The Good Lord Bird

Like most things the Old Man planned out, the attack against Captain Pate’s Sharpshooters didn’t work out the way he drawed it up. For one thing, the Old Man always got bad information. We rode out against Captain Pate on a Saturday in October. Come December, we still hadn’t found him ... Everywhere we went, the story changed. We’d roll toward Palmyra and a settler on the trail would holler, “There’s a fight with the rebels yonder in Lawrence,” and off we’d go toward Lawrence, only to find the fight two days past and the rebels gone. A few days later a woman on her porch would exclaim, “I seen Captain Pate over near Fort Leavenworth,” and the Old Man would say, “We have him now! Go men!” and off we’d bust out again, full of pluck, riding two days, only to find out it weren’t true. Back and forth we went, till the men was plumb wore out. We went like that all the way into February, the Old Man spoiling for a fight, and getting none.

We picked up another dozen or so Free Staters this way though, wandering around southern Kansas near the Missouri border, till we growed to about thirty men. We was feared, but the truth is, the Pottawatomie Rifles weren’t nothing but a bunch of hungry boys with big ideas running ’round looking for boiled grits and sour bread to stuff their faces with in late February. Winter come full on then, and it growed too cold to fight. Snow blanketed the prairie. Ice formed eighteen inches deep. Water froze in pitchers overnight. Huge trees, covered with icicles, crackled like giant skeletons. Those in the Old Man’s army who could stand it stayed in camp, huddled under the tent. The rest, including me and the Old Man and his sons, spent the winter keeping warm wherever we could. It’s one thing to say you’s an abolitionist, but riding for weeks on the plains in winter, with no spare victuals, you weeding a bad hoe for satisfaction to test a man’s principles that way. Some of the Old Man’s men was turned toward slavery by the time winter was over.