The Good Lord Bird

They dashed toward Osawatomie. The town weren’t but a short distance off, and I cut through the woods a few steps to a high knoll, where I could see the Old Man and his men take the trail that circled ’round and led to the river and the town on the other side of it. I didn’t want to set ’round with Fred and that dead bird asleep in death, and there weren’t nothing to say to him nohow.

From where I was, I could see the town. The bridge crossing the Marais des Cygnes River leading to Osawatomie was swarming with rebels who had hauled two cannons over it. A few hundred yards off was the first cannon, which was perched downstream, along a grassy ridge, where you could wade across the water. There were several Free Staters firing on our side, trying to make it across there, but rebels on the other side was holding them off, and every time a group of Free Staters got close in, that cannon cleaned them out.

The Old Man and his boys busted right through them and charged down the hill and into the shallow water like wild men. They come up on the other side firing, and just like that sent the rebels on the other bank scrambling.

This fight was hotter than Black Jack. The town was in a state of panic and there were women and children about, scattering every which way. Several homesteaders was desperately trying to douse the fires on their homes, for the Reverend’s riders had torched several houses, and the Rev’s men shot them as they tried to put out the flames, which gived the busy homesteaders one less task to do, being that they was deadened. Altogether the Free Staters in town was badly organized. The Missourians’ second cannon was on the other side of town, blasting away, and between that one barking on one end of town, and the other barking at the riverbank on the other end, they was cleaning up the Free Staters.

The Old Man and his men charged out the water with guns blazing and cut to the right toward the first cannon that was downstream. The Free Staters who couldn’t cross on account of that cannon took courage when the Old Man’s army come and runned past them to take the bank, but the rebels at the cannon held. The Old Man’s men hacked and shot their way halfway to the cannon working alongside the creek, which ridged up as it reached the cannon. They pushed the enemy back, but more enemy arrived on horses, dismounted, regrouped, and swung that cannon to bear on them. That thing blowed off to deadly effect and halted the Old Man’s charge cold. Sent grapeshot whistling into the trees and cut down several Free Staters, who fell down the riverbank into the creek and didn’t get up. The Old Man mounted a charge again, but the cannon sent another volley that sent the Old Man and his men backward again, this time several falling halfway down the riverbank. And this time the rebels leaped out from behind the cannon and charged.

The Old Man’s men was outgunned and his boys fell back farther to the ridge, the creek right at their backs now, no place else to back up. There was a line of timber at the riverbank there, and he shouted quickly to his fellers to mount a line, which they did, just as the rebels charged the riverbank again.

I don’t know how they held it. The Old Man was stubborn. The Free Staters was badly outnumbered, but they held on until a second party of rebels flanked them from the rear, on the same side of the stream. A few of the Old Man’s team turned ’round to fight them off while the Old Man held his boys on the line, urging his men on. “Hold men. Steady. Aim low. Don’t waste ammunition.” He walked up and down the line shouting directions as bullets and cannon shot tore the leaves and limbs off the trees ’round him.

Finally, behind him, the Free Staters trying to hold off the rebels in that direction quit and run for it across the river, eating lead the whole way, and several of them breathed their last in the river. It was just too many enemy. The Old Man was cut off from a clean retreat now, taking fire from two sides, with the cannon blasting grape at him and rebels closing from the other way, with the creek behind him. He weren’t going to make it. He was defeated, but he wouldn’t give in. He held his men there.

The Missourians, cussing and hollering, quit for a minute to move their cannon closer, and took some lead from the Old Man’s men. But they got it mounted up again within fifty yards or so of the Old Man’s line and blowed a big hole in the line, sending several of his men into the water. Only then did he give up. He was done. He hollered, “Back across the river!” The men gladly did it, scrambling fast, but not him. He stood, big as you want, firing and reloading until the last man got out the tree line, hit the bank, and waded across. Owen was the last to go, and when he was at the riverbank and seen his Pa weren’t there, he turned back, hollering, “Come, Father!”