Twenty of us, after a brisk ride, reached the dugout at ten o’clock in the morning.  But the thieves had gone.  We found a newly made grave where they had buried the man I had to kill, and a trail leading southwest toward Denver.  That was all.  But my adventure at least resulted in clearing the country of horse-thieves.  Once the gang had gone, no more depredations occurred for a long time.

After a year’s absence from home I began to long to see my mother and sisters again.  In June, 1861, I got a pass over the stage-line, and returned to Leavenworth.  The first rumblings of the great struggle that was soon to be known as the Civil War were already reverberating throughout the North; Sumter had been fired upon in April of that year.  Kansas, as every schoolboy knows, was previously the bloody scene of some of the earliest conflicts.

My mother’s sympathies were strongly with the Union.  She knew that war was bound to come, but so confident was she in the strength of the Federal Government that she devoutly believed that the struggle could not last longer than six months at the utmost.

Fort Leavenworth and the town of Leavenworth were still important outfitting posts for the soldiers in the West and Southwest.  The fort was strongly garrisoned by regular troops.  Volunteers were undergoing training.  Many of my boyhood friends were enlisting.  I was eager to join them.

But I was still the breadwinner of the family, the sole support of my sisters and my invalid mother.  Not because of this, but because of her love for me, my mother exacted from me a promise that I would not enlist for the war while she lived.

But during the summer of 1861 a purely local company, know as the Red-Legged Scouts, and commanded by Captain Bill Tuff, was organized.  This I felt I could join without breaking my promise not to enlist for the war, and join it I did.  The Red-Legged Scouts, while they cooeperated with the regular army along the borders of Missouri, had for their specific duty the protection of Kansas against raiders like Quantrell, and such bandits as the James Boys, the Younger Brothers, and other desperadoes who conducted a guerrilla warfare against Union settlers.

We had plenty to do.  The guerrillas were daring fellows and kept us busy.  They robbed banks, raided villages, burned buildings, and looted and plundered wherever there was loot or plunder to be had.

But Tuff was the same kind of a fighting man as they, and working in a better cause.  With his scouts he put the fear of the law into the hearts of the guerrillas, and they notably decreased their depredations in consequence.

Whenever and wherever we found that the scattered bands were getting together for a general raid we would at once notify the regulars at Fort Scott or Fort Leavenworth to be ready for them.  Quantrell once managed to collect a thousand men in a hurry, and to raid and sack Lawrence before the troops could head them off.  But when we got on their trail they were driven speedily back into Missouri.