The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains: The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and Plain — John Shaqi
The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains: The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and PlainCook, John R.
History
The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains: The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and Plain
Cook, John R.
American bison hunting -- Southwest, New -- History -- 19th century; Cook, John R., 1844-1917; Frontier and pioneer life -- Kansas; Frontier and pioneer life -- Southwest, New; Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1866-1895; Kansas -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; Pioneers -- Kansas -- Biography;
Before drifting these chapters to the early settlements of southern
Kansas, and finally to the mountains and plains of the Southwest, the
author deems it pertinent and relevant to follow more or less the
Kansas and Missouri border, and on down through Indian Territory and
Arkansas, from 1862 to 1865, the final ending of the rebellion, which
found me at Little Rock, Arkansas. One incident occurred during the
winter of 1861 that gave me my first glimpse of a Missouri guerrilla.
My brother Emerson was teaching school at Hesper. One afternoon, one of
the scholars left a bright-red shawl on the playground at recess. The
road from Lawrence to Olathe ran through this playground. I was seated
near a window at the south side of the school-room, in plain view of
the road and shawl, when I noticed three men traveling east. One of
them dismounted and picked up the shawl, and, mounting his horse, the
three rode on. I called my brother's attention to the fact. He went to
the door and called to the men, saying, "Bring back that shawl." They
looked back and said something to him that he did not understand, and
rode on, one of them putting the shawl over his shoulder. My brother
dismissed the school, and, going to the nearest house, procured a horse
and overtook them at the Bentley ford, on Captain's creek, and brought
back the shawl. The words that Turpin of Olathe and his Missouri pals
used when my brother overtook them were afterward remembered by one of
these desperadoes as he was lying on the floor of a shack on the west
side of the public square in Olathe, his life ebbing away from mortal
gunshot wounds from Sheriff John Janes Torsey, of Johnson county.
My brother, stooping over him, asked the dying bushwhacker if he
remembered him. "Yes," came the feeble answer, "and I am sorry I said
what I did to you when you came after the shawl last winter."
My next sight of a guerilla was in the summer of 1862, at Eudora. A
German named Henry Bausman kept a road-house just north of the Wakarusa
bridge, on the Lawrence road. He kept beer, pies, cakes, bologna
sausage, and cheese to sell to travelers. His son Henry was about
my age, and I thought a good deal of him, and when I would make the
seven-mile ride from home to Eudora for the mail, I would cross the
bridge and have a few moments chat with young Henry. On this particular
occasion we were in the garden, not twenty steps from the road, when we
saw a man approaching from the timber from the direction of Lawrence.
It was the man that terrorized the border—Charles William Quantrill.
But we did not know it at the time. He dismounted, tied his horse to a
hitching-rack in front of the house, and went inside. Henry said to me:
"John, I believe that fellow is some kind of a spy. He has passed here
several times in the last year, always going the same way. Let's go
inside and see him."
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