Hard Way Out of Hell Read online

  HARD WAY

  OUT OF HELL

  THE CONFESSIONS OF COLE YOUNGER

  JOHNNY D. BOGGS

  Copyright © 2016 by Johnny D. Boggs

  E-book published in 2018 by Blackstone Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6113-1

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6112-4

  Fiction / Westerns

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  In memory of John J. “Jack” Koblas.

  Thanks for your books, music, friendship,

  and the loan of your sofa on those trips to Minnesota.

  “Long is the way

  And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  “Blood is contagious.”

  —John Newman Edwards

  Prologue

  1913

  In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark woods; for the straight way was lost.

  Thus wrote Dante, a man I have long admired, especially in Inferno, his masterpiece, and how brilliantly he described those nine circles of Hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery.

  All of those circles, Parson, I have seen. Indeed, I lived in them. Some—Lust, Gluttony, Heresy—I have regretted, but much of the Anger and Violence I would gladly do again. Forgiving is hard, even though you say that I can be forgiven. Am I worthy to walk those Streets of Gold? That question I cannot answer because, honestly, I do not know.

  Ma and Pa always wanted me to become a preacher, whilst many of the boys I rode with dubbed me Bishop. For a boy who once only dreamed of being a Christian, who longed to join the Masons, and who desired nothing other than to marry a good woman, and live in peace, I have traveled a hard road. The first five decades proved to be unbearably difficult. Though I rarely dream, I have wakened from nightmares of unspeakable events that I witnessed, and of horrible crimes that I committed.

  It brings to mind William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

  Act 3, scene 2.

  Few, I think, will ever forget the evil that I, Thomas Coleman Younger, delivered upon my enemies.

  Ask anyone, best friend or the bitterest of enemies, and they will tell you that Cole Younger is an evil man. Bold? Certainly. Loyal? As the noblest bluetick hound. But wicked. Heartless. Cold-blooded as a timber rattlesnake.

  There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.

  Isaiah 48:22.

  Peace eluded me. Perhaps I avoided living in harmony because the very thought of peace frightened me.

  I was, I remain, and I will always be a wicked man, but only because of this sad fact: Almost as long as I can remember, I have been lost in those dark, foreboding woods.

  For me, the woods were Missouri. And Stillwater, Minnesota.

  Part I

  1844–1865

  Chapter One

  The Missouri River became the River Acheron, and John Brown, instead of Charon, held the job as the master of the ferry. Don’t mistake me. I don’t hate this fine state. I never cared much for any man, or woman, who disparaged his or her home. I love Missouri. Lee’s Summit. Blue Springs and Sni-A-Bar Creek. The woods, and the dogs, and even some schoolhouses I attended. Corn pone, Ma’s biscuits, and pig-pickings. And the finest horses and mules you’ll find anywhere in this country.

  Yet when I was growing up, Parson, and even after I became a grown man, Missouri turned into the worst kind of hell.

  * * * * *

  Long before you were born, kids everywhere played rolling pins, hopscotch, shuttlecock, quoits, hide-and-seek, and marbles. The most popular game at our house, however, was Old John Brown.

  Unless you grew up in western Missouri in the mid-to-late 1850s, that’s a game unfamiliar to you. It was pretty simple. On our farm, it usually went something like this.

  On account that my baby brothers, John and Bob, were too little to get picked on, Brother Jim got to play the fine Missouri farmer. John, you see, didn’t come around till 1851, with Bob trailing two years later. We had a mighty big family, but I always thought we were short a mite on boys. Sadly, all of my brothers would be dead by 1902, and, today even many of my sisters have gone to glory.

  We young ’uns numbered fourteen, though a fever took sweet Alphae in 1852 when she was but two years old. As the seventh surviving child born to Henry Washington Younger and Bursheba Leighton Fristoe Younger, I joined an already good-size family on January 15, 1844. Laura, Isabella—who everyone called Belle—and Martha Anne came along first, followed by my older brother, Charles Richard, who went by Dick. Dick was the best of the boys, six years my senior. Old beyond his years, he would be the Younger brother that might have amounted to something fine, real fine. Anyway, I don’t recollect ever playing anything with him, for he kept busy ciphering figures and helping Pa.

  After Dick, Mary Josephine—we always called her Josie—and pretty Caroline were born. Caroline got the handle Duck, on account that we usually found her down by one of the ponds as a little girl, quacking like ducks. Sarah “Sally” Ann, Jim, and Alphae followed Caroline and me. John, Emilly, and Robert came after the Almighty took baby Alphae into His arms, and finally baby Henrietta—who everybody knew as Retta—was born.

  I remember one neighbor telling Pa: “There’s enough of you Youngers to make your own militia.” Turns out, history would prove Mr. McCorkle to be practically right.

  Getting back to Old John Brown, we would be outside, usually near the barn or corral, and Jim would be making out like he was shucking corn—sometimes he really would be shucking corn, because we Youngers could play and work at the same time—or working a plow behind a mule, just doing the hard, daily work on any farm.

  Then out I would stride, all high and mighty, and start preaching blood and thunder, hell and damnation. Jim would stop whatever he had been doing, and yell: “What are you doing here, John Brown? This is Missouri, not Kansas.”

  Pretending to be Old John Brown, I would tell him something like: “I am what I am, and you are Missouri trash.” So we’d get to tussling, and sometimes, in the spirit of things, I’d box Jim’s ears. One time, I remember, I must have hit Jim a little harder than I intended. Although Jim wasn’t puny, I was big for my age, and because Dick was always busying himself with bookwork, it was left to me to fork the hay, move the sacks, harness the mules, and split the firewood, so I was pretty strong. Anyway, down went Jim, but up he came, catching me with an uppercut that split my lip.

  The idea of this game was that Old John Brown would torment a poor Missouri farmer, or a preacher, or just some passerby. Then the Younger siblings would come to the Missourian’s rescue, driving Old John Brown off with pitchforks and hoes, or throwing pecans or dirt clods. They’d pretend the sticks they carried were muskets, or rapiers. Something along those lines, anyhow. One time, they pelted me with the potatoes that we had been tossing into the cellar. They did that until Ma realized what we were doing, and we all got a switching. Even me, who had only been dodging those flying spuds.

  Well, the way the game was supposed to be played was that once the neighbors came out to help the poor soul that was being tormented, Old John
Brown would hightail it back to Kansas. The good guys, you see, would win.

  The time I’m recollecting, I found myself doing what big brothers usually did to their younger siblings. Mouth bleeding, I tossed Brother Jim onto some hay, straddled him, pinned his arms with my knees, and started slapping him this way and that. Then here would come the neighbors, of course—Josie, Caroline, Sally—to drive Old John Brown back to Kansas. Only this time, as Old John Brown, I refused to go anywhere till Brother Jim begged for mercy, or cried uncle. Mad as I was, I’m not rightly sure even that would have stopped me.

  So my sisters took to crying and screaming, and within a few minutes, hands were grasping my arms and pulling me off my bleeding, bruised, sobbing kid brother. Still madder than a March hare, I whirled to whip whoever had interfered with my vengeance. I drew back my arm, intending to cave in Dick’s face, but a neighbor stepped betwixt us, blocking my punch with his left forearm.

  The neighbor was John Jarrette, who, I imagine, would have been around twenty-three years old. Kentucky-born, his family had moved to Missouri right around 1851. His pa was a cabinetmaker, and, like his father, Jarrette had arms like two-by-fours. Still seeing blood in my eyes, I fought to punch him or Dick or Jim, but Jarrette got his hands locked behind my back, and began squeezing the breath out of me, almost crushing my ribs, arms, and backbone.

  “Easy there, Old John Brown,” I recall him saying in a tight, hoarse whisper.

  Now I was big and strong but, being only twelve years old, I could not free myself from Jarrette’s clutches.

  “Easy there, Cole,” Jarrette kept saying over the sobs and shrieks coming from my siblings. “Easy …”

  It wasn’t John Jarrette who stopped me, though. It was the voice of another.

  “ ‘And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’ So now Satan is walking on my own farm … in my own house.”

  My muscles weakened, and I stopped struggling. John Jarrette released that vise that pinned me, and stepped back, while I stood in front of my mother, head bowed.

  “Come here, Coleman,” she said, and I obeyed.

  I prepared myself to go find a switch and take my whipping—Pa seemed to be gone most of the time, so punishment usually came from Ma’s hands, and I believe her hand was tougher than Pa’s. Kentucky-born and bred, and having birthed fourteen kids, Ma was harder than oak. That morning, however, Ma simply turned and walked away from the barn while my two oldest sisters, Laura and Belle, hurried to tend to Jim, who kept sobbing. I followed Ma.

  We did not stop until we reached the porch of our farmhouse. Only then did Ma turn, her eyes stern, her countenance firm. “The devil gets ahold of you, Coleman,” she said. “You try my patience. You’ll never become that preacher if you keep acting like that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “ ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,’ ” she quoted. “Keep this up, and you’ll be the one devoured.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your brothers and sisters be watching, Coleman. No supper tonight. And you’ll go down there and apologize to everyone. Then you’ll fetch a switch.” She pointed toward the woods, where the brambles could rip off the hide of a rabbit or squirrel. “From down yonder. Don’t get yourself bit by no snake, and don’t you dare bring me a puny switch.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What was that y’all was playing that let Satan try to steal your soul?”

  “Old John Brown.”

  “Figures,” Ma said. “He’s the devil, too. ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness …’ Hurry off, Coleman. I’ll be here waiting.”

  Chapter Two

  You’re mighty young for a preacher, Parson, so I’m guessing that you were not born till after the War for Southern Independence. Therefore, let me summarize things for you.

  John Brown was a fire-eating Yankee abolitionist, hanged by the neck until he was dead, in Virginia when, in fact, he should have been executed in Kansas for his deplorable acts. Here’s what has always eluded my grasp. More than fifty years since he has been, as the song still sung proclaims, “a-molderin’ in his grave,” he is hailed as a visionary to be celebrated, while men like William Quantrill, Bill Anderson, Frank James, and I are considered murderers who should have been strung up or shot down for committing high treason.

  In the 1850s, Brown brought his sons down from New York to Kansas. In 1856, he and his ardent followers set upon the Doyle family, who were living peacefully on Pottawatomie Creek. Yes, the Doyles—and many other Kansans—supported slavery, but in those days, such was their Constitutional right. John Doyle and two of his sons—their names I disremember—did not deserve to be led into the dark and hacked to pieces by broadswords. Had Mrs. Doyle not begged and pleaded for mercy, John Brown would have murdered another of Doyle’s boys, a sixteen-year-old. After the butchery, Brown and his felons moved on, yet, blood lust not sated, the killers then found another Southern home, where they slashed, stabbed, and slayed Allen Wilkinson. Before the night was over, William Sherman was also brutally murdered.

  “Bleeding Kansas” certainly ran red.

  Yes, Missourians would ride across the border. Certainly Missouri men as well as Kansas Redlegs would commit wrongs. Free-Soilers and border ruffians killed, plundered, and—to my mind—started that ugly Civil War years before the first shots were fired upon Fort Sumner.

  The violence I grew up around all started with the Kansas-

  Nebraska Act of 1854. Residents, according to that new law, would declare a state’s slavery status. That sent men like John Brown and other Free-Soilers streaming into Kansas while Missourians crossed the boundary to support the rights of the South. The Wakarusa War, and battles at Black Jack and Osawatomie followed. A constitution was ratified in Lecompton in 1857, but since it allowed slavery—and was supported by President James Buchanan—the Yankees disallowed the election, called for another vote, and the Free-Soilers won. When Kansas entered the Union in 1861, it came in as a free state. And Old John Brown? The insane fiend left Kansas for Virginia, to raid the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, where he was stopped, tried, convicted, and executed—and became a Yankee martyr.

  * * * * *

  Now, before you label me that unreconstructed Rebel, evil slaver, and butcher, let me lay some facts on you.

  Yes, Pa owned slaves, but he was a good man, a Christian, and I never saw any whippings or abuse of any of the colored servants we had.

  Truthfully, I didn’t think anything much about the slaves we owned. Just took it to be the way things were, had always been, and would always be. When Pa moved from Crab Orchard to Missouri, he set up a little ferry on the Little Blue River near Randolph. He made enough money on that venture to pay back the fellow who loaned him the cash to start up the ferry, and to buy some land in Jackson County, and a few more slaves. One of those slaves, Pa left behind to run the ferry.

  All these years later, I regret that part of my family history. But when you’re a boy with Southern ties, you didn’t think about the wrongs of slavery. It wouldn’t be till I ran across a Negro named Erskine Green that my way of thinking changed. That would be in Stillwater. I’ll get to Erskine Green directly.

  During my growing-up years, I got into some fine discussions about Scripture, hunting, and horses with one of Pa’s slaves, a kindly cuss with arms that could have snapped John Jarrette in two. We called him Hardin. And there was Mammy Suse, a plump Negress who helped Ma around the house and took care of us like we were her own young ’uns, especially when Ma came down sick or got worn down.

  Yet while Pa was a slave owner, here’s something else you
should know about him.

  Colonel Henry Washington Younger did not hold with Secession. He bled Union red, white, and blue. Ma had similar inclinations, and her father fought with Andy Jackson at New Orleans and was a grand nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall.

  A conservative Unionist is how most folks looked upon Pa, which wasn’t always a good thing in Missouri, but he fared pretty well. In 1855, he was elected to the Shawnee Mission Legislature, even though he owned no land and never lived in Kansas. He owned maybe thirty-five hundred acres in Jackson and Cass Counties, Missouri—a little more than half of that on our farm near the town of Strother; they would change its name to Lee’s Summit in 1865—where we mostly raised livestock. Pa even sold a quarter-section to the county court back in 1852, so the county could set up a poor farm.

  In 1859, Josie married John Jarrette, and Pa got elected mayor of the town of Harrisonville and landed a contract with the federal government to deliver mail. That two-hundred-mile run stretched from Kansas City all the way to Neosho. So we moved from our farm to Harrisonville, although Pa spent most of his time carrying letters north or south.

  Pa remained loyal to the Union—maybe he did not support Abraham Lincoln and those high-minded, holier-than-thou abolitionists, but he did his best to stay on the straight and narrow. When our Southern-minded neighbors began bringing up the idea of Secession, Pa—who never strayed from or lied about his convictions—told them exactly what he thought of their views.

  “You, sir,” I remember him saying as we walked out of the barbershop, “speak of treason.”

  So, Parson, tell me this … why would men who claimed to be fighting for the North abuse a loyal Union man like Colonel Henry Washington Younger?

  I speak of the actions of not John Brown, but men like James Montgomery and his Self-Protective Company, Doc Jennison, and Senator Jim Lane. These Jayhawkers—nothing more than armed thieves and murderers—crossed the Kansas-Missouri line to hang men with no trial, no jury, just a rope.