actâthe judge was always like that. A little later, another mob came and, seeing the pretty home, decided to burn it. But once again and as calm as ever, Carpenter met the raiders and sent them away disarmed. The pressure on the women, however, was almost unbearable. 32
It was a miracle! The bushwhacker just started shooting at the men clinging to the beams when George Bell yelled out. The firing stopped, and everything became still.
It was true. The Rebel was actually Bellâs old friend. In happier times the two had often broken bread together at the Kansanâs table, and each had greatly enjoyed one anotherâs company. Bell and his companion were told to come down, for from that moment on both men were home free. The old friend would talk to the Missourians and straighten things out. The county clerk jumped down followed by the other man, and together the three walked outside. Thatâs where the miracle ended. The crowd of guerrillas standing around them, wild and bitter, didnât care a dime about old acquaintances.
âShoot him! Shoot him!â was their cry, and not a word was uttered by the old friend. A religious man, Bell asked for a moment to pray. Granted. Finished, the clerk said amen , and in a burst of fire his companion fell down and George Bell dropped dead.
From there the gang scaled Mount Oread to complete the job. At home Mrs. Bell met the raiders and recognized the former guest. âWe have killed your husband,â he blandly informed her, âand we have come to burn his house.â 33
When a group of bushwhackers broke into the home of Edward Fitch and shouted for him to come from hiding, he did. While Sarah and the three terrified children watched, the Massachusetts native walked down the stairs and into the circle of waiting men. As soon as Fitch hit the foot of the stairs he was dead. But just to make certain, the Rebel who shot him grabbed another revolver and continued to pump slugs into the corpse until that gun too was emptied. The guerrillas then moved on to rob and torch the home.
As the smoke began to drift about, Sarah pleaded and tried three separate times to remove her husbandâs body. But three separate times the murderer forbade it. She then ran to retrieve a small painting of Edward, but once more was denied. Finally the woman ceased all efforts and just wandered from room to room watching as her home was destroyed. At last, when the place was engulfed in flames, and with sparks and debris showering about her, a guerrilla forced her to leave.
Sarah walked with her screaming children across the road, sat on the grass, and watched while the home and everything she owned crackled and roared over the body of her husband. Above, on an adjoining shed, a small Union flag hung limp. The children, playing soldier a day or two before, had planted it high so that everyone in town could see they were loyal and proud to be Yankees. 34
Escape was the thing, escape by any means. Politicians, doctors, and merchants bellied toward safety side by side with local layabouts and town drunks, crawling in underclothes through flowerbeds and cabbage rows, along weedy lots and ditches until they finally reached what to them seemed a God-sent sanctuaryâa cottonwood chicken coop or a tiny, stinking outhouse. Others simply hurled headlong into wells or shimmied beneath wooden walkways. An outdoor cellar in the center of town with a hidden entrance was a haven where many fled. 35 But more found refuge in the ravine, along the tangled banks of the river, or in Jim Laneâs vast cornfield. Often chasing a victim right to the edge of these places, guerrillas always slammed to a halt and galloped away as if expecting a volley of shots to ring out. In the cornfield, scores of thirsty citizens were hidden. Several times the raiders rode along the perimeter; some were for going in. Uncertainty, however, always held them back. A woman living on the hem of the field who had