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Short Stories & Tall Tales
A Season in the Brush
Steven Clark
August 1864 North of Liberty, Missouri
The devil incarnate.
At the outset of July he had been relatively unknown to the Federals, referred to in their reports simply as “the guerilla Anderson.” Now, less than two months later, they were calling him a host of colorful names: the devil incarnate; the murdering fiend; the most desperate of desperate men; or as one newspaper put it, “the most heartless, cold-blooded bushwhacking scoundrel that had operated in Missouri since the outbreak of the war.” All were fairly accurate descriptions of William T. Anderson, the man most knew lately as Bloody Bill.
There was very little fiendish about his appearance. He was a strikingly handsome man with sharp, angular features: high cheekbones and a strong chin obscured somewhat by a short, untrimmed beard. He was of average height and weight with a thin, wiry buildwhich surprised those who, based on his reputation, expected him to be more monstrous in stature and form. His prized feature was his dark-brown hair, which fell in long wavy locks to his shoulders, topped by a cavalryman’s hat, never worn quite straight. Of all his physical attributes, only his eyes offered any hint of his true nature. His small gray-blue eyes, set back beneath heavy brows, were cold and unsympathetic, and seemed to bore right through anyone who dared gaze into them.
It was the eyes Jesse first noticed when he was introduced to Bill Anderson in camp that day. As he stood shaking the guerilla leader’s hand, he recalled one man telling him that Anderson’s eyes reminded him of a cross between an eagle and a snake. But Jesse didn’t feel that was close to an accurate description; at the moment it felt more like he was starting into the eyes of a walking dead man. There was no trace of life flickering in that gaze, no passion, no yearning, no anger or heartbreak, no…humanity. It was the raw, utterly vacant stare of a man who didn’t care if he lived or died. And although Jesse had never before met a man that he feared, his first encounter with Bloody Bill sent a shiver up his spine.
“My name’s Jesse James,” he said, unable just yet to break away from the man’s vacuous gaze. “My brother Frank here rode with you under Quantrill. You might know him as Buck James.”
The guerrilla chieftain said nothing to his new recruit, merely uttered a slight grunt before releasing Jesse’s hand and moving on to greet Jim Cummins in similar manner.
To Frank he offered five words, “Good to see you again,” delivered without warmth or expression.
Archie Clement was the only one of them to garner any real reaction from Anderson, who, immediately after shaking the little man’s hand, took him aside for a brief discussion of strategy.
Jesse glanced at Anderson’s horse…and the gory trophies that adorned it: scalps, hides, and even a couple of shriveled ears from his past victims were strung haphazardly on the saddle horn and bridle. His stomach beginning to roil, Jesse looked away. Now he knew where Little Archie had picked up some of his less savory traits. Those two are cut from the same cloth, Jessie thought as he watched the two men stride towards the campfire, side by side…the Devil Incarnate and the Butcher.
Later in the afternoon, after Jesse and Frank and Jim had settled in, something occurred in the camp that people would be talk about for years to comemore memorable than many of the small battles fought by the guerrillas throughout the countryside…not because it was an event of historical consequence, but simply because it was so offbeat, so thoroughly unexpected.
Shortly after Anderson had assigned the new recruits their various camp duties, a tall rangy-looking man rode in on what appeared to be a broken-down plow horse. The tall man, dressed in rags that looked to be more dust than cloth, slid down off his pitiful mount and sidled up to the first man he saw.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going?” the guerilla asked the rangy character.
“I’m here to see Bloody Bill Anderson. Whar’s he at?”
The guerilla picket glanced the tall man over once, then again. “What’s your business?” he asked with a sneer.
“My business is yore business,” the man replied. “I’m a bushwhacker like youns, and I’m looking to join up with this here crew.”
The guerilla chuckled. “Don’t hold your breath, pardner. I don’t think the boss is that desperate yet.”
“Don’t talk to me that way!” the tall man snapped. “I know about desperateYore lookin’ at a desperado from the Ozark Mountains. Talk to me that way agin and you’ll be pickin’ yore bloody teeth up outta the dirt!”
“Well!” the guerilla said, stepping back a little. “We’ll see what the captain has to say about that.”
More than a few men had gathered around to witness the exchange as this tall Ozark hillbilly was escorted to the campfire, where Bill Anderson was seated on a log, sipping coffee from a tin cup.
“Captain, this may says he’s a desperado,” the picket reported. “He’s from the Ozarks. Says he wants to join up.”
Bill Anderson stood to his full height, still drinking from the cup. He found himself looking skyward into the grimy, suet-covered face of the hillbilly.
“I got nothin’ against the Ozarks,” Anderson grunted. “But you strike me as a coward. Don’t have no use for you here.”
“Coward’s tail!” the hillbilly erupted. “I ain’t ever run from nothin’. I’ve foughten mountain lions bigger’n some of the men you got here. Try me, Cap’n. Turn me loose on some Yankees, and I’ll show you that I ain’t yellow.”
“It ain’t no use,” Anderson replied, staring into his cup, hardly paying attention to the man.
“Please, Cap’n. I rode a long ways up here to join you. Gimme a week to prove myself.”
They haggled back and forth in such manner for a full minute, and then Anderson finally lost his patience.
“Look!” he sputtered through clenched teeth, now giving the man his full attention; he spoke slowly, emphasizing every word, as if scolding a child. “I said…I don’t…need you. Now take your scrawny tail out of my camp.”
“Curse you, Bloody Bill!” the hillbilly hollered, kicking the ground with his boot, stirring up dust.
By now almost every man in camp was watching the bizarre scene unfold. Even the pickets had come in from the perimeter just in time to see Bill Anderson rear back and hawk a stream of spit into the hillbilly’s face. Many of the men began to laugh and mock the Ozarkian, but their laughter was cut short as the spectacle took an unexpected turn.
Without flinching or bothering to wipe away the spit, the tall filthy man who called himself a desperado reared back and delivered a haymaker to Bill Anderson’s jaw, knocking the unsuspecting captain off his feet and onto the ground.
Anderson’s lieutenants jumped to the aid of their leader, who was splayed out in the dirt beside the fire. They began to lift him off the ground, but he shoved their hands away, rising to his feet on his own. He staggered once and then stood squarely, face to face with the man who had delivered the painful blow.
Bloody Bill stared at the hillbilly for several moments, frowning as he rubbed his aching jaw.
The guerillas held their breath waiting for their captain to draw his pistol and fill the hillbilly’s guts with lead.
Instead, he spit once into the fire, then turned to his lieutenants and said, “Swear him in boys. Any man that can knock down Bill Anderson surrounded by his men will do as a member of our band.”
The men began clamoring around the Ozark Mountain man, slapping him on the shoulders and shaking his hand, congratulating him on having done something every Yankee in the state would kill to do. The man introduced himself as Samuel White, said he was from a town south of Springfield so small even the ants couldn’t find it. He had fought at Wilson’s Creek, but had to take leave of the army to care for a sick wife. Now that his wife had passed, he explained, he was ready to fight again for the freedom of his home state. But he wasn’t interested joining in the Confederate regulars again: this time Anderson’s band had been his first and only choice.
From that day on no one ever questioned Sam White’s courage again. Jesse made a note to pay attention to the tall hillbillythe one man in camp who might be even more fearless than he…in Arch Clement’s opinion at least.
That evening, just before bedtime, Captain Anderson welcomed Sam White officially at the campfire. And thenspeaking gravely and wearing a stony look on his facehe warned his men that anyone else who tried what Sam did would have his eyeballs cut out of the sockets and fed to the horses. Not a man in camp took it as a joke.
As Jesse lay half-awake in his blankets that night, staring up into the glittering midnight sky, he was reflecting back on all he’d seen that day. The war had change, it occurred to him. Bloody Bill was a testament to that fact. Men followed him because he did things they wished they could do, things they couldn’t bring themselves to do…but hoped to learn how. The battle lines were the same, the friends and foes the same, but the tactics had become crueler as the hatred had grown deeper.
And now he and Frank and Jim were part of that new kind of war.
Jesse’s thoughts wandered back to the night he’d first entered Fletch Taylor’s guerilla camp, less than three months ago. A season he’d spent in the brush so far, but it felt to him as though he’d already been out here for years. He wondered how old he would be when the war endedand how much he would see before then. I’ve seen too much already, he thought wearily.
Somewhere off in the darkness a dog began bayinga lost, deeply forlorn sound that struck a familiar chord somewhere inside Jesse’s breast.
Just before he closed his eyes and allowed sleep to take him, a final thought flickered in his waking mind: Somehow, I have a feeling I haven’t seen anything yet…
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