Hard Way Out of Hell Read online

  Such men were not abolitionists who I could respect—Frederick Douglass and perhaps even Mr. Lincoln—but brigands. They robbed my father. They stole our saddle mounts, and we had some excellent horses: Morgans, thoroughbreds, Arabians, and even some Narragansett Pacers, which I don’t believe exist any more. Pa liked to crossbreed the Pacers with the Morgans.

  Redlegs didn’t just steal our livestock. They broke into our stables to liberate phaetons, surreys, buggies, spring wagons, hay wagons, buckboards, and farm wagons. At first they never came to our farm, the house in Harrisonville, or the ferry Pa still owned, but struck the mail stations and other businesses that Pa had a stake in. In one night alone, they robbed us of more than $4,000 in merchandise.

  As crimes and war talk heated up, Pa approached me one afternoon while I was mucking out the stables. “Cole,” he said softly, “I think it is time you learned how to shoot.”

  Leaning the pitchfork against a stall, I laughed. “Pa, I’ve been shooting a gun since I was six years old.”

  His expression did not change. He did not smile, nor did he blink.

  “Son,” he said, and the smile vanished from my face, “I speak not of shotguns or rifles.” From his coat pocket, he withdrew a .36-caliber Navy Colt, and held it out to me, butt forward.

  With some tentativeness, I accepted the revolver, amazed by both its balance and the lightness of weight.

  Pa nodded. “It fits your hand,” he said, “like you were born with it.”

  * * * * *

  I taught myself to shoot. Bottles, cans, pinecones. Right-handed at first. Then John Jarrette taught me to shoot with my left hand.

  “Why would I need to shoot left-handed?” I asked him.

  “Because you might get shot in your right arm,” he said.

  “Shot?” I laughed, until I realized Jarrette was not joking.

  Troubled times, certainly, but, like most kids throughout all of history I imagine, I had no idea about how good my life was. Even in those dark days of the Border Wars—since I rarely saw bloodshed or thievery firsthand but only heard Pa, Dick, and Jarrette speak of such crimes—I could hunt, fish. Never did our family go hungry. Ma taught us to read from the Bible, and Pa, a man of letters, would debate—his word—the news of the day with us, for Pa collected newspapers like he owned a Kansas City newspaper stand. Even my sisters would be allowed to voice opinions.

  After supper, we might cite Shakespeare, Milton, or Lord Byron. Sometimes we would even bring in Hardin, the slave, to discuss the teachings of Jesus or the letters of Paul.

  My parents insisted that their children get a formal education. At one schoolhouse, I got my first taste of the devil.

  * * * * *

  His name was Bob Griggs, blue-eyed and bald except for the greasy, red hair strands that ran around the sides of his head. A

  freckle-faced man with a crooked nose, Bob Griggs did not like me—or my brothers or sisters—one iota.

  This is how Bob Griggs started every morning, five days a week, in that little one-room schoolhouse.

  “Children …” He would be standing behind his desk, which held a few old McGuffey’s Readers, a Bible, a Webster’s Dictionary, and his hat, crown down. He always smiled like some kindly uncle, his hands at his chest, the fingers of one hand spread out and pressing against the fingers of the other hand, highlighting the pointer finger of his left hand that was missing two knuckles. He always ordered all the children—which varied in number between sixteen and twenty-nine, what with the crops and the seasons and the weather, or how the fish might be biting—to come up and draw a number from his hat.

  We did that every single day, each of us pulling out a folded piece of yellow paper and then returning to our seats. After the first couple of weeks of school, the minute he stood behind the desk, many of the girls, but even some of the smaller boys, would start crying, because they knew what came next.

  Releasing his fingertips, he would stare at the ceiling as if in deep thought, and eventually would look at us carefully before calling out the number. Some unfortunate would come up with the slip of paper with the number he had called, and return it to the hat, and then bend over. Producing an ugly piece of board with holes drilled through, Bob Griggs would arc back his arm and then slam that paddle savagely on the student’s backside. Just one slap, and the boy or girl would tearfully walk to the rear left corner, standing there till recess, when perhaps the pain would have lessened enough for that day’s victim to sit down again for the afternoon.

  Every day.

  Four times a week, on average, that unfortunate kid was a Younger, since there would have been five of us at school at that time I’m recalling—Josie, pushing sixteen, down to Jim, who was eight.

  That day Bob Griggs called out: “Seven!”

  My number. This wasn’t my first whipping from that sorry old cuss, but it would be my last. From my dinner pail, I pulled out the bullfrog I had caught—my original plan had been to scare my cousin, Nannie Harris, and a real pretty girl named Lizzie Brown—and handed it to Lizzie’s brother Tom before I strode up to take my punishment.

  Griggs swung hard, the paddle sending spasms of pain racing up my backbone, and I could feel welts rising on my buttocks. But damned if I even flinched.

  “What’s the matter with you, Younger?” Bob Griggs yelled, and swung the paddle again. I was not expecting a second blow, so, as I was straightening and turning, the paddle caught me on the right hip, and sent me crashing to the floor. At the same time, the frog must have leaped out of Tom Brown’s hand. Frightened, the girls began screaming, turning the small log cabin into bedlam. That really angered Bob Griggs, who started to take it out on me as I pushed myself up off the floor.

  The next swing of the paddle caught my forearm, which I quickly raised to defend myself. The devil, however, had taken hold of Bob Griggs, and the paddle sprained my wrist and left a bruise that eventually stretched from knuckles to elbow. Back came the paddle, catching me on the side of my head. My eyes glazed over. I tasted blood in my mouth. I swore I saw Satan, horns and all, standing over me.

  As far as I was concerned, that was my punishment for whipping Brother Jim while playing Old John Brown. The devil himself had come to take me straight to hell.

  “You uppity piece of trash!” Griggs yelled. “Holier than thou. Richer than God Almighty. Well, I’m about to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget!”

  As he came at me, I closed my eyes, ready to travel to that terrible place. Something crashed. A man screamed. I could feel the floor of the schoolhouse trembling as my classmates stampeded outside. They’d tell their parents, I dimly thought. The closest family was the Kelley clan—Doc Kelley had donated the land for the school—but still their house lay three miles southeast, and the Kelley brood always walked to school.

  By the time some grown-up came, I would be dead.

  So I lay there, practically unconscious, feeling half-dead as I tried to remember some good Bible verses.

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

  I went back to the Old Testament, when the earth was without form. I fell into that void, where darkness was upon the face of the deep.

  Chapter Three

  And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

  Genesis 1:3.

  My eyes opened. I saw my older brother Dick, whose eyes were rimmed red from tears. Or perhaps rage. His collar had been pulled askew, buttons had been ripped from his shirt, and when he let out that sigh of relief as I returned to consciousness, he lifted his right hand to run through his curly hair. I saw the scrapes on his knuckles.

  Dick would have been eighteen on that Friday morning in 1856. Ma and Pa had sent him to Chapel Hill College up in Lexington, but Dick had been riding home for a visit and had decided to
stop by the schoolhouse. Why the Lord has always looked over me, I cannot say.

  Nor will I ever understand why I should have been blessed with such a kind, sweet, and loving brother like Dick. Neighbors always said we were direct opposites: me the hothead, and Dick the one who sought to reason things out, not turn to fisticuffs.

  On that day, though, it took Jack and Tom Brown and Horatio Kelley to pull Dick off Bob Griggs, and even then the schoolmaster had four busted ribs, a shattered jaw, and a nose that had been pretty much flattened.

  “Speak to me, Cole,” Dick pleaded. “Can you talk?”

  My lips parted, and I turned my head to spit out blood.

  “Oh, God!” Dick cried.

  My head straightened, and I mouthed, “I am all right,” and swallowed.

  Nannie Harris came back inside, holding a handkerchief that she had dipped in a well bucket. Kneeling at my side, she began to squeeze the handkerchief, dripping cool spring water into my mouth. That revived me, but still I must have been addled, because I asked: “Tom, where’s that bullfrog?”

  * * * * *

  They hauled Bob Griggs back to Strother, wrapped up his jaw, bandaged his ribs. Then the Kelleys and Browns, along with other good citizens, doused his body—naked except for the coverings on his wounds—with hot tar before dumping goose feathers over him. Finally, they ran him out of the county. Or at least that’s what I heard. I didn’t witness any of it, and I never ran into Bob Griggs again—for which Mr. Griggs, if he’s not dead, should give thanks every day.

  Boosted onto Dick’s horse, I slumped in the saddle as my big brother grabbed the reins to lead the blue roan mare through the woods road toward our farmhouse. Sally, Josie, Duck, and Jim followed. When we came to the crossroads and could see our home, Dick stopped, turning to face my brothers, sisters, and me.

  “What should we tell Ma and Pa?” Sally asked.

  Dick wet his lips. “That Griggs damned near killed Cole. That’s all. Hurry down and tell Ma, so she can have hot water and a bed ready. You kids can run faster than I can pull Cole on Frances here.”

  “I ain’t that busted up,” I said.

  “Hush.” Dick nodded at the others, and they took off, running, screaming loud enough to alert farms far distant to the south. He watched them run for maybe a minute, and when he turned back, I saw tears streaming down his face.

  “Cole …” He was as desperate as I had ever seen him. “Don’t tell them, Cole. Please don’t tell them what I did to that schoolmaster. Please …”

  That was another difference between Dick and me. He had more of Pa in him than I did, and he kept his eye on politics. After he was graduated from Chapel Hill College, he came home—we lived in Harrisonville by then—and opened up a livery business with Will Kelley, who used to freight down the Santa Fe Trail. Dick would become a Mason when the Grand Lodge of Missouri, Prairie Lodge Number 90, started up in 1860. We all figured he was destined for greater things—had life turned out like everyone thought it would.

  Me? I was the wild one, the one everyone would have expected to have beaten Bob Griggs so savagely no one could have recognized him.

  Over the several miles from the schoolhouse and our home, my reasoning and senses had returned, relatively speaking. It hurt to suck in a deep breath, but that’s what I did, holding it for a while before exhaling. My head bobbed. I did not know why Dick should feel ashamed for what he had done to that evil man. Hell, I still don’t know.

  “You didn’t do anything,” I said. “I whupped Bob Griggs. And I’d do it again,” I assured him.

  * * * * *

  After that experience in school, you might think that I would have shunned education, and joined a bunch of boys like some of the Kelley and Jarrette crew that avoided schoolhouses and books the way Nannie Harris swung wide berths around spiders, snakes, and frogs. Yet, education in the Younger household was considered a privilege, an honor, and a necessity.

  We loved our parents, even when Pa was far off in Kansas City, even when Ma was sending us to get a switch to be used on our backsides. We loved the discussions about the world, literature, and the Bible. Yes, I found life beyond books—in the woods where I hunted, on the roads where I rode, during those hours practicing with that Navy Colt. And at the socials, barn raisings, turkey shoots, and pig-pickings where we ate, danced, sipped of Mr. Jarrette’s corn liquor when no grownups were looking, once we were teenagers, or sneaked a kiss from a girl.

  Sister Laura married Will Kelley, a widower who had a daughter. Belle wed Richard Hall, a shopkeeper and blacksmith, and they moved into Ma and Pa’s first home near Strother. Duck eventually would marry one of Pa’s best wranglers, George Clayton. Pa stayed busy, and we prospered, and I returned to school—and loved it.

  After we moved to Harrisonville, I got an education from my cousin, Stephen Carter Ragan, and another fine schoolmaster, Stephen B. Elkins, at a fancy school called the Academy. I joked that it was for the brightest kids in the county, but, actually, it was for any boy or girl whose parents could pay the hefty price of subscription per student.

  Ragan’s ma was Aunt Mary, Pa’s sister, and Captain Ragan proved himself to be a mighty fine teacher, who never put a dunce cap on anyone, never made a boy or girl stand in a corner, and never rebuked any kid for giving an incorrect answer. I mean to tell you that, after enduring Bob Griggs for those hellish months, having a cousin for a teacher, and a capable teacher at that, seemed

  heaven-sent. Captain Ragan—he would wear the gray under Generals Kirby Smith, Braxton Bragg, and Joseph Johnston—taught us for two years. Then Stephen Elkins came on the scene.

  Elkins was different, but he appreciated my willingness to listen, and learn, and to break up fights—Elkins was not a big gent—when the boys took to rough-housing. One September afternoon in 1859, when every boy in school, including Jim, had gone to the McCorkle’s cornfield to shoot doves for supper and the following morning’s breakfast, Mr. Elkins called me up to the head of the class. At that time, I don’t think Elkins could have been older than seventeen or eighteen, and maybe not even that.

  “Don’t you like dove meat, Cole?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well …” He glanced out the window, and we could hear the muffled reports of shotguns off the west, where the McCorkles had their farm. “What brought you to school?”

  “My older brother Dick,” I answered.

  “Dick brought you to school.” His words always came out a lot different than most folks. He had attended the Masonic College and earned his sheepskin from the University of Missouri over in Columbia, but everyone knew that he hailed from Ohio. He smiled that little wan smile of his, shook his head, and said: “Cole, I didn’t ask you who brought you here. I asked you what brought you here.”

  “Same answer, sir,” I said. “I’m here because of Dick. I figure … well, if I can be like Dick, then maybe I’ll amount to something.”

  He thought about that before coming close enough to whisper in my ear: “Coleman Younger, I am not a wise old man, but I think I have seen enough in this schoolhouse to know one thing for certain. You, young man, will amount to something.”

  Chapter Four

  Strother lay a tad under twenty miles due north of Harrisonville—an easy ride—so Pa trusted me, now sixteen years old, to make the run with the mail on June 6, 1860. ’Course, I carried the Navy Colt on my hip and the mail in a pouch was secured around the horn of the saddle. I rode the best Narragansett Pacer we had, a fourteen-and-a-half-hand high chestnut stallion, long-necked and high-tailed. I called him Robinson Crusoe, and always rode him at an ambling gait.

  The mail I carried included newspapers—the editor of the Harrison Democrat had some sort of agreement with the publishers and editors of other newspapers in which they’d send each other that week’s papers. The papers made for pretty good reading once I got out of Harrisonville on the no
rthbound route, or Strother when I started back for home. When one editor was finished with a paper or papers, he would mail his batch on up or down the line. Kansas City’s Enquirer and Star … Liberty Tribune … Border Star … Occidental Messenger … Western Beacon … Lexington Express. I had plenty to read.

  Slowing down Robinson Crusoe that day, I pulled out the Border Star from the mail pouch and began reading about the upcoming election. Pa supported Claiborne Jackson for governor and Thomas C. Reynolds for lieutenant governor. They were running on the Stephen Douglas ticket, and Pa liked them on account they were pro-slavery but moderate. By 1860, you heard plenty of talk about Secession, but Pa and many others wanted to preserve the Union.

  I don’t think it mattered much to me one way or the other. I just liked to read.

  Besides, it was a hot day, so muggy that I had broken out in a sweat before I had ridden a mile out of town. I didn’t want to tax my stallion too much.

  Hoofs thudded behind me, forcing me to rein up and look back. The papers also carried news about James Montgomery and Doc Jennison, who kept making off with Missouri property, which they carried back to Kansas. Now, not thinking any Redleg would be after me, I didn’t even reach for my Colt. What I did do was curse and drop my newspaper, because the roan and rider didn’t even slow down till they were about ten yards from me. Then the horse practically slid to a stop, which caused Robinson Crusoe to shy and buck a bit, and that sent the Westport weekly into the bar ditch.

  “Damn you, Duck!” I shouted, and swung to the ground, holding the reins to Robinson Crusoe and sliding down into the ditch. Rain had been steady that week, the ditch was flowing, and the Border Star was soggy. I held up the paper, ink already blurring. “Look what you done!” I yelled.

  “No one’ll miss one little newspaper, brother,” my older sister told me. “I won’t tell Pa. So you won’t lose your job … or get sent to the Walls.”