one of them Pitt Mackeson’s wife.
Black John did not take it well. I did not take it well either. Bushwhackers and fence sitters and even some Federals took it badly. All along the border frothy anger and crazed plots of revenge began to be howled.
The Federals had crossed over the last line of restraint. And believe you me, we were the wrong tribe to treat in that fashion.
Riders came and went from all over the territory. Every little nest of bushwhackers was being called on to rally with Captain Quantrill on the Blackwater River. We went to the place, and so did the men of Thrailkill, Poole, Jarrett, Younger, Cobb and Todd.
It was a sullen and dangerous gathering. The boys of every group were outraged by the smashed women and the murders of comrades and the hopeless war.
Our group, a mix of Ambrose and Clyde men, was one of the larger gangs. Quantrill’s was the largest, with about a hundred and twenty famous fighters, but some of the others were only family-sized bands.
Captain Quantrill had credentials of consequence all over the region and in many parts of the nation. He was a girlish man in appearance, with fine features and heavy-lidded eyes. He killed in bulk and at every opportunity. He was loved by many.
“Patriots of the South!” he shouted down to us from a wagon bed. “It is time we strike back! The Yankees believe they can drive our people from their homes and kill us with impunity. They have gotten the notion that so unmanly are we, so toothless a gang of masculine specimens, that they can kill our women as leisurely as if it were a sport. Well, it ain’t so and we all know it. We’re going to Lawrence, boys, and root the rats right out of their holes!”
The grisly audience raised hoorahs at this, for Lawrence was the place on the map we most wanted to blot off it. But I looked around me at the mingling bands of desperadoes and thought, Saying it is one thing, but pulling it off is another.
I went over to George Clyde, who was beaming with anticipation.
“George,” I said. “Lawrence is forty-five miles into Kansas. There are whole armies out there and no friends at all.”
“You got it, Dutchy,” Clyde said jovially. “It’ll be a shockarooni of a surprise to the bastards. They sleep heavy out there, believing they are safe from us.”
Well, I did not argue it with Clyde, but it turned out that many of the boys shared my thoughts. “We’ll never make it back,” Cave Wyatt said. “Even if we can get there, they’ll chop us down on the prairies. But I reckon we’ll give that town some memories first.”
As I strolled about the camp, I heard many echoes of this sentiment. Almost no one planned on needing more gulps of air after this trip. There were scads of Federals out there, so we thought we were seeing Missouri for the last time.
It figured to be a bitter killing spree in the town, house-to-house fighting with all the Yanks out there, then it would end in a vigorous form of mass suicide once the armies caught up to us. This frame of mind was fueled by a flood of whiskey. Dumb and bold things are best accomplished drunk, we figured, so we went deep into the popskull.
The night before setting out we stayed drunk, rambunctious with anticipation, and thereby took a miss on sleep. I found myself sharing jugs with strangers who rode my side of the road, and got up-close glimpses of some of our ilk who had become famous. Frank James doddered around with Coleman Younger, and Kit Dalton staggered about with the Basham brothers and the Pence brothers and Payne Jones and Peyton Long. These men were all notorious above and beyond most of us, and waddled about the camp, blind drunk and not noticeably special.
Riding with such earnest men gave me confidence.
“Holt,” I said, “this band will be the Spartans in a few histories someday.”
Holt looked at me slack-lipped, flustered by rotgut, and said, “That so? I wouldn’t know.”
By dawn I was too whiskey-weary to care about much. Quantrill started us off for Lawrence early. There were over three hundred riders and the sight of us was awesome: long flowing southern hair beneath slouch hats; broken-in border shirts; a great harvest of pistols hanging everywhere; and fuzz-cheeked faces beneath busthead-reddened eyes.
I joined a scout party in the lead of the main group.