It proved to be the final dissolution of Quantrell's once formidable force of partisans. George Todd, the Paladine of the command, the leader who was persistent and daring, slept quietly after the fierce turmoil of life's battlefield had ended. John Poole, another hard rider, desperate fighter and dauntless leader, mouldered in a gory grave. John Jarrette and Cole Younger had sometime before separated from the band, and were operating in the far South where the magnolias grow and the moss-bearded live-oaks stand sentinels in the fever-haunted swamps. Fernando Scott was dead. Bill Anderson had fallen in a terrible combat while endeavoring to effect a crossing of the Missouri river in Howard county. As he had lived for some years, grimly fighting, so in the last extremity when the odds were all against him and unseen messengers of death burdened the air with their low-hummed dirges, his life went out while he still fought in the very shades of despair. Kinney was dead, and many more had surrendered life in the hot simoon of battle. And what a band it had been, which was now broken! Its deeds must ever remain a part of the history of Missouri, and the chapter wherein the record is made will always be read with a shudder, and in years to come men will remember the mournful story of devastation and death with feelings of painful regret that human beings could so revel in the miseries and misfortunes of whole communities. To those who can calmly sit and look down the vista of the dead years and recall without prejudice the history of men who were authors of deeds so notable--actions which, performed under other circumstances, would have made heroes of deathless fame, there must come a feeling of regret that such men should have been the victims of a baleful destiny. CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURES IN SEPARATE FIELDS. The days of Guerrilla warfare were drawing to a close. The retreat of Price and Shelby from Missouri left the Federals free to operate against the Guerrillas. The old bands were decimated. Death had been busy in their ranks; and for the remnants of a once formidable organization, no Confederate army could extend over them sheltering arms. The drama was about completed; the curtain was soon to drop.