"All right, sir," said Brown, with military salute, and he left me again alone, perfectly satisfied that he had done his duty.

It was pay-day, and the two white men, with their pockets full of Confederate notes, meeting John, and finding he also had some money, concluded they would relieve him of it at a friendly game of poker. John was a bright mulatto, sharp as a razor, and the result was that the wrong parties got relieved.

*

The rain still pattered; the sentinel still pursued his solitary tramp, no other noises disturbed the darkness of the gloomy night or my reveries of the past, and the latter were finally resolved into a practical shape by then and there beginning to write up a diary to that date, and a determination to keep it through "the cruel war."

The result I propose to condense in these pages; no history, no philosophizing, and above all nothing that can arouse any of the slumbering animosity or hate engendered by the strife. As an old soldier would, by the peaceful fireside, "fight his battles o'er again" with a former enemy and quaff a beaker to future friendship, so only will I. I can promise that every incident and circumstance herein to be detailed actually occurred as related. I will merely give my own observations of the battles in which I participated, without attempting to go into the dry, technical details, and in some few instances, where personal feelings might be outraged, I have used fictitious names. The actors themselves, of course, if they ever see the narrative, will know who is meant; but before the public at large it would be useless and cruel at this late day to parade any one's shortcomings or defects.

My retrospection carried me back through many bright oases-some of them, I must confess, rather verdant. While one warlike scene was mingled with the shifting panorama, I gazed placidly at my innocent sword, which was dangling from the ridge-pole, and congratulated myself that I was a veteran. I had fought through a previous campaign. I had bivouaced on the frosty ground and formed my plan of an approaching battle as I questioned the mildly-shining stars to tell me of my own fate. Yes, I had been a soldier in the Wakarusa war!

Did you ever hear of it, gentle reader? It was preliminary to the great contest embalmed in history as the "Lost Cause," and therefore I will tell you of it:

From Polk county, Missouri, where I was then living, I was transplanted by an official appointment to Paoli, in Kansas Territory. Hardly arrived in my new location, when Sheriff Jones called out his posse comitatus to enable him to enforce some writs in Lawrence, and I, with other border ruffians, as our Northern friends complimentarily styled us, turned out to help enforce the law. On a pleasant October morning (1855) I mounted my bob-tailed Indian pony and started for the seat of war. The vast prairies, blackened and scarred by recent fires, to the vision seemed boundless, save as they were circumscribed by the arching skies which bended lovingly toward them. With nature only to witness my communings, I was indulging in glowing visions of the martial glory that awaited me, when my beast, alarmed by the commonest kind of a weed, gave a lurch to one side, and I to the other, carrying the saddle with me. The villainous animal looked at me a moment, and then started back home in the most leisurely manner. I tried in vain to catch him. The only alternative was to take the saddle on my own back and to follow him ten miles to Paoli. He kept a short distance ahead of me, apparently enjoying my discomfiture, and when we brought up at our starting point my martial ardor was considerably cooled, and I had long since arrived at the conclusion that this pony had more pure cussedness in him than any other on the Plains.

Mounted again, I was unable to reach the camp, some seven miles from Lawrence, until after dark.

It was the first bivouac I had ever seen, and the long lines of fires twinkling through the bushes and glimmering over the waters of the little Wakarusa creek, on which they were situated, reminded me that I was exceedingly hungry, and that the first duty of a soldier was to provide for his supper. I soon learned that the only way I could appease my hunger was to join some company and draw my rations. This was more than I had bargained for, but necessity knowing no law, I enrolled my name as a member of Captain Bledsoe's company.*

While eating my supper I heard the situation discussed. We were armed with shot-guns and old-fashioned muskets -the Lawrence folks with Sharpe's rifles We would have to charge them over an open prairie, and they could pick us off for half a mile before we could get in range The same gallant "Old Hi" whose formidable guns afterwards thundered in my ears during all the war.

with our guns; we were eleven, they thirteen hundred men; and this cheerful information was crowned with the assertion that we would fight to-morrow certain. The outlook did not suit me; I was anxious enough for the glory, but I did not like the idea of running so many risks to get it, so I adopted the plan that I have often seen successful since. I got Governor Shannon to accept me as a volunteer aid-de-camp, in which position I was out of danger, and therefore felt myself superior to the situation.

My first duty was a pleasant one. "Old Pomeroy," as the boys call him, who has since become so famous, or infamous, if you please (depends on which party you are a member of,) as Senator from Kansas, had been captured the day previous, in endeavoring to make his way into Lawrence. As soon as the Governor heard of it he dispatched me to ascertain the cause of his detention and have him released. The only tent in the camp was appropriated to the prisoner, before which a sturdy Missourian, with a dilapidated double-barreled shot-gun was pacing slowly, apparently impressed with his great responsibility as much as was he that guarded Francis I. on the night of Pavia,

"Who his sleepless vigils kept

While lords and ladies wailed and wept."

He informed me that he belonged to Captain Denson's company, and him I found closely engaged at seven-up. "Captain, who is your prisoner?" I asked.

"Old Pomeroy," he replied, without looking up. "When did you capture him?”

"Yesterday; high, jack and the game."

Why did you arrest Pomeroy?"

"He's contraband-my deal.”

"Governor Shannon directed me to tell you to release Mr. Pomeroy."

"Tell old Shan to go to h-l-shan't do it--turn up jack."

"Very well, sir," I answered; "I will deliver your reply," and started away indignantly.

"I say, Cap," shouted Denson after me; "don't make a d-n fool of yourself; come back here and take a hand." "No, thank you."

"Oh, well, if old Shan says so, I 'spose it's all right." "Bill!" yelled the captain at the top of his voice, "let old Pom go; Guv'nor says so-whose deal is it?"

The embryo Senator heard it all, and as I escorted him

out of the camp and saw him safely on his road to Lawrence, he seemed disposed to ridicule our discipline.

On the next day, which was by common consent fixed for the battle, instead of the field of blood and carnage which I expected to witness (from a safe distance,) we went into Lawrence and met the enemy in council; we took a drink all around and made a treaty. Jim Lane agreed to allow the service of the writs, and the bloodless Wakarusa war was ended.

TH

CHAPTER III.

OLD JOHN BROWN.

But who that chief? his name on every shore
Is famed and feared-they ask and know no more.
Lone, wild and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt.
His name could sadden and his acts surprise,
But they that feared him dared not despise.
-[Corsair.

HE bald and treeless plains of "Bleeding Kansas witnessed the inception of our civil war; here transpired the first part of the mighty drama, and Old John Brown was the leading actor. Beecher's stirring words and sounding periods thrilled to the fingers' ends of many a bold and lawless man, and sped on fatal errand many a leaden messenger from the muzzle of the Sharpe rifle.

The polished rhetoric of Rhett's and Yancey's eloquence fired the heart of many a reckless pioneer, whose old shotgun or musket was rapidly rubbed up for sterner work than lying idle in the garret.

Hence I conceive these reminiscences of the doubtful hero of Ossawatomie and Harper's Ferry to be germain to my subject.

A tall, spare-made, athletic man, with sunken, restless eyes, and a prickly, iron-gray beard, with manners curt and crisp, and a cold metallic voice. A correct picture of Brown would bear a harsh and hard-featured resemblance to Bramanti's portrait of Michael Angelo. He was famous.

before I saw him; his name had become a talisman with which the humble settlers' wives frightened their crying babies, and men spoke with bated breath of the almost nightly outrages committed by his gang.

The winter of 1855 is noted in the annals of the Territory; for months the snow lay deep on the ground and was drifted by the fierce winds that swept over the broad prairies, until the inequalities were filled up and the country assumed the appearance of a dead level. Occasionally the sun would shine with a frigid glare, the snowy surface would give back a thousand rays of resplendent beauty, and in front of my door a solitary tree whose pendant icicles flashed in the morning light with every color of the rainbow, seemed as if loaded with jewels and glittering with costly diamonds.

As the warmer breezes of spring tokened the approach of summer, the carnival of crime commenced. Dutch Henry, a good citizen, was murdered in cold blood; Stanford assassinated; Dr. James compelled to leave the country, and many other occurrences of the kind, the perpetrators of which wrapped themselves in impenetrable mystery and practical outlawry. Their crimes were generally laid to the door of "John Brown's gang," and some attempts were made to capture them.

I remember Colonel H. Clay Pate, at the head of a gallant band, started out from Westport with the express object of bringing back the dreaded freebooter, dead or alive. The expedition was a perfect success, with the little variation that the wrong party was captured-at least it was the current rumor that Brown took Pate and released him on parole.

At last the climax was reached in the Ossawatomie murders. In the still silence of a cold night Wilkinson and Doyle were taken from the bosom of their families, and hardly had the sounds of their footsteps on the frozen snow, or their cries for mercy ceased to be heard by their terrorstricken wives, when the sharp, cruel volley proclaimed that they were dead. Brown and his son were arrested. I was employed for the prosecution in the examining court. The evidence seemed to me conclusive, but the court in their superior wisdom acquitted the old man and held the young one over for further trial. The latter was immediately bound with a rope, the other end of which was held by a mounted United States dragoon, and marched off on foot to jail.