The whole relation but confirms what has been reiterated in the pages of this volume, that the resources and shrewdness of Jesse James are truly wonderful; that in all respects he and his brother are men of extraordinary capacity, and that in courage, skill, adroitness, and vitality, they are men strangely endowed. What they may yet accomplish is hidden in the unrevealed future, which to our questioning returns no answer. CHAPTER LI. ALLEN PARMER. Allen Parmer is a Missourian. His boyhood days were passed principally in Jackson county. When the late war broke over the country, Allen Parmer was a youth, little fitted to enter the ranks with fighting men. Yet he became a member of Quantrell's band. He first came into prominence among his comrades in August, 1863, at the capture and sack of Lawrence, Kansas. That day Parmer was a member of the squad led by Bill Anderson, who murdered without compunction and destroyed without feeling. He escaped with the rest of the band. He was at Independence; at Lone Jack; at Camden; at Weston; in their lairs among the Sni Hills, and along the waters of the Blues. He was one of the six men who remained with Todd at Judge Gray's house, near Bone Hill, Jackson county, when Captain John Chestnut arrived in that neighborhood, in September, 1864, bearing a communication from General Price to the Guerrillas, which at once caused a rally of the old partisans. He was selected by Lieut. Geo. W. Shepherd as one of the picked men ordered on a dangerous expedition to the north side of the Missouri. The Guerrilla campaign there was short but bloody. The terrible massacre and rout at Centralia was the crowning event, and Parmer performed a conspicuous part in that conflict. All through the operations of the Guerrillas he was one of the most daring in the band. He was one of the executioners of Bradley Bond, a militiaman of Clay county. He and Frank James captured the man, and afterward he was shot. [Illustration: ALLEN PARMER. (Williams & Thomson, Photographers, Kansas City, Mo.)] When Missouri no longer offered a field for operations, and Quantrell entered upon his last campaign in Kentucky, Allen Parmer was one of the old Guerrillas who followed him. The Federal garrison was compelled to surrender at Hustonville, Lincoln county, Kentucky. Thenceforward Quantrell was known in his true character. In a fight in Jessamine county, George Roberson and a member of Quantrell's command, was captured, taken to Louisville, and confined in prison, but subsequently escaped. Afterward he was captured again, taken to Lexington, transferred to Louisville once more, and there arraigned before a court-martial, tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged on a charge of murdering the Federal major at Hustonville, who fell by the hand of Parmer. Roberson was afterward publicly executed at Louisville. Parmer took part in all the dreadful frays of Quantrell's little band in Kentucky.