Paso we went down through Chihuahua and Sonora to Guaymas, where the party split up, Capt. Jarrette going up the mainland, while Kennedy and I, with three men, took a boat to San Francisco, disguised as Mexican miners. We were not detected, and then traveled by stage to Puget Sound, sailing for Victoria, as nearly as I have since been able to locate it, about where Seattle now is. On our arrival at Victoria, however, we found that Lee had surrendered at Appomattox and the war was at an end.

For a long time I was accused of the killing of several people at Centralia, in September, 1864, but I think my worst enemies now concede that it is impossible for me to have been there at the time.

Another spectre that rose to haunt my last days in prison, and long stood between my parole and final pardon, was the story of one John McMath, a corporal in an Indiana cavalry company, in Pleasanton's command, that I had maltreated him when he lay wounded on the battle field close by the Big Blue, near my old home in Jackson county. McMath says this occurred Oct. 23, 1863. It is true that I was in Missouri on that date, but McMath's regiment was not, nor Pleasanton's command, and the war department records at Was.h.i.+ngton show that he was injured in a fight at the Big Blue Oct. 23, 1864-3 full year later-much as he says I hurt him.

This was eleven months after I had left Missouri and while I was 1,500 miles away, yet this hideous charge was brought to the attention of Chief Justice Start, of Minnesota, in 1896 by a Minneapolis newspaper.

In his _Noted Guerrillas,_ Maj. John N. Edwards wrote: "Lee's surrender at Appomattox found Cole Younger at Los Angeles, trying the best he could to earn a livelihood and live at peace with all the world. The character of this man to many has been a curious study, but to those who knew him well there is nothing about it of mystery or many-sidedness. An awful provocation drove him into the army. He was never a bloodthirsty or a merciless man. He was brave to recklessness, desperate to rashness, remarkable for terrible prowess in battle; but he was never known to kill a prisoner. On the contrary, there are alive today (1877) fully 200 Federal soldiers who owe their lives to Cole Younger, a man whose father had been cruelly murdered, whose mother had been hounded to her death, whose family had been made to endure the torment of a ferocious persecution, and whose kith and kin, even to remote degrees, were plundered and imprisoned. His brother James did not go into the war until 1864, and was a brave, dauntless, high-spirited boy who never killed a soldier in his life save in fair and open battle. Cole was a fair-haired, amiable, generous man, devoted in his friends.h.i.+ps and true to his word and to comrades.h.i.+p. In intrepidity he was never surpa.s.sed. In battle he never had those to go where he would not follow, aye, where he would not gladly lead. On his body today there are the scars of thirty-six wounds. He was a Guerrilla and a giant among a band of Guerrillas, but he was one among five hundred who only killed in open and honorable battle. As great as had been his provocation, he never murdered; as brutal as had been the treatment of every one near and dear to him, he refused always to take vengeance on those who were innocent of the wrongs and who had taken no part in the deeds which drove him, a boy, into the ranks of the Guerrillas, but he fought as a soldier who rights for a cause, a creed, an idea, or for glory. He was a hero and he was merciful."

17. THE EDICTS OF OUTLAWRY