Woe to Live On

2

WHEN EVENING HAD been thrown over us, we were camped at a woods on a farm owned by a man named Sorrells. A brook sang near us, and our pickets had a good view from the mound we occupied. Fires were lit, as we knew the militia feared to travel in this country by night. We ruled the dark roads.

Arch Clay had produced his deck of cards and was trying to teach gambling games to the Hudspeth brothers. Neither of them had turned seventeen and they came of good family, so they possessed no skills in idolatrous pastimes. I did not join them, as I had no spirit for games.

“Now what have you?” Arch asked. Arch was a runtish, dandified man who killed more jollily than I found well mannered. He was Black John’s closest friend and sole confidant.

“Two of these here,” Babe Hudspeth said, holding his cards aloft toward the light. “The black-hearted ones—is that good?”

“We call them ‘spades,’ ” Arch instructed. “And you?” he asked of Ray Hudspeth.

“Three,” Ray said. He was beaming from the ease with which he had become a successful gambler. “All puppies’ feet—do I win the money?”

“Puppies’ feet!” Arch exclaimed. He looked at me sourly, though I was no more than one year senior to the brothers. “Can you fathom that? Puppies’ feet!” He threw his cards onto the blanket. “Them’s clubs, you damned children. No more gamblin’ for me. I can’t enjoy it like this.”

The Hudspeths shared glances, then Babe said, “Just who do you think you’re damning, Clay?”

Arch was half-sized on either of the boys but older and more certain.

“Did I hurt your feelings, son?”

“Well,” Babe answered, not quite convinced of how he should feel. “It was rude of you.”

“Ha,” Arch snorted, and lay back on the blanket, tipping his hat forward across his eyes. “That’s the least bad I’ve been for years. It was good of you children to note it for me. Makes me feel all warm and Christian.”

I left the Hudspeths to their own thoughts and wandered to join another group of comrades. I generally whittled something useless and strolled of an evening. It relaxed me and made me feel at home.

I joined Jack Bull Chiles, Coleman Younger and Pitt Mackeson on the dark ground beneath a tall oak tree. Cole regarded me intensely, watching as I sat and scraped at a branch. His eyes did not leave me when he thrust a whiskey bottle forward.

I sheathed my knife, then accepted the bottle. I appreciated his generosity to the measure of a quarter pint on the first swallow.

“Do not think you are a good man,” Coleman Younger said. “The thought will spoil you.”

“I am a southern man,” I said. “And that is as good as any man that lived ’til he died.”

Coleman Younger was reddish in skin and hair, with the temperament that is wed to that hue, and girth and grit enough to back it up.

“You are a southern man—that is proven,” he said. “But a rare one.”

For Coleman Younger to speak of me so set a glow in me that whiskey could not match, nor doubt extinguish. It was for this that I searched, communion and levelness with people who were not mine by birth, but mine for the taking.

“Oh, yes, Roedel,” Mackeson said. “You are proven to be a southern man who eats kraut and kills boys from the back.”

“If the boy had freed the rope, the hanging would’ve been scotched and required doing over,” I said.

“Judas worked quick, too,” said Pitt Mackeson.

Cole slowly savored a swallow of inspirational popskull, then said, “You did right. Dead from the front is no more dead than from the back. It is a question of opportunity.”

“So is chicken stealin’,” Mackeson said. His lopsided face viewed me from my topknot to my toes in a steady glance.

“Do you wish you had more often spoken to your great-grandfather, Mackeson?” I asked. “Tell me.”

My arms ached already from the thought of digging his eternal home, for I was thinking he would soon be in it.

“How could I wish that, Dutchy? I never even knew him.” Mackeson was confused. “He was gone years before I was borned.”

I slid my hand toward my belly gun, and hunched over to shade the move.

“Well, your introduction to him may be close at hand if you so wish.”

“Now, none of that,” Coleman Younger said. His person and voice had authority. “Jake did right. And that is that. We are comrades.”

“I hear you sayin’ it,” Mackeson replied. He stood and looked down on me, then began to walk off. “I’ve heard many a thing said that wasn’t so, too.” He left us then.

“I’m telling you, Jake,” Jack Bull said, “you want to watch that man.”

The whiskey bottle was once more in my hand, so I took a share of it.

“Perhaps I should put him where he’ll not need so much watching,” I suggested.

“Naw, naw,” Cole said. “In a hot place Pitt is a good man to have with you.”

“I hear you saying it,” I answered.

We drank then, on into full dark and hooty-owl time, after which the three of us slept, our bedrolls not a rifle’s length apart. Coleman Younger was not a regular part of our band, and soon he left us, but for that one brief period he was my comrade.


In the morning we shed our blue sheep’s clothing. Our border shirts came out of satchels and onto our backs. We preferred this means of dress, for it was more flat-out and honest. The shirts were large, with pistol pockets, and usually colored red or dun. Many had been embroidered with ornate stitching by loving women some were blessed enough to have.

Mine was plain, but well broken in. I can think of no more chilling a sight than that of myself, all astride my big bay horse, with six or eight pistols dangling from my saddle, my rebel locks aloft on the breeze and a whoopish yell on my lips.

When my awful costumery was multiplied by that of my comrades, we stopped faint hearts just by our mode of dread stylishness.

That morning we dawdled about camp more than usual. Black John squatted up to an oak trunk and consulted long with Press Welch, a rider from George Clyde’s group. We often linked up with Clyde, or Quantrill, or Poole, Jarrett and Thrailkill. By having many captains we kept our bands small for easy hiding, but we could call all together in a few days’ time.

After Press Welch departed, Black John pinched his cheeks together and looked down, lost in some manner of stern thought. He was older than most of us and had lived in Kansas. When being formal he called us the First Kansas Irregulars, which I never heard anyone echo except in his presence. His head was a riot of black tangling hair on the skull and cheeks both. Long-faced, he had a hollowed look brought on by a steady ration of hard days.

“Men…” he finally spoke, raising himself from the ground. “Men, there is work to be done.” His voice was low and thick and Baptist-certain that what it spoke was right. “Hampton Eads and seven other of our comrades were took by the militia out of Warrensburg. You had friends among them.”

This was not a rare sort of news, but we began to pay attention. Something would be done.

Black John spread his arms wide as if to calm us, although we were yet subdued. “They are all murdered.”

Oaths were uttered at this, and Black John commanded us to mount. This we quickly did, and soon we were afield, feeling wolfish, searching for victims.

They were in good supply.


We made trash of men and places. At Sweet Springs we found the houses of two Unionists who had tried to waylay Cave Wyatt when he had visited his mother there. Both men were unaware of us and smug—but not for long. Cave put amens to their miserable existences after delivering unto them a knotty sermon. Their homes became beacons.

Several of the boys were from this neighborhood and had scores to settle. A man called Schmidt thought a fox was in his henhouse but encountered a larger thief than he was prepared for. His end was merciful, as he was a good runner and nearly made the woods.

Following Davis Creek we traveled north by west, swooping on known Union properties and persons. Word of our presence traveled fast, and by midday all we found were empty houses to destroy. Here and there we confiscated silverware or jewelry that had fallen into the wrong hands. But there was not much of it.

Our devotion to revenge began to dull after that, and we yearned to ambush some food and plenty of it.

Turner Rawls had family on the creek, so we stopped in there for dinner. All horses but two were secreted in a ravine behind the house. Turner’s father had been shot in Warrensburg for buying more lead than one man could need, and his two brothers were somewhere in Arkansas with Price. This made him the only protector of his mother and two sisters. He was tender in attitude when about them, a level of temperament he had never before displayed. It made me fonder of him.

The women set us a fine table: chicken fried the way mothers do it, and ham with sweet potatoes, biscuits and coffee. I was zealous about the ham and sweet potatoes, and soon had my fill. Having my fill made me sleepy, so I went onto the porch. It was a fine, sunny day and I decided to count the nailheads in the porch ceiling. To do this I lay on my back, but quickly I lost the count.

Sneezing horses awakened me. I sat up, but they were there: Four militiamen stared at me from behind carbines. A good distance off there was a larger gaggle of bluebellies.

The house had gone silent.

“Where’s the other, you devil?” asked one of the militia. He had puppy cheeks and foam at the mouth. He gestured at the two horses we had left out front. “Speak up and maybe you’ll live yet.”

This brought haw-haws from his brethren, who were a pink-jowled lot of bad citizens.

My comfort was diminished. The full gullet made me feel slow and perhaps stupid.

“Get his guns,” the foamy man said. One of the others acted as if he would come forward to disarm me, but hesitated. “Halloo inside! Come out and show your parole or surrender.”

Southern men who would not fight could post parole bonds to walk about with a little freedom. I had no parole, and I was armed, as no paroled man could be.

The main body was now coming forward, and a quick scout told me there was fifty or more of them. The numbers were not favorable.

“I am alone,” I said. “That’s my daddy’s house. He was shot off it three days back.”

“He lies,” said a shrewd militia. “Let’s parole him to Jesus, and right now.”

I was still seated, and that saved me. The house exploded in the militia’s faces, and four saddles were instantly unburdened. I pulled to my knees and grabbed the reins of our two horses and began to run to the rear of the house.

“Get in here!” voices called to me, but I knew we needed the horses, though neither was mine.

My course was changed when the troop of militia opened up on me. I heard the enchanting whack of bullet on meat. Both horses screamed and spasmed, one dropping dead while the other spun in a tight agonized whirl, the rear legs useless.

The bullets were coming in gangs, as I was a lonely target. The little finger on my left hand, a fairly useless digit, was cleaved from me. I saw it land pink and limp in the dust of the chicken pen but made no move to regain it.

Two more strides put me in the house.

At every window there were guns pointing out. Black John stood at the front one, a man cool and plausible.

The women were on the floor and not in the right spirit for the adventure that had befallen them. Turner Rawls crouched nearby his family, pistol pulled, as if the center of the floor was his last stand.

“Do you kill women?” Black John called out the window. “There are women in here!”

The militia was on three sides of us now, and from the house to the wooded ravine and horses there was a clear patch of fifty yards.

Running it would be hot.

“You know we don’t,” came back a bossy honk of a Yankee voice. You might fight a voice like that for any small reason, let alone for invading your neighborhood. “Send them out now and they’ll be safe passaged!”

A bone-and-pulp nubbin was all of my finger I had left. My blood spotted the floor and walls. Someone told me I was hit, as if I might have overlooked it myself. I took a rag and wound it firm about the aching nubbin. The pain was shrill enough, but the idea of a finger of mine twitching about, lost in chicken-pecked dust, was more terrible.

“Please, Ma, you got to go,” Turner Rawls was pleading.

Ma Rawls looked at him somewhat berserkly, then waved a hand in his face.

“We’re goin’, son,” she said. “You best believe we’re goin’. There ain’t no way we’re not goin’.”

She and the sisters were soon on the porch. We watched as they walked to the militia. There was a pinch of dignity to their stride but a peck of pace to it.

Once the courtesies were out of the way, the militia sent a hurricane of bullets to batter the house. We stayed low and returned the weather as best we could.

Holes began to be chewed through the thin planks, and splinters flew about plenty.

It was not a situation we had wanted for ourselves.

“We cain’t hold them from here,” Turner Rawls said. He reflected the desperation many of us were beginning to feel—mouth agape, skin paled, features gorged with concern.

Black John was still cool, as always, but he was well known to be sane only in a peculiar way.

“Stand fast, boys,” he said. “We’ll kill them yet.”

Just as he spoke, several mounted men charged the house, tossing torches at the roof. They had a ferocious covering fire but we hit two of the riders, one flopping loose to the ground the lovely way they do when dead.

Flames could soon be smelled and heard on the roof and side porch. None of us cared at all for the crispy end that portended. Smoke had to be wrestled for a breath of air.

“We’ll just have to take what chances we have runnin’,” said Coleman Younger.

“They’ll riddle us down! They’ll riddle us down!” a panicky Hudspeth spoke. “Shit, there ain’t so much as a stump out there for cover.”

A general pandemonium now broke out. We were all on our stomachs, smoke-blind, trying to find a place to go. Starke Helms and a boy called Lawson crawled under a bed. They were quivering from the odds.

The flames began licking at us like a mad dog’s tongue through a porch rail.

Black John stood, then kicked at the bed.

“Come on, men!” he shouted. “Let’s go get it!”

“No!” said a voice from beneath the four-poster. I don’t know which man said it. “We’re all gonna die out there! We’ll die certain out there!”

“This is no time for debate,” Black John howled, then booted out the back door and put his long legs to use. We all followed except for the two men under the bed. Their timidity would cost them.

We popped shots as we ran, hopeless, desperate cries coming from us. There was no chance to aim and our bullets whizzed off in all haphazard directions. Bill House went down clutching his knee, and the ground was monstrous pecked by the militia fire. Pete Kinney reached back for House only to have his head exploded. Lane, Martin and Woods also fell, maybe not dead but as good as.

I could run with only so much care and I applied it all to myself.

Several of us were hurting but moving when we reached the woods. Turner Rawls had a hole in the cheek and much blood running from his mouth. Jack Bull Chiles was unhurt and I gained his side as we scrambled pell-mell down the wooded ravine to our horses.

We hit the downslope of woods with such energy that some were injured from not being able to dodge trees. It was tricky that way, and I popped my noggin on a sly branch myself. A blood egg grew above my eye and there was some agony.

Jack Bull put an arm about me and led me to my mount. We were quickly in the saddle, flinging shots at the militia, who were coming into the ravine after us.

“Split up!” Black John shouted. “We’ll meet at The Place.”

The Place was McCorkle’s farm, which was designated as such for occasions of just this sort.

The militia came on the trot down the slope, crowding us. Those of us who would turned and exchanged fire with them, reminding them thusly of the frailty of the human vessel.

But they came on, bold from the advantage they held. The fighting became close in, as there was no good path for us to flee along. Carbines banged about us and our pistols barked back, horses screamed with panic and a chorus of voices cried, “This way, men!” or “Down there, boy!” or “I got one!”

As we made our way into the woods, men gained on us. A big Yank on a black horse mis-aimed a round, then began to club his carbine at me, but the branches were so bunched that he was ineffective with his blows. My aching head was a mirage on my shoulders; it was no longer much of an instrument, but I managed to see him and shoot. The ball scored him somewhere. He gasped and gave up on me.

My horse, Old Fog, a trusty beast, somehow followed Jack Bull’s blue-black Valiant. Gunfire and cries and murders went on, but we made it to a field of dry stumps and scrub oak. We covered some ground, you might say—quickly.

When distance enough had been achieved, some objectivity reentered our thoughts and we halted to see who we were and how bad off.

Jack Bull Chiles was still unhurt, Riley Crawford’s foot was bloodied but he said it was trivial, my head was not quite real but I lived, and Babe Hudspeth had a significant gash in his forehead. Turner Rawls looked anxious from blood loss but he was a sturdy-made man.

This, then, was our group.

“Where is my brother?” young Hudspeth asked. The crimson flow ran in a rivulet down the bridge of his nose, encircling, but not entering, his eyes. “Did you see my brother?”

“Bock Yawn,” Turner told him. Some teeth had been pulled rudely by the round through his cheek, and air escaped from two holes now so that his words were low-note riddles rather than precise. “Woof im. Alibe.”

Staring across the field through which we had passed, Jack Bull kept watch for pursuit. There seemed to be none.

“That was sure enough hot,” he said, his voice an octave or two more jaunty than I felt. “I think I killed a runt. They left us hurting—that’s certain.”

The agony of my head and forlorn finger had me in a state that could be called fearless. Safety was not in my thoughts, but relief was, and death seemed at that moment to be a remedy, although it was one I would wait for others to dose out.

The blood egg on my brow throbbed and throbbed as if it might crack open to reveal a condor.

“Goddamn murderin’ militia!” Riley Crawford said. “I’ll kill ten men for this wound and a thousand if I’m crippled!”

Hudspeth had dismounted and was rubbing mud on his gash. Turner was in the saddle but slumped over. I was more or less the same.

“We’d best be on the move,” Jack Bull said.

When Hudspeth was remounted, we followed my near brother. He chose good routes and by evening we were at a farm pond somewhere deep in Lafayette County, moaning a bit, but mostly somber, wondering how many of our dinner companions would share our meals no more.