CHAPTER VI.    QUANTRELL'S FIRST BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAR.    THE war drums were being beaten all over the land. Prone amid the ruins of Fort Sumpter the United States flag symbolical of an indivisible nation-was down amid its debris, the Palmetto, in lieu of it, waving high over the ramparts. It was as though a mighty torch had been cast in the midst of the hatreds and the passions of two desperate sections, and that the thing called Civil War was its conflagration. Armies began to muster. People with picking and stealing fingers had already commenced to count the chances of the strife and take sides with the strongest. In the womb of the future the typical American Guerrilla quickened preternaturally. Politicians became soldiers, and statesmen took to the field.       Battle was about to kill men; posterity to judge them. A few peace ravens-notably in Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri-croaked out something about armed neutrality with a fiery energy of words which cost nothing to weaponless hands. Here and there compromise-with the beautiful mask of patriotism hiding its Medusa head-seduced from the standards of the right some noble and generous spirits. Imbecility crept into corners, and hypocrisy admitted at last that war cut through everything.    The hour of those adventurous souls had struck who believed it a necessary diversion to the universal ferment. They hoped to change the fanaticism of secession into the fanaticism of glory, and to satisfy the conscience of the Border States by intoxicating it with victory. A few conservatives---sporadic rather than epidemical-threw themselves helplessly across the path of the Revolution, and betwixt weeping and lamentation entreated a hearing. It was accorded by both sections, but like people of half parties and half talents, they excited neither hatred nor .anger. Events stepped across their prostrate bodies and marched on towards results that were utterly absolute.    Quantrell did not enquire which side he should defend; brave, 'the weaker; Southerner, the Confederacy; sincere, the right.    His position made his creed. From Marion to him the appreciation of duty was not wide apart, the one understanding it as a Christian who never had to wear sackcloth because he was out ·of money to buy absolution, the other as a helpless waif blown westward by restless emigration winds and wrecked upon the pitiless lee-shore of Kansas hospitality. If for both there had been the same auspices, one would have cut off the left ear while the other cut off the right.       In May, 1861, Quantrell enlisted in Captain Stewart's company of cavalry, an organization composed of barely settlers from what was then known as the Kansas Neutral Lands. As a private he served with conspicuous daring in the battles of Carthage, Wilson's Creek, and Lexington, but especially at the latter place did his operations in presence of the enemy attract attention, Mounted there on a splendid horse, armed with a Sharpe's carbine and four navy revolvers, for uniform a red shirt, and for oriflamme a sweeping black plume, he advanced with the farthest, fell back with the last, and was always cool, deadly, and omnipresent. General Price-himself notorious for being superbly indifferent under fire-remarked his bearing and caused mention to be made of it most favorably.    Quantrell marched with the army retreating from Lexington as fur southward as the Osage River. Winter was approaching, active operations could not go on in the nature of things to come time, and the old yearning for Guerrilla service came over him again with an influence that would not be resisted.    Stewart, the captain, knew of his aspirations for several days, and so did General Rains, the commander of the division to which his company was attached as an independent company. Neither objected and Quantrell turned back alone from the Osage River, skirted rapidly the flanks of the detailed cavalry columns pursuing General Price, and arrived in Jackson county late in the autumn of 1861. At first his exploits were confined to but eight men-a little band that knew nothing of war save how to fight and to shoot-who lived along the border and who had already some scores to settle with the Jayhawkers. The original eight-the nucleus of a Guerrilla organization which was to astonish the whole country twice-once by its ferocity and once by its prowess-were William Haller, James and John Little, Edward Coger, Andrew Walker-the son of that Morgan Walker Quantrell hall known under sterner auspices - John Hampton, James Kelly, and Solomon Basham. Haller - a young and dauntless spirit-was one of those men who' are themselves ignorant of their own powers until a crisis comes in their experience and circumstances give them a duty to perform.    Just of age, impetuous as Murat, of an old and wealthy family, handsome, to the grace of a cavalier adding the stern political conviction of an Ironside, he rode through his fitful military life at a gallop and drank the wine of battle to its dregs before they brought him back from his last combat- "The life upon his yellow hair, But not within his eyes."    These eight men, or rather nine, for Quantrell commanded encountered first their hereditary enemies, the Jayhawkers. Lane entered Missouri only upon grand occasions; Jennison every once and a while, and as a frolic. One was a colossal thief; the other a picayune one. Lane dealt in mules by herds, horses by droves, wagons by parks, negroes by neighborhoods, household effects by the ton, and miscellaneous plunder by the city full; Jennison contented himself with the pocket-books of his prisoners, the pin money of the women, and the wearing apparel of the children. Lane was a real prophet of demagoguism, with insanity latent in his blood j Jennison a sans culotte who, looking upon himself as a bastard, sought to become legitimate by becoming brutal.    It was again in the vicinity of Morgan Walker's that Quantrell with his little command ambushed a portion of Jennison's regiment and killed five of his thieves, getting some good horses, saddles, bridles, and revolvers. The next fight occurred upon the premises of Volney Ryan, a citizen of Jackson county, and with Company A., of Burris' regiment-a regiment of Missouri militia, notorious for three things-robbing hen-roosts, stealing horses, and running away from the enemy. The eight Guerrillas struck Company A. just at daylight, charged it home, charged through it, and charged buck again, and when they returned from the pursuit they counted fifteen dead, the fruits of a running battle.    Chaos had now pretty well come again. In the wake of a civil war which permitted always the impossible to the strongest, beggars got upon horseback and began driving every decent thing before them to the devil. In the universal upheaval lean people saw how they might become fat, and paupers how they might become kings. To the surface of the cauldron-because of the tremendous heat beneath it-there came things mean, cowardly, parasitical, crouching, contemptible, bad. Beasts of prey became numerous, and birds of ill-omen flew hither and thither. The law-it was the sword; the process-it was the bayonet j the constitution -it was hung upon a gibbet; the right-the "Good old rule, the simple plan, That he can get who has the power, And he can keep who can."    One Searcy, claiming to be a Southern man, was stealing all over Jackson county and using violence here and there when he could not succeed through persuasion. Quantrell swooped down upon him one afternoon, tried him that night, and hung him the next morning. Before they pulled him up, he essayed to say something. He commenced: "Not so fast, gentlemen! It's awful to die until red hands have had a chance to wash themselves." Here his voice was strangled like the voice of a man who has no saliva in his month. Four Guerrillas dragged on the rope. There seemed to be-as his body rested at last from its contortions-the noise as of the waving of wings.    Could it be that Searcy's soul was taking its flight? Seventy-five head of horses were found in the dead man's possession, all belonging to citizens of the county, and any number of the deeds to lands, notes, mortgages, and private accounts. All were returned. The execution acted as a thunder-storm, it restored the equilibrium of the moral atm03phere. The border warfare had found a chief.    The eight Guerrillas had now grown to be thirty. Among the new recruits were David Pool, John Janette, William Gregg. John Coger. Richard Burns, George Todd, George Shepherd, Coleman Younger, and several others of like enterprise and daring. An organization was at once effected. and Quantrell was made Captain;  William Haller, 1st Lieutenant; William Gregg, 2d; George Todd; and John Jarrette, Orderly Sergeant. The eagles were beginning to congregate; the lions to hunt en masse.    Pool, an unschooled Aristophanes of the civil war, laughed at calamity and mocked when any man's fear came. But for its picturesqueness, his speech would have been comedy personified.    He laughed loudest when he was deadliest, and treated fortune with no more dignity in one extreme than another. Gregg-a grim Saul among the Guerrillas-made of the Confederacy a mistress, and, like the Douglass of old, was ever tender and true to her. Janette, the man who never knew fear, added to an immense activity an indomitable will. Events bent to him as distance disappeared before his gallops. He was, pm' excellence, a soldier of the saddle. John Coger never missed a battle nor a bullet. "Wounded twenty-two times, he lived as an exemplification of what a Guerrilla could endure-the amount of lead he could comfortably get along with and keep fat. Steadfastness was his test of merit-comradeship his point of honor. He who had John Coger at his back had a mountain. Todd was the incarnate devil of battle. He thought of fighting awake, dreamed of it when asleep, mingled talk of it with topics of the days studied campaigns as a relaxation, and went hungry many a day and shelterless many a night that he might find an enemy and have his fill of battle. Quantrell had always to hold him back, and yet he was his thunderbolt. He discussed nothing in the shape of orders. A soldier who discusses is like a hand which would think. He only charged. Were he attacked in front-a charge; in the rear-a charge; on either flank-a charge. Finally, in a desperate charge, and doing a hero's work upon the stricken rear of the 2d Colorado, he was killed. This was George Todd.    Shepherd-a patient, cool, vigilant, plotting leader-he knew all the roads and streams, all the fords and passes, all modes of egress and ingress; all safe and dangerous places; all the treacherous non-combatants and the trustworthy one~-everything, indeed, that the few needed to know who were fighting the many. Burns fought. Others might have ambition and seek to sport the official attributes of rank; he fought. In addition there were among the Guerrillas few better pistol shots. It used to do Quantrell good to see him on the skirmish line.    Coleman Younger-a boy having about his neck still the purple track of a rope ploughed the night the Jayhawkers shot down his old father and strung him up to a black jack-spoke rarely, and was away a great deal in the woods. What was he doing, his comrades began to enquire, one of another. He had a mission to perform-he was pistol practicing. Soon he was perfect, and then it was noticed that he laughed often and talked a great deal. There had come to him now that intrepid gaiety which plays with death. He changed devotion to his family into devotion to his country, and he fought and killed with the conscience of a hero.    The new organization was about to be baptized. Burris, raiding generally along the Missouri border, had a detachment foraging in the neighborhood of Charles Younger's farm. This Charles Younger was an uncle of Coleman, and he lived within three miles of Independence, the county-seat of Jackson county. The militia detachment numbered eighty-four and the Guerrillas thirty-two. At sunset Quantrell struck their camp.    Forewarned of his coming, they were already in line. One volley settled them. Five fell at the first fire and seven more were killed in the chase. The shelter of Independence alone, where the balance of the regiment was as a breakwater, saved the detachment from utter extinction. This day-the 10th of November, 1861, Cole Younger killed a militiaman seventy-one measured yards. The pistol practice was bearing fruit.    Independence was essentially a city of fruits and flowers. About every house there was a parterre and contiguous to every parterre there was an orchard. Built where the woods and the prairies met, when it was most desirable there was sunlight, and when it was most needed there was shade. The war found it rich, prosperous and contented, and it left it as an orange that had been devoured. Lane hated it because it was a hive of secession, and Jennison preyed upon it because Guerrilla bees flew in and out. On one side the devil, on the other the deep sea, patriotism, that it might not be tempted, ran the risk very often of being drowned. Something also of Spanish intercourse and connection belonged to it. Its square was a plaza; its streets centered there; its court house was a citadel. Truer people never occupied a town; braver fathers never sent their sons to war; grander matrons never prayed to God for right, and purer women never waited through it all-the siege, the sack, the pillage and the battle-for the light to break in the east at last, the end to come in fate's own good and appointed time.    Quantrell had great admiration for Independence; his men adored it. Burris' regiment was still there-fortified in the courthouse-and one day in February, 1862, the Guerillas charged the town. It was a desperate assault. Quantrell and Pool dashed down one street, Cole Younger and Todd down another, Gregg and Shepherd down the third, Haller, Coger, Burns, Walker and others down the balance of the approaches to the square. Behind heavy brick walls the militia of course fought, and fought besides at a great advantage. Save seven surprised in the first moments of the rapid onset and shot down, none others were killed, and Quantrell was forced to retire from the town after taking some necessary ordnance, quartermaster and commissary supplies from the stores under the very guns of the court house. None of his men were killed, though as many as eleven were wounded. This was the initiation of Independence into the mysteries as well as the miseries of border warfare, and thereafter and without a month of cessation, it was to get darker and darker for the beautiful town.    Swinging back past Independence from the east the day after it had been charged, Quantrell moved up in the neighborhood of Westport and put scouts upon the roads leading into Kansas City. Two officers belonging to Jennison's regiment were picked up--a Lieutenant, who was young, and a· Captain, who was of middle-age. They had only time to pray. Quantrell always gave time for this. and had always performed to the letter the last commissions left by those who were doomed.    The Lieutenant did not want to pray. "It could do no good," he said. "God knew about as much concerning the disposition it was intended to be made of his soul as he could suggest to him." The Captain took a quarter of an hour to make his peace. Both were shot. Men commonly die at God's appointed time; beset by Guerrillas, suddenly and unawares. Another of the horrible surprises of civil war. At first, and because of Quantrell's presence, Kansas City swarmed like an ant-hill during a rain-storm; afterwards, and when the dead officers were carried in, like a firebrand had been cast thereon. A regiment came out after the Guerillas, but Quantrell fell back through Westport, killed nine straggling Federals there, anI1 made his camp, after a rapid march, at David George's place on the Sni, a large stream of water in Jackson county, abounding in fastnesses and skirled by almost inaccessible precipices and thickets. From the Sni to the Blue -another Jackson county stream historic in Guerrilla annals, Quantrell returned the third day, While at the house of Charles Cowherd a courier came up with the information that Independence, which had not been garrisoned for some little time. was again in possession of a company of militia. Another attack was resolved upon, On the night of February 20th, 1862, Quantrell marched to the vicinity of the town and waited for the daylight.    The first few faint streaks in the east constituted the signal. There was a dash alt06ether down South Main street, a storm of cheers and bullets, a roar of iron feet on the rocks of the roadway, and the surprise was left to work itself out. It did, and reversely. Instead of the one company reported in possession of the town, four were found, numbering three hundred men, They manned the court house in a moment, made of its doors an eruption and of its windows a tempest, killed a noble Guerrilla, Young George, shot Quantrell's horse from under him, held their own everywhere and held the fort. As before, all who were killed among the Federals, and they lost seventeen, were those killed in the first few moments of the charge. Those who hurried alive into the court house were safe. Young George, dead in his first battle, had all the promise of a bright career. None rode further nor faster in the charge, and when he fell he fell so close to the fence about the fortified building that it was with difficulty his comrades took his body out from under a point-blank fire and bore it off in safety.    It was a part of Quantrell's tactics to disband every now and then. "Scattered soldiers," he argued, "make a scattered trail. The regiment that has but one man to hunt can never find him." The men needed heavier clothing and better horses, and the winter, more than ordinarily severe, was beginning to tell. A heavy Federal force was also concentrating- in Kansas City, ostensibly to do service along the Mississippi River, really to drive out of Jackson county a Guerrilla band that under no circumstances possible at that time could have numbered over fifty. Quantrell, therefore, for an accumulation of reasons, ordered a brief disbandment. It had hardly been accomplished before Independence swapped a witch for a devil. Burris evacuated the town; Jennison occupied it. In his regiment were trappers who trapped for dry goods, fishermen who fished for groceries. At night passers-by were robbed of their pocketbooks; in the morning market women of their meat baskets. Neither wiser, perhaps, nor better than the Egyptians, the patient and all-suffering citizens had got rid of the lean kine in order to make room for the lice.    Alert always, and keeping a vigilant eye ever upon the military horizon, Quantrell ordered a rally of his disbanded Guerrillas. As it was in the days of the raiding Highlanders, so in the times that tried men's souls along the border. If Rhoderick Dhu had his Malise, Captain Quantrell had his splendid rider. From house to house the summons flew. The farmer left his plow to speed it, the maiden forgot her trysting to help on the messenger, settlement spoke to settlement through a smoke in a hollow or a fire on a hill, patriotism bad a language unknown to the invaders, and the mustering-place rarely ever missed a man..    At the appointed time, and at the place of David George. the reassembling was as it should be. Quantrell meant to attack Jennison in Independence and destroy him if possible, also moved in that direction as far as the Little Blue Church. Here he met Allen ParJr.er, a regular red Indian of a scout, who never forgot to count a column or know the line of march of an enemy, and Parmer reported that instead of three hundred Jayhawkers being in Independence there were six hundred.    Too many for thirty-two men to grapple, and fortified at that, they all said. It would be murder in the first degree and unnecessary murder in addition. Quantrell, foregoing with a struggle the chance to get at his old acquaintance of Kansas, flanked Independence and stopped for the night at the residence of Zan. Harris, a true Southern man and a keen observer of passing events. Early the next morning he crossed the Big Blue at the bridge on the main road. to Kansas City, surprised and shot down a detachment of thirteen Federals watching it, burned the structure to the w:,ter, and marched rapidly in a southwest direction, leaving Westport to the right. At noon the command was at the residence of Alexander Majors, a partner in that celebrated freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, the pioneers of the west as well as its victims. Russell was n. giant in :J. civilization whicl1 produced big men. The plains were immense and so was his intellect. He planned business as generals planned campaigns, and took in the whole territory from Philadelphia to Santa Fe at a glance. Waddell was his cabinet man, Majors his man fur the field. Altogether they established an empire and created a dynasty which took the unscrupulous power of a venal government to uproot and destroy. It was the empire of business sense and the dynasty of executive ability. 'When the war came they were looked upon as disloyal in order that they might be robbed, and Congress finisl1ed what the government had begun. In revolutions there is no repentn.nce, there is only expiation j but who in the end is to make good this plunder of its citizens by a power constituted solely to protect them?    After the meal at Majors', Quantrell resumed his march, sending Haller and Todd ahead with an advance guard and bringing up the rear himself with the main body of twenty-two men. Night overtook him at the Tate House, three miles east of Little Santa Fe, a small town in Jackson county close to the Kansas line, and he camped there. Haller and Todd were still further along, no communication being established between these two parts of n. common whole. The day had been cold and the darkness was bitter. That weariness which comes with a hard ride, a rousing fire, and a hearty supper, fell early upon the Guerrillas. One sentinel at the gate kept drowsy watch, and the night began to deepen. In various attitudes and in various pln.ces, twenty-one of twenty-two men were sound asleep, the twenty-second keeping watch and ward at the gate in the freezing weather. It was just twelve o' clock, and the fire in the capacious fire-place was burning low. Suddenly a shout was heard. The well-known challenge of "Who are you?" arose on the night air, followed by a pistol shot, and then a volley.    Quantrell, sleeping always like a cat, shook himself loose from his blankets and stood erect in the glare of the firelight. Three hundred Federals, following all day on his trail, had watched him take cover at night and went to bag him boots and breeches.    They had hitched their horses back in the brush and stole upon the dwelling afoot. So noiseless had been their advn.nce, and so close were they upon the sentinel before they were discovered, that he had only time to cry out, fire, and rush for the timber. He could not get back to his comrades, for some Federals were between him and the door. As he ran he received a volley, but in the darkness he escaped.    The house was surrounded! To the men within-side this meant, unless they could get out, death by fire and sword. Quantrell was trapped, he who had been accorded the fox's cunning and the panther's activity. He glided to the window and looked out cautiously. The cold stars shone, and the blue figures under them and on every hand seemed colossal. The fist of a heavy man struck the door hard, and a deep voice commanded: "Make a light." There had been no firing as yet save the shot of the sentinel and its answering volley. Quantrell went quietly to all who were still asleep and bade them get up and get ready. It was the moment when death had to be looked in the face. Not a word was spoken. The heavy fist was still hammering at the door. Quantrell crept to it on tip-toe, listened a second at the sounds outside, and fired. "Oh!" and a stalwart Federal fell prone across the porch, dying. "You asked for light, and you've got it, d-n you," Quantrell ejaculated, cooler than his pistol barrel. Afterwards there was no more bravado. "Bar the doors and barricade the windows!" he shouted; "quick, men!" Beds were freely used and applicable furniture. Little and Shepherd stood by one door; Jarrette, Younger, Toler, and Hoy barricaded the other and made the windows bullet-proof. Outside the Federal fusillade was incessant.    Mistaking Tate's house for frame house when it was built of brick, the commander of the enemy could be heard encouraging his men to shoot low and riddle the dwelling.    Presently there was a lull. Neither party fired for the space of several minutes, and Quantrell spoke to his people: "Boys, we are in a tight place. We can't stay here, and I do not mean to surrender. All who want to follow me out can say so; all who prefer to give up without a rush can also say so. I will do the best I can for them." Four concluded to appeal to the Federals for protection; seventeen to follow Quantrell to the death. He called a parley, and informed the Federal commander that four of his followers wanted to surrender. "Let them come out," was the order. Out they went and the fight began again. Too eager to see what manner of men their prisoners were, the Federals holding the west front of the house huddled about them eagerly. Ten Guerrillas from the upper story fired at the crowd and brought down six. A roar followed this. and a rush back again to cover at the double quick. It was hot work now. Quantrell, supported by James Little, Cole Younger, Hoy, and Stephen Shores, held the upper story, while Jarrette, Toler, George Shepherd, and others held the lower.    Every shot told. The proprietor of the house, Major Tate, was a Southern hero, gray-headed but Roman. He went about laughing. "Help me to get my family out, boys," he said, "and I will help you to hold the house. It's about as good a time for me to die, I reckon, as any other, if so be that God wills it. But the old woman is only a woman." Another parley. Would the Federal commander let the women and children out? Yes, gladly, and the old man too. There was eagerness for this, and much of veritable cunning. The family occupied an ell of the mansion with which there was no communication from the main building where Quantrell and his men were save by way of a door which opened upon a porch, and this porch was under the concentrated fire of the assailants.    After the family moved out the attacking party would throw skirmishers in, and then-the torch. Quantrell understood it in a moment, and spoke up to the father of the family: "Go out, Major. It is your duty to be with your wife and children." The old man went, protesting. Perhaps for forty years the blood had not coursed so pleasantly and so rapidly through his veins. Giving ample time for the family to get safely beyond the range of the fire of the besieged, Quantrell went back to his post and looked out. He saw two Federals standing together beyond revolver range. "Is there a shot-gun here?" he asked.    Cole Younger brought him one loaded with buck-shot. Thrusting half his body out the nearest window, and receiving as many volleys as there were sentinels, he fired the two barrels of his gun so near together that they sounded as one barrel.    Both Federals fell, one dead, the other mortally wounded. There followed this daring and conspicuous feat a yell as piercing and exultant that even the horses. hitched in the timber fifty yards away, reared in their fright and snorted with terror. Black columns of smoke blew past the windows where the Guerrillas were, and a bright red flame leaped up toward the sky on the wings of the wind. The ell of the house had been fired, and was burning fiercely. Quantrell's face-just a little paler than usual a set look that was not good to see. The tiger was at bay. Many of the men's revolvers were empty, and in order to gain time to load them, another parley was had.    The talk was of surrender. The Federal commander demanded immediate submission,  and Shepherd, with a voice heard above the rage and the roar of the !lames, pleaded for twenty minutes. No.. Ten? No. Five? No. Then the commander cried out in a voice not a whit inferior to Shepherd's in compass: "You have one minute. If, at its expiration, you have not surrendered, not a single man among you shall escape alive." "Thank you," said Cole Younger, sotta voce, "catching comes before hanging."    "Count sixty then, and be d-d to you," Shepherd shouted as a parting volley, and then a strange silence fell upon all these desperate men face to face with imminent death. When every man was really, Quantrell said briefly: "Shot guns to the front.'    Six, loaded heavily with buck-shot, were borne there, and he put himself at the head of the six men who carried them. Behind these were those having only revolvers. In single file, the charging column was formed in the main room of the building.    The glare of the burning ell lit it up as though the sun was shining there. Some tightened their pistol belts. One fell upon his knees and prayed. Nobody scoffed. at him, for God was in that room. He is everywhere when heroes confess. There were seventeen who were about to receive the fire of three hundred.    Ready! Quantrell flung the door wide open and leaped out.    The shot-gun men-Jarrette, Younger, Shepherd, Toler, Little and Hoy were hard behind him. Right and left from the thin short column a fierce fire beat into the very faces of the Federals, who recoiled in some confusion, shooting, however, from every side. There was a yell and a grand rush and when the end had come and all the fixed realities figured. up. the enemy had eighteen killed, twenty-nine badly wounded. and five prisoners, and the captured horses of the Guerrillas. Not a man of Quantrell's command was touched, as it broke through the cordon on the south of the house and gained the sheltering timber beyond. Hoy, as he rushed out the third from Quantrell and fired both barrels of his gun, was so near to a stalwart Federal that he was struck over the head with a musket and knocked senseless. To capture him afterwards was like capturing a dead man. But little pursuit was attempted. Quantrell halted at the timber, built a fire, reloaded every gun and pistol, and took a philosophical view of the situation. Enemies were all about him. He had lost five men-four of whom, however, he was glad to get rid of-and the balance ,were afoot. Patience! He had just escaped from an environment sterner than any yet spread for him, and fortune was not apt to offer one splendid action by another exactly opposite. Choosing, therefore, a rendezvous upon the head-waters of the Little Blue, another historic stream of Jackson county, he reached the residence of David Wilson late the next morning, after a forced march of great exhaustion. The balance of the night, however, had still to be one of surprises and counter-surprises not alone to the Federals, but to the other portion of Quantrell's command under Haller and Todd. Encamped four miles south of the Tate House, the battle there had aroused them instantly. Getting to saddle quickly, they were galloping back to the help of their comrades when a Federal force, one hundred strong, met them full in the road. Some minutes of savage fighting ensued, but Haller could not hold his own with thirteen men, and retreated, firing, to the brush. Afterwards everything was made plain. The four men who surrendered so abjectly at the Tate House imagined it would bring help to their condition if they told all they knew, and they told without solicitation the story of Haller's advance and the whereabouts of his camp.    A hundred men were instantly dispatched to surprise it or storm it, but the firing had aroused the isolated Guerrillas, and they got out in safety, after a rattling fight of some twenty minutes.    Moving up from David Wilson's to John Flannery's, Quantrell waited until Haller joined him, and then disbanded for the second time, fixing his rendezvous-when all the men were well mounted again-at a 4esignated point on the Sni.    In April, 1862, Quantrell, with seventeen men, was camped at the residence of Samuel C. Clark, situated three miles southeast of Stony Point, in Jackson county. He had spent the night there and was waiting for breakfast the next morning, when Captain Peabody, at the head of one hundred Federal cavalry, surprised the Guerrillas and came on at the charge, shooting and yelling.      Instantly dividing the detachment in order that the position might be effectively held, Quantrell, with nine men, took the dwelling, and Gregg, with eight, occupied the smoke house. For a while the fight was at long range, Peabody holding tenaciously to the timber in front of Clark's, distant about one hundred yards, and refusing to come out. Presently, however, he did an unsoldierly thing-or, rather, an unskillful thing-he mounted his men and forced them to charge the dwelling on horseback. Quantrell's detachment reserved their fire until the foremost horsemen were within thirty feet, and Gregg permitted those operating against his position to come even closer. Then a quick, sure volley and twenty-seven men and horses went down together. Badly demoralized, hut in no manner defeated, Peabody rallied again in the timber, while Quantrell, breaking out from the dwelling house and gathering up Gregg as he went, charged the Federals fiercely in return and with something of success. The impetus of the rush carried him past a portion of the Federal line, where some of their horses were hitched, and the return of the wave brought with it nine valuable animals. It was over the horses that Andrew Blunt had a hand-to -hand fight with a splendid Federal trooper. Both were very brave. Blunt had just joined. No one knew his history. He asked no questions and he answered none. Some said he had once belonged to the cavalry of the regular army; others, that behind the terrible record of the Guerrillas he wished to find isolation. Singling out a fine sorrel horse from among the number fastened in his front,    Blunt was just about to unhitch him when a Federal trooper, superbly mounted, dashed down to the line and fired. Blunt left his position by the side of the house and strolled out in the open, accepting the challenge defiantly and closing with his antagonist.    The first time he fired he missed, although many of the men believed him a better pistol shot than Quantrell. The Federal calmly sat his horse, fired the second shot deliberately and again missed. Blunt went four paces towards him, took a quick aim and fired very much as a man would at something running. Out of the Federal's blue overcoat a little jet of dust spurted up and he relaxed in his seat. The man, hard hit in the right breast, did not fall, however. He gripped his saddle with his knees, cavalry fashion, steadied him elf in his stirrups, and fired three times at Blunt in quick succession. They were now but twenty paces apart, and the Guerrilla was shortening the distance. When at ten he fired his third shot, the heavy dragoon ball struck the gallant Federal fair in the forehead and knocked him dead from his horse. While the duel was in progress, brief us it was, Blunt had not watched his rear, to gain which a dozen Federals had started from the extreme right. He saw them, but he did not hurry. Going hack to the coveted steed, he mounted him deliberately and dashed back through the lines closed up behind him, getting a fierce hurrah of encouragement from his own comrades and a wicked volley from the enemy.    It was time. A second company of Federals in the neighborhood, attracted by the firing, had made a j unction with Peabody and were already closing in upon the houses from the south. Surrounded now by one hundred and sixty men, Quantrell was almost in the same desperate strait as at the Tate house. His horses were in the hands of the Federals, it was S0me little distance to the timber, and the environment was complete. Captain Peabody, himself a Kansas man, knew who Jed the forces opposed to him and burned with the desire to make a finish of this Quantrell and his reckless band. at one clean sweep. Not content with the one hundred and sixty men already in positions about the house, he sent off post haste to Pink Hill for additional reinforcements. Emboldened also by their numbers, the Federals had approached so close to the positions held by the Guerrillas that it was possible for them to utilize the shelter the fences gave.       Behind these they ensconced themselves while pouring a merciless fusillade upon the dwelling-house and smoke-house in comparative immuniy. This annoyed Quantrell, distressed Gregg and made Cole Younger-one of the coolest heads in council ever consulted-look a little anxious. Finally a solution was found. Quantrell would draw the fire of this ambuscade; he would make the concealed enemy show himself. Ordering all to be ready and to fire the very moment the opportunity for execution was best, he dashed out from the dwelling-house to the smoke-house, and from the smoke-house back again to the dwelling. Eager to kill the daring man, and excited somewhat by their own efforts made to do it, the Federals exposed themselves recklessly. Then, owing to the short range, the revolvers of the Guerrillas began to tell with deadly effect.      Twenty at least were shot down along the fences, and as many more wounded and disabled. It was thirty steps from one house to the other, yet Quantrell made the venture eight distinct and separate times, not less than one hundred men firing at him as he came and went. On his garments there was not even the smell of fire. His life seemed to be charmed-his person protected by some superior presence. When at last even this artifice would no longer enable his men to fight with any degree of equality, Quantrell determined to abandon the houses and the horses and make a dash as of old to the nearest timber. "I had rather lose a thousand horses," he said, when some one remonstrated with him, "than a single man like those who have fought with me this day. Heroes are scarce; horses are everywhere."    In the swift rush that came now, fortune again favored him. Almost every revolver belonging to the Federals was empty. They had been relying altogether upon their carbines in the fight. After the first onset on horseback-one in which the revolvers were principally used-they had failed to reload, and bad 110tlling but empty guns in their hands after Ql1untrell for the last time drew their fire and dashed away on the heels of it to the timber. Pursuit was not attempted. Enraged at the escape of the Guerrillas, and burdened with a number of dead and wounded altogether out of proportion to the forces engaged, Captain Peabody caused to be burned everything upon the premises which had a plank or a shingle about it.    Something else yet was also to be done. Getting out afoot as best he could, Quantrell saw a company of cavalry making haste from towards the direction of Pink Hill. It was but u short distance to where the road he was skirting crossed a creek, and commanding this crossing was a perpendicular bluff inaccessible to horsemen. Thither he hurried. The work of ambushment was the work only of a moment. George Todd, alone of all the Guerrillas, had brought with him from the house a shot-gun. In running for life, the most of them were unencumbered.    The approaching Federals were the reinforcements Peabody had ordered up from Pink Hill, and as Quantrell's defence had lasted one hour' and a half, they were well on their way. As they came to the creek the foremost riders halted that their horses might drink. Soon others crowded in until all the ford was thick with animals. Just then from the bluff above a leaden rain fell as hail might from a cloudless sky. Rearing steeds trampled upon wounded riders. The dead dyed the clear water red.  Wild panic laid hold of the helpless mass cut into gaps and flight beyond the range of the deadly revolvers came first to all and uppermost. There was a rally, however. Once out from under fire the Lieutenant commanding the detachment called a halt. He was full of dash, and meant to see more of the unknown on the top of the hill. Dismounting his men and putting himself at their head, he turned hack for a fight. marching resolutely forward to the bluff. Quantrell waited for the attack to develop itself.  The Lieutenant moved right onward.    When within fifty paces of the position, George Todd rose up from behind a rock and covered the young Federal with his unerring shot-gun. It seemed a pity to kill him, he was so brave and collected, and yet he fell riddled just as he had drawn his sword and shouted "Forward!" to his lagging men.    To Todd's signal there succeeded a fierce revolver volley, and again were the Federals driven from the hill and back towards their horses. Satisfied with the results of this fight-made solely as a matter of revenge for burning Clark's building Quantrell fell away from the ford and continued his retreat on towards his rendezvous upon the waters of the Sni. Peabody, however, had not yet had his say. Coming on himself in the direction of Pink Hill, and mistaking these reinforcements for Guerrillas, he had quite a lively fight with them, each detachment getting in several vollies and killing and wounding a goodly number before either discovered the mistake.     CHAPTER VII. BATTLES AND SURPRISES.    QUANTRELL and his command were all on foot again, and Jackson county was filled with troops. At Kansas City there was a large garrison, wit}l smaller ones at Independence, Pink Hill, Lone Jack, Stoney Point, and Sibley. Peabody caused the report to be circulated that a majority of Quantrell's men were wounded, and that if the brush was scoured thoroughly they might be picked up here and there and summarily disposed of. Raiding bands therefore began the hunt. Old men were imprisoned because they could give no information of a concealed enemy; young men were murdered outright; women were insulted and abused. The uneasiness that had heretofore rested upon the county gave place now to a feeling of positive fear. The Jayhawkers on one side and the militia on the other made matters hot. All travelling was dangerous. People at night closed their eyes in dread lest the morrow should usher in a terrible awakening. One incident of the hunt is a bloody memory yet with many of the older settlers of Jackson couuty.       An aged man by the name of Blythe, believing his own house to be his own, fed those whom he pleased to feed, and sheltered all whom it suited him to shelter. Among his Illany warm personal friends was Coleman Younger. The Colonel commanding the fort at Independence sent a scout one day to find Younger, and to make the country people tell where he might be found. Old man Blythe was not at home, but his son was-a fearless lad of twelve years. He was taken to the barn and ordered to confess everything he knew of Quantrell, Younger, and their whereabouts. If he failed to speak truly he was to be killed. The boy, in no manner frightened, kept them some moments in conversation, waiting for an opportunity to escape. Seeing at last what he imagined to be a chance, he dashed away from his captors and entered the house under a perfect shower of balls. There, seizing a pistol and rushing through the back door towards some timber, a ball struck him in the spine just as he reached the garden fence and he fell back dying but splendid in his boyish courage to the last. Turning over on his face as the Jayhawkers rushed np to finish him, he shot one dead, mortally wounded another, and severely wounded the third. Before he could shoot the fourth time, seventeen bullets were put into his body.    It seemed as if God's vengeance was especially exercised in the righting of this terrible wrong. An old negro man who happened to be at Blythe's house at the time, was a witness of the bloody deed, and, afraid of his own life, ran hurriedly into the brush. There he came unawares upon Younger, Quantrell, Haller, Todd, and eleven of their men. Noticing the great excitement under which the negro labored, they forced him to tell them the whole story. It was yet time for an ambuscade.    On the road back to Independence was a pass between two embankments known as "The Blue Cut." In width it was about fifty yards, and the height of each embankment was about thirty feet. Quantrell dismounted his men, stationing some at each end of the passage-way, and some at the top and on either side. Not a shot was to be fired until the returning Federals had entered in, front and rear. From the Blue Cut this fatal spot was afterward known as the Slaughter Pen. Of the thirty-eight Federals sent out after Cole Younger, and who, because they could not find him, had brutally murdered an innocent boy, seventeen were killed, while five-not too badly shot to be able to ride-barely managed to escape into Independence, the avenging Guerrillas hard upon their heels.    The next rendezvous was at Reuben Harris', ten miles south of Independence, and thither all the command went, splendidly mounted again and eager for employment. Some days of preparation were necessary. Richard Hall, a fighting blacksmith who shot as well as he shoed, and knew a trail as thoroughly as a piece of steel, had need to exercise much of his handiwork in order to make the horses good for cavalry.    Then there were many rounds of cartridges to make. A Guerrilla knew nothing of an ordnance-master. His laboratory was in his luck. If a capture did not gain him caps, he had to fall back on ruse, or stratagem, or blockade-running square out. Powder and lead in the raw were enough, for if with these he could not make himself presentable at inspection he had no calling as a fighter in the brush.    It was Quantrell's intention at this time to attack Harrisonville, the county-seat of Cass county, and capture it if possible. With this object in view, and after having made every preparation amiable for a vigorous campaign, he moved eight miles east of Independence, camping near the Little Blue, in the vicinity of Job Crabtree's. He camped always near or in a house. For this he had two reasons. First, that its occupants might gather up for him all the news possible; and, second, that in the event of a surprise a sure rallying point would always be at hand. He had a theory that after a Guerrilla was given time to get over the first effects of a sudden charge or ambushment, the very nature of his military status made him invincible; that after an opportunity was afforded him to think, a surrender was next to an impossibility.    Before there was time to attack Harrisonville, however, a scout reported Peabody again on the war-path, this time bent on an utter extermination of the Guerrillas. And he well nigh kept his word. From ,Job Crabtree's Quantrell had moved to an unoccupied building known as the Low House, and then again from this house he bail !r0ne to some contiguous timber to bivouac for the night.       About 10 o'clock the sky suddenly became overcast, a fresh wind blew up from the east, and rain fell in torrents. Again the house was occupied, we horses being hitched along the fence in the rear of it, the door on the south, and the only door, having a bar put across it in lieu of a sentinel. Such soldiering was perfectly inexcusable, and it taught Quantrell a lesson he remembered to the day of his death. In the morning preceding the night of the attack Lieutenant Nash, of Peabody's regiment, commanding two hundred men, had struck Quantrell's trail, lost it later on, and then found it again just about sunset. He was advised of his having gone from the Low House to the brush, and of his having come back to it when the rain began to fall heavily. To a certain extent this seeking shelter was a necessity on the part of Quantrell. The men had no cartridge boxes, and not all of them overcoats. If once their ammunition was permitted to become damaged, it would be as though sheep should attack wolves. Nash, supplied with everything needed in any weather, waited patiently for the Guerrillas to become snugly ensconced under shelter, and then surrounded the house. Before a gun was fired, the Federals had every horse belonging to the Guerrillas, and were bringing to bear upon the only door every available carbine in the command. At first all was confusion.    Across the logs which once had supported an upper floor, some boards had been laid, and sleeping upon them were Todd, Blunt, and William Carr. Favored by the almost impenetrable darkness, Quantrell determined upon an immediate abandonment of the house. He called loudly twice for all to follow him and dashed through the door under a galling fire. Those in the loft did not hear him, and maintained in reply to the Federal vollies a lively fusillade. Then Cole Younger, James Little, Joseph Gilchrist, and a young Irish boy-a brave new recruit-turned back to help their comrades. The house became a furnace. At each of the two corners on the south these four men fought, Younger calling on Todd in the interval of every volley to come out of the loft and come to the brush. They started at last. It was four hundred yards to the nearest shelter, and the ground was very muddy. Gilchrist was shot down, the Irish boy was killed, Blunt was wounded and captured, Carr surrendered, Younger had his hat shot away, Little was unhurt, and Todd, scratched in four places, finally got safely to the timber,    but it was a miracle.    Twenty Federals singled him out as well as they could in the darkness and kept close at his heels, firing whenever a gun was loaded. Todd had a musket which, when it seemed as if they were all upon him at once, he would point at the nearest and make pretense that he was going to shoot.    When they halted and dodged about to get out of range, he would dash away again, gaining what space he could until he had to turn and re-enact the same unpleasant pantomime. Reaching the woods at last, he fired point blank and in reality now, killing with a single discharge one pursuer and wounding four. Part of Nash's command were still on the track of Quantrell but after losing five killed and a number wounded, they returned again to the house but returned too late for the continued battle. The dead and the two prisoners were all that were left to them.    Little Blue was bankfull, and the country was swarming with militia. For the third time Quantrell was afoot with unrelenting pursuers upon his trail in every direction. At daylight Nash would be after him again, river or no river. He must get over or fare worse. The rain still poured down; muddy, forlorn, well-nigh worn out, yet in no manner demoralized, just as Ql1antrell reached the Little Blue he saw on the other bank Toler, one of his own soldiers, sitting in a canoe.      Thence-forward the work of crossing was easy, and Nash, coming on an hour afterwards, received a volley at the ford where he expected to find a lot of helpless and unresisting men.    This fight at the Low House occurred the first week in May, 1862, and caused the expedition against Harrisonville to be abandoned. Three times surprised, and three times losing all horses, saddles, and bridles, it became again necessary to disband the Guerrillas in this instance as in the two preceding it. The men were dismissed for thirty days with orders to remount themselves, while Quantrell-taking Todd into his confidence and acquainting him fully with his plans-started in his company for Hannibal. It had become urgently necessary to replenish the supply of revolver caps. The usual trade with Kansas City had been cut off. Of late the captures had not been as plentiful as formerly. Recruits were coming in, and the season for larger operations and enterprises was at hand.    In exploits where peril and excitement were about evenly divided, Quantrell took great delight. He was so cool, so calm; he had played before such a deadly game j he knew so well how to smile when a smile would win, and to frown when a frown was a better card to play, that something in this expedition appealed to everything quixotic in his intrepidity. Todd was all iron; Quantrell all guile. Todd would go at a circular-saw; Quantrell would sharpen its teeth and grease it where the friction was. One purred and killed; the other roared and killed. What mattered the mode, however, so only the end was the same.    Clad in the full uniform of Federal Majors-supplies of which Quantrell kept constantly on hand even at a day so early in the war as this-they rode to Hamilton, a little town on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and remained for the night at the principal hotel. A Federal garrison was there-two companies of Iowa. infantry-and the Captain commanding took a great fancy to Todd, insisting that he should leave the hotel for his quarters and share his blankets with him.    Two days were spent in Hannibal, where an entire Federal regiment was stationed. Here Quantrell was more circumspect. 'When asked to give an account of himself and his companion, he replied promptly that Todd was the major of the Sixth Missouri Cavalry and himself the major of the Ninth. Unacquainted with either organization, the commander at Hannibal had no reason to believe otherwise. Then he asked about that special cut-throat Quantrell. Was it true that he fought under a black flag? Had he really ever belonged to the Jayhawkers?    How much truth was in the stories the newspapers told of his operations and his prowess? Quantrell became volume. In rapid yet picturesque language lie painted a perfect picture of the war along the border. He told of Todd, Janette, Blunt, Younger, Haller, Poole, Shepherd, Gregg, Little, the Cogers, and all of his best men just as they were, and himself also just as he was, and closed his conversation empllatically by remarking: "If you were here, Colonel, surrounded as you are by a thousand sodiers, and they wanted you, they would come here and get you."    From Hannibal-after buying quietly and at various times and in various places fifty thousand revolver caps-Quantrell andl Todd went boldly into St. Joseph. This city was full of soldiers. Colonel Harrison B. Branch was there in command of a regiment of m!litia-a brave, conservative, right-thinking soldier-and Quantrell introduced himself to Branch as Major Henderson, of the Sixth Missouri. Todd, by this time, had put on in lieu of a Major's epaulettes, with its distinguishing leaf, the barred ones of a Captain. "Too many Majors traveling together, quaintly remarked Todd, "are like too many roses in a houquet: the other flowers don't have a chance. Let me he a Captain for the balance of the trip."    Colonel Branch made himself very agreeable to Major Henderson and Captain Gordon, and askecl Todd if he was any relation to the somewhat notorious Si. Gordon, of Platte, relating at the same time an interesting adventure he once had with him. En route from St. Louis, in 1861, to the headquarters of his regiment, Colonel Branch, with one hundred and thirty thousand dollars on his person, found that he would have to remain over night in Weston aud the better part of the next day.    Before he got out of the town Gordon took it, and with it he took Colonel Branch. Many of Gordon's men were known to him, and it was eminently to his interest just then to renew old acquaintanceship and be extremely complaisant to the new. Wherever he could find the largest number of the Guerrillas, there he was among them, calling for whisky every now and then, and telling incessantly some agreeuble story or amusing anecdote. Thus he got through with what seemed to him an interminubly long day. Not a dollar of his money was touched, Gordon releasing him unconditionully when the town was abandoned and bidding him make haste to get out lest the next lot of raiders made it the worse for him.    For three days, off and on, Quantrell was either with Branch at his quarters, or in compuny with him about town. Todd elsewhere and indefatigable was rapidly buying caps and revolyers. Branch introduced Quantrell to General Ben. Loan, discussed Penick with him and Penick's regiment - a St. Joseph officer destined to give Quantrell in the near future some stubborn fighting-passed in reyiew the military situation, incidentally referred to the Guerrillas of Jackson county and the savage nature of the warfare going on there, predicted the absolute destruction of African slavery, and assisted Quantrell in many ways in making his mission thoroughly successful. For the first ann the last time in his life Colonel Branch was disloyal to the government and its flag-he gave undoubted aid and encouragement during those three days to about as uncompromising an enemy as either ever had.    From St. Joseph, Quantrell and Todd came to Kansas City in a hired hack, first sending into Jackson county by a man unquestionably devoted to the South the whole amount of the purchases made in both Hannibal and St. Joseph.    Within three miles of Kansas City a Federal sentinel on outpost duty rudely halted the driver of the hack, an Irishman as belligerant as a game cock, and wanted to know who he was, what sort of people his passengers were, and what business decent hackmen had traveling at such an unseemly hour of the night. The driver answered curtly, assuring the soldier that his passengers were two Illinois gentlemen, and that they were going about their own business and into Kansas City. During the dialogue Todd quietly opened t!\e hack door opposite to the sentinel and stepped out. Quantrell followed him. It was quite dark, but they knew the direction from the course of the river and followed it down to the farm of William Bledsoe, a staunch Southerner and a man of immense assistance to the Guerrillas in many ways. The poor driver, however, fared badly. In order to verify the truth of his report, the sentinel examined the hack for himself, only to find it empty. neither his vociferations, nor the leak of genuine surprise upon his face at the trick his passengers had played him, saved him from the guard house that night, and from a good long term in prison afterwards.    Blunt, entirely recovered from his wound, was not Bledsoe's. Three nights after his capture he had escaped from Peabody, taking with him a captain's horse, saddle and bridle, and killing two of the guards who tried to halt him. With Blunt were six others of the cornmand, who joined Quantrell and came on with him to Jackson county, At David George's, Gregg, with another detachment, was ready for work, and at John Moore's Jarrette and Younger-having in charge another detail of men were waiting for the sounding of the tocsin. Soon a veritable hornet's nest was stirred up, the swarming, buzzing, and stinging of the next few days being desperately wicked. Quantrell bad not yet succeeded in getting all of his men together when a scout of twenty-five Federals struck four of his men at John Shepherd's, killed Theodore Blythe, and burned a couple of houses belonging to two friends of the Guerrillas.     An eye for an eye was the edict, and a tooth for a tooth. Quantrell, resting a little from his recent trip, was at Toler's when the news of the raid was brought to him. Taking eight men instantly and selecting a spot on the Independence and Harrisonville road eight miles south of Independence, as the place of ambuscade, he stationed eight as deadly men to do his deadly work as ever mounted a horse or fired a pistol. Quantrell and George Shepherd occupied what might be called the centre of the line, Jarrette, OIl. Shepherd, and Mart. Shepherd, the rear or left, and Todd, Blunt, Little, and Younger the front or right.    As a signal-when the rear files of the Federal column had passed ;ell beyond John Jarrette and his two comrades-Jarrette was to fire, and then the entire squad was to charge. Every order was obeyed to the letter. Never a bloodier overthrow followed a briefer fight. Three minutes-five at the very furthest-ended all. Only one out of twenty-five escaped.    Furious before, this savage episode made Peabody ferocious. He swarmed out of Independence with two hundred men and spread himself over the country, shooting at every male thing he saw. Quantrell, Jarrette, and Todd were together and were pressed by twenty Federals for seventeen miles. It was a stern chase and a long one, and ended only when the night fell, each Guerrilla losing his horse, and each receiving a slight wound. Seven of the twenty pursuers were killed and five wounded. At John Shepherd's, Younger, Oliver Shepherd and George Shepherd were surrounded by another detacllment of Federals numbering thirty-two. Everything fought about the premises. Indeed it was a day of battles in Jackson county-battles of twos and threes-battles of squads and parts of companies; battles by bush and stone-battles here, there, and everywhere.    It was getting hot for the three Guerrillas in John Shepherd's house, and Cole Younger was just on the eve of sallying out at the head of the two Shepherds, when Scott, Martin Shepherd, John Coger, and Little attacked the Federals furiously in the rear, making a sufficient diversion for all purposes of escape. It was time to concentrate; the Guerrillas were being devoured piece-meal. Quantrell multiplied himself. Gathering up Haller at Morgan Walker's, and Gregg at Stony Point, he galloped down into Johnson county in order to scatter his trail a little. In the intervals of picquet fighting he recruited. Some splendid fellows came to him here-John Brinker, Ogden, Halley, McBurgess, Thomas Little, Joseph Fickell, William Davenport, and several others. In a week he was back again in Jackson county, and from Jackson county into Kansas, surprising the town of Aubry, capturing its garrison, consisting of one company, and putting all but one to the sword who were not killed in the attack. This single exception was a young Lieutenant from Brown county, clever of speech, amiable of disposition, and artless as a school girl. He seemed never to have realized the manner of men who had him. Not so much a philosopher as he was free from guile, he became an enigma to the Guerrillas because they had never made the acquaintance of his species. Quantrell kept him for purposes of exchange. A good man of his, Hoy,  had been knocked senseless the night of the fight at the Low House, and captured, and he wanted to get him released. The Lieutenant was offered in exchange for the private, but not for the Guerrillas were any of the immunities of civilized war; Quantrell's courteous application was thrown back rudely in his face. The lines were being drawn tightly now, and before the summer was over and the harvests were ended, the Black Flag would be raised.    What should be done with the Lieutenant? Many said death. To spare a Kansas man was to offend the God of a Guerrilla. To take a prisoner and then not to kill him. was an insult to the inspiration of the ambuscade. These desperate men had laws, however-unwritten but none the less inexorable on account of it. One especially accorded life to any prisoner vouched for or endorsed by any Guerrilla. Quantrell stood for the Lieutenant. Thenceforward those who at first demanded his life, would have defended it to the last cartridge. As Quantrell was in the act of releasing him a. few days afterwards, he said in parting: "Go back to your people. I like you very much, but between them and me there will never again be peace." Still as one who seemed incapable of understanding his situation, the Lieutenant thanked him and replied: "As for me, I never hurt anyone in my life." Civil war, which leaves nothing but tombs, here left a fountain.    The conflict deepened. The tide of the conflict was at its flood. Many eyes were attracted towards Quantrell, and many journalists were busy with the tale of his exploits. Imagination made of him a monster. No crime was too black for him; no atrocity too brutal; no murder too monstrous; no desperate deed too improbable. Let all the West be harried, and the tiger slain in his lair!    The hunt began. Quantrell passed again through Jackson county and entered Johnson from the west. At Mrs. Davenport's he met first a company of militia and dealt them one of his telling blows, killing eleven, and pushing the balance back into Warrensburg. The taste of such Guerrilla work us this was bitter in the mouth of the Federal commander at Warrensburg, and he spat his dread at Quantrell over the petticoats of a lot of women. Arresting Miss Brinker, the sister of John Brinker, and one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of the West, he put her at the head of two hundred men, together with four other Southern girls, and rode through the county in this fashion, hunting for Quantrell. Ambushed along the high road, and having in his favor position, prowess, and experience, Quantrill yet saw the whole line pass by him as it were in review, firing not a gun at them, nor charging a single squadron. Unknown to all of them, these angels of the column had saved it from destruction.    Baffled thus thrice by the presence of these women, who were held a week as hostages, Quantrell abandoned active oppositions for the time and went into camp at Captain Purdue's, sending out detachments hither and thither in quest of ammunition and adventures  The supplies sent forward from St. Joseph some time before had not yet arrived. Stinted somewhat in revolver caps, and deficient somewhat in navy revolvers, a well contested fight of an hour or two generally left the command unable to be effective until the next day. Cole Younger and George Shepherd were sent into Jackson county, therefore, to procure ammunition; others were ordered into Cass for horses; while Todd, having a command of twelve men, had made for him the opportunity so frequently desired, of conducting a raid into Kansas. Then the fighting began again-a week of fruitful and extended fighting. Haller, in Cass, the very first day, met twenty militia on an open prairie with five men and cut the whole squad to pieces. He relied always on the charge, and drilled his men constantly in horseback firing, the faster the horses went the better the shooting.    When these twenty Federals came upon him, he halted his squad and asked each man by name 'What should be done. "A fight or a foot race, eh, boys?" This was Haller. Little said charge, Coger said charge, Poole said the same, Blunt the same, they all said it, and charge it was. A charge on the prairie means death. No trees, no hollows, no stones, no shelter; body to body and hand to hand-this is prairie fighting.    Prowess tells. Death helps him who fears. him least. He who dodges is in danger. Fortune's great uncertain eye looks down upon the melee and brightens when it falls upon the bravest. The quickest is the safest; the coolest the least exposed. Haller's attack was a hurricane; a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand grappled with the horizon. His pistol practice was superb. Beyond the killing there was a singular episode. With the Federals, and in the forward file, was a scout, sun browned and huge, who had for uniform a complete suit of buckskin. Evidently a plainsman and an ugly customer, he shot swiftly yet without effect.      Some about him stood not for the onset he awaited it as though it were the coming of buffalo. Dave Poole singled him out, and as he closed with him. contrary to his custom, demanded a surrender. Buckskin laughed a little scornfully, lifted himself up high in his stirrups, leaned over far to the right and grabbed with his left hand, as with a grasp of iron, Poole's long black beard In his right hand; a bright bowie knife shone. "Gracious!" cried Poole, always grotesque, here's your regular Indian fighter; but scalp or no scalp, he's powerful strong." And he was. He held Pool so close to him that he could not use his revolver, and while he held him he was working viciously with his knife. One slash cut into his right shoulder, another gashed his cheek, a third scored his left arm deeply, and the fourth might have come surer home, when Haller, acquit of all who had come before him, turned back to the rescue and shot the frontiersman dead from his saddle. "As he lay," said Poole afterwards. "he looked in length about eight feet."    Younger and Shepherd worked hard and fast, and got together a load of ammunition-sufficient for a week of solid service. While after a wagon to haul it out, seventy-five Federals surrounded them in a house and demanded a surrender. No! the word was not in their vocabulary. Close to the house stood an orchard, and growing luxuriantly in this a heavy crop of rye. Where it was thickest their horses had been hitched, and beyond the horses was a skirt of timber. Gaining the first under a shower of balls, they soon gained the other, but not unhurt. Four buckshot had struck Younger got three, drawing blood, and Shepherd was hit too hard to ride beyond the nearest shelter.    As Todd came along on the road to Kansas, Younger joined him near the Blue and struck the enemy about the line. Some fighting occurred, as the night came, but Todd changed his position further to the west, crossing into Kansas to the right of Olathe. Six government wagons loaded with supplies, and convoyed by parts of two infantry companies, were his first emoluments. Scattered along the highway in disorder, and drunk, some of them, to incapacity, the poor infantry fellows didn't know a Guerrilla from a gate-post. Todd went through the convoy at a canter, sparing nothing along the line. One huge Dane, very drunk and very noisy, took a couple of minutes to die, seventeen revolver bullets in his body, and four thrusts of his own bayonet.    In one wagon there was whisky, and before Todd knew it, several of his men were boisterous; they demanded more blood. Having turned back with his captures toward Missouri, Todd left with them a small escort and started forward again in order to gratify this demand-one which accorded so well with his own desires. Where Quantrell had burned the bridge over Big Blue upon the road leading from Independence to Kansas City, the Federals had established a ferry. An old tete du pont there had been turned into a stockade, garrisoned by half a company.    Todd stalked it as a Highlander stalks red deer. When he could no longer walk, he crept; when he could no longer creep, he crawled. Some fog was on the river, and here and there a. fire with a smoke, which lay heavy along the undergrowth. Doomed men have no dreams. Armed shadows rose slowly out of the ground, and yet they did not see them. This mirage of the rising of armed men is well known to persons accustomed to frequent ambuscades. This day at the fort nineteen Federals were doing duty, and when Todd reached the river they were in a large flatboat crossing from the Independence to the Kansas City side. Merriment abounded with them, and a sentimental young soldier was heard clearly to sing: "The cruel war is over, Once more with her is he: 'You've learnt to love since last we met? He says, but naught says she. 'You'll wed the happy Somebody, And me you'll quite forget! Would I were he, my darling!" 'You are!' cried Colinette."    It was of love and a furlough, and something sweet at the last-something that tasted of red lips and of devotion. Poor fellow! He did not wait until the end of the war before his furlough came to him forever. Others talked loudly. Some traced trickling fingers through the water. A few scanned the western bank, but saw nothing. The boat's bow was on the beach, and a hand had been lifted to the rope to make it fast ; but what mattered the boat - death was there. Not a soul escaped. Ten fell dead the first fire, four leaped into the river and were drowned, und five were finished leisurely. Todd's ambusbments were parts of the ferocity of a system, and not the ferocity of his nature. The youth of the love song must have been spared had the bullets been any respecter of persons.    The boat was sunk, the dead were not even buried, and Todd galloped on to rendezvous at Reuben Harris' With the blood scarcely washed from his hands, or the powder smoke from his face, he hastened on the next morning to another ambuscade on the Harrisonville and Independence road. South of the residence of John Fristoe there grew a hazel thicket of conspicuous hiding capacity. Up from the midst of it a. lone elm reared itself, tall and shapely. Todd remarked of it standing like a sentinel, and spoke to Younger: "God put it there for some wise purpose. Let a good climber climb to its top and tell us of the country." This unaffected reliance upon the wisdom of God is heard often where the work to be done is veritable devil's work.     Martin Shepberd, agile as a squirrel of the hills, mounted quickly to the lookout, and reported just as quickly the admnce of a Federal column. Fired upon at the distance of twenty feet, and charged simultaneously with the volley, five fell from their horses dead and a number wounded rushed away in retreat, keeping tlleir saddles with difficulty. Only the covering party of a column two hundred strong had been encountered, and while Blunt, Younger, James Von, William Bledsoe, Dick Yager, and Vis. Acres were down in the road gathering up revolvers, ammunition, and such other things of the dead as were needed, the main body came rushing on, firing furiously and bent on revenge. Todd fell back slowly on foot to his horses, mounted in no haste, and skirmishing then and in fine order gained the timber. Each soldier, besides the horse he rode, had three others to protect, thus making the question not so much one of fighting as taking care of the captures.    Five scouts-Yager, Blunt, Von, Younger, and Sbepherd-vrere thrown forward to find the enemy, who had not pursued. Five better men never took a hot trail at a gallop-eager, daring, splendidly mounted, and pressing always forward for a closer fight. After a swinging gallop of several miles, a Federal rear guard, seventy-five strong, was struck, at the house of Dr. Pleasant Lee. The five fought the seventy-five. At the first fire Von killed an orderly sergeant, and kept closing up. For twenty seconds or so the melee was fierce. The first line formed across the road to stop the Guerrillas was rode over or cut to pieces, the second gave way, and the third faltered. Then the whole rear guard formed behind a stone fence, the balance of seventy-five on the defensive against five. At such odds the Guerrillas fought continually. Younger  returned to Todd, reported the coast clear, and advised that a push be made rapidly and at once for the camp of Quantrell, the captured Kansas wagons now having come up, and the necessary horses to mount all the new recruits having been secured.    Moving by way of Blue Springs and Pink Hill, and on towards headquarters at Stony Point, Todd was set upon and hard bestead. The prince of amhuscaderil fell into an ambuscade.    The man of the surprise and the sudden volley, had his own tactics  administered to him, none the less unpalatable because of their being familiar. Seventy-five Federals laid a trap for him close to the Sni, and he rode into it snugly. If to the skillfulness of the ambushment there had been added the coolness of the Guerrilla, decidedly the credit side of the killing would have been the Federal side. But just outside the teeth of the trap a tremulous watcher let his gun go off. It signaled a volley of course, but a volley of miscalculation. No charge followed it. Loading where they stood, and forgetting to all appearances every reliance upon the revolver, Todd got time to break out from his bad position. The carbine he carried in his hand was shot in two, and Martin Shepherd, a lion in every combat, mortally wounded. As be reeled he fired both barrels of his shot-gun, killing a Federal at each discharge, and before he fell Cole Younger caught him in his arms and brought him out. Others were wounded, though not mortally.    Todd, coolest in danger, like Massena, and deadliest, dashed through the ambushment and on towards the Pink Hill bridge across the Sni, the seventy-five Federals following fast, soon to be reinforced by one hundred and twenty- five more. Skirmishing ensued heavily. The wagons, before encountering the enemy at the ambuscade, had been parked in an out of the way place far from a main road, and only the extra horses now had to he looked to. The bridge was in sight, and beyond it was Quantrell and reinforcements. The trot quickened into a gallop and Todd had struck the west end of it, well ahead of the pursuers in the rear, when from the eastern approach a fierce fire beat into his very face and a blue mass rushed into the road and halted. Hemmed in as he was, and hampered with horses, he rushed at the squadrons blocking up his passage way and strove to cut through. The fire was too severe, the odds too unreasonable. Blunt was wounded, Yager was wounded, Younger had two horses killed under him, Von was wounded, Bledsoe was wounded twice, Todd had his hat shot off and four holes through his coat, and those covering his rear could hold it only a moment or two longer. At the bridge the Sni made a bend, the bulge of the stream pushing towards the east; when he got to the western approach he was in the complete envelopment of a cul de sac. Neither able to move backwards nor forwards; on the right hand the Sni, and on the left hand the Sni; two hundred Federals in his rear and an unknown number in his front-this was Todd's predicament.    The river was there, it is true, but the banks on the west were ten feet high and perpendicular. He would take to the water below the bridge, and be the first also to take the leap. Twice his horse refused him, but lifting him the third time by a spur stroke, and giving him the rein and a cheering cry, he sprang sheer over the steep into the river, halting there under fire to guide, as it were, and encourage his men. All got over in safety, carrying with them the bulk of the extra horses, and at daylight the next morning he was in the camp of Quantrell, near Pallett's on the Sni.    While encamped here, and waiting for the operations of the various detachments sent out to be completed, Quantrell had received the consignment of arms and ammunition forwarded to Quantrell by Quantrell from St. Joseph. In addition to an unusually large number of revolver caps, one hundred and sixty-eight new navy revolvers-worth everyone of them its weight in gold -made glad the eyes of the Guerrillas and light their hearts. They would try them also in a forward movement the next day.    Todd's old antagonists were in Pink Hill, easy of access, and thither Quantrell marched. Choosing a position west of the place that was a natural ambuscade, he made ready to execute a maneuver never before attempted. Behind an embankment that was a perfect shelter, the horses were hitched. To the right and left of the road, and running parallel with it for two hundred yards and more, were ditches for draining purposes, now dry and deep enough to shelter the men; in these fifty soldiers could fight five hundred. Gregg was chosen to command a decoy party consisting of ten men, and sent forward at once to fight the Federals awhile, retreat slowly, fight again, then retreat, tl1en turn once more about, and finally-with nothing of trepidation and with scarcely a show of speed, lead them into the lion's den. The name of Gregg was even then beginning to make the Jayhawkers tremble. He had the nerve of an inflexible will in council, and on the battle-field the impetuosity of youth. Under all circumstances his example was one of intrepidity. He seemed to recognize no other aspiration than the triumph of his cause. He devoted himself to Quantrell-like Todd, Cole Younger, Poole, Blunt, the Shepherds, the Littles, and many others-by a double worship, to his principles as a Guerrilla, to his person as a friend. Honest, modest, silent-without other ambition than that of serving his country as became a hero, he did superbly the hardest thing to do on earth-his whole duty,    Keeping well under cover until within one hundred yards of Pink Hill, Gregg broke out of the timber at a run and dashed furiously into the town. For the first few moments all was dire confusion, no one heeding orders, and none making head against the Guerrillas until they had shot down fifteen in the streets, wounded eleven, and crippled, cut loose, and stamped not less than sixty horses, Afterwards from dwellings, garden fences, store-houses, corn cribs, from behind chimneys and out of the tops of hay stacks and wheat stacks two hundred Federals took shelter and drove Gregg out. He retreated a short distance and turned about. They would not follow him.    Try how he would, not a soldier left his place of security. He tempted them next with bravado. Sending Cole Younger, James Vaughn, and James Tucker back to ride about and around Pink Hill, he calmly waited himself just beyond gun shot until they should get ready to follow. These three skirmished with everything they saw for all hour. Now all one side of Pink Hill and now on another, no one would come out to try a grapple with them. At length, and as if to vary the monotony of so much recklessness on the one side and so much cowardice on the other, a splendid horse broke away from the town and ran some distance in the direction of the three Guerillas.    Vaughn rode forward to capture him. If he dashed at the Federal horse he knew he should scare him and lose him, but if he went gently the chances were good for success. Fifty concealed soldiers fired at him incessantly as he rode slowly up to the horse and as slowly back again. Twice he took off his hat and waved it towards the nearest marksman who shot the closest to him, and twice he dismounted within easy range to adjust his saddle. Fortune deserted him at last, however, and when he had the least reason to expect it. Full five hundred yards from the nearest house, he was struck in the right breast by a heavy ball, which passed through the lung and out at the back, near the spine. In losing him, Quantrell; lost a soldier conspicuous for enterprise, and remarkable for the coolness of an intrepidity which was unconscious of its own excess.    Unwilling to follow Gregg, and afraid to move out of Pink Hill, the commander of the two hundred Federals cooped up there sent a Union citizen who knew the country well post-haste to Independence for reinforcements, but Quantrell moved that night into Johnson county, and camped for several days on Walnut creek. They were after him, however. Commanded by a dashing officer, one hundred Federal cavalry came up from Clinton, in Henry county, and struck Quantrell afoot at the house of William Asbury. In his front was an open prairie, and in his rear a. large orchard in which his horses were hitched.    The Federals came right onward at a gallop, fronted into line swiftly, and dashed down to within thirty yards of the house only to meet a withering volley and to fall back in much confusion, leaving behind them all their dead and wounded. Rallying beyond range, the gallant leader of the Federals formed another line, placed himself again at its head, and strove to urge it forward. Instead of men he talked to stocks or stones.    Some make-believes of charges fooled him twice or thrice', when drawing off in sheer disgust, he took up a position of masterly observation something over a mile away upon the prairie.    Gregg, with three men-Cole Younger, Henry Ogden, and George Maddox-followed him and fought him at every step, driving in his picquets twice, and keeping his cowardly detachment in a constant state of uproar. While preparing to mount and attack in return, Dave Poole and John Brinker hurried up with the unpleasant information that two hundred Federals, attracted by the firing, were coming up rapidly from the direction of Harrisonville. Quantrell's force numbered exactly sixty-three, capable of whipping easily the one hundred within striking distance, but inadequate to the other task.    The Federal wounded, numbering eighteen, he had looked after carefully. Not belonging to any of the commands waging upon him a war of extermination, he had no desire to make them responsible for the cruelties of other organizations. Rapid always, whether in retreat or advance, Quantrell traveled two miles in a southeast direction through some heavy timber, thence across a prairie to Big Creek, over Big Creek to Devil's Ridge, and from Devil's Ridge northeast towards Pleasant Hill.    By this time seven hundred Federals were on his track, well mounted and full of fight. It rained all day the first day out from Asbury's, the roads became muddy, and the streams began to rise. During most of the second night Quantrell scattered his trail at suitable places, and used whatever of stratagem was best to retard pursuit. At daylight Pleasant Hill was three miles to the right, and Big Creek within sight on the left. The sky had cleared up, and Quantrell stopped for breakfast six miles west of the town. All night long also had the Federals marched, reaching Pleasant Hill an hour later than Quantrell and breakfasting there. Peabody led their advance with three hundred cavalry, four hundred more marching on in supporting distance behind him. He had some old scores to settle and some ugly old wounds to get ointment for.    Quantrell had halted in Swearingen's barn, and the Guerrillas were drying their saddle-blankets. One picquet, Hicks George -an iron man, who could sleep in the saddle, and eat as he ran, who faced every suspicious thing until he fathomed it, and explored every mysterious thing until he mastered it-watched the rear against attack, Peabody received George's fire-for George would have fired at angel or devil in the line of his duty-and drove him towards Quantrell at a full run. Every preparation possible under the circumstances had been made, and if the reception was not as warm as expected, the Federals could attribute much of it to the long night march and the rainy weather. The horses were hitched in the rear of the barn to protect them as far as possible, and the Guerrillas lined and lay along the fence in front.       Quantrell stood by the open gate calmly, with his hand upon the latch; when George entered in he would close it and fasten it. The crest of the wave of Peabody's onset had reared itself up to within thirty feet of the fence when the Guerrillas delivered a crushing volley, and sixteen Federals, borne on by the impetus of the rush, crushed against the barricade and fell there, some wounded and some dead. Others fell as the ebb came, and more dropped out here and there before the disorganized mass got back again safely from the deadly revolver range.    After them hot dashed Quantrell himself, George Maddox, Jarrette, Cole Younger, George Morrow, Gregg, Blunt, Poole and Haller, following them fast to the timber and gathering upon their return all the arms and the ammunition of the killed and wounded. At the timber Peabody rearranged his lines, dismounted his men. and came forward again at a double-quick and yelling. Do what he would, the charge spent itself before it could be called a charge. Never nearer than one hundred yards of the fence, he skirmished at long range for nearly an hour and finally took up a position one mile south of the barn, awaiting reinforcements. Quantrell sent out Cole Younger, Poole, John Brinker and William Haller, to "lay up close to Peabody," as he expressed it, and keep him and his movements steadily in view. The four dare-devils multiplied themselves. They attacked the pickets, rode around the whole camp in bravado, firing upon it from every side, and finally agreed to send a flag of truce in to Peabody with this manner of a challenge: "We, whose names are hereunto annexed, respectfully ask of Colonel Peabody the privilege of fighting eight of his best men, hand to hand, and that he himself make the selection, and send them out to us immediately." This was signed: Coleman Younger, William Haller, David Poole and John Brinker. Younger  bore it, Tying a white handkerchief to a stick he rode boldly up to the nearest picket and asked for a parley. Six started toward him, and lie bade four go back. The message was carried to Peabody, but he laughed at it and scanned the prairie in every direction for the coming reinforcements.    Meanwhile Quantrell was retreating. The four men cavorting about Peabody were to amuse him as long as possible and then get away as best they could. Such risks are often taken in war; to save one thousand men sometimes one hundred are sacrificed. Death equally with exactness has its mathematics.    The reinforcements came up rapidly. One hundred joined Peabody on the prairie, and two hundred masked themselves by some timber on the north and advanced parallel with Quantrill's line of retreat-a flank movement intended to be final. Haller hurried off to Quantrell to report, and Peabody, rigorous and alert now, threw out after the three remaining Guerrillas a cloud of cavalry skirmishers.  The race was one for life. Each started for the barn on a keen run. It was on the eve of harvest, and the wheat, breast high to the horse, flew away from before the feet of the racers as though the wind was driving through it an incarnate scythe blade. As Pool struck the eastern edge of this wheat, a very large jack, belonging to Swearingen, joined in the pursuit, braying loudly at every jump, and leading the Federals by a length. Comedy and tragedy were in the same field together.       Carbines rang out, revolvers cracked, the jack brayed, the Federals roared with merriment, and looking back over his shoulder as he ran, Poole heard the laughter and saw the jack, and imagined the devil to be after him leading a lot of crazy people.    The barn was almost gained, and Brinker and Younger were through the gate, into the lot, and away on the track of Quantrell, when the two handrail flanking Federals burst from their cover on the north and cut Poole squarely off from the gap he had to go through to get out of the barn lot. It was a rain of bullets now. His gun was shot out of his hand. His horse was wounded and blown; he was in a trap; and something like a roar went up of "surrender!" "surrender!" "surrender!"    But he did not surrender. Turning his horse to the west where it seemed to him there was a panel lower than the rest, he drove on it, in' through it, or over it, with a crashing and a splintering that jarred the whole fence and dragged him well nigh from his saddle. Younger and Brinker were not yet out of sight when he was up with them again, the whole three dashing on together upon Quantrell's trail, the pursuing Federals close behind.    In a hollow close to Fred. Farmer's house Quantrell formed his sixty-three men on foot to fight seven hundred, Peabody struck him first and got his fire at ten steps before he knew it.    Fifteen saddles were emptied here- James Morris, and young Moore, son-in-law of David Yeager, performing several acts of conspicuous bravery.. In each hand a revolver, and advancing continually, they fired so rapidly and so accurately that it might well have been taken for a company. Peabody, sick of fighting Quantrell on horseback, dismounted beyond range and divided his command-sending one part of it to the west an(l keeping the other at the south. The flanking detachment, coming up from the north, also divided, keeping one portion there and sending the other to close up the gap on the cast. Thus was the environment complete; sixty-three men were surrounded by seven hundred. A series of desperate combats followed in the thick brush; charging those on the south and killing and wounding twenty-two, those on the north were then looked to, and then those on the east and the west.    One charge followed another, the combats culminating at every point over desperate rallies for the horses. This hollow held by Quantrell vomited fire and smoke as the mouth of a volcano. In the gloom Titans struggled. To the long roar of musketry-full, sonorous, resonant-there succeeded the shriller and sharper notes of the revolver vollies. The two lines marked the strife thus: the Federals with the more melodious music, the Guerrillas with the more discordant.    Quantrell was getting anxious. Some of his horses had been killed, and many of his best men were wounded.. Gregg, Coger, Poole, Cole Younger, Moore, Maddox, Morris, Brinker, Haller, find a dozen others shot, more or less severely, fought on, yet slowly. Attrition alone would make this conflict only one of time; to fight further, was to waste precious blood unnecessarily.    To the left-front of the hollow-the south front-there lay wounded probably s. dozen Federals, and some of them had dragged their hurt bodies below its crest for such shelter as it afforded from the balls, now coming from every direction. As Quantrell passed hurriedly through them, from the south, to repel a furious attack upon the north-conspicuous alike by his presence and the splendid coolness of his bearing-a Federal soldier raised himself up on his knees and fired at him, point blank. The bullet, intended for the breast, struck Quantrell in the right leg, below the knee, and cut clean through, narrowly missing the bone. Quantrell fell, but leaped so quickly to his feet, that his men imagined he had only stumbled. Gregg's quick eyes, however, fathomed the movement at a glance, and in an instant he had a pistol at the assassin's ear. "Pray!" he said. The wounded Federal only shut his eyes and bowed his head; he had played a desperate game and lost-that game that men sometimes play with death when they know death must win. Gregg blew his brains out.    "Say nothing of my wound," Quantrell said to Gregg, so low that none heard him, "and tell the men to mount rapidly and at once."    Yelling, and charging upon the hollow from all sides, the jubilant enemy now had everything their own way. To get out was touch and go; to stay there was absolute death. At the mounting time, Jarrette found his horse dead, and so did Gregg, George Shepherd, Toler, Tucker, Henry Ogden, Dick Maddox, James Morris, and Dick Burnes. These men had been doing splendid work on the east, and had had no time to look to their horses. They now broke through this line again on foot, and fought slowly north, gaining a little at every step, and getting little by little all their enemies behind them. To the combat of the squad, the individual combat succeeded. Quantrell and John Coger went out together, each losing his horse a mile from the battle-field. Will Haller and Gregg led a furious charge to the north, broke through Peabody's lines in that direction, dashed back by the barn of the morning's conflict, on past Swearingen's house, and then east again. As they struck the line under a steady fire, Kit Chiles, who was riding side by side with Cole Younger, felt his horse sink beneath him.    "I'm gone," he said to Younger." "No! courage Kit," and Cole dismounted there, helped him out from under his dead horse, and up behind him on his own. Thus they rode away, and to his dying hour Kit Chiles bore testimony with gratitude, that he owed his life to his intrepid comrade. This standing side by side with one another was Guerrilla tactics: they never abandoned their wounded if one could ride or walk, or even crawl. Sometimes three on one horse have been carried out from some disastrous melee; not infrequently back to back two have stood-one unhurt the other hurt too grievously to escape-and died together. Quantrell taught such comradeship; in his bivouacs and about his camp-fires he pictured to them what a blessed thing was devotion. Frank Ogden carried out Jarrette, Blunt carried out Hart, Poole carried out Haller. Those who rode the strongest horses picked up the heaviest among the dismounted men, and so on down this way in gradation, until not even so much as a wounded horse, not too badly hurt to travel, was left to the seven hundred Federals, still scouting through the brush, firing into the hollow, and wondering what had become of the encompassed Guerrillas.    Safely through the toils, and used up quite seriously in men and horses, Haller rode rapidly for the Harrisonville and Independence road, and reached it, after heavy skirmishing, at James Wilson's. Thlnce marching north to Dupre's, and concentrating finally at Major J. F. Stonestreet's, the command was disbanded until the following night, with the rendezvous agreed upon-the house of Fleming  Harris. Quantrell himself was one of the first to arrive, mounted on an old blind mare, saddleless and bridleless, John Coger leading her into camp with a rope.  Within a mile from the place of the fight, twenty cavalrymen overtook them, killed their horses, wounded Coger and drove each afoot into the timber, Quantrell walking with great pain.    After night, Coger stumbled upon a blind mare by accident, and as it was the best that could be done, Quantrell rode her bare-back, while he walked and led her-the blind emphatically leading the blind-for Coger had an old wound not entirely healed, and a new one, that though comparatively slight, gave him some trouble.     CHAPTER VIII. INDEPENDENCE.    QUANTRELL recovered slowly. His wound was more serious than he at first admitted, and to neglect there had succeeded erysipelas. Forced to change his positions in the brush often, and cut off frequently from needful medical attention, several weeks elapsed before his men could be got together again. Not idle, however, in the interval nor indifferent to events, they had worked faithfully for Col. Upton Hays, who was recruiting a regiment for the Confederate service. Colonel Buell, of soldierly character, honor and courage, held Independence with six hundred men. The citizens respected him because he was just; the Guerrillas because he was merciful; his soldiers because he was firm. Order and stability are the two necessities of a garrison. Buell was the same one day as another. A patriot without being a proscriptionist; a stern fighter who was not a hangman; a rigid executive officer without being an executioner-he sometimes was twice successful: once by his manhood and once through his magnanimity.    In pursuance of superior orders issued through his headquarters, every male citizen of Jackson county between the ages of eighteen and forty-five was required to take up arms and fight against the South. They did take up arms, but they did not fight against the South. Providence sent to their especial deliverance n giant by the name of Upton B. Hays-a military Moses indeed, who, raised up for a certain glorious work, died before reaching the promised land. Death smote him in the harness, and he fell where it was an honor to die.    Hays was of a family famous for great physical vigor and courage. A plainsman before he was a soldier, immensity had taught him self-reliance, and isolation that searching communion which decides and hardens character. Treachery was abhorrent to him, and baseness of heart aroused his indignation. Of enormous energy, commanding presence, sonorous voice. splendid horsemanship, he won men to him by the magnetism of a magnificent manhood, and held them there through the gentler gifts of appreciation and generosity. He understood the war, for he had summed it up early. He disputed nothing; he sang no good man's song by the cradle of a young Confederacy who had suspended the habeas corpus and was muttering of conscription; he only stipulated that every blow should be decisive. He believed that the people possessed no other Conviction than that of their emotion; that in revolution temerity was prudence; and that on desperate occasions there was no hope save in that despairing patriotism which risked everything with the idea of saving it.    Indefatigable in recruiting as ill other things, Colonel Hays soon had organized for active service the materials of as fine a regiment as ever followed a competent leader to war. It had need to be baptized; through baptism-that sort of baptism which picks out the bravest and the best and puts them in the fore front of the regiment to die-came the touching of elbow to elbow in battle, the winnowing that ever estopped a rout; tenacity, endurance, fatalism-that something of insanity which made them charge like Murat and die like Leoaillas.    Well up from his ugly wound, and anxious for battle air and exercise, Quantrell had sped the mustering cry from Guerrilla to Guerrilla until at the Flannery rendezvous not six of his trusty veterans were absent. Hays came also and talked of taking Independence. Between the two the plan was arranged, and ten days given to gather the forces and mould the bullets. Recruiting officers from the South were entering Missouri in every direction-Col. Gideon W. Thompson, Col. John T. Coffee, Col. Vard Cockrell, Capt. Jo. O. Shelby. Col. John T. Hughes, Col. S. D. Jackman- and it was necessary to strike a blow. The more resounding it was made the better. After a serious hurt, or when a bold dash left behind it a trail of clean fighting and killing, the Federals always concentrated. The little posts ran into the big ones. Scouting parties staid at borne for several days; on the arms of the heavier headquarters people there was crape. Fasting and prayer, of course, never came by way of propitiation, but cattle-stealing was less luxuriantly indulged in, and bedeviling citizens not so much of a frolic. But then the wind that ruffled so rudely the blue uniforms blew benedictions to the recruiting folk.      Borrowing three of Quantrell's old men-Cole Younger, Dick Yager and Boon Muir-and taking two of his own-William Young and Virgil Miller-Col. Hays concluded to make a tour of his cantonments.    Buell's order had put into the brush well nigh the entire arms-bearing population of Jackson county. On all the streams there were camps. Men drilled on the prairie edges nearest to the timber, and where the undergrowth was thickest there generally were silent ambuscades. The woods were inhabited. Women sewed in the shade of the trees; children sported among the leaves.      Uniformed as Federal soldiers, Col. Hays and his little party rode into Westport where there was a garrison fifty strong. Simulating a loyalty totally unfelt, the citizens had just given to the breeze a magnificent flag worth a hundred dollars. It flew high and free as he rode in; as he rode out it was trampled and torn. The fifty soldiers garrisoning Westport were part of Jennison's regiment, especially obnoxious to the citizens, and given up, more or less, to predatory excursions in the country round about. It was the same old story of splendid personal recklessness and prowess. As Hays trotted leisurely in at the head of his squad, an orderly at a corner saluted him, supposing him to be a Federal officer; the salute was returned. As Dick Yager followed on behind, the orderly, looking upon him only as a private, did not salute. "Why do you refuse?" asked Dick. "You are a fool," said the orderly. "But I am a fine shot," replied Yager, and he was, for he put a dragoon pistol ball fair through the man's forehead.    The Jayhawkers swarmed. Seizing upon houses, fifty men under cover fought five. Hays separated his soldiers and kept up an incessant fusillade. A German living in the place had boasted a few days before of a desire to lead a company of extermination against rebel women and children; it was an effective way to end the war, he said. Younger treed the Dahomey man in a h0use, which was barricaded, and swept the street in front of it, while Yager was battering down the door to get in.    The doomed man fought like a wolf, but they killed him in his den and flung his body out of a window. Then they ran fighting and separated. Hays cut the flag ropes and dragged the loyal banner after him as he galloped south, followed by Muir, Young and Miller; Younger and Yager took the Kansas City pike, ran north a mile and into one hundred cavalry coming up to understand the battle. Jayhawkers front and rear, and a blind lane running square to the right like a cul de sac. They turned into it; at the far end ::J:nll across it a heavy fence had just been built. Their pursuers yelled once in exaltation-they knew the barrier at the finish-and poured into the lane's mouth a flood of steeds and steel. But the heavy new rails were as pasteboard. Both horses-held hard together and massed, as it were, for the shock-launched themselves forward like a bolt from a catapult, and Younger and Yager stretched away and beyond in a free, full gallop.    The capture of Independence !laving been agreed upon, Hays asked of Quantrell some accurate information touching the strongest and best fortified points about the town. It was three days to the attack; the day before it was begun the information should be forthcoming. "Leave it to me," said Cole Younger, when the promise made to Hays had been repeated by Quantrell, "and when you report, you can report the facts. A soldier wants nothing else." The two men then separated. It was the 7th day of August, 1862.    On the 8th, about 10 o'clock in the morning, an old woman with gray hair and wearing spectacles, rode up to the public square from the south. Independence was alive with soldiers; several market wagons were about the streets; the trade in vegetables and the traffic in fruits was lively. This old woman was one of the ancient time. A faded sun-bonnet, long and antique, hid almost all the face. The riding-skirt, which once had been black, was now bleached; some tatters also abounded. and here and there an unsightly patch. On the horse was a blind bridle, the left rein leather and the right one rope.    Neither did it have a throat-latch. The saddle was a man's saddle, strong in the stirrups and fit for any service. Women resorted often to such saddles then; civil war had made many a hard thing easy. On the old lady's arm was a huge market basket, covered by a white cloth. Under the cloth were beets, garden beans and some summer apples. As she passed the first picket he jibed at her; "Good morning, grand-mother," he said. "Does the rebel crop need any rain out in your country?"    Where the reserve post was, the sergeant on duty took her horse by the bridle, and peered up under her bonnet and into her face. "Were you younger and prettier I might kiss you," he said. "Were I younger and prettier," the old lady replied, "I might box your cars for your impudence." "Oh! No! you old she-wolf, what claws you have for scratching!" and the rude soldier took her hand with an oath and looked at it sneeringly. She drew it away with such a quick motion and started her horse so rapidly ahead that he did not have time to examine it. In a moment he was probably ashamed of himself, and so let her ride on  uninterrupted. Once well in town no one noticed her any more. At the camp she was seen to stop and give three soldiers some apples out of her basket. The sentinel in front of Buell's headquarters was overheard to say to a comrade: "There's the making of four good bushwhacking horses yet in that old woman's horse;" and two hours later, as she rode back past the reserve picket post, the sergeant, still on duty, did not halt her himself, but caused one of his guards to do it; he was anxious to know what the basket contained, for in many ways of late arms and ammunition had been smuggled out to the enemy.    At first the old lady did not heed the summons to halt-that short, dry, rasping, ominous call which in all tongues appears to have the same sound; she did, however, shift the basket from the right arm to the left and straighten up in the saddle just the least appreciable bit. Another cry, and the old lady looked back innocently over one shoulder and snapped out: "Do you mean me?" By this time a mounted picket had galloped up to her, ranged alongside and seized the bridle of the horse. It was thirty steps back to the post, maybe, where the sergeant and eight men were down from their horses and the horses hitched. To the out-post it was a hundred yards, and a single picket stood there. The old lady said to the soldier, as he was turning her horse about and doing it roughly: "What will you have? I'm just a poor lone woman going peaceably to my home." "Didn't you hear the sergeant call for you, d-n you? Do you want to be carried back?" the sentinel made answer.    The face under the sun-bonnet transformed itself; the demure eyes behind their glasses grew scintillate. From beneath the riding-skirt a heavy boot emerged; the old horse in the blind bridle seemed to undergo an electric impulse; there was the gliding of the old hand which the sergeant had inspected into the basket, and a cocked pistol came out and was fired almost before it got straight. With his grasp still upon the reins of the old woman's bridle, the Federal picket fell dead under the feet of her horse. Then, stupefied, the impotent reserve saw a weird figure dash away down the road, its huge bonnet flapping in the wind, and the trail of an antique riding-skirt, split to the shoulders, streaming back as the smoke that follows a furnace. Coleman Younger had accomplished his mission. Beneath the bonnet and the bombazine was the Guerrilla, and beneath the white cloth of the basket and its apples and beets and beans, the unerring revolvers. The furthest picket heard the firing, saw the apparition, he thought himself of the devil, and took to the brush. That night Quantrell made his report to Hays, and the next night the mustering took place at Charles Coward's.    Col. John T. Hughes was there, a Christian who had turned soldier, and who fought as he prayed. As the author of Doniphan's Expedition to Mexico, he had planted some fruits in the fields of literature, and added some green things to the chaplets of war. The soldiers knew him as a hero. Constitutionally brave in the presence of men whom he wished to recruit, he added to intrepidity, recklessness.    At daylight, on the morning of the 11th, Hays, leading three hundred and fifty men, saw the spires of Independence loom up indistinctly through the morning mist. An attack was in process of consummation; some brave men were about to die. Quantrell led the advance; the Guerrillas, jauntily dressed, looked lithe and lean and tawny. Thanks to Younger, the leap had not to be made in the dark; spectres might be where the spires were, but not the unknown.    Due west a mile from the town, the garrison had a camp; about it were stone fences and broken ways-bad for cavalry. Buell had his headquarters in some strong houses, southwest of the square; guards were on duty about the town. Cole Younger led the advance. The east was yet dim and uncertain; the grasses and the earth smelt sweet; it was a blessing to live. The first picket-a quarter of a mile from the square-fired and ran, the pursuit thundering at his heels. Buell's guard at his headquarters fired on the advance, and Kit Chiles fell. " First his horse, then the rider; poor Kit," and Quantrell left the dead body to lie until the battle was decided.    The camp was in the midst of the long roll when Quantrell struck it; Haller shot down a drummer with uplifted stick. John Jarrette was first over a stone fence, running along in front of a line of tents, and as he alighted, he killed a big corporal at his tent door. The Federals rallied manfully and fought from the fences about their flanks, and from the broken ways and the hollows. Hays' men dismounted, and rushing up afoot, surrounded the encampment. Rock walls now replied to rock walls, and cover answered cover. Buell, pent up in the houses of his headquarters, fought stubbornly there with such forces as were left to him; the guards upon the streets had mostly been killed. When the people of the place awoke, in many directions dead men were visible.    When once fairly joined, the issue thereafter, at no moment was in doubt. The line of fire contracted about the doomed camp; the enterprise of the sappers was making way fast towards the doomed commander. Not a point in the hazardous game of attack had been lost. As Younger had traced upon a piece of paper, so were found the route, the streets, the guards, the camp, the defences, the strong places and the weak places, the Colonel's commodiou; dwelling house, and the sentinels' approachable barracks.    Hays relieved Quantrell at the stone walls, and Quantrell threw himself upon Buell. Buell fought from every door and window of his domicile. A hundred men in houses are terrible. If they fight, and if there is no artillery, they are murderous. Buell fought, and there was no artillery. Hays kept creeping slower and slower; the rifles of the woodsmen kept telling and telling. Quantrell could not advance-there were the houses that were no longer houses-those fortresses of the besieged.    Yager was for smoking them out; Poole suggested a keg of gunpowder; George l\Maddox, fire; Haller, fire; Jarrette, fire; the majority said fire-a wagon loaded with hay was brought and volunteers ran with it to the rear of an out-building and fired it speedily. The out-house caught; the roof of the fortress caught; the red heat eat its way downward; the ashes as they fell scorched and blistered, and then the calm, grave face of Buell blanched a little. He grappled with his fate, however, and fought the flames. Revolver vollies drove his men from the !'roof. He put himself at the head of a forlorn hope, and went at the double danger like a hero. Some wind blew. George Shepherd lifted his hat from his hot brow and felt it blow cool there: "God is here," he said reverently. "Hush," replied Poole, "God is everywhere." At that moment Colonel Hughes fell.    A great cheer from the camp now-a full, passionate, exultant cheer, and then not a gunshot more. All was over. Colonel Buell, no longer in command of a force, surrendered unconditionally. As he had done unto others, so in a greater degree did others do unto him. Black flag men were about him in great numbers, but not so much as a single upbraiding was ever heard from a Guerrilla's lips. If Quantrell's men could have been decorated for that day's fight, and if at review some typical thing that stood for glory could have passed along the ranks, calling the roll of the brave, there would have answered modestly, yet righteously: Haller, Gregg, Todd, Jarrette, Morris, Poole, Younger, James Tucker, Blunt, George Shepherd, Yager, Hicks George, Sim. Whitsett, Fletch. Taylor, John Ross, Dick Burns, Kit Chiles, Dick Maddox, Fernando Scott, Sam. Clifton, George Maddox, Sam. Hamilton, Press. Webb, John Coger, Dan. Vaughn, and twenty others, dead now, but dead in vain for their country. There were no decorations, however, but there was a deliverance. Crammed in the county jail, and sweltering in the midsummer's heat were old men who had been pioneers in the land, and young men who had been sentenced to die.    The first preached the Confederacy and it triumphant; the last to make it so enlisted for the war. These jail-birds, either as missionaries or militants, had work to do.         CHAPTER IX. LONE JACK.    AFTER Independence there was a lull of a few brief days. Kansas City drew in all of its outposts and showed a naked front to whoever would attack. The swoop of the eagles outside of it had alarmed the border; Kansas prairies might next resound with the iron feet of the marching squadrons. Recruiting officers were riding up from the South through all the summer days-some to tarry awhile in Jackson county, and some to borrow guides from Quantrell and strike unguarded fords along the river. Enthusiasm-that virile breeder of volunteers-was abroad in Missouri. Even in her remotest extremities the Confederacy's life blood was in vigorous circulation; ossification at the heart commenced only when a factious Congress began to put on crape at the mention of martial law.    En route to regions where battalions grew, Col. John T. Coffee had entered the Southwest from Arkansas. He had been the stern nurse of hardy men. The war found him a politician and made him a patriot. He had great popularity through much patience with the people. Men of the scythe-blade and the plow, men who mowed in the lowlands and reaped on the hillsides were not damned on the drill ground and badgered at the inspection because Hardee and heathen with all too many were synonymous terms. Round-shouldered riflemen shot none the worse for dressing up badly in parade with square-shouldered giants, and the stammerer-who to keep some tryst or to receive some blessing begged for a furlough-got no aloes at least in the little wine of human nature the service let be doled out to him. Coffee recruited a regiment.    Col. Vard Cockrell, preceding Coffee a day's march or two, awaited a junction at the Osage River. Cockrell was a Christian who sometimes preached. His revolutionary ideas were but a form of his evangelical faith. He believed the devil the author of all evil in So spiritual point of view, the Abolitionists the cause of all the trouble in a political. To fight both was superlative orthodoxy. In battle it is believed that he prayed notably short prayers like Lord Ashley made at Edgehill, which battle was fought between Charles I. and the Puritans: "Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me. March on, boys!" Like Coffee, Cockrell also recruited a regiment.    Captain J. O. Shelby-only a captain then, leading Cockrell's advance-had marched from Tupelo, Mississippi, on foot, through Arkansas on foot, into Missouri on foot, and still northward and northward on foot until he struck the horse line. The most of those who followed him had no beards. He found them ruddy country lads with here and there a city's eager, sallow face, and he left them Indians. Shelby understood war both as an instinct and a religion. He did not play the great man; he was one. Some soldiers understood the movement solely of the revolution; Shelby both its movement and its direction. Some had its intoxication; he both its intoxication and its love. Its energy, agitation, generosity, intrepidity-all were his; but nothing of its ferocity. His genius was his audacity; but it was more. He saw God in men and he used them; a fatalist, and yet he left nothing to chance; ardent, he made his enthusiasm subsidiary to his thought; feeling the passions, he yet represented the superiorities of the epoch; young, older officers trusted their interests and ambitions to his keeping; a giant, he lifted his soldiers up to him; after caressing popularity, he braved it as a wild beast which he dared to de\'our him; a general, beyond the mechanism of a division he grasped the ideal; courageous, his intrepidity had soul; he had passions, but he was generous; crushing incapacity, he also plucked favoritism up by the roots and out of his own breast; he entered Missouri s. captain, and he left it a brigadier general, carrying his brigade with him.    Col. S. D. Jackman, part Guerrilla and part regular, carried over to the line the circumspection of the ambuscade. He fought to kill, and to kill without paying the price that ostentatious fighting invariably costs. Patient, abiding as a. rock in the tide of battle; satisfied with small gains, but not carried away by large ones; serene under any sky, and indomitable to the end of the play, he also recruited a regiment which afterwards grew into a brigade.    Col. Charles Tracy-lying along the southern border of the State for several months, waiting for a dash-hurried up with the crowd and threw himself in the van of the recruiting service. Indefatigable; once an Indian fighter; on a trail like a Comanche, and in the darkness like a night hawk; winning with young men and enterprising with brave ones; a cavalryman by education and a leader through great vitality and perception, he gathered up a regiment in the midst of his enemies, and had it baptized before it was turned.    Col. D. C. Hunter came also from his lair, as a grizzly might, where the winter had been hard and the deep snows frozen. In gaps in the Boston :Mountains he had held on to roads until their names grew evil, and on to passes until Federal detachments swore the devil was there. He was a still hunter. No pomp, nor circumstance, nor rattling scabbards made women turn and curiosity prick out its neck when Hunter marched down to a fight. Everything was matter of fact; so many rounds, so many killed. To-morrow was to take care of itself; to-day belonged to clean guns and dry powder. Eat-certainly, when there was anything to eat; sleep-most assuredly, when sleep could be had. If neither was possible, then patience and another round or two at the enemy. Such a man of course had no difficulty in getting a regiment. Coffee, Cockrell, Tracy, Hunter and Jackman, therefore having communicated with Hays-commenced recruiting. Neither of these men desired a battle. The brush of Western Missouri was full of Southern men, driven from their homes by the militia. Little camps in the counties of Jackson, Clay, Platte, Lafayette, Johnson, Cass, Bates and Ray, sent their squads daily to either officer-sent fours, twos, single volunteers, bent only upon getting to the regular army and getting arms after they reached there. Certainly, therefore, it was not tactics for the Confederates to hunt for a fight, much less to take the chances of a doubtful one.    Even the Guerrillas, as desperate as the nature of their services had become, saw a single company swelled nearly to a regiment. Establishing a rendezvous first in the neighborhood of Blue Springs, and next at the residence of Luther Mason, three hundred splendid young fellows came trooping in to Quantrell. Jarrette commanded one company, Gregg one, Scott one, and Haller the old original organization. For the time Quantrell had a battalion. Todd was lieutenant under Haller, Coleman Younger under Jarrette, Hendrix under Gregg, and Gilkey under Scott. Of the above, Quantrell is dead, Gilkey dead, Haller dead, Hendrix dead, Todd dead-all slain in desperate battle.    The fall of Fort Sumter, like a huge mine, had exploded the passions of a continent. Missouri, hearing the deep and portentous reverberations, listened with her hand upon her sword. She had politicians but no statesmen; determination but no unanimity. Her Governor, reared in the facile and compromising school of American Democracy, showed a gloved hand to those who kept perilous ward in the St. Louis Arsenal.    Beneath all its velvet, however, there was no iron. Three days after Lyon took command he laughed; as he looked city-ward he was bland. In a week he was sullen and dangerous, and began to show his teeth. In a month he was vicious and shed the blood of women in the streets of St. Louis. It may have been necessary. Trades-people and farmers need death dashed against their eyes in some terrible way to understand revolution.    Far west in the State some hastily gathered volunteers met the United States dragoons under Sturgis. Retreating sullenly, the dragoons turned once fairly to bay and Halloway and McClannahan fell. Another necessity in this that it taught younger officers how to die. The issue was made ; blood had been spilt in the East and in the West; Governor Jackson was a fugitive; his young men were mustering; the din of preparation resounded throughout the State, and Lexington was named as a mustering place.    Hither came a young man leading a cavalry company. His uniform was attractive and differed only from that of the men in the single point of a feather. Women lifted their eyes as he passed and said: "How handsome he is." Men gazed after him and his uniform and said complacently: "He dresses like a soldier." Quite a difference, truly, in the opinion expressed. One reasoned from the head, and the other from the heart.    This uniformed company had something of drill, something of discipline, more of stalwart vigor and bearing. Its commander was Jo. O. Shelby, swarthy as an Arab, brown-eyed, loved of the conflict, and having over him, as an invisible aureole, the halo of an hundred battles.    The weeks and the war grew old together. Through Carthage, through Oak Hills, through Sugar Creek, through Elk Horn, this man led his followers, and those who fought him best will bear witness that only at long intervals did any enemy see Jo. Shelby's back.    Shiloh lit all the Southern cotton-fields with fire, and Johnston fell with the beautiful corpse of victory dead upon his dead, cold heart. 'When the burial bugles sounded, mistress and lover were buried together. And Farmington followed, and a great retreat, and in the rear marched Shelby, the jaunty uniforms stained with mud of Corinth trenches-the flowing feather drooping in the rain of Corinth bivouacs. The sunshine was alone upon their bayonets and in their faces.  The first glistened all along the route to Tupelo, the last lit up with a great joy when by the camp fires it was told how their captain had been ordered to march two thousand miles into Missouri-march to the river-to the Missouri river-to halt there, fight there, recruit there, and return from there a Colonel commanding.    From a Captain to a Colonel is a rugged way upwards at times. Every step that Shelby took ran over in blood. He had little faith in battle, where nobody was killed, and he valued his fields by the number of the dead upon them. The richest acres were those where the wreck lay thickest, and where, on either flank, "men's lives fell off like snow."    Past the Mississippi, fretted with iron islands; past White River, black with the sombre fate of the Mound City; past Little Rock, listening to a siren's song, and dreaming of an early peace; past the Arkansas, sickly with conscripts; up upon the borders of Missouri, the promised land, he came, this leader Shelby, having in his hands a last commission from Earl Van Dorn, that peerless Lancelot, over whom the famous funeral oration might have been pronounced when they carried him away and buried him in Joyeuse Guard, the truest, noblest, simplest ever uttered: "Ah! Sir Lancelot, there thou liest that never wert matched of earthly hands. Thou wert the fairest person, and the good-liest of any that rode in the press of Knights; thou wert the truest to thy sworn brother of any that buckled on the spur; and thou wert the faithfulest of any that have loved women; most courteous wert thou, and gentle of all that but in hall among dames; and thon wert the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever laid spear in the rest." "Patience! It is of the Lone Jack battle I write, but all things must have a beginning. Had there been no Shelby, there would have been no Lone Jack battle.   With this commission, therefore, of Gen. Earl Van Dorn in his hands, Shelby waited two brief days on the Missouri border, next door to Arkansas.    With his brown eyes fixed on the buff sash of a Brigadier, Shelby led Cockrell's advance with a speed that annihilated distance, and gave no time for fatigue. If he slept at all, he slept in the saddle. For food, the men drew as rations ten roasting-ears a day. There was no time to kill or to cook what might be eaten.    Preceding this march by a dozen summer days, Col. John T. Coffee had come with his irregular cavalry, and news drifted back of broken skirmishes wherein he was worsted. Shooting at long range and not of necessity always, Coffee's scant ammunition had grown scantier, and hemmed in upon the Osage river, he had sent a bold borderer forward praying for help and succor in extremity. Cockrell was in Johnson county when the messenger came. Coffee was southward still some thirty miles. "The horses are tired, the men are tired, we have little time. Shall we countermarch, Shelby?" "Yes, if it takes the last soldier, and the last horse, and the last cartridge. Fall in! Trot-march!" And the black plume galloped back thirty miles, and the brown eyes had found a battle-light, and the bronzed face smiled only at intervals now. Coffee was not a prudent man always, and whether knee deep or breast deep in danger, Shelby meant to cut him out or die there.    The rescue, however, cost no gunpowder. The stream, which was at first merely a rivulet, had become to be a river. The tide set strongly in towards the west again, and divided only upon the line of Jackson county-Coffee and Cockrell going to Independence, Shelby to "Waverly, where a massed regiment of Confederates awaited him.    And now the work of Shelby in the Lone Jack battle: Cockrell, left to himself and his own resources, would not have countermarched. Coffee, without succor and a swift column to help him, might have perished. There would, consequently, have been no commingling of forces, no aggressive movements on the part of Cockrell's weak detachment, no attack anywhere, and in the end a distant bow to the resolute Federals keeping grim watch and ward upon the Sni hills, and holding Lone Jack and all the country roundabout.    It was an August day, hot but with some wind. God had blessed the earth; the harvests were abundant. On the afternoon of the 13th some clouds began to gather about Lone Jack, a small village in the eastern portion of Jackson county. Once a lone black jack tree stood there-taller than its companions and larger than any near to it; from this tree the town took its name. The clouds that were seen gathering there were cavalrymen.    Succoring recruits in every manner possible, and helping them on to rendezvous by roads, or lanes, or watercourses, horsemen acquainted with the country kept riding continually up and down. A company of these, on the evening of the 15th, were in the village of Lone Jack. Cockrell was also in the neighborhood, but not visible. Coffee was there also, and Tracy, Jackman, Hunter and Hays-that is to say, within striking distance.    Major Emory L. Foster, doing active scouting duty in the region round about Lexington, had his headquarters in the town. The capture of Independence had been like a blow upon the cheek; he would avenge it. He knew how to fight. There was dash about him; he had enterprise; he believed in espl'it dlt corps; prairie life had enlarged his vision and he did not see the war like a martinet; he felt within him the glow of generous ambition; he loved his uniform for the honor it had; he would see about that Independence business-about that Quantrell living between the two Blues and raiding the west about those gray recruiting folks riding up from the South about the tales of ambuscades that were told eternally of Jackson county, and of the toils spread for unwary Jayhawkers. He had heard, too, of the company which halted a moment in Lone Jack as it passed through, and of course it was Quantrell.    It was six o'clock-the hour when the Confederates were there-and 8 o'clock when Col. Foster marched in, leading nine hundred and eighty-five cavalry, with two pieces of Rabb's Indiana battery-a battery much celebrated for tenacious gunners and accurate firing. Cockrell knew Foster well; the other Confederates knew nothing about him. He was there, however, and that was positive proof enough that he wanted a fight. Cockrell, Hays, Hunter, Tracy, Coffee and Jackman had between them about nine hundred men. Coffee with two hundred men did not arrive in time to participate in the fight, and this contretemps simplified the situation thus: Seven hundred Confederates-armed with shot guns, horse pistols, squirrel rifles, regulation guns, and what not-attacked nine hundred and eighty-five Federals in a town for a position, and armed with Spencer rifles and Colt's revolvers, dragoon size.    There was also the artillery. Lone Jack sat quietly in the green of its emerald prairies, its orchards in fruit and its harvests goodly. On the west was timber, and in this timber a stream ran musically and peacefully along. To the east the prairies  undulated, their grass waves crested with sunshine. On the north there were groves in which birds abounded. In some even the murmuring of doves was heard, and an infinite tremor ran over all the leaves as the winds stirred the languid pulse of summer into fervor.    In the center of the town a large hotel made a strong fortification. The house, from being a tavern, had become to be a redoubt. From the top the stars and stripes floated proudly a tri-color that had upon it then more of sunshine than of blood.    Later the three colors had become four. On the verge of the prairie nearest the town a hedgerow stood as a line of infantry dressed for battle. It was plumed on the sides with tawny grass. The morning broke upon it and upon armed men crouching there, with a strange barred banner and with guns at a trail. Here Bohannon waited, his calm eyes fixed on the stark redoubt of the Cave House and eager for the signal.    On the north and northwest there were cornfields as well as groves. In the cornfields Hays held his men in the hollow of his two hands-that is to say, perfectly under his control. The dew upon his beard glistened. It was not yet five o'clock. In the east the sleepy soul of the sunshine had not yet clothed itself with the sweet, gracious wings of warmth and moisture. The great face of the dawn was unveiled and looked down upon the earth tenderly. It was that sacred hour when the faint, universal stir of awakening life gives glory to God and grandeur to nature. No white dimple stirred among the corn, Hays' men were so still. The low ripple of the leaves had a tremor and a shiver that were ominous. By and by if the cast a sunrise-city was open-gated and all unfastened a golden door. The sun would be up in an hour.    Joining Hays on the left was Cockrell, and the detachments of Cockrell, Hays, Rathburn and Bollannon. Their arms were as varied as their uniforms. It was a duel they were going into and each man had the gun he could handle best. From the hedge-row, from the green-growing corn, from the orchards and the groves the soldiers could not see much, save the flag flying skyward on the redoubt of the Cave Honse.    At five o'clock a solitary gunshot alarmed camp and garrison, and outlying videttes, and all the soldiers face to face with imminent death. No one knew thereafter how the fight commenced.    It was Missourian against Missourian-neighbor against neighbor-the rival flags waved over each, and the killing went on. This battle has about it a strange fascination. The combatants were not numerous, yet they fought as men seldom fight in detached bodies. The same fury extended to an army would have ended in annihilation. A tree was a fortification. A hillock was an ambush. The corn fields from being green became to be lurid. Dead men were in the groves. The cries of the wounded came up from the apple orchards. All the houses in the town were garrisoned. It was daylight upon the prairies, yet there were lights in the windows-the light of musket flashes.    The grim redoubt of the Cave House grew hotter and hotter until it flared out in a great gust of fire. There was a woman there -Mrs. Cuve-young, beautiful, a mother. She tried to escape, but muskets hemmed her in. Corpses lay in her path upon the right hand and upon the left. There was blood upon her feet, and a great terror in her soft, feminine eyes. She did not· even cry out. In one sublime moment the tender young matron had caught a heroism not of this earth. In the next she was dead upon her own doorstep, a bullet through her maternal breast. Oh War! War!    There is not much to say about the fight in the way of description. The Federals were in Lone Jack; the Confederates had to get them out. House fighting and street fighting are always desperate. Cool men allied to walls defy everything except fire. The bullet rain that in an open field would scarcely penetrate, in the angles and protuberances or a street is a tempest.    Where once were curtains, white or damask-transfigured faces, powder-scorched; where once were latch-strings gaping muzzles; among the roses-dead men; where lovers lingered late and trystings were sweet or stolen-pitiful pale faces, wan in the light that never was on sea or shore. Smoke came from chimneys-marksmen were there; at the garden gates skirmishers crouched; upon the street corners companies concentrated; the hotel was a hospital, later a holocaust; the cannoneers stood by their guns and died there; and over all rose and shone a blessed summer sun, while the airy fingers of the breeze ruffled the oak leaves and tuned the swaying branches to the sound of a psalm.    The gray coats crept nearer. On the east, west, north or south Hays, Cockrell, Tracy, Jackman, Rathburn, or Hunter gained ground. Farmer lads in their first battle began gawky and ended grenadiers. Old plug hats rose and fell as the red fight ebbed and flowed; the shotgun's heavy boom made clearer still the rifle's sharper crack; under the powder-pall boyish faces shone in the glare with the bearded ones. An hour passed; the struggle had lasted since daylight.    Foster fought his men splendidly. Wounded once, he did not make complaint;  wounded again, he kept his place; wounded the third time, he stood with his men until courage and endurance only prolonged a sacrifice. Once Haller, commanding thirty of Quantrell's old men, swept up to the guns and over them, the play of their revolvers being as the play of the lightning in a summer cloud. He could not hold them, brave as he was. Then Jackman rushed at them again and bore them backward twenty paces or more. Counter-charged, they hammered his grip loose and drove him down the hill. Then Hays and Hunter-with the old plug hats and the wheezy old rifles finished the throttling; the lions were done roaring.    Tracy had been wounded, Hunter wounded, Hays wounded, Captains Bryant and Bradley killed, among the Confederates, together with thirty-six others, and one hundred and thirty-four wounded; among the Federals, Foster, the commander, was nigh unto death; his brother, Captain Foster, shot mortally died afterwards; one hundred and thirty-six dead lay about the streets and houses of the town, and five hundred and fifty wounded made up the aggregate of a fight, numbers considered, as desperate and bloody as any that ever crimsoned the annals of a civil war. A few over two hundred breaking through the Confederate lines on the south, where they were weakest, rushed furiously into Lexington, Haller in pursuit as some beast of prey, leaping upon everything which attempted to make a stand between Lone Jack and Wellington.    Dies irce! The moan that went up through Poictiers and Aquitaine when at Lussac bridge the lance head of a Breton squire found the life of John Chandos, had counterpart at Kansas City and all the country round about. Again did the little posts run into the big ones. Commanders turned pale. A mighty blow seemed impending, and lest this head or that head felt the trip-hammer, all the heads kept wagging and dodging. Burris got out of Cass county; Jennison hurried into Kansas; the Guerrillas kept a sort of open house, and the recruits-drove after drove and mostly unarmed, hastened southward. Then the Federal wave-which had at first receded beyond all former boundaries, flowed back again and inundated Western Missouri. Quantrell's nominal battalion-yielding to the pressure of the exodus-left him only the old guard as a rallying point. It was necessary again to reorganize. Gregg was made First Lieutenant; Todd, Second; Scott, Third; Blunt. Orderly Sergeant; Jam.es Tucker, First Duty Sergeant; Younger, Second; Hendrix, Third; Poole, Fourth; James Little, First Corporal; Dick Burnes, Second; Hicks George, Third, and Hi. George, Fourth. After this re-organization, the Guerrillas stripped themselves for steady fighting. Incidents and personages suited the epoch. Federal troops were everywhere; infantry at the posts, cavalry on the war path.    The sombre defiance mingled with despair did not come until 1864; in 1862 the Guerrillas laughed as they fought. And they fought by streams and bridges, where roads crossed and forked and where trees or hollows were. They fought from houses and hay-stacks j on foot and on horseback; at night, when the weird laughter of the owls could be heard in the thickets; in daylight, when the birds sang as they found sweet seed. The black flag was being woven, but it had not yet been unfurled.    Breaking suddenly out of Jackson county, Quantrell raided Shawneetown, Kansas, and captured its garrison of fifty militia. Then at Olathe, Kansas, the next day, the right hand did what the left one finished so well at Shawneetown; seventy-five Federals surrendered here. Each garrison was paroled and set free -each garrison save seven from Shawneetown; these were Jennison's Jayhawkers and they had to die. A military execution is where one man kills another; it is horrible. In battle one does not see death. He is there surely-he is in that battery's smoke, on the crest of that hill fringed with the fringe of pallid faces, under the hoofs of the horses, yonder where the blue or the gray line creeps onward trailing ominous guns-but his cold, calm eyes look at no single victim. He kills there yes but he does not discriminate. Harold, the dauntless, or Robin, the hunchback-what matters a crown or a crutch to the immortal reaper?    The seven men rode into Missouri from Shawneetown puzzled; when the heavy timber along the Big l3lue was reached and a halt had, they were praying. Quantrell sat upon his horse looking at the Kansans. His voice was unmoved,' his countenance perfectly indifferent as he ordered: "Bring ropes; four on one tree-three on another." All of a sudden death stood in the midst of them, and was recognized. One poor fellow gave a cry as piercing as the neigh of a frightened horse.    Two trembled, and trembling is the first step towards kneeling. They had not talked any save among themselves up to this time, but when they saw Blunt busy with some ropes, one spoke up to Quantrill: "Captain, just a word: the pistol before the rope; a soldier's before a dog's death. As for me, I'm ready." Of all the seven this was the youngest-how brave he was! The prisoners were arranged in a line, the Guerrillas opposite to them. They had confessed to belonging to Jennison, but denied the charge of killing and burning. Quantrell hesitated a moment. His blue eyes searched each face from left to right and back again, and then he ordered: "Take six men, Blunt, and do the work. Shoot the young man and hang the balance."    Hurry away! The oldest man there-some white hairs were in his beard-prayed audibly, Some embraced. Silence and twilight, as twin ghosts, crept up the river bank together. Blunt made haste, and before Quantrell had ridden far he heard a pistol shot. He did not even look up; it affected him no more than the tapping of a woodpecker. At daylight the next morning a wood-chopper going early to work, saw six stark figures swaying  in the river breeze. At the foot of another tree was a dead man and in his forehead a bullet-hole-the old mark..     When in every hour in every·day a man holds his life out in his open hands, he becomes at last to be a fatalist; and fatalism is grand. It stands like a rock. It abides the worst without a tremor. Fernando Scott was one of those men whom revolutions cast up, sometimes to be Titans and sometimes monsters. Todd said that he did not know the meaning of the word fear, and of all the men Todd led or rode with, he wept for Scott alone the night they buried him.    There came one day to Quantrell an old man, probably sixty years of age, who was tremulous and garrulous. He had a boy, he said, just turned of eighteen, who was his main stay and his sole reliance. Trouble had been heavy upon him of late. His wife had died, a daughter had died, the Jayhawkers had driven off his stock, and now the militia had arrested his boy. Would Quantrell help him to get his son back? He was in Jail in Independence; they were cruel to him; his old heart was desolate and his old home was without a prop. Quantrell listened coldly. He had no prisoners to exchange for his son, and even if he had, he was not giving soldiers for citizens. Why was not his son in the army?    It was pitiful to watch the look of hopeless despair which came to the old man's face when Quantrell's practical reply pierced his fond illusions like some sharp thing that froze as it cut. He slid down from a sitting posture to a crouching one and began to moan helplessly, tears forcing themselves through his withered fingers as he tried in vain to cover his eyes with his hands. Some of the Guerrillas turned away their heads; others of them jeered at him. Scott did neither. He went to the old man kindly and lifted him up. "Do not despair," he said, almost as gently as a saint might have pleaded with a sinner, and you shall have your boy. Silence, men! Do you not  that the old man is crying?" Quantrell humored his Lieutenant.    He controlled his desperadoes by seeming not to control them. his discipline was rigid, but iron as it was, it never clanked, or corroded, or hurt one's self-respect. Independence was strongly garrisoned again, and a picquet station on the Blue Springs road had at the outpost four men, and at the reserve sixteen-twenty in all. Five horsemen in the dusk of a summer evening, were riding up from towards the east-very quiet for comrades and very watchful for people who seemed to have business there. If a moon had been in the sky, by the light of it one could have recognized the faces of Scott, Will Haller, Cole Younger, Sim Whitsett and David Poole, volunteers all in Scott's endeavor to solace the last days of an old man whom he did not even know. Upon the left flank of the road on which were the picquets, they were maneuvering to get between the reserves and the outpost. One thing alone favored them-they knew the country. It was a gentle night, all starlight and summer odor. The men might not have to fight-no matter, they were there just the same. A little halt was called, and Scott spoke low to the group: " I thank you, men, for corning here. If you asked me why the old man's tale stirred me so, and wily the yearning was so strong to do a good act, in perhaps a bad way, I could not tell you for my life. Maybe it Is fate. Do any of you understand what fate is? The other day at Lone Jack, you know, we charged the cannon, under Haller there. About the guns it was hell, wasn't it, Bill? I had four revolvers, and never a shot left. A Federal at the corner of a house, not twenty yards away fired at me six times and missed me every time, though I did not dodge. That was fate." But the Guerrillas were in no mood to moralize. Poole broke in grimly: "That was d-d bad shooting." The poor fellow's consoling castle fell as walnut leaves before a frost, and he added but this: "They won't give the boy up for less than two, perhaps for less than four. Their militia are not set much store by, even among the commanders of them; but the prisoner is a citizen and not a Guerrilla; a Guerrilla is not for exchange at any price. We must have the outpost intact, if possible."    "Hush!" said Younger, in a whisper, his head turned to one side as a stag's head, "I hear horses." Behind them from toward the reserves, the steady tramp of regular feet were audible, the gait being a walk. "It is the relief," spoke up 'Whitsett, in a moment; and "follow me," was heard from Scott, as he hurried from the road into the brush and drew up again in its heavy shadow, every man peering forward and waiting eagerly.    One file, eight, twenty, fifty, a hundred-instead of a relief piquet going forward to the outpost, it was a marching column of Federal cavalry moving the Guerillas did not know where.    What a noisy column! Some sang from the rear, and others from the front. Jest, and joke, and badinage flew along from squadron to squadron. Quantrell was everything-a horse thief, murderer, scoundrel, villain, man-eater, cannibal, devilfish.    They would roast him, draw him, quarter him, boil him in oil, flay him alive-they only wanted to find him and get one fair chance at him. Scott's little band heard all this militia ebullition and laughed in their throats a leather-stocking laugh. Let once a mare whinney, however, or a horse neigh, and then those who laughed best would have to laugh last.    The rear guard of the marching column was barely out of sight when Scott fell in behind it. As he neared the Independence outpost it did not even halt him; luck certainly was his to-night. "One each for all of you, none for me," Scott said, a little regretfully, as he was upon the four militia sitting quietly in their saddles, "and now to work, kill only in extremity." There was no need to kill. In an instant Haller bad a pistol to one bead, Whitsett to another, Younger to a third, and Poole to the fourth; the excitement of the capture was scarcely enough to add to it interest. The Federals, confident to the end that the Guerrillas were but a portion of the command which bad just passed, did not so much as even imagine an enemy until they were powerless. It was best so. Flight could not have saved them, and resistance such as theirs must have been, meant simply sheep against the shearers. When disarmed and dismounted, the Federals stood amazed in the presence of their captors. Scott asked who of the five would carry them to Quantrell.    At that name a great fear fell upon the prisoners. One whispered to another, but his excitement made him audible: "My God, Joe, has it come to this at last? Quantrell! Quantrell! Why Quantrell is but another name for death." The leaven was at work. The two trees by the Big Blue had begun to bear other fruit than the six men the wood-chopper found of a summer morning as he went singing to his work.    No one would go back; they had tasted the strange thing of a capture without a fight, and it was bitter to the mouth. "Draw lots," said Scott, "and if it falls upon me, I will go hack." Whitsett held the hat, Haller put the paper in. They all drew, and Poole drew the slip with the word guard on it. "Fall in, milish!" he cried out contentedly, as he saw his luck, and away they all marched through the night. He knew what Scott intended to do, but he had drawn. Scott's quick soldier eye saw that with the silent capture of the out-post the reserve was uncovered, and he would beat it up a little. Not satisfied with doing thoroughly what he had but small hopes of doing at all, he must needs go further if he fared worse. Luck still abode with him, he said, and he would press it. Soldiers also have this term in common with gamblers-the only difference in the dice being the difference between lead and ivory. It was scant three hundred yards between the reserve and the furthest post, had yet between the two a stream ran which had very steep banks but no bridge. In an enemy's country, also. no intermediate sentinels divided up the distance. The out-post-if it was not actually cut off from its reserve-was almost wholly inaccessible to its succor. Scott saw all this as he rode down and spoke of it: "These militia do nothing right; they do not even know how to kill a gentleman." But they knew bow to be on guard. As the four Guerrillas emerged from the darkness into the light, a sergeant with the reserve halted them. "Say nothing," whispered Scott, "do as I do, and when I draw my pistol, charge." Then speaking up to the sergeant, though still advancing, he replied roughly: "Why do you question us? We have just passed through your lines and have been sent back with special dispatches to the Colonel at the post. Give way." He was upon them as he finished and his pistol was out. So close indeed was he that when he shot the sergeant in the middle of the forehead the powder singed his eyebrows. It looked mightily afterwards like a massacre. But ten of the sixteen pickets were mounted, while those on horseback had scarcely time to fire a gun. No one led. 'When the sergeant fell there was a stampede-a wild. helpless, sudden rending away, no two taking the same direction, and on the east the town of Independence was absolutely uncovered.    Scott's men were not scratched. Seven dead lay about the bivouac fires, and several wounded hid themselves in the brush. By noon the next day the old man's boy was back again at the homestead, Scott's four militia buying him out after II. lengthy parley.    Those late summer and early autumn days were busy battle days. Men fought mere than they plowed; there were more forays than furrows. Todd took thirty men and went down along the Harrisonville and Kansas City road and built him an ambuscade. Getting together forty or fifty picks and forty or fifty shovels he dug a series of trenches along the highway deep enough to shelter a hundred men. From the first one to the last one it was a hundred yards-a line of fire that would eat its way furiously through any column. Back of these trenches was the dry bed of a stream-a natural bomb proof for the horses.    Todd did things in this way generally j he had Scipio's eye and the brawn of Spartacus. Working at night and lying by in the day, the birds even knew nothing of the traps and dead-falls this indefatigable hunter was setting and digging for larger game than any that had ever abounded since on Big Creek the buffalo grazed.    Two hundred cavalry with ten wagons were marching up from Henry county to Leavenworth. New at the business, Quantrell's name had only came to them as the name of Jonathan Wild or John A. Murrell. Todd let them pass along until their line lay against his line, and then the rifle-pits became a tornado. All that portion of the column in front of them was torn out as a fierce wind tears a track through the trees, the two bleeding ends striving helplessly to unite, the wagon train being the ligature. But while Todd was still keeping his holes in the ground a veritable furnace, Scott put torches to the wagons and added to the terrors of the ambuscade the demoralization of a conflagration. Less the vehicles and seventy wounded and dead men, the stricken remnant of a once dashing column gained the friendly shelter of Kansas City.    The rifle pits remained. For days and days it was silent there, and from the torn earth some grass began to grow.    Gregg would see what sort of a footing these gave a Guerrilla who had some scruples about fighting at odds greater than twenty to two. He came one evening late, with Haller and Scott, and prepared to keep a single vigil at least upon the lonesome water-course. There was a young moon. The night, ju1liJant with singing things, seemed to dwell upon peace in every chirp, or breeze. or song, or monotone. Nature was glad; its harmonies filled all space and its narcotism all the senses. Even the Guerrillas felt the Katydid's droning opiate, and the water's running lullaby. Some stretched themselves at ease where the shadows were heaviest. and some-yielding to the witcheries of the hour-let memory re-establish the past and re-people it with faces, and vows, and pieces of rings.    All were silent.    Suddenly a pistol-shot from the south, a scattering volley, and then the loud clatter of resounding hoofs transfigured the dreamers; the lotos leaves had become laurel. Gregg had sent George Shepherd south along the road before dismounting, and everything must be safe there. It was Shepherd's pistol shot that he had heard, and the galloping of Shepherd's horse. Watching with all the eyes he had, and  especially alert and vigilant, this choice scout had not seen an infantry line approaching him through the brush, however, nor did he know that beyond a turn in the road three hundred cavalrymen had ridden up, had dismounted, and were even now marching forward to surprise the surprisers; that the hunted were hunting the hunters. But that he was a man of extraordinary coolness and quickness, Shepherd must have fallen without alarming his comrades. Infantry were all around and about him.    It looked to him strange afterwards, but he had not even heard the fall of a footstep in the bushes or the breaking of a twig among the undergrowth. All he understood then was the rising up of a tall form close to his right stirrup, the leveling of a gun barrel, and the short, sententious word "Surrender!" As still as the creeping had been, it was yet no match for Shepherd's splendid presence of mind. He threw himself forward on his horse, shot the dismounted trooper in the breast us he turned, took the fire of all who saw that the game was up, and then at a long, swinging gallop rushed. away to alarm his comrades. That night saw a fight the whole war failed to surpass with any stubborn combat. Especially to take a hand against Quantrell and help drive him to the wall, Major Hubbard, of the Sixth Missouri Federal Cavalry, came up from Clinton county. He was one of the best fighters the militia produced. He was not afraid to charge; he could stand up square and take and give, man for man; he saw only the soldier in the Guerrilla; he meant to get on Quantrell's track and keep on it until he found him.    As he rode up gaily from the south some one met him north of Harrisonville-some one who knew of the rifle pits--and described accurately the whole lay of the land. Cavalry could not operate against them, the spy said, but infantry might. They were now held by about fifty Guerrillas. This was the substance of the report Hubbard heard Borne few miles from the ambuscade, and he began to make ready at once to carry it by assault. Failing to silence the single picquet on guard in front of him, he dashed ahead, firing fiercely when he reached the range. Gregg did not return it until he was completely enveloped. Ignorant of the enemy's number, he cared not for further enlightenment. It was first fight, and fight, and fight.    When the moon went down the fight was still raging. There could be no maneuvering. Inside the rifle-pits were the Guerillas; outside the militia. All were bent on killing. Gregg's men spoke very little; the Federals scarcely any more. Now and then a fierce yell would usher in a savage rush, and once or twice a bugle sounded. Gregg held on. One charge reached even to his parapets, if such the earth could be called piled in front of the trenches, but it found no lodgment. The beating of a furious revolver rain full in their faces drove the militia back. They seemed not to care for the horses; if they knew anything about them they did not molest them. Hubbard was also a tenacious fighter, as well as a dashing one. He held on to that wild night's work for three mortal hours, charging every twenty minutes and encouraging his men by voice and example.    At last he hauled off and mounted, made a detour around that vengeful spot hidden as a sinister thing in mid highway, and hurried onward to Kansas City, leaving his dead, fifty-two in all, to be buried by the citizens, and his wounded in every house for a dozen miles. Gregg's wounded were only eight, thanks to the excellent cover Todd had provided, and killed, none at all.    These two blows, together with a sharp skirmish Quantrell had with Burris further down in Cass county massed the detached commands in pursuit of him and united them as a single column for his destruction. Calling in every outlying scout or squad in return and getting well together, Quantrell fell back first to Big Blue, fighting. The chase was a long and a stern one. Giving Todd ten men, Haller ten, Gregg ten, Scott ten, and keeping ten himself, he made the hunt for him one long ambuscade of two hundred miles. Tortuous, but terrible; at every ford a fight; in every hollow a barricade; on every hilltop a volley. From Big Blue to Little Blue they chased this lank, bronzed fox of the foray, bugles blowing all about him, and the wild hallooing of the huntsmen coming ever on and on.    Away again from the Little Blue to King's, from King's to Dr. Noland's the five detachments fighting and falling back as the pendulum used to swing to and fro in the ancient clocks. Tired, but still determined, Hubbard 'spoke up at last to Peabody: "Who is this Quantrell you hunt so hard? man or devil, he fights like a wild beast." "And he is; you found one of his lairs, it seems."    Doubling back on the Little Blue lower down, and leading the pursuing column only by an hour, Quantrell-hungry from much fasting and wary at that-found twenty-three militia at Crenshaw's bridge to dispute it. Twenty-three! It was as though a butcher's hand opened all of its bloody fingers at once, fan-fashion, to brush from a slaughtered bullock a bunch of buzzing blue flies. Sim Whitsett and Cole Younger led the advance when the bridge was reached, and they stopped not to count any numbers or any costs. On one side the river was flight and fight; on the other rations and rest. "Altogether, boys," the great voice of Younger roared out, and the bridge shook, and the white splinters flew up from the planks and the timbers there. It is not believed the militia knew their men.    The citizens said they seemed appalled at the rush that did not even look up when their volley was fired, and broke for shelter in every direction without reloading. Two escaped, and singularly.    One, a mere youth, had done Whitsett a good turn once. and Whitsett saved him. The other, known to Cole Younger in past days as a clever neighbor, reminded him of a favor conferred-the curing of a valuable horse and charging nothing and Younger put upon him the sign of the Passover.    Down went the bridge after Quantrell was east of the Blue, and up came that long Federal gallop that would not tire. Food and rest came to hunted and hunters alike, but the race was done. Quantrell left for the Lake Hills slowly the next morning, and the Federals on a raft got over during the day and followed on. The carbines rang-the revolvers answered; they were at it again, fifty against a thousand. From the Lake Hills to Johnson county the drive grew rapid. Now Quantrell, now Haller, now Scott, now Gregg, now Todd-if any man fell out of the ranks he was shot out. No rest in Johnson county; none in Lafayette county. Halted at Warren's for a bit or two of bread and corn, Quantrell was driven away; at Graves' it was worse; at Wellington they gave him no rest; down towards Lexington he hadn't even time to water; out south from Lexington six miles it took all five of the chosen fighters to keep the chase a stern one; and back again to Wellington and west by a forced night march, he gained some hours for a needed bivouac.    Day had just broken over a brief bivouac and the men were a stir when some friendly citizen brought news to Quantrell of a reconnoitering party occupying Wellington. They were militia but not connected in any manner with the column in pursuit. They might be cut to pieces. To this hour it is not clearly known what business they had in Wellington. Numbering seventy-five, unacquainted with the country, ostensibly aimless and objectless, they poked about the town professing to be after Quantrell, and they found him. He tried to get between them and Lexington, but they were too quick for that. As he reached the main road the rear guard was just disappearing; then came the charge and the rout. One volley only and a great rush. Blood and bottom told in that furious three mile race.       Quantrell's own shooting was superb; six saddles were emptied by him, five by Blunt, four by Haller, four by Younger, three by Poole, three by Fletch Taylor, three by George Shepherd, and two each by Todd, Gregg, Whitsett, Coger, Hicks George, Scott, and six or eight others who were riding swift, fresh horses. Of the seventy-five ten alone got back unhurt. It was a blow that carried terror and horror with it, People talked of it as they talked of something sent by God-some pestilence. or drought, or famine. Dead men along the road were gathered up for a week, and for years belated travelers have told how, when the night turns, there might be heard again the shots, the shrieks, the infernal din and the swift rush of insatiate horsemen that stopped for no prayer and touched no bridle rein until for the want of fuel the fire had burned itself out.    Too late either to pity or save the slaughtered Wellington detachment, the pursuing Federal column might avenge them perhaps and put to the credit side a propitiation or two worthy the comradeship of soldiers. The dust was still heavy upon the garments of the Guerrillas and the foam white upon their horses, then Peabody's pursuit began to thunder again in the rear of Quantrell. It pushed him back again through Wellington; back across the Sni, whose bridge he burned; back through all the open country beyond, and still back ward and backward.    For five days and five nights Quantrell had been running and fighting. Out of fifty men, twenty-two bad been hurt-some badly and some not so badly. They staid, however; they reeled in the saddle every now and then, but they fought.      Heroic Scott, with a minie bal! through his thigh, from the Wellington rout, kept his squad of ten intact and led them to the end.    At Pink Hill it was no better. In his rout, near the Blackwater ford of the Sni, Burris was waiting for Quantrell. Todd dashed at the left flank of this not over-bold command and made it huddle, and then away again southwest for Big Creek,  Dave Poole leading the rear and Cole Younger the advance. On the divide, between Big Creek and the .Sni, the Guerrillas were hemmed at last. Quick work had to be done. If the two millstones were permitted to come together, they would be ground to powder. Quantrell massed his men behind the divide-a bold ridge that rose up abruptly from an otherwise comparatively level country, and made them a little speech: "Men," he said," you see how it is as plainly as I do. It is my business to get you out of this, and I will get you out. Just over the ridge yonder-you can see them from the summit-five hunched Federals, your old friends under Burris, are coming up to hold you in check until Peabody's column arrives. Then, instead of ten to one, there will be thirty to one. We shall strike Burris first, and trust to luck"    A man of very few words and very few figures of speech, Quantrell arrayed the Guerrillas just as he wanted them, and waited behind the ridge. He kept Todd near to him, and in the rear he stationed Haller and Scott. Gregg was to watch the centre of the line, for he meant to charge in line with double intervals, thus giving free play to the revolvers.    Burris was probably two hundred yards below the summit of the divide when Quantrell crowned its crest at a walk and broke at sight of him into a gallop. The gallop, in an instant, was a fierce run, the whole front of the charging Line wrapping itself in a powder cloud from its incessant pistol vollies. Abreast of one another, yet preserving perfect intervals, Quantrell, Gregg, Todd, Younger, Tom Talley, Poole, Hicks George, Sim Whitsett, Haller, Ki Harrison, and John Coger, struck the Federal line about the same time, and such an onset meant the riving of its ranks as a hurricane rives the timber. Then the strange spectacle was presented of a regiment cut half in two, both ends bloody, and between them something that looked like a lurid wedge driven there by a power the dense smoke made invisible.    But Quantrell did not tarry. Harrison was badly wounded in the charge, Hicks George was wounded, George Shepherd was shot, Quantrell himself was wounded again, Todd had blood drawn from him twice, Poole was shot and Scrivener was killed. To the rear the nearest prairie was black with pursuing Federals. Night came on, and Burris followed after, but far behind. Reaching the heavy timber of Big Creek with scarcely an unwounded man in his command, Quantrell disbanded for a little rest and medical attention. By twos and threes, in squads, singly, the Guerrillas went their way as phantoms.    There-alert, stalwart, armed, soldierly in every movement-they seemed under the trees and in the uncertain light a host. Look again! The trees are there, the dark waters flow rapidly under them and away, the watch fires burn low, no forms flit there, the silence is supreme, were they ever real? Had they ever flesh and blood and bone and sinew? Spectres, did they not go back into the unknown? Illusions, why trouble the imagination with a mirage that may never come again?    A great roaring laugh awoke the echoes of Big Creek the morning after the night of the disbandment, and Hubbard bantered Peabody:  "Here we are, Colonel, without a trail; a track. Has this man Quantrell of yours gone into the earth or into the water? Where is his hole; and has he pulled his hole in after him? Our work, it appears to me, is pretty well over." "His old trick," replied Peabody, curtly, "he has disbanded." "And so should we," rejoined Hubbard, in evident disgust at the result of the whole campaign. "Any one thousand men that can't take fifty ain't worth the pipe clay that rubs up their sabre-belts. Your Quantrell is either a myth or a devil-which?" "He is both," and Peabody and Hubbard shook hands and parted.    Ostensibly unorganized, the Guerrillas notwithstanding failed to be quiet. Indeed the wild life they had deliberately chosen made successive days of peace absolutely impossible. In the old fashion-hammer and tongs-they were at it again in less than forty-eight hours. Todd struck an isolated scout on the main Harrisonville and Warrensburg road and charged it as he always charged. It was a running fight of eight miles, wherein no quarter was given and not much asked. Twenty-two Federals fell along the roadside and the balance of the detachment, eighteen, reached Harrisonville through sheer hard running.    Charley or Ki Harrison, a tall, swarthy, extremely silent, uncommunicative man lived in Denver City when the war commenced, and went South early. Colorado bred a set of grave, inflexible borderers, who-whether Federal or Confederate left their hand writing pretty legibly written whenever or wherever they stood in battle. Harrison practiced that kind of revolver shooting which consisted of instantaneous execution. Between the act of drawing and the act of firing, if it took longer than two seconds, he argued that no man excelled another as an expert. For hours and hours he worked at the theory.    Erecting at twenty paces the outlines of a human figure, and indicating by smaller divisions the eyes, the mouth, the forehead, the heart, the bowels, and the lungs, he would labor with something of a monomania to excel all in the rapidity of the process by which he got his revolver from its scabbard, and the accuracy of its fire afterwards. Carroll Wood came into Missouri with Harrison. He too had been both a mountaineer and a plainsman. So, also, did Captain William Vest, that man called by Richardson, of the mournful McFarland memory, "the swarthy Adonis of the Plains." Each of these men had either a stern or tragical beginning. Wood, standing at the back of some friends fighting in the streets of Denver, had reflected upon him many of the more sombre lights of the quarrel, and felt to lay hands upon him that most monstrous of all organizations of brutality and cowardice, a western Vigilance Committee. It was ten against two hundred. Word went instantly to John C. Moore, then editor, ex-mayor and lawyer, that the toils had closed over Carroll. He neither asked the right nor the wrong of the arrest-he simply saw the danger; he did not discuss the philosophy or the morality of the proceeding-he only informed himself that they had his friend. As he hurried he buckled on a. revolver. , Wood's ten comrades were about him and nearest to him, hut the peril was imminent. He was known to be a rebel, "dead game," not over given to take a slight or a taunt, and the Vigilantes hated him; the hour had come to cast up and count the score and to settle it. "Hang him!" two hundred bass throats roared out-that volumned, ferocious roar which has in it the malignity of the faction and the selfishness of the born coward on top through circumstances and numbers. Moore was not a second too soon. The rope was being knotted and noosed. Wood. just a little pale from the swift blood that flowed so fiercely, lifted up his undaunted eyes to all the hungry faces in front of him and gazed thereon, steadily but superficially. Splendid scorn might be all that death intended to leave to him at the finish. Moore put himself before the prisoner and the wild beasts showing their teeth and licking their lips, and spoke to them. That he spoke nobly and eloquently it is not necessary to assert. That he spoke practically and adroitly the sequel made more than manifest. Best of all, however, it was the peroration which exhibited the man. "I have now done," he said quietly in conclusion, "what the duty of the advocate required of me; it is the duty of the friend which I do next." As he finished he carne down from the stand and placed himself alongside of Wood, his revolver in readiness and his resolution taken. It is enough to know that there was no hanging. Wood lives to-<lay, a factor in the great peaceful body of thriving citizens, the past a memory that cannot die, and his acts therein fashioned of soldierly episodes from Lexington, 1861, to Newtonia, 1864.    West came to Gen. Jeff. Thompson scarred from a bowie-knife duel that had left him little better than dead. On the plains with a gentleman named Tutt, from St. Louis, a dispute commenced between them which ended in a challenge from West. Tutt accepted, choosing bowie-knives. The arena was a circle with a diameter of twenty feet, the combatants stripping to the waist. Each man was an athlete. Tutt cut his antagonist seventeen times, the last one being the worst one, getting in return only a few slashes that did not go to the hollow. Die, repeated the doctors in indignation at a question so clearly out of order-of course West would die. But he didn't. Nay, more, the man got better, and better, and finally rode away southward toward where Jeff. Thompson was writing impossible proclamations and paddling improbable canoes. Swarthy, splendidly formed, a horseman who rode like a swan swims, long-haired like Absalom, and just as fated, the end came speedily. Tarrying late one afternoon beyond the picquets, and riding homeward under the moon, the soldier who halted him was furiously charged. West went at him in sheer wantonness no doubt, but the sentinel gave him his death wound. As the tide turned, and the night had fallen, a perfect peace came upon the pallid man, lying just this side the wonderful river. Not a white dimple stirred among the corn; not a low ripple shivered through the leaves; flooded with the moonlight, even the cattle slept; the very air seemed as if it had no breath of earth to stain it. "West!" something called. Moore, who sat beside the dying man, heard no word; McDowell. who held the weak hand, knew no whisper in the room "\Vest!" "Here," and the pallid face lit up like a sunbeam had touched it, and the perfect form lifted itself just a little: "Who called? Here, Colonel, and ready for duty!" Hush!    An angel might have been by the dead soldier. In this world there are touching illusions that perhaps in the other are sublime realities, and following the angel call he had gone where the snowy blossoms never wither on the everlasting hills, and the autumn never braids its scarlet fringing through the green of eternal summers.    Harrison, on a larger scale, meant to try that rigid revolver practice of his. Having forty men of his own, and being reinforced by twenty men more under Lieutenant William Haller, he rode down in the neighborhood of Sibley, nearly on the line between Jackson and Lafayette counties. Richard Chiles joined him with ten men more, brother of that Kit Chiles who had fallen in the front of Quantrell's splendid charge at Independence, and who in surviving his brother had received fate's simple lease to fight a little longer. Either in combat was a lion.    Chiles led the assault and was shot down. Two hundred Federals in the houses of the town held their own and more, for they repulsed five separate and distinct attacks, and forced Harrison at last to forego the ugly job of getting them out. As he fell back he counted the costs. Six men were dead and thirty-seven wounded-a forbidding aggregate. Revolver practice against brick walls amounted to naught. It was the old lesson, bought by Harrison for a good round price, that hard fighting is not always hard sense. As a Guerrilla, he figured no more in the history of the border, but over his last days there is even yet, as they are recalled, something of the savage light of a massacre.    Shelby was the great banyan-tree, metaphorically speaking, of the Guerrillas.. They sat under the protecting shade of his constantly expanding reputation, and were content. No evil after-things followed them there. No sleuth-hound conscription put its nose upon the track that led to the camp of the Iron Brigade. No department officials, or district officials examined into the bloody annals of these migratory people, going South in winter and North when the spring came. In addition. Shelby was their great high priest. They prayed to him, confessed to him, remembered him often in wills and testaments, furnished him spies on the eve of operations and scouts in their consummations, helped his flanks in the raiding season, made Missouri familiar to him as Arkansas, and piloted the way to many a crushing overthrow as the pilot-fishes pilot the sharks to many a stricken squadron.    Captain Harrison believed he could do some excellent service for the Confederacy in Colorado. He believed that he could recruit at least a regiment of Colorado Guerrillas who would inhabit the plains, live like the Indians, destroy supply trains, make the overland routes to California impracticable, eliminate from the military economy of western occupation the frontier post system, enlist the savages to fight against the United States, and break the only link that bound California and the Union together. This was Harrison's plan. It was bold but not feasible, and Shelby told him so. He pleaned just the same, however, to be permitted to try, and Shelby finally prevailed upon Hindman to grant him the authority. That Colorado carte blanche was his death warrant. Harrison reached the territory of the Osage Indians with forty-five men and entered it at a rush. His object was to waste no useless time in fighting there, nor anywhere until the hour of opportunity. Assailed in front and rear, hemmed in, overwhelmed, hunted on all sides, driven from position to position, forty-four of the forty-six men died at bay, selling dearly all that was left to each-his life.    Two alone escaped. One of these, Colonel Warner Lewis, lives today in Fulton, Callaway county, and the other-Clark Hockensmith- fell fighting like the hero he was over Quantrell's wounded body in Kentucky. Lewis left Harrison dying as the Indian always dies-killing to the last. Behind his dead horse, both legs broken, a jaw shattered, and four fingers of his left hand gone, he shot while a load was left in a single pistol. There came finally a rush and a volley-then a great stillness. Harrison had been the last to go, and it had taken him three-quarters of an hour to die. This side the judgment day no one will ever know what heroic things were done on that last march through fire and savages-a border Calvary of fifteen hours. Perhaps some touching talk was had. Husbands were there who were never to see their wives any more. Fathers were there who in the dreams of the past night's bivouac had heard the prattle of blue-eyed children. It was terrible to die so, but they died.    Six months later, as a strong Confederate column marched through where they fell, more than twenty bodies, shriveled by wind and weather, claimed even then the last sad rites of comradeship.       CHAPTER X. THE MARCH SOUTII.    WINTER had come and some snow had fallen. There were no longer any more leaves; nature had nothing more to do with the ambuscades. Some bitter nights, as a foretaste of bitterer nights to follow, reminded Quantrell t.hat it was time to migrate. 1\1ost of the wounded men were well ag3 in. All of the dismounted had found serviceable horses. On the twenty-second of October, 1862, a quiet muster on the banks of the Little Blue revealed at inspection nearly all of the old faces and forms, with a sprinkling here and there of new ones. Some few, too hard hit in that pitiless pursuit to ride so early, were still awaiting the balm of a much bedeviled Gilead. Quantrell counted them two by two as the Guerrillas r1ressed up in line, and front rank and rear rank there were just seventy-eight.    On the morrow they were moving southward. That old road running between Harrisonville and Warrensburg was always to the Guerrillas a road of fire, and here again on tl1eir march toward Arkansas, and eight miles east of Harrisonville, did Todd in the advance strike a Federal scout of thirty militia cavalrymen. They were Missourians and led by a Lieutenant Satterlee. To say Todd is to say charge. To associate him with something that will illustrate him, is to put torch and powder magazine together. It was the old, old story. On one side a furious rush, on the other panic and imbecile flight.    Emphatically a four mile race, it ended with this for a score: Todd, killed, six; Boon Schull, five; Fletch. Taylor, three; George Shepherd, two j John Coger, one; Sim. Whitsett, one; James Little, one; George Maddox, one-total, twenty; wounded, none. Even in leaving, what sinister farewells these Guerrillas were taking!    The second night out Quantrell stopped over beyond Dayton, in Cass county, and ordered a bivouac for the evening. There came to his camp here a good-looking man, clad like a citizen, who had business to transact, and who knew how to state it. He was not fat, he was heavy. He laughed a great deal, and when he laughed he showed a perfect set of faultlessly white teeth. If that smile should by any chance become preternaturally fixed, the mouth that before it was winning n repose, would certainly become after it forbidding. He was young.    An aged man is a thinking man; this one did not appear to think-he felt and enjoyed. He was tired of dodging about in the brush, he said, and he believed he would fight a little. Here, there and everywhere the Federals had hunted him and shot at him, and he was weary of so much persecution. Would Quantrell let him become a Guerrilla? "Your name?" asked the chief. The recruit winced under the abrupt question just the slightest of an almost imperceptible degree, and Quantrell saw the start. Attracted by something of novelty in the whole performance, a crowd collected. Quantrell, without looking at the new comer, appeared yet to be analyzing him. Suddenly he spoke up: "I have seen you before; where?" "Nowhere." 'Think again. I have seen you in Lawrence, Kansas!' The face was a murderer's face now, softened by a woman's blush. There came to it such a look of mingled fear, indignation, and cruel eagerness that Gregg, standing next to him and nearest to him, laid his hand on his revolver. "Stop," said Quantrell, motioning to Gregg, "do not harm him, but disarm him."    Two revolvers were taken from his person, and a pocket pistol -a derringer. While being searched, the white teeth shone in a smile that was almost placid. "You suspicion me," he said, so calmly that his words sounded as if spoken under the vault of some echoing dome, "but I have never been in Lawrence in my life."    Quantrell was lost in thought again, with the strange man standing up smiling in the midst of all the band-watching him with eyes that were blue at times and grey at times, and ah, so gentle. More wood was put upon the bivouac fire, and the flames grew ruddy. In their vivid light the young man might not be really so young. He had also a thick neck, great broad shoulders) and something of sensuality about the chin.    The back of his skull was bulging and prominent. Here and there in his hair were little white streaks. Because there were both bloom and color in his cheeks, one could not remember these. Lacking the consolation of tears, nature had given him perfect health. Quantrell still tried to make out that face, to find a name for that Sphinx in his front, to recall some time or circumstance, or place that made obscure things clear, and at last the past returned to him in the light of a swift revealment. "I have it all now," he said, "and you are a Jayhawker. The name is immaterial. I have seen you at Lawrence; I have seen you at Lane's headquarters; I have been a soldier myself with you; we have done duty together-but I mean to hang you this hour, by g-d ," Unabashed, the threatened man drew his breath hard and strode a step towards Quantrell. Gregg put a pistol to his head: "Keep back. Can't you talk where you are? Do you mean to say anything?"    The old smile again! Could nothing ever drive away that smile-nothing ever keep those white teeth from shining? "You ask me if I want to talk, just as if I had anything to talk about. What can I say? What must I do to prove myself sincere? I tell you that I have been hunted, proscribed, shot at, bedeviled, driven up and down, around and about, until I am tired. I want to kill somebody; I want to know what sleeping a sound night's sleep means." Quantrell's grave voice broke calmly in: "Bring a rope!" Blunt brought it. "Make an end fast, Sergeant." The end was made fast to a low-lying limb; in the firelight the noose expanded. "Up with him, men." Four stalwart hands seized him as a vise. He did not even defend himself. His flesh beneath their grip felt soft and rounded. The face, although all the bloom was there, hardened viciously-like the murderer's face it was. "So you mean to get rid of me in that way? it is like you, Quantrell. I know you, but you do not know me. I have been hunting you for three long years. You killed my brother in Kansas; you killed others there, your comrades. I did not know, till afterwards, what kind of a devil we had around our very messes-a devil who prowled about the camp fires and shot soldiers in the night that broke bread with him in the day. Can you guess what brought me here?"    The shifting phases of this uncommon episode attracted all; When Quantrell himself was interested. The prisoner-ostensible recruit no longer-threw off all disguise, and defied those who meant to hang him up. "You did well to disarm me," he said, addressing himself to Gregg, "for I intended to kill your Captain. Everything has been against me, however. At the Tate House he escaped; at Clark's it was no better; we had him surrounded at Swearingen's and his men cut him out ; we ran him for two hundred miles and he disappeared-devil that he is, or in league with the devil-and now, after playing my last card and staking everything upon it, what is left to me? A dog's death and a brother unavenged. No matter; it's luck. Do your worst." As he finished he folded his arms across his breast and stood stolid as the huge trees overhead. Some pity began visibly to affect the men. Gregg turned away and went out beyond the firelight. Even Quantrell's face softened, but only for a moment. When he spoke again to Blunt, his voice 'was so changed and harsh that it was scarcely recognized. "He is one of the worst of a band that I failed to make a finish of before the war came, but what escapes to-day is dragged up by the net to-morrow. If I had not recognized him Ile would have killed me. I do not hang him for that, however. I hang him because the whole race and breed to which he belongs should be exterminated. Sergeant, do your duty." Blunt, by a dexterous movement, slipped the noose about the prisoner's neck, and the four men who had at first disarmed him, tightened it. To the last the bloom abode with his cheeks. He did not pray; neither did he make plaint nor moan. The fitful firelight flared up once and fixed his outline clear against the shadowy background a sudden breeze made the boughs moan a little; no man spoke a word; something like a huge pendulum oscillated as though spun by a strong hand, quivered once or twice, and then, swinging to and fro and regularly, stopped forever. Just at this moment, three quick, hot vollies and close together, rolled in from the northern picquet post, and the camp was on its feet.    If one had looked then at the dead man's face, something like a smile might have been seen there, fixed and sinister, and beneath it the white, sharp teeth. James Williams had accepted his fate like a hero. At mortal feud with Quantrell, and living only that he might meet him face to face in battle, he had joined every regiment, volunteered upon every scout, rode foremost in every raid, and fought hardest in every combat. It was not to be. Quantrell was leaving Missouri. A great gulf was about to separate them. One desperate effort now, and years of toil and peril at a single blow might be well rewarded. He struck it and it cost him his life.       To this day the whole tragic episode is sometimes recalled and discussed along the border.    The bivouac was rudely broken up. Three hundred Federal cavalry, crossing Quantrell's trail late in the afternoon, had followed it until the darkness fell, halted an hour for supper, and then again, at a good round trot, rode straight upon Haller holding the rear of the movement southward. He fought at the outpost half an hour. Behind huge trees, he would not fall back until his flanks were in danger. Ail the balance of the night through he fought them thus, making six splendid charges and holding on to every position until his grasp was broken loose by sheer hammering. At Grand River the pursuit ended, and Quantrell swooped down upon Lamar, in Barton county, where a Federal garrison held the court house and the houses nearest to it. He attacked, but got worsted; he attacked again and lost one of his best when he attacked the third time and made no better headway. Baffled, finally, and hurt more than was necessary in any aspect of the situation, he abandoned the town and resumed, unmolested, the road to the south.    From Jackson county to the Arkansas line the whole country was swarming with militia, and but for the fact that every Guerrilla was clad in Federal clothing, the march would {lave been an incessant battle. As it was it will never be known how many isolated Federals, mistaking Quantrell's men for comrades of other regiments not on duty with them, fell into traps that never gave up their victims alive. Near Cassville, in Barry county, twenty-two were killed thus. They were coming up from Cassville, and were meeting the Guerrillas, who. were going south. The order given by Quantrell was a most simple but a most murderous one. By the side of each Federal in the approaching column a Guerrilla was to range himself, engage him in conversation, and then, at a given signal, blow his brains onto Quantrell gave the signal promptly, shooting the militiaman assigned to him through the middle of the forehead, and where upon their horses twenty-two confident men laughed and talked in comrade fashion a second before nothing remained of the unconscious detachment, literally exterminated, save a few who struggled in agony upon the ground and a mass of terrified and plunging horses. Not a Guerrilla missed his mark. It was as though a huge hand had suddenly opened and wiped clean out a column of figures upon a blackboard.    This minute instinct with joy and life, the next dead, and their faces in the dust. Quantrell found Shelby at Cane Hill, Arkansas, and reported to him. Shelby attached the Guerrillas to the regiment commanded by Colonel David Shanks, and busied himself so much with preparations for the great fight that was to come off at Prairie Grove that he saw them rarely until they left him again.    Cole Younger remained in Missouri, and with him a formidable squad of the old Guerrillas, who were not in a condition to ride when Quantrell moved southward. Younger was exceedingly enterprising. He fought almost daily. He did not seem to be affected by the severity of the weather. At night and on a single blanket he slept often in the snow. While it was too bitter cold for Federal scouting-parties to leave their comfortable cantonments or Federal garrisons to poke their noses beyond the snug surroundings of their well furnished barracks, the Guerrillas rode everywhere and waylaid roads, bridges, lines of couriers, and routes of travel. Six mail carriers disappeared in one week between Independence and Kansas City. A load of hay to be safe had to have with it a company of cavalry. A messenger bearing an order required a. company as an escort. Quantrell was gone, but Quantrell's mantle had fallen upon one worthy to succeed him.    In a month after Quantrell's arrival in Arkansas, George Todd returned to Jackson county, bringing with him Fletch Taylor, Boon Schull, James Little, Andy Walker and James Reed.    Todd and Younger came together by that blood-hound instinct which all men have who hunt or are hunted. Todd had scarcely made himself known to the Guerrillas in Jackson county before he had commenced to kill militia. A foraging party from Independence were gathering corn from a field belonging to Daniel White, a most worthy citizen of the vicinity, when Todd and Younger broke in upon it, shot five down in the field and put the balance to flight. The next day, November 30, Younger-having with him Joshua and Job McCorkle, and Thomas Talley, met four of Jennison's regiment face to face in the neighborhood of the County Poor House. Younger, who had a most extraordinary voice, called out loud enough to be beard a mile: "You are four and we are four; stand until we come up." Instead of standing, however, the Jayhawkers turned about and dashed off as rapidly as possible, followed by Younger and his men. Excellently mounted, the race lasted fully three miles before either party won or lost. At last the Guerrillas gained and kept gaining. Three of the four Jayhawkers were finally shot from their saddles, while the fourth escaped by superior riding and superior running.    Younger bad now with him George  Wigginton, John McCorkle, Job McCorkle, Tom. Talley, Zach. Traber, Nathan Kerr, John Barker, Dave Hilton, William Hulse, Dr. Hale, Ike Basham, George Clayton, Joseph Hardin and Oath Hinton.    Albert Cunningham, another Guerrilla leader of a squad, had a few men-William Runnels, Jasper Rodes, John Hays, .Noah Webster, Daniel Williams, Edward Hinks and Sam. Constable. Todd, retaining with him those brought up from Arkansas, kept adding to them all who, either from choice or necessity, were forced to take refuge in the brush. He argued that a man who did not want to fight and was forced to fight, made most generally a desperate fight when he got into it. Whenever he could hear of a citizen being robbed or plundered of property, or insulted in any manner, he always managed to recruit him into his band and make of him in a very short time a most formidable Guerrilla.    Todd, never happy except on the war path, suggested to Younger and Cunningham a raid into Kansas. West of Little Santa Fe, always debatable if not dangerous ground, thirty Guerrillas met sixty-two Jayhawkers. It was a prairie fight, brief, bloody, but finished at a gallop. Todd's tactics-the old yell and the old rush-swept everything. A revolver in each hand, the bridle rein in the teeth, the horses at a full run, the individual rider firing right and left-this is the way the Guerrillas charged. Such was their horsemanship, and such the terrible accuracy of their fire that never in all the history of the war did a Federal line, man for man, withstand an onset. Two to one even did not ma.ke it much better, and with the exception of the Colorado troops Quantrell scarcely ever hesitated a moment about attacking an enemy who held against him the enormous odds in battle of three and four to one.    The sixty-two Jayhawkers fought better than most of the militia had been in the habit of fighting, but they would not stand up to the work at revolver range. When Todd charged them furiously as soon as he came in sight of them, they stood a volley at a hundred yards and returned it; but not a closer grapple. Reinforced after an hour of running and fighting by one hundred and fifty additional Jayhawkers, they in turn became the aggressors and drove Todd across a large prairie and into some heavy timber. It was while holding the rear with six men that Cole Younger was attacked by fifty-two and literally run over. Every man among the covering party was wounded but none mortally. In the midst of the melee-bullets coming like hailstones in summer weather-John McDowell's horse went down, the rider under him and badly hit. He cried out to Younger for help. Hurt himself, and almost overwhelmed, Younger dismounted, however, under fire, rescued McDowell, and brought him safe back from the furious crush, killing as he ran for succor a Federal soldier whose impetuous horse had carried him beyond Younger and McDowell struggling in the road together. Afterwards Younger was betrayed and by the man to save whose life he had risked his own. Dividing again, and operating in different localities, Todd, Younger, and Cunningham carried the terror of the Guerrilla name through all the border counties of Kansas and Missouri.    Every day and sometimes twice a day from December 3d to December 18th, these three fought some scouting party or attacked some picquet post. At the crossing of the Big Blue, on the road to Kansas City-the place where the former bridge had been burnt by Quantrell-Todd surprised six militia, killed them all, and then hung them up on a long pole, resting at either end upon forks, just as hogs are hung up in the country after slaughtering time. In the morning they were frozen hard as iron. So bold, in fact, did they become, and so unsparing, that as bitter as the weather was the Federals at Kansas City began to get ready to drive them away from their lines of communication.    Three heavy columns were sent out to scour the country. Surprising Cunningham in camp on Big Creek, they killed a splendid soldier, Will Freeman, and drove the rest of the Guerrillas back into Jackson county after a running fight of twenty-seven miles.    Todd, joining himself quickly to Younger, ambuscaded the column hunting for him, and in a series of combats between the Little Blue and Kansas City, killed forty-seven of the pursuers and captured five wagons and thirty-three head of horses.    There was a lull again in marching and counter-marching, the winter got colder and colder, and some deep snows fell. Christmas had come and the Guerrillas would have a Christmas frolic. Nothing bolder and braver exists to-day upon the records of either side in the civil war, than this so-called Christmas frolic.    Col. Henry Younger, father of Coleman Younger, was one of the most respected citizens of Western Missouri. A stalwart pioneer of Jackson county, fourteen children were born to him and his noble wife, a true Christian woman and a veritable and blessed mother in Israel. A politician of the old school; practical and incorruptible; bold in the expression of his opinions and ardent in their support; kind neighbor, liberal citizen, and steadfast friend, Colonel Younger for a number of years was a Judge of the County Court of Jackson county, and for several terms a member of the State Legislature. In 1858, he left Jackson county for Cass, and dealt largely in stock. He was also an extensive farmer, an enterprising merchant, and the keeper of one of the best and most popular livery stables in the West, located in Harrisonville, the county seat of Cass county. His blooded horses were very superior. He had two farms of six hundred acres each, that were in a high state of cultivation, and he generally had on hand for speculating purposes ready money to the amount of from $6,000 to $10,000.    On one of Jennison's periodical raids, in the fall of 1862, he sacked and burned Harrisonville. Col. Younger, although a staunch Union man and known to be such, was made to lose heavily. Jennison and his officers-the officers on all occasions being more rapacious than the privates-took from him $4,000 worth of buggies, carriages and hacks, and forty head of blooded horses, worth at a low average $500 a piece. Then the balance of his property that was perishable and yet not moveable, was burned. The intention also was to kill Col. Younger, upon the principle that dead men could tell no tales, but he escaped with difficulty and made his way into Independence. Spies were on his track. In that reign of hate and frenzy along the border, men were as often murdered for money as for patriotism. Jennison was told that Col. Younger was rich, and that he invariably carried with him large sums of money. A plan was formed immediately to kill him. Twenty cut-throats were organized as a band under a Jayhawker named Whalley, and set to watch his every movement. They dogged him to Independence, from Independence to Kansas City, and from Kansas City down again into Cass county. Coming upon him at last in an isolated place, and within a few miles of Harrisonville, they riddled his body, rifled his pockets, and left the corpse, stark and partially stripped, by the roadside. The fire and torment of persecution did not end here. The mother and orphan children were driven from Harrisonville. She sought refuge at her farm in Jackson county, but the bloodhounds followed her. There was scarcely a day but what she was robbed of something, until at last there was nothing left.    At the muzzles of their pistols, finally, and when all was gone, they forced her to set fire to her own house. She did it for the sake of her children, because she believed that unless it were done her life would be taken, and the homestead to her was nothing in comparison to the comfort that would still be left to her if her life was spared to watch over her little ones. There was a deep snow on the ground when they turned her adrift, penniless, well nigh garmentless, and certainly homeless and shelterless. In a miserable shanty in Lafayette county she took up her abode. Only God and his good angels know how she stood up under it all and suffered. No respite came in any way. She was followed to Lafayette county, her house surrounded, and a younger son, John, shot at and driven to the brush. He was but fourteen years of age and the sole male support of the family. From Lafayette county she was driven to Clay county, suffering privation and want in a Christian-like and uncomplaining manner.    The war closed, and in the last stages of consumption, she dragged her poor emaciated body back to Jackson county to die. Her boys came home, went to work, and tried as best they could to forget the past and look solely to the future. Her cup of misery was not yet full, and one night a mob attacked the house, broke in the doors and windows, and rushed upon the dying woman with drawn revolvers, demanding to know, upon her life, where James and Coleman were.      Among the mob she recognized some whose hands had been covered with her husband's blood. Furious at not finding James and Coleman, after having searched for them everywhere and stolen whatever about the scantily furnished house tempted their beggarly greed, they laid hands upon John, the youngest brother, carried him to the barn, put a rope about his neck, threw one end over a joist, and told him to say his prayers, for he had but a little time to live unless he declared instantly where his brothers were. He defied them to do their worst. Three times they strung him up and three times he refused to breathe a word that would reveal the whereabouts of James or Coleman. The fourth time he was left for dead. Respiration had perceptibly ceased. The rope had cut through the skin of the neck and bad buried itself in the flesh. It was half an hour and more before he recovered. Not yet done with him, the mob wounded him with sticks, beat him across the shoulders with the butts of their muskets, tormented him as only devils could, and finally released him, hl\lf dead, to return to his agonized and brokenhearted mother. Soon afterwards Mrs. Younger died.     But this is a digression that does not belong properly to this history. Over the cold body of his murdered father, Cole Younger registered a vow before God to be revenged upon the cowards who assassinated him, and how sternly he kept to its fulfillment the annals of the border all too well can tell.    Eight hundred Federals held Kansas City, and on every road was a strong picquet post.. The streets were patrolled constantly, and ready always for any emergency, horses, saddled and bridled, stood in their stalls. Early on the morning of December 25th, 1862, Todd asked Younger if he wouldn't like to have a little fun. "What kind of fun?" was the enquiry, in reply. "A portion of the command who murdered .your father are in Kansas City, and if you say so we will go into the place and kill a few of them. Younger caught eagerly at the  proposition and commenced at once to get ready for the enterprise.    Six were to compose the adventurous party-Todd, Younger, Ab Cunningham, Fletch Taylor, Zach Traber, and George Clayton. Clothed in the uniform of the Federal cavalry, but carrying instead of one pistol four, they arrived about dusk at the picquet post on the Westport and Kansas City road. They were not even baited. The uniform was the passport; to get in did not require a countersign. A little south of where the residence of Col. Milt. McGee now stands, the six Guerrillas dismounted and left their horses in charge of Traber, bidding him to do the best he could if the worst came to the worst.    The city was royal with revelers. All the saloons were crowded j in many places there was music; the patrols had been doubled and were active and vigilant; comrade clinked glasses with comrade, and Jayhawker drank fortune to Jayhawker.    The five Guerrillas, with their heavy cavalry overcoats buttoned loosely about them, boldly walked down Main street and into the thick of the Christmas revelry. Visiting this saloon and that saloon they sat knee to knee with some of Jennison's most bloodthirsty troopers, and drank confusion over and over again to the cut-throat Quantrell and his bushwhacking crew. Imperceptibly the night had waned. Todd knew several of the gang who had waylaid and slain Col. Henry Younger, but hunt how he would he could not find a single one. Entering near to midnight an ordinary drinking place facing the public square, six soldiers were discovered who sat at two tables playing cards-two at one table and four at another. A man and a boy were behind the bar. Todd, as he entered, spoke low to Younger: "Run to cover at last. Five of the six men before you were in Walley's crowd that murdered your father. How does your pulse beat?" "Like an iron man's. I feel that I could kill the whole six myself." They went up to the bar, called for whisky, and invited the card-players to join them. If it was agreeable the boy might bring them their whisky and the game could go on. "Certainly," said Todd, with the purring of a tiger cat ready for a spring, "that's what the boy is here for."    Over their whisky the Guerrillas whispered. Todd planned the killing as good now as accomplished. Cunningham and Clayton were to saunter carelessly up to the table where the two players sat, and Todd, Younger and Taylor up to the table of the four. The signal to get ready was: "Come, boys, another drink," and the signal to fire was: "Who said drink?"    Cole Younger was to give the first signal in his deep, resonant voice, and Todd the last one. After the first each Guerrilla was to draw a pistol and hold it under the cape of his cavalry overcoat, and after the last he was to fire. Younger as a special privilege was accorded the right to shoot the sixth man. As curious people frequently do in saloons that keep card tables, Cunningham and Clayton walked leisurely along to where the two Jayhawkers were, and took each a position to the right and rear of the players. Todd, Younger and Taylor did the same with three of the other four. In firing they had looked to the danger of hitting one another and in order to avoid it, they had made a right oblique. In the end, however, the fatality would be the same, instead of the back of the head for the muzzle of the pistol it would be the side.    How quiet the room appeared! Every tick of the clock was plainly audible. The bar-keeper leant his head upon his two hands and rested; the boy was asleep. Even the shuffling and dealing of the cards seemed subdued; the necessary conversations of the game were brief and unemphatic.    Cole Younger's deep voice broke suddenly in, filling all the room and sounding so jolly and clear: "Come, boys, another drink /" It was an unctuous voice, full of Christmas and brimming glasses. The card players gave heed to it and stayed long enough the tide of the game to assent most graciously. There was a little pause. Expectant, the bar-keeper lifted up his head; aroused, the sleepy boy forced apart his heavy eyelids. The clock was upon the stroke of twelve. No one had moved. Was the invitation, so evidently apropos, to be forgotten? Not if Todd could help it. Neither so loud nor so caressing in intonation as Younger, yet his voice-sharp, distinct and penetrating-prolonged it were the previous proposition and gave it emphasis: " Who said drink /"    A thunder clap, a single pistol shot, and then total darkness. The bar-keeper, dumb in the presence of death so instantaneous, shivered and stood still. The boy groveled at his feet. Todd, cool as the winter night without, extinguished every light and stepped upon the street. "Steady! " he said to his men, "and do not make haste." So sudden had been the massacre, and so prompt the movements of the Guerrillas, that the patrols were groping for a clue and stumbling in their eagerness to find it. At every street corner an alarm was beaten. Harsh and high, an ominous of danger imminent, the tong roll sent its clangor through the town. Soldiers poured out from every dance house, rushed from every saloon. "Guerrilla!" "Guerrilla!" was the cry; "the Guerrillas are among us in Federal clothing and killing the Kansas men I"    Mixing fearlessly with the crowd. and swaying to and fro as it swayed, Todd asked and answered questions as he pressed ever on steadily yet surely towards his horses. None suspected him so far, and the worst was over. Presently a tremendous yell was heard-a yell plaintive yet full of fury, menacing, wrathful, accusing; the bar-keeper had found his voice at last, and had rushed upon the street, shouting, "Murder!" "Murder!" "Murder!" Seized instantly by armed patrols, and shaken into continuity of speech, he understood tolerably well the monosyllable "Where?" "Come with me and see." They went with him, and a great crowd followed. God help them all; Not a man breathed in the mass upon the floor. From the tables to the stove, from the stove to the bar, and from the bar to the door blood had trickled and trickled, and flowed and flowed. One laid upon another. In the hands of two the cards were gripped as in a vice. Another, looking up to the ceiling, seemed to be asleep, his face was so soft and placid. Every bullet had brought sudden death, and in this the Guerrillas were merciful. In and out all night the crowd ebbed and flowed, and still the dead men lay as they fell. Day dawned, and the sun came up, and some beams like a benediction fell upon the upturned faces and the pallid lips. Was it absolution? Who knows? Blessed are the dead who die in their uniforms; Past the press in the streets, past the glare and the glitter of the thicker lights, past patrol after patrol, Todd had won well his way to his horses when a black bar thrust itself suddenly across his path and changed itself instantly into a line at' soldiers.    Some paces forward a spokesman advanced and called a halt. "What do you want?" said Todd. "The countersign." "We have no countersign. Out for a lark, it's only a square or two further that we desire to go." "No matter if it's only an inch or two. Orders are orders." "Fire! and charge, men!" and the black line across the streets as a barricade shriveled up and shrunk away. Four did not move, however, nor would they move ever again until, feet foremost, their comrades bore them to the burial place. But the hunt was hot. Mounted men were abroad, and hurrying feet could be heard in all directions.    Rallying beyond range and reinforced, the remnant of the patrol were advancing and opening fire. Born scout and educated Guerrilla, Traber-judging from the shots and the shouts knew what was best for all and dashed up to his hard pressed comrades with their horses. Thereafter the flight was a frolic.    The picquet on the Independence road was ridden over and through, and the brush gained beyond without an effort, and the hospitable house of Reuben Harris, where a roaring fire was blazing and a hearty welcome extended to all.    In a week or less, it began snowing. The hillsides were white with it; the hollows were choked; the bridle-paths obliterated, and the broad highways made smooth as the surface of a frozen stream. After the snow had ceased to fall, there came a rain, and then a furious north wind. which covered the earth with a sheet of ice.  Travel stopped, foraging parties staid at home, the bivouacs were pitiless, and the wild beasts-hunting one another along the border-went hungry rather than stir.    It really was the first dead calm the West had known since 1856. Todd established his camp near Red Crenshaw's; Younger eight miles south of Independence, near the farm of Martin O. Jones; and Cunningham near the place of Dr. Thornton, on the east fork of the Little Blue River. Save to get forage for their horses and food for themselves, the Guerrillas made no more exertion than the boughs of the ice-bound trees over their heads; they asked only to hide themselves and to be let alone.    John McDowell was in Younger's camp, and once upon a time Cole Younger had saved John McDowell's life at the imminent risk of his own. Certainly he would not make an excuse to see a sick wife, to get into Independence, to talk to Penick long and privately, and to bite hard at the hand which had succored him. John McDowell knew too much of the holy meaning of gratitude for that.    The ice crust, because of successive frosts, got brittle at last and added another misery to the miseries of traveling. In order to get out at all, Younger dug a road out with pick and shovel. The nearest corn to him was on the John Kerr place, where Mrs. Rucker lived, and to this corn the improvised road was made to run. To hide it from the Federals, and to keep the strangest of its features from the too curious eyes of isolated passers by, Mrs. Rucker had her stock fed upon the trail. In twenty-four hours afterwards the rooting of the hogs, the trampling of the cattle, and the pawing of the horses, had made of the Guerrilla road a feeding place.    The nights were long, the days were bitter, and the snow did not melt. On the 10th day of February, 1863, John McDowell reported his wife sick and asked of Younger permission to visit her'. It was granted, the proviso attached to it being the order to report again at 3 o'clock. The illness of the man's wife was a sham. Instead of going home, or even in the direction of home, he hastened immediately into Independence and made the commander there, Col. Penick, thoroughly acquainted with Younger's camp and all of its surroundings. Penick was a St. Joseph, Missouri, man, commanding a regiment of militia. The Guerrillas regarded him as an officer who would fight under any and all circumstances, and as one who, operated upon by better fortunes, might have made considerable military reputation. with the men he had, try how he would, the stream never could be made to rise higher than its source. Not homogeneous, possessed of neither esprit du corps nor soldierly ambition, nature in forcing them to be born under the contraband flag of inferiority, made it also obligatory that they should join the pirates. The echoes of the desperate adventure of Younger and Todd in Kansas City, had long ago reached the ears of Col. Penick, and he seconded the traitor's story with an energy worthy the game to be hunted. Eighty cavalrymen, under a resolute officer, was ordered instantly out, and McDowell, suspicioned and closely guarded, was put at their head as a pilot.    Younger had two houses dug in the ground, with a ridge pole to each and rafters. Upon the rafters were boards, and upon the boards straw and earth. At one end was a fire-place, at the other a door. Architecture was nothing; comfort everything.    The Federal officer dismounted his men two hundred yards from Younger's huts and divided them, sending forty to the south and forty to the north; the attack was to be from two directions and simultaneously. No picquets were out; no guards kept watch about the premises. Even the doors were closed; fate at last. it seemed, had cut off the fair locks of this intrepid Sampson and was about to deliver him over, helpless and impotent, into the hands of the Philistines.    The Federals on the south had approached to within twenty yards of Younger's cabins when a horse snorted fiercely, and Younger came to the door of one of them. He saw the approaching column on foot and mistaking it for a friendly column, called out: "Is that you, Todd?" Perceiving in a moment, however, his mistake, he fired and killed the lieutenant in command of the attacking party and then aroused the houses.    Out of each the occupants poured, armed, desperate, meaning to fight but never to surrender. It was hot work despite the bitter weather. The Federals on the north were well up to time and fired a deadly volley, killing Ike Basham and Dr. Hale. Younger had four dragoon pistols belted about him, but he husbanded his loads and fired only to do execution. Turning westward as the Federals from the north and south came together, for two hundred yards Penick's men and Younger's men were mixed inextricably, shooting and shouting. Then the Guerrillas began to emerge from the press and to gain a little on their pursuers. Encumbered by heavy cavalry overcoats, heavy boots, spurs and carbines, the militia could not make the speed the Guerrillas did, but they kept pressing forward for all that and shooting incessantly. Younger's devotion that day was simply heroic. In front, guiding his men, because he knew every foot of ground in the neighborhood, he heard Joe Hardin's voice call out to him: "Wait for me, Cole; they have nearly got me." In a moment he was back to his comrade and covering him with his pistol. As he ran down the ranks toward Hardin, he ordered the men to pull off their overcoats and boots, and trust more to running than to fighting.        While Hardin was working at his boots and trying to get them off, Younger killed two of the boldest of the pursuers and took the rear himself, the last of all in the desperate race. Twenty yards further Hardin was shot dead, and Oath Hinton needed succor. He was down tugging at his boots and unable to get them off. Younger halted behind a tree and fought fifteen Federals for several moments, killed another who rushed upon him, rescued Hinton and strode away after his comrades, untouched and undaunted. Fifty yards further Tom Talley was in trouble. He had one boot off and one foot in the leg of the other, but try how he would he could neither get it on nor off. He could not run, situated as he was, and he had no knife to cut the leather. He too called out to Younger to wait for him and to stand by him until he could do something to extricate himself.    Without hurry, and in the teeth of a rattling fusillade, Younger stooped to Talley's assistance, tearing literally from his foot by the exercise of immense strength the well-nigh fatal boot, and encouraging him to make the best haste he could and hold to his pistols. Braver men than Thomas Talley never lived, nor cooler. As he jumped up in his stocking feet, the Federals were in twenty yards, firing as they advanced, and loading their breech-loading guns as they ran. He took their fire at a range like that and snapped every barrel of his revolver in their faces. Not a cylinder exploded; wet by the snow, he held in his hand a useless pistol. About thirty of the enemy had by this time outrun the balance and were forcing the fighting.    Younger called to his men to take to trees and drive them back, or stand and die together. The Guerrillas-barefooted, hatless, some of them, and coatless, rallied instantly and held their own. Younger killed two more of the pursuers here-five since the fight began-and Bud Wigginton, like a lion at bay, fought without cover and with deadly effect. Here Job McCorkle was badly wounded, together with James Morris, John Coger, and five others. George Talley, fighting splendidly, was shot dead, and Younger himself, encouraging his men by voice and example, got a bullet through the left shoulder. The Federal advance fell back to the main body and the main body fell back to their horses. Sick of a pursuit on foot which had cost them seventeen killed and wounded, they desired to mount and try it further on horseback. Instantly ordering a retreat in turn,    Younger made a dash for the Harrisonville and Independence road, the men loading their pistols as they ran, and making excellent time at that. The snow, fourteen inches deep, was everywhere. Not four of the Guerrillas had on shoes or boots.    The big road, cut into blocks and spears of ice, was like a highway paved with cutting and piercing things. Halting just a moment, Younger said: "Boys, if we can muster up courage enough to run down this road two hundred yards, on our naked feet and over its icicles, worse than Indian arrow-heads, the chances to get away will be splendid. Otherwise, say your prayers." They did dash down the road as though it were carpeted, and kept down it a quarter of a mile to a field in the rear of Mrs. Fristoe's house, where a bridge was, and where to one side of the bridge a hog trail ran. Leaping from this bridge and one at a time into the hog path, the Guerrillas followed it west three hundred yards, and then south-west through the snow a mile, Younger leading and requiring each one of his men to put their feet into the tracks his own feet had made. Baffled, but by no means beaten, the Federals got quickly to horse and dashed on after the retreating Guerrillas. The big road gave no sign, the hog path at the bridge gave no sign, and only a single footstep could be discovered leading off to the southwest from the trail which continued on to the west. Dividing, however, into detachments of ten each, and keeping within due succoring distance, the cavalry began to scour the entire neighborhood. Wherefore? Younger's grim tenacity, woodcraft, and stubborn fighting saved all who had not been killed in open battle. Three miles from the Fristoe house a bluff ran east and west for the distance of several miles, perfectly impracticable for horsemen, and difficult even for footmen who did not know the easy descending places. Thither Younger led his little band, showing them how by the help of trees and bushes they might get down, and leaping himself, wounded as he was, into the top of a contiguous oak by the way of illustration.    The sun was sinking in the west, and the night was near when the last wounded Guerrilla, dragging his hurt body along with difficulty, reached the base of the bluff in safety. "Thank God!" cried Younger in exultation, and looking away to the west where some red clouds beamed as with the lurid benediction of the sun, "we'll see to-morrow another sunset."    Overhead and firing down upon him some Federal cavalry appeared, as if to prove his boasting vain, but they hit no one and could not descend. There was not time to flank the bluff at either end; the pursuit was ended; the Guerrillas were safe.    True to those instincts, however, which make plunderers of battle-fields and robbers of the dead, the returning militia put .fire to the houses of Mrs. Rucker and Mrs. Fristoe, and to everything else about their premises that would burn. Mrs. Fristoe was Younger's grandmother, a most intelligent woman of great Christian piety, who had been a widow for twenty years. Her husband had been a lieutenant under Gen. Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, and stood noted in the community in which he lived for sterling integrity and incorruptible manhood.    Vandalism deals generally with such victims; cowardice is never so happy as when gray heads are made to bow.    With feet torn and lacerated, and their wounded barely able to hobble along, the Guerrillas reached the house of Old Johnny Moore, as he was familiarly called by them, and after the daunIess set in Mrs. Josephine Moore, a Southern heroine of Mary's trust and faith, dressed tenderly all the hurts and emptied her house of whatever the men could wear. To one she gave a coat, to one a hat, to one a pair of shoes or boots, and to all a welcome worth thrice the balance.    The winter of 1862 was a memorable one. The deep snow stayed deep to the last. Military operations were generally suspended tilroughout the entire country, and especially did the spring make haste slowly up the border way. Todd, as terrible as the roads were, and as pitiless as was the weather, left a comfortable cantonment at the instance of his unfortunate comrades and found for them rapidly horses, accoutrements, boots and clothing. Presently the report began to circulate that Younger was slain. As proof of the fact the Federals exhibited in Independence his coat and hat, and a pair of gloves which had upon them, "Presented to Lieutenant Coleman Younger by Miss M. E. Sanders." Above everything else lost by him, Younger regretted most of all the gloves. Some talismanic message, perhaps, had made them precious.    Wild as the weather was, and as harsh the aspect of everything, John Jarrette arrived one day from the South, bringing with him Richard Kenney, Richard Berry, George Shepherd, and John Jackson. Younger joined these with John McCorkle and John Coger, and altogether they worked their way down into Lafayette county, where Poole lived, and where he intended to recruit a company. Richard Berry, a soldier by intuition, and a Guerrilla because of the daring life connected with the service, saw where some choice young spirits might be gathered up, and he had come to enroll them. Afterwards no more formidable band than his and David Poole's fought in the West.    In Lafayette as in Jackson, the weather was simply impossible. Berry found shelter speedily and disappeared. Others did the same; and Jarrette, Younger, McCorkle, and Coger countermarched towards the Sni hills for the same purpose. En route and while on the Georgetown and Lexington road, they surprised and captured Colonel King, Major Biggers, and seven private soldiers. At this time the black flag was generally recognized as the flag under which the militia fought In no single instance lately had the life of a captured Guerrilla been spared, while step by step and rapidly that period was approaching when all disguise would be thrown off and the combatants, understanding one another thoroughly. would seek only to exterminate. Not one of the nine Federals, however, was hurt.      Jarrette was a Free Mason and so were Colonel King and Major Biggers. A vote was taken and much depended upon Younger. McCorkle and Coger had good reason to pronounce for the death penalty. Two men oftener shot at and oftener wounded did not live. Younger bore nothing love that wore the blue, but singular as it seems, in this instance he voted on the side of mercy, and many times thereafter. Acquainted well with a Mrs. Bales, an aunt of King, and regarding her emphatically in the light of a friend, he ranged himself with Jarrette. To break the tie and gain over Coger was not difficult; the Federals were released and paroled. Thus were men's lives played with in those cruel days, and thus upon such slender thing!! did human action depend. Unquestionably, however, it was the influence of Free Masonry working upon Jarrette which first formed the channel for the flowing of the other good impulses, and committed to the cause of mercy two of the most savage men in the ranks of the Guerrillas-Jarrette and Coger.    For a few days towards the latter part of February a south wind blew and some little thawing was observable about the sunny places. Tempted by it, and by the prospect of some further open weather, Colonel Penick sent Captain Johnson out from Independence on a scouting expedition. Not long in finding a fresh Guerrilla trail, he followed it eagerly. Todd, Jarrette and Younger, according to a special agreement, were to dine with Rodney Hines at the Will Howard place, the very day Johnson's expedition got under way. Preceding these three men to Hines' by several hours were William Hulse. Boon Schull and Fletch Taylor. Hulse was a swarthy fighter who had no superior for dead game and bulldog tenacity. Black eyed. clean limbed, cool always, not much of a sleeper, born to a horse, and skilled in all manly exercises, as he rode he rested, and when he fought he killed.    Boon Schull, destined to give up a dauntless young life early for the cause he loved best, won the respect of all by a generosity unstained of selfishness and the exercise of a courage that in either extreme of victory or disaster remained perfect in attribute and exhibition. None were more gentle than he; none more courteous, calm and kindly. When he fell, liberty never required upon its altar as a sacrifice a purer victim.    Fletch Taylor was a low, massive Hercules, who, when he had one arm shot off, made the other nil the more powerful. Built like a quarter-horse, knowing nature well, seeing equally in darkness and light, rapacious for exercise, having an anatomy like a steam engine, impervious to fatigue like a Cossack, and to hunger like an Apache, he always hunted a fight and always fought for a funeral.    These three men, having passed on carelessly through the snow to the rendezvous at Hines' left a good, broad trail which Johnson-especially commissioned to look after bushwhackers was not slow in following. Surrounded, but in no manner demoralized, two Federals were already upon the front porch when Hulse, discovering them, fired through a side window and shot down the foremost. The other ran, and Johnson, on foot, began to close up. Hurrying from the front of the house to the rear, and then through an ell and a kitchen, the Guerrillas, gained their horses, hitched to the inner side of an orchard fence, and essayed to mount under a distressing fire. The horses were inexperienced and untried, and struggled so violently to break loose that the men could neither control nor mount them.    Fletch Taylor drew a knife and cut the halter of his horse, got into the saddle and opened a furious fire upon the nearest Federals-a pistol in each hand and the bridle rein in his teeth. Somewhat protected by a diversion so gallantly made, Schull and Hulse got mounted finally, joined in the combat with Taylor, and drove to cover the enemy immediately in front of them. Reinforced, the Federals came on with loud cheers as if they were charging a regular line of battle, but the three horsemen-gallantly waving their hats to the ladies of the house where they hall expected to dine-cleared the orchard fence at a bound and rode rapidly away.       Johnson could not pursue for some time. He had dismounted two companies that three Guerrillas might he captured, then when he needed them most he had not at his command even so much as a single mounted trooper. In hearing of the guns, and rushing down to help his comrades, Younger arrived too late to participate; but laying off and on in sailor fashion, he hung about the Howard premises and watched the Independence road for half the night, thinking Johnson might return. Afraid to fire upon him where he was in bivouac, lest in revenge he should kill Hines and burn the house from over the heads of his family, and seeing no indications of a move in any quarter, Younger marched at midnight in the direction of Blue Springs, breakfasting the next morning with Joel Basham. Beyond Basham lived William Hopkins, and there Younger found Todd and his men well mounted and in splendid fighting fix. Fortune also favored Johnson. Janette, Gregg and David Hilton, having remained the previous night at the house of Baby Saunders, started for Hilton's early in the morning to meet with Todd, and it was the trail made by them that Johnson found and followed up with considerable energy. As he rode he threatened; wherever he stopped, or whenever he had occasion to question a citizen, he promised invariably in leaving to catch the Guerrillas in front of him and hang them afterwards.    Man proposes and God disposes. Todd, in command of all the united squads by virtue of his rank, and well informed of Johnson's approach, had everything in readiness to receive him. It was going to be a most remarkable fight. Todd,  forming the Guerrillas in an open field in the vicinity of the Hopkins house, had on the left of this field a steep bluff, and on the right of it n. heavy fence, By this fence a road ran, and through the field to the house, which was upon the bluff, and on past the house and over the bluff into a. bottom beyond. An exact count showed thirty Guerrillas and sixty-four militia; on the one side Captain Johnson commanded, on the other, Captain Todd, The prairie wolf was about to encounter the tiger.    Johnson marched up from the bottom to the crest of the bluff, halted his detachment near the Hopkins house, and rode forward himself towards where Todd's line was formed in the field. Todd. Jarrette, and Younger advanced to meet him, and quite a dialogue ensued at the distance of thirty paces:    "Who are you?" asked Johnson. " Kansas troops," replied Todd. ,. What command?" "Jennison's."  "What are you doing here?" "Hunting for Guerrillas." "Excellent employment, but your line looks light; where is the balance of your men?" "What you see are all." "Impossible!" "Come and judge for yourself."      Evidently Johnson ha(l discovered enough to convince him of the character of the organization before him, and he wheeled suddenly and put spurs to his horse. As quick as he was, the Guerrillas were quicker. Todd, Jarrette and Younger fired each at him three shots in rapid succession, but splendid shots that they were, they missed him clear. The charge that followed was one of the most furious of all the furious ones of Todd's tempestuous career. Before the Federals could well about face, the Guerrillas were upon them and among them. Coherency was gone in a second. Well dressed ranks fell apart as a house made of cards.   The retreat was a panic, the panic insanity. As a tornado the storm of steeds and steel swept to the southwest corner of the field, blue rider and gray side by side and shouting in each other's faces. The road was abandoned. In every direction through the woods the Federals rushed, shooting, each man as he ran, " Hold up!" "Hold up!" but never a halt or a rally.    It had rained lately, some snow had melted, and Little Blue was bank full. From the corner of the fence on the southwest to the river, it was an hundred yards, and nearer still to the river was a ditch. Into this ditch Johnson, leading his troopers, leaped fearlessly, and from the ditch into the swimming river. Hot upon their track and seeing before them an enemy helpless because paralyzed, the Guerrillas jumped from their horses and lined the east bank of the Blue, attempting to fire upon them with their shotguns. Not a barrel exploded. Wet with the rain of the previous morning, these never to be depended upon weapons failed them utterly. Every revolver had been discharged in the race, the gun barrels would not go off, the Federals at their mercy were struggling and swimming in the river, and yet there was nothing to shoot them with.    Beaten back from the opposite bank by the force of the current, and beaten down some one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards, Johnson landed again on the eastern side of the river and dashed away into Blue Springs, beating the Guerrillas who had halted long enough to load their revolvers, and who came into the road some little distance behind them. Then there was another charge and another panic. Side by side, and leading, Todd and Younger rode together. Near to the rear, with pistol in hand and in the act of firing, Todd's horse fell headlong across the road, and Younger's, swerved aside by its powerful rider lest his comrade should be hurt, lost his stride and his pace, and his position at the front. Close behind them and thundering on, Boon Schull leaped his horse over Todd and his crippled steed, followed by James Little, who spoke not nor touched rein until ranging up along side of the rearmost Federal he shot him from the saddle. Schull dismounted instantly over the dead man and appropriated his carbine and his pistols.    Todd mounted his horse and hurried away in pursuit. The next victim was the famous Jim Lane. House-burner, highwayman, spy, something of a scout, theatrical in hair and toggery, claiming to be brave, notorious for evil deeds, and known somewhat by his boasts to the Guerrillas, he had taken the name of Jim Lane as an honor, and swore to set it above the name of the real one for devilment done to the border ruffians.    Little fired at him and missed; Schull's pistol snapped; but Younger, dashing by at full speed, shot him square through the temples. Jim Lane, junior or inferior, hall burnt his last house and robbed his last Missourian. To keep to the road in front of a pursuit as swift and merciless as the pursuit of the Guerrillas, was simple madness, and the road was abandoned by the larger portion of the Federals as if swayed by some mysterious yet instantaneous impulse. Nothing in the semblance of an array was preserved; it was every man for himself and God's mercy for the hindmost. Taylor, followed by twenty others, poured through the timber on their trail and killed whenever he came to one. Janette and George Wigginton were the last to leave the heels of the flying foe, killing two beyond the bridge between Blue Springs and Independence, and wounding another badly under the very range of a sheltering picquet post. As trooper after trooper galloped into Independence, or limped in wearily on foot, forlorn, bedraggled, scared well nigh to speechlessness, Penick, without doubt, developed a clear case of hydrophobia.    Succeeding every report there was a spasm. Jerking off his coat in the agony of an uncontrollable paroxysm, he went about the streets assaulting and knocking down each man encountered who was looked upon as a Southern man or in sympathy with the Guerrillas. One especially, Tobias Owens, should receive a more degrading punishment. Seeking him out and finding him finally, he went into his room with a rawhide in his hand and locked the door. Owens stood ten, maybe twenty, good, keen cuts, but human nature rose up against and mastered prudence at last, am] he in turn became the aggressor. Wrenching the rawhide from Penick's grasp he gave back blow for blow most vigorously, and only ceased from his punishment when the excitement of the assault and the violent exercise completely exhausted him. Before he could be assassinated for an exhibition of manhood justified even in the eyes of a militia garrison, he escaped.      Thirty-two Federals perished in this ill-starred and wretchedly handled expedition, and nine severely shot, died afterwards. Not so much as a single Guerrilla was wounded. The militia could not or did not fight.    They tried more or less, but always with that unsteadiness which comes from a want of nerve. Johnson himself lost his head. The officers had no men, and the men had no officers. If the shot guns of the Guerrillas had gone off on the banks of the Blue, not a soldier due at Independence would ever have returned there.      Penick hurried out the next day two hundred cavalry and three pieces of artillery for purposes of display alone, and to hide his regiment's grievous hurt. He shelled the timber on both sides of the road from Independence to Hopkins' house, but the Guerrillas, eating dinner ten miles away, laughed over their plates at the sound of the cannon and told one to another the pleasant story of the Blue Springs races.    A man now by the name of Emmet Goss was beginning to have it whispered of him that he was a tiger. He would fight, the Guerrillas said, and when in those same days one went upon the war path so endorsed, be sure it meant all that it was intended to mean. Goss lived in Jackson county. He owned a farm near Hickman's Mill, and up to the fall of 1861, had worked it soberly and industriously. When he concluded to quit farming and go to fighting, he joined the Jayhawkers. Jennison commanded the 15th Kansas Cavalry, and Goss a company in this regiment. From a peaceful, thrifty citizen, he became suddenly a terror to the border. He seemed to have a mania for killing. Twenty old and unoffending citizens probably died by his hands. When Ewing's famous General Order No. 11 was issued-that order which required the wholesale depopulation of Cass, Bates, Vernon and Jackson counties-Goss went about as a destroying angel, with a torch in one hand and a revolver in the other. He boasted of having kindled the flames in fifty-two houses, of having made fifty-two families homeless and shelterless, and of having killed, as he declared, until he was tired of killing.       Death was to come to him at last by the hand of Jesse James, but not yet. He had sworn to capture or kill Cole Younger, and went to the house of Younger's mother on Big Creek, for the purpose. She was living in a double-log cabin built by her husband before his death, for a tenant, and Cole was at home. It was about eight 0'clock, and quite dark. Cole sat talking with his mother, two little sisters and a boy brother. No one was on watch. Goss, with forty men, dismounted back from the yard, fastened their horses securely, moved up quietly and surrounded the house. Between the two rooms of the cabin there was an open passage way, and the Jayhawkers had occupied this before the alarm was given. Desiring to go from one of the rooms to the other, a Miss Younger found the porch full of armed men. Instantly springing back and closing the door, she shouted Cole's name involuntarily.    An old negro woman-a former slave, but more of a confidant than a slave-with extraordinary presence of mind blew out the light, matched a coverlet from a bed, and threw it over her head and shoulders. "Get behind me, Marse Cole, quick!" she said in a whisper, and Cole in a second, with a pistol in each hand, stood up close to the old woman, the bed spread covering them both. Then throwing wide the door, and receiving in her face the gaping muzzles of a dozen guns, she querulously cried out: "Don't shoot a poor old nigger, massa sogers. It's nobody but me gwine to see what's de matter. Ole Missus is nearly skeered to death." Slowly then, so slowly that it seemed an age to Cole, she strode through the crowd of Jayhawkers blocking up the portico, and out into the darkness and the night.    Swarming about the two rooms and rummaging everywhere, a portion of the Jayhawkers kept looking for Younger, and swearing brutally at their ill-success, while another portion, watching the movements of the old negress, saw her throw away the bed spread, clap her bands exultingly and shout: "Run, Marse Cole! run for your life! de debbil can't catch you this time!"    Giving and taking a volley which harmed no one, Cole made his escape without a struggle. As for the old negro woman, Goss debated sometime with himself whether he should shoot her or hang her. Unquestionably a rebel negro, she was persecuted often and often for her opinion's sake, and hung up twice by militia to make her tell of the whereabouts of Guerrillas.    True to her people and her cause, she died at last in the odor of devotion.

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