Woe to Live On: A Novel Read online

  “I can’t ride,” Riley said. Wrong parts of him hung over his belt. He wasn’t even sixteen and he was ruined. “Put me down, please. Please. Please, put me down.”

  Dark wasn’t coming on fast enough to help us. We had to keep running. That is one thing bushwhackers know. The thick green leaves shielded us for the moment, but right away we could hear the Jayhawkers trotting into the timber a short distance away.

  “Please, please,” went Riley.

  I stepped down and pulled the ripped-wide boy off his mount and set him against a tree. He held his hands where he was spilling, and that pale thing that happens to the mortally wounded was happening to him.

  “Leave me my guns,” he said. “Don’t take ’em. Leave ’em.” Riley was a kid like no kid I ever knew. “I might get one.”

  I cocked a pistol and laid it near him. Turner was grunting some fierce riddle and Holt was prancing about. We had to go.

  “Riley,” I said. I put my palm to his face and squeezed his cheek. “You got to fire at them, Riley. Bring them down on you.”

  “I will, Jake. Boys, I will.” He was crying, and rippling with pain. “I was a good boy, wasn’t I?”

  “As good as they come,” I said, and remounted.

  We took off. I looked back once and saw Riley hunched to the tree, his face to the sky.

  A sneak through the woods was our plan. It is a hard trick to bring off on horseback. Noise was made. The Jayhawkers were shouting commands to fan out and flush us. Pretty quick after that Riley’s shots sounded. That was our notice to lay on the spurs and we did it.

  In a minute there were more shots, then silence.

  “Tough boy,” Holt said. “But he didn’t hold them long.”

  Even as he spoke I heard hooves beating the earth, branches cracking and dangerous voices. We were in a low spot, thick with bramble, that ran between two rises. A gully twisted down toward the south.

  “Follow this gully,” I said. “If we got to, we’ll break their line.”

  Turner led. Flinches had come to roost on his face, and the whole gamut of his features bobbled. Holt took up the rear, and in the undertones of his breath I believe I caught a snatch of a hymn.

  Before we’d gone two hundred feet I saw two men on the rise to the east. I hoped to kill them before they saw us, and then they did see us, and I think they had had the same idea in store for us, so both opinions were disappointed.

  Everybody looked for a tree to hide behind.

  “Oh, Lor’!” Turner cried. “Dey’s god us.”

  “We’ll break through,” I said. All the horses were jittery and jerking around, but fighting on foot was for morons. “Let’s do it now. Attack those two now, it’s our only chance.”

  Fright may have been our regular pastime, but hesitancy was not a bushwhacker trait. We tore right into them, and they plowed downhill to meet us. Clean shots were hard because of the trees, and bark flew hither and yon, and we trilled rebel yells for all we were worth, and you had better believe that we could raise a cry that would have you filling your boots.

  When we closed on them, between two spacious, fat oaks, the shots were so rapid as to be mesmerizing. One of the Jayhawkers had a red feather in his hat and a rotten face. He aimed on Holt but I got him. I busted him open at the neck and the teat and he fell a corpse.

  His comrade lost heart on seeing this and retreated, calling wildly for help.

  We then did a tactical move that consisted entirely of running away.

  After a quarter mile of panicked scrambling, we came to a clearing and just about flew across it. I looked over my shoulders and, oh, shit, yes, there they were, coming on after us.

  The horses we rode were as fine a breed of beasts as there has ever been. They had bottom and sand and some vague beasty knowledge that we required all of it right then. We ran them hard all afternoon, and the Jayhawkers fell back but stayed in sight until dark.

  In the night we made a big loop to the south, then swung west, west to our comrades.

  That day had been too near a thing.

  15

  ALL THAT SEASON they were driven to us. Woeful widows with hung husbands and squalling babes. White-haired grannies with toothless mouths and fierce feelings. Hard-faced farm boys who would now apprentice themselves to the study of revenge.

  They had been run from their homes, burned out, turned out, and set adrift to die. Western Missouri had a pitiful legion of raggedy citizens.

  “Look at them,” Cave Wyatt said. “The damned Yankees will starve the children to sadden the fighters. It is a mean game.”

  And it was, and we were its counterpart.

  It was in that same terrible month of July that the Federals arrested Black John’s sisters. They were imprisoned in the upstairs of a liquor supply house at Kansas City.

  Black John became frantic to exact a price for this breach of the rules. He ranted and preached blue peril, and threatened to do wonders to entire armies.

  One morning I watched Black John holding a hand mirror while combing his hair. He peered at his reflection and said, “How do you do, Black John?” Then smiled, and answered himself, “Damned fine, Mr. Ambrose, damned fine.”

  For a while we went back to wearing Yankee blue uniforms. They were easy to come by. The trick of it was so simple, but it worked peachy. Twenty or thirty of us would ride up to a scout of Federals and George Clyde would say, “How is rebel hunting today, lieutenant?” and before an answer could be uttered or suspicions raised on closer inspection, we would cut open on them point-blank and pass them through to the next world. The treachery of it was not too noble, but it was a rare day when it failed.

  I had not seen Sue Lee for a few months. I knew she had gone to Henry County and was living with the kin of Howard Sayles. I thought often of her but had little news until Howard approached me in camp and said, “That Sue Lee gal is with child, Roedel.”

  His expression was somewhat stern.

  “She is?” I said. “I didn’t know it.”

  “Well, now you do, damn it.” Howard spit and glowered at me. “You better go marry her, boy. It ain’t right not to.”

  “Me?” I said. “No, not me. I don’t got to marry nobody.”

  “Is that right?” Howard Sayles was thirty or even older, and the youthful manners of his comrades often served to annoy him. “You’re that kind of man, eh, Dutchy?”

  I reckon my face sterned up some, too, and I said, “I will take care of her, Sayles. And you have said about all the rough things to me you had better.”

  This man smirked at me.

  “Is she your woman of light love, Dutchy? ’Cause we don’t want the scandal of it on our names down home. That gal needs a husband and quick.”

  “It’ll be took care of somehow,” I said. “When it can be.”

  He softened upon hearing that.

  “That’s all I ask,” he said. “I know now ain’t the right time. Hell, we all do things.” He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. “Everybody likes her real good, you know. I don’t want you to believe otherwise.”

  “I never did.”

  Later that night I told Holt of Sue Lee’s predicament. He pursed his plump lips, and gazed down, weighted by heavy thought.

  “Could be you ought to,” he said finally. “I’ve thunk it from several sides, and could be she’d make you a fine wife.”

  “But there is one thing we ain’t mentioning here,” I said. “It might be she don’t want to marry me. That is, even if I did want to marry her, she might not.”

  I could not tell whether he thought me a pessimist or a lame-brain, but it was plain he figured I was something slow.

  “Now, how could that be?” he asked.

  At this time George Clyde ambled over, hauling a tin of beans, and stood near us. He had a curious attitude on his face.

  “You two sure got to be pals, didn’t you?” he said. He looked at both of us, and I wondered if he had come to feel like the spare wheel. “Ever since winte
r you two boys have been clapping your gums together regular as crones.”

  I told him about Sue Lee. He laughed and said, “Hell, that’s Chiles’s baby she’s lugging. I think so, anyhow.”

  I just looked at him sourly.

  “Don’t tell me it’s yours even if it is,” he said.

  “It ain’t.”

  “Then don’t be a lunkhead, Dutchy. Marry some girl who is pregnant from you—that’s the fun part, anyhow.”

  “If you say it is, then I reckon it is,” I said. “I don’t rightly know. But maybe I ain’t ripe for marrying up with nobody. Maybe it’s the bachelor way for me.”

  “Ah,” went Clyde. He bobbed his chin in approval. “That’s even more fun, Dutchy. You are showing some sense.”

  He said I was, and I supposed it could be true, but I wondered what opinion I might shift to if I was looking at her sweet busted tooth, or that fascinating scar down her brow, or those hot dark eyes.

  The Federals kept us moving. Large bodies of bluebellies would ride into our area and we would scatter to rendezvous at a choicer spot. Often a few hands would not show up who should have and we would figure them dead.

  In this manner we saw a good portion of Missouri. Whole neighborhoods of ash and splintered glass awaited us. Chimneys stuck up alone, the one thing left solid by the whirl of destruction. The roads were clogged by refugees who’d been robbed of everything but the garb they wore.

  It just let the grease right out of your heart to see them.

  Where the chance of it was fair, we chastised the enemy. They were so many, though, and we so few. I believe that by late summer we all felt we were being whipped. This did not turn us meek, but it numbed our spirits a grade or two.

  So many of us died rudely.

  Near Austin, in Cass County, after a draining ride on a skillet-hot day, we rode up on two old women in grimed attire. The old gals were headed for Texas and not going to make it from the looks of them. They glanced over us, then one of them said to the other, “Rebels, Isis. These men are rebels.”

  “So I see,” said the other granny. “When it’s too late for them to help, they rush up spoilin’ for a fight.”

  Black John nodded down at the women and showed some irritation at their sarcasm.

  “Show us Yankees, ladies, and we will hurt them.”

  The old gals looked glum. One of them pointed off down a lane that ran east and said, “Go on thataway ’til you see a burned barn, mister bushwhacker. You go on down past the barn and into the tree line, why don’t you? You’ll find an interestin’ thing there.”

  “What might that be?” Black John asked.

  “Oh, rebels. Some of the rebels are hanging around up in there.”

  We followed their directions and rode right under their granny pun. High in the branches, seasoned beyond recognition, there swung seven noosed rebels. It was macabre and altogether eerie. The bodies draped down through the leaves like rancid baubles in the locks of a horrible harlot.

  “I bet it’s Carter McPhee,” Cave Wyatt said. Cave pointed to high up in the great tree. “I bet it’s Carter McPhee and I reckon some of those others are Raphael McPhee and the Price brothers. I can’t be sure. They all rode with Quantrill.”

  Time allowed for it, so we did some Christian spade work. The Yankees hung men like this to taunt and torment local patriots. Such murders were inspirational to us. Any southern man or deluded Federal who was caught burying ex-rebels was shot by the soldiers. This habit led to many southern dead rotting for months in plain sight.

  In this instance we set that straight, but I think all of us boys got a nervous preview of our own futures.

  After a while, these things got to you. At times like this I was often feeling Jack Bull’s dead hand on my shoulder. It was the heavy touch of grim memory. All it made me was forlorn, but it kept coming back. That is the way with grievous knowledge, you can never get far enough ahead of it.

  What really ripped it was when the women’s prison in Kansas City collapsed. The girls were mashed like rose petals in the family Bible. Unionists had weakened the walls by digging under the foundation, and this had got them what they wanted—the death of our womenfolk.

  Two of Black John’s three sisters were killed and the third was crippled. Five other true southern women perished as well, one of them Riley Crawford’s mother and one of them Pitt Mackeson’s wife.

  Black John did not take it well. I did not take it well either. Bushwhackers and fence sitters and even some Federals took it badly. All along the border frothy anger and crazed plots of revenge began to be howled.

  The Federals had crossed over the last line of restraint. And believe you me, we were the wrong tribe to treat in that fashion.

  Riders came and went from all over the territory. Every little nest of bushwhackers was being called on to rally with Captain Quantrill on the Blackwater River. We went to the place, and so did the men of Thrailkill, Poole, Jarrett, Younger, Cobb and Todd.

  It was a sullen and dangerous gathering. The boys of every group were outraged by the smashed women and the murders of comrades and the hopeless war.

  Our group, a mix of Ambrose and Clyde men, was one of the larger gangs. Quantrill’s was the largest, with about a hundred and twenty famous fighters, but some of the others were only family-sized bands.

  Captain Quantrill had credentials of consequence all over the region and in many parts of the nation. He was a girlish man in appearance, with fine features and heavy-lidded eyes. He killed in bulk and at every opportunity. He was loved by many.

  “Patriots of the South!” he shouted down to us from a wagon bed. “It is time we strike back! The Yankees believe they can drive our people from their homes and kill us with impunity. They have gotten the notion that so unmanly are we, so toothless a gang of masculine specimens, that they can kill our women as leisurely as if it were a sport. Well, it ain’t so and we all know it. We’re going to Lawrence, boys, and root the rats right out of their holes!”

  The grisly audience raised hoorahs at this, for Lawrence was the place on the map we most wanted to blot off it. But I looked around me at the mingling bands of desperadoes and thought, Saying it is one thing, but pulling it off is another.

  I went over to George Clyde, who was beaming with anticipation.

  “George,” I said. “Lawrence is forty-five miles into Kansas. There are whole armies out there and no friends at all.”

  “You got it, Dutchy,” Clyde said jovially. “It’ll be a shockarooni of a surprise to the bastards. They sleep heavy out there, believing they are safe from us.”

  Well, I did not argue it with Clyde, but it turned out that many of the boys shared my thoughts. “We’ll never make it back,” Cave Wyatt said. “Even if we can get there, they’ll chop us down on the prairies. But I reckon we’ll give that town some memories first.”

  As I strolled about the camp, I heard many echoes of this sentiment. Almost no one planned on needing more gulps of air after this trip. There were scads of Federals out there, so we thought we were seeing Missouri for the last time.

  It figured to be a bitter killing spree in the town, house-to-house fighting with all the Yanks out there, then it would end in a vigorous form of mass suicide once the armies caught up to us. This frame of mind was fueled by a flood of whiskey. Dumb and bold things are best accomplished drunk, we figured, so we went deep into the popskull.

  The night before setting out we stayed drunk, rambunctious with anticipation, and thereby took a miss on sleep. I found myself sharing jugs with strangers who rode my side of the road, and got up-close glimpses of some of our ilk who had become famous. Frank James doddered around with Coleman Younger, and Kit Dalton staggered about with the Basham brothers and the Pence brothers and Payne Jones and Peyton Long. These men were all notorious above and beyond most of us, and waddled about the camp, blind drunk and not noticeably special.

  Riding with such earnest men gave me confidence.

  “Holt,” I said, �
��this band will be the Spartans in a few histories someday.”

  Holt looked at me slack-lipped, flustered by rotgut, and said, “That so? I wouldn’t know.”

  By dawn I was too whiskey-weary to care about much. Quantrill started us off for Lawrence early. There were over three hundred riders and the sight of us was awesome: long flowing southern hair beneath slouch hats; broken-in border shirts; a great harvest of pistols hanging everywhere; and fuzz-cheeked faces beneath busthead-reddened eyes.

  I joined a scout party in the lead of the main group. George Clyde rode at the front, for he knew the wrinkles in that neighborhood, having been there before to tangle with Jim Lane’s Kansans. His gaze went everywhere, looking quickly on this, then quicker on that, nodding his head at landmarks that had not shifted.

  The sun was a merciless yellow presence. Heat lapped up from the baked dirt and the horses breathed rattly. The land was level pretty much and light on shade trees.

  By noon we were south of Spring Hill, Kansas. Captain Quantrill called a halt. There were Federal posts within the next few miles, and his plan called for us to slip by them at night. So we fell out around a scummed-over pond and bore down on the whiskey ’til dark.

  My mind had broken the leash, spurred on by fatigue and busthead, and dragged back thoughts I never wanted. A quality I didn’t care for came out in me. I pitied myself. I pitied myself and my lot in life. That is a mangy introspection and not one I petted much. But there it was, a weak thought languishing between my ears. Life had been a big boohoo.

  I wondered if I truly was diseased in the brain. Then I looked at my comrades: some of them were engaged in pegging stones at bullfrogs, while others oiled pistols or snuggled to the jug. This made me wonder the same thing, only louder.

  Babe and Ray Hudspeth sat next to me for a spell. These boys were looking on the bright side. Babe said, “There’s a store in Lawrence called Bush’s Delicacies and Apparel, Dutchy. It’s packed from floor to ceiling with fine clothes and smoked hams and sweet breads. We aim to rob it right off. Be with us, why don’t you?”