Hard Way Out of Hell Page 3

  She meant the state prison in Jefferson City, which had opened back in 1836 and was already considered the “bloodiest forty-seven acres in America.” Having seen more than my fair share of bloodshed, I might disagree with that assessment, although I cannot say for certain. I’ve never been inside any Missouri prison.

  After tossing the Border Star back into the water, I climbed out of the ditch. Two years my senior, Duck was right. No editor would miss one little newspaper, already a month old, which had been read and passed along by Lord knows how many other publishers. The ink was smeared long before it fell into that bar ditch.

  Of all my sisters—actually, of all of my siblings—I felt closest to Duck. Headstrong, pretty, athletic, smart, she could ride like the devil and laugh like a giggling toddler. Her blue eyes always sparkled, and I don’t think any of the Younger brood loved life the way she did. She lived for the day, and nothing pleased her more than to spur a horse into a gallop with the wind blowing in her face. Folks in Harrisonville didn’t like that she rarely rode sidesaddle, but no one had the stupidity to mention that to her, or any of the Youngers.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, both haughty and mad.

  “Keeping you company,” she said.

  “You are not.”

  “Am, too.” She laughed. “Ma said it was all right for me to go and visit Belle and Richard. In her last letter, Belle said she finally got that brand-new sewing machine from the I. M. Singer and Company.”

  I slipped my boot into the stirrup, swung back into the saddle, kicked the chestnut into a walk, saying: “Since when did you ever take interest in sewing?”

  Easing her horse alongside Robinson Crusoe, she tilted her head at me and showed her most bewitching smile. “Richard got himself a new shotgun.”

  We walked about a mile, before Duck got antsy. “C’mon, Cole. I’ll never get to try out that new shotgun if we dilly-dally like this.” She wore boots. She wore spurs. And the Morgan bolted into a high lope, so I had to follow.

  It was miles we rode like that before slowing down to a walk to let our horses cool down. It was long past noon when I heard some noise a ways up the road. Woods lined both sides of the road, more path than pike, and I pushed back the brim of my hat, leaned forward in the saddle, and listened.

  “What was that?” Duck asked.

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  Muffled shouts, the breaking of twigs, a horse’s whinny all came from the eastern woods. Dogs were barking.

  We stopped.

  “Sounds like a coon hunt,” Duck said.

  I knew it wasn’t. I gripped the butt of the Navy, and eased Robinson Crusoe in front of Duck and her Morgan.

  A man burst through the woods, hatless, his clothes ripped by the brambles. He started across the road, but here the ditch had widened to practically a creek, and, panting as he was, both pale and already limping, I guess he knew he could never make that leap across. So he turned and ran north, away from us. So terrified he seemed, I don’t think he even saw us.

  The blast of a shotgun startled our horses, and pellets rained down among the trees as we steadied our horses. A few seconds later, riders emerged from the trees and briars that grew so thick that they were forced to move slowly, picking their way carefully and cautiously in single file. These men, wearing hats and each carrying a shotgun or revolver, spotted us. One smiled, while another stopped, tipped his hat at Duck, and bowed, before spurring his dun down the road.

  Eight men in all. The last one wore a fine morning coat, with a black hat fitted with a purple ostrich plume, one side pinned up. He carried a large revolver in his small hand, which he pointed up the road, yelling: “Stop him!”

  They did. Up the road, past the woods in an area where some farmer had cleared the land and planted corn. A big man with a long beard and a buckskin shirt knocked the fugitive down with his dapple horse. Then, quickly, two others dismounted and jerked the man back up to his feet.

  When the dainty man with the ostrich plume caught up with them, he cried out: “There!” Then, pointing his big pistol, he yelled: “To that oak! The oak!”

  Duck and I could see that one tree remained at the edge of the cornfield, a mighty oak that looked as though it had been growing there for centuries.

  “Let’s go back,” I said, turning my horse around.

  Duck blinked. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s none of our affair,” I told her as I started walking the pacing horse back toward Harrisonville.

  Duck rode toward the clearing instead. Muttering an oath and pulling the reins, I raced after her.

  “Capt’n,” the burly man said, pointing at us, and the man with the plumed hat turned toward Duck and me.

  Captain? No one in this group wore a uniform, and I couldn’t see any chevrons or epaulets on their clothing, yet my newspaper readings and our suppertime discussions with Pa had educated me. During the previous year, the southeastern portion of Kansas had briefly been put under martial law. In Missouri, our legislature had authorized the raising of a militia to put down banditti terrorizing our state, as well as offering rewards as high as $3,000 for the capture of Kansas raiders who crossed the state line to perpetrate atrocities on Missourians.

  “What’s going on here?” Duck called out as she reined up, watching the captured man, whose hands had been tied behind his back, being pushed toward the oak tree. He was alternating between screaming out in fear and crying out to the Lord.

  The big man with the long beard stepped away from the others. An old single-shot pistol remained tucked in his waistband, but he pulled a hatchet and waved it at my sister. “Get out of here, you pryin’ little bitch.”

  A mere second later, he stopped his charge as he stared down the barrel of my Navy Colt.

  “You speak to my sister like that again, mister,” I said, “and your next conversation will be with Peter at the pearly gates.” I actually said that, like I was some character in one of those five-penny dreadfuls that Jim was always reading when he could sneak one into the house without Ma catching him.

  The hatchet dropped to the sod, and the man swallowed his tobacco quid.

  That got the man with the fancy coat and hat to laugh. He shoved his big revolver into a flapped holster on his left hip and stepped forward, sweeping off his hat and bowing slightly.

  “Lankford would apologize, friends,” he said as the hat returned to his head, “were he not about to lose his breakfast.” Indeed, the man with the thick beard had fallen to his knees and hands, gagging.

  Duck could have cared less. “What are you doing to this man?” she demanded to know.

  “Why we’re hanging him, my dear,” answered the fancy man.

  His voice sounded more like a girl’s, and though I guess he stood maybe five-foot-nine in those high-heeled boots, a good wind would have likely sent him sailing into the cornfield. I doubt if he weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds. His eyes were pale, as was his face, and he had just begun sprouting a yellowish mustache. But his sandy-colored hair was well-groomed, and he carried himself with an easy gait. He didn’t look like a captain, more like a schoolteacher, and I don’t mean Bob Griggs.

  “For what?” Duck demanded.

  “He’s a damned Kansan!” came a curt shout from a man standing beneath the oak.

  The fancy man grinned. “Mr. Todd speaks the truth. But more than just a Kansan”—he leaned his head back and laughed—“as I once lived in the fair city of Lawrence myself … he foments insurrection. He and others planned to free slaves being auctioned off in Independence, arm them, and sic them on their masters.” His voice lowered. “You know what a darky would do to a lovely lass like yourself.”

  I aimed the Colt at this smooth-speaking gent, but he showed no fear.

  Addressing me, he continued: “You know I speak the truth, sir. This rapacious swine would s
trike you down without remorse, commit the most heinous crimes on you and your family, and would turn western Missouri into a Chicago slaughterhouse.”

  A number of the other seven men started moving away from the oak tree, their guns in their hands. My palms turned clammy.

  Duck looked my way, and for once I saw fear in her eyes.

  “It was in the paper,” I commented as I holstered the Colt. “The sale of some slaves in Independence.”

  “If there are no further objections, then,” the dandy said, “we shall proceed with our execution.” He turned in the direction of the oak, but then stopped and twisted back toward us. “Would you care to watch?”

  “No,” I said for the both of us. In no mood for any objection from Duck, I took the reins from her and led her Morgan away.

  Duck wasn’t finished, though. She called back: “Might I have your name?”

  Stopping, I turned in the saddle as the man bowed. “But, of course,” he said brightly. “I would be honored to have your lips mouth my name. Yet might I first ask to hear yours?”

  “Caroline,” she said. “Caroline Younger.”

  Then the fancy man’s cold eyes found me.

  “Cole,” was all I told him. He already knew that Duck was my sister.

  “A pleasure to make the acquaintance of both of you.” After a quick bow, he walked toward the man they planned to hang, who had dropped to his knees, begging for mercy in between his sobs. I didn’t think the fancy man was going to tell us his name, or even an alias, for fear we would tell the authorities—though neither Duck nor I ever spoke of that day.

  “You may call me Hart!” he called out. “Hart! Charley Hart!”

  Charley Hart wasn’t his real name, of course. He had been born Quantrill. William Clarke Quantrill.

  Chapter Five

  I saw my brother Dick in Harrisonville on Election Day, August 1860, when I rode Robinson Crusoe to the livery he owned with Laura’s husband, Will Kelley.

  “Come to vote, Bud?” he said, grinning.

  Dick was the one who saddled that nickname on me. I never knew why, but it made me laugh. “I’m not old enough to vote, Dick.”

  “This is Missouri,” Dick said. “I bet you can vote. Probably two or three times … as long as you’re voting for the Douglas ticket.”

  “Thought this was just a city election,” I said as I swung out of the saddle and handed him the reins. “Got no interest in politics, Dick,” I told him, and gave him a wicked grin. “I just want to see how you shoe a horse.”

  He took the reins, and led the stallion to the smithy. “I’m a businessman, Bud,” he said. “I don’t shoe horses. I pay my farrier. Hey, Ned!”

  Leaving the Narragansett Pacer with the smithy, Dick led me across the street. I figured we’d be going to some café, though it seemed a mite early for supper, or maybe Pa’s mercantile for some new duds, because Dick never cared much for how I dressed. But instead, I found myself stepping onto the sawdust and peanut shells that covered the floor of Stricklyn’s Tavern.

  This being Election Day, the place had drawn a crowd. To make it to the bar took some doing since Dick stopped at any number of tables to shake hands and exchange a few words with the seated men, as well as introduce me. We had to squeeze between two gents in bowler hats who both were using a bar towel to wipe the suds off their mustaches. Once we sidled up, Dick rapped his knuckles on the top of the bar, and when the beer-jerk turned his way, Dick held up two fingers.

  “Ma’ll raise hell, Dick,” I said, not whispering because you had to talk loud to be heard as noisy as Stricklyn’s was that afternoon.

  “Ma doesn’t need to know everything, Bud.”

  The barman drew two steins of beer, which he slid down the bar one at a time. Dick caught them both, handing the first one to me, grinning. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been sneaking sips from a jug at the Jarrette’s, because, remember, I’m a graduate of Chapel Hill College.”

  Our mugs clinked, and we drank. Dick borrowed the wet rag to wipe suds from his lips. I used my shirtsleeve.

  “You’ve enrolled, I take it,” he said, setting the stein on the bar top. “Like I told you to do.”

  My head bobbed, yet I sighed as I told him: “I sent in that application, sure.”

  The stein returned to his mouth. “You don’t sound excited.”

  I couldn’t really look at him as I tried to find the words that might lessen his disappointment. “Well … I don’t see how I can spend two or three years cooped up in some big-ass brick building.”

  He laughed at that, and pointed at my beer. I drank.

  “You and Duck are two peas in a pod,” he told me. “You want to spend your whole life guarding mail for Pa? Or hunting and fishing for your supper? Toiling sunup to sundown on some hardscrabble farm and raising a brood of uppity young ’uns?”

  I grinned. “The part about the kids sounds kind of fun.” Being in a saloon filled with men, we could make such off-color remarks.

  “How about the army?” he said.

  “Huh?” Beer spilled down my chin and shirtfront.

  “Bud”—he put his empty stein on the bar—“you read more than me or our brothers and sisters combined. You know what’s happening. War’s coming. Even if Stephen Douglas wins the presidency, eventually there will be war. North against South. Fate will not rest until the South becomes its own country.”

  “Maybe you should run for office,” I said, then sipped my beer.

  “I intend to, Bud.” He was dead serious. “With bigger ambitions than Pa. Jefferson City? Hardly. I’ll be in Washington City, or wherever our new Southern nation puts her capitol.”

  My head shook, but his voice turned firm. “I am serious, Bud, about the army. I’m thinking of it myself, when the shooting starts. You could make captain easily, the way you ride … and how you handle any kind of weapon. Me?” His head tilted back, and he let out a hearty laugh. “I have to think that Colonel C. Richard Younger would be impossible to lose a bid for the senate.”

  Once I had finished my beer, Dick escorted me out of the tavern, but not before he managed to shake a few more hands. I wouldn’t bet against him making it to the senate. We talked a bit more till we had arrived back at his livery.

  “Brick buildings are not that bad, little brother,” he told me as Ned led the chestnut stallion out of the stall with four new shoes. “You’d make a fine schoolmaster.”

  “I’m going to be a Mason, Dick,” I told him, and grinned. “Just like you.”

  “What about preacher?”

  I laughed. “After I just drunk a beer?”

  We shook hands. I felt good, and not because of the beer.

  “I’ll see you, Bud,” he said.

  The next time I saw Dick, he was dead.

  * * * * *

  I had to escort mail over to Pleasant Hill, which is why I had taken Robinson Crusoe in to be shod. The next day, I made that eleven-mile run northeast, but the Methodists were holding a dance that evening, so I stayed. By the time I got back into town, Dick was dead.

  Let brotherly love continue.

  Hebrews 13:1.

  Pa met me on the porch, black band around his white shirt sleeve, redness in his eyes. Of course, I knew something was wrong when I dismounted and saw one of our neighbors, Mrs. McCoy, bringing over a platter full of ham slices. It was the way of things. When a neighbor died, you brought victuals. Yet I suspected it to be one of the little ones, maybe Retta, who then would have been about three years old, or Bob, only six.

  “It’s Dick,” Pa said, and led me inside where Dick lay in a coffin in our parlor, wearing his best suit, with his hands folded across his chest.

  I was told how Dick suddenly just took ill, even joking with Richard Kelley that he must have eaten some gone-bad chicken because he had a stomachache. He was clutching the area around his
belly button. He had started for the house he was renting, but then made a beeline for Ma’s. By the time he got there, he was doubled over in pain. His right side just hurt like blazes, he told Ma, the pain having shifted over from his middle. When Ma put her hand on his side, he screamed. She got him to bed, and … well, he never got up. Chills set in. He had to stop drinking and eating because he couldn’t keep anything down. By the next morning, he couldn’t even move without screaming. Doc Logan arrived, but there wasn’t a thing he could do.

  Sometime on the morning of August 7th, Dick Younger passed on.

  We took his body to the farm near Strother, a grim procession, and laid him in the little cemetery where we had buried sweet Alphae eight years earlier.

  “Our brother, Charles Richard Younger, has reached the end of his earthly toils,” said the Grand Master of Grand Lodge of Missouri, Prairie Lodge Number 90, as we gathered near the grave old Hardin had dug. “The brittle thread which bound Richard to earth has been severed, and the liberated spirit has winged its flight to the unknown world.”

  It was nice of those Masons, for Dick had only been in their fold a few months.

  “The cord of silver is loosed.” The words still echo in my ears, and I can see myself standing beside Pa, see my ma on her knees, hands clasped, and see the preacher looking stern, gripping the Bible, but nodding every now and then at the words the Grand Mason spoke.

  “The golden bowl is broken,” he continued. “The pitcher is broken at the fountain. The wheel is broken at the cistern. And, brothers and sisters, the dust has returned to Earth as it was.” He paused before concluding with the words: “And the spirit has returned to God who gave it.”

  It was a nice funeral, I guess. The Masons did their part, and the Reverend Ketchum handled the Christian sections and the amens and the hymns. Lizzie Brown attended, which lifted my heart just a tad. By Jehovah, it seemed like everyone came to say farewell to the best older brother a body could ever pray to have. I have to think that Dick would have enjoyed the turnout, for folks came all the way up from Harrisonville, and a few came down from Lafayette County, where they had taught Dick inside those brick walls of Chapel Hill College.