Bloody Bill Anderson by Thomas Goodrich

Author:Thomas Goodrich [Goodrich, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780811745383
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 1998-11-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

The Lord Have Mercy

The Guerrilla Camp, Young’s Creek: 2:00–3:00 P.M.

“I say, Bill, I wonder how in the hell Anderson has permitted this damn Yankee to live so long?”

“Dunno, can’t say, lest like ’twas a Providence, for taint like Old Bill, is it?”

No, thought Tom Goodman, who overhead his two guards talking, it is not like Anderson at all. The big sergeant lay on the ground. Around him, most of the bushwhackers were sleeping off the whiskey they had guzzled. He, too, had tried to sleep but in vain. He simply could not stop wondering what Anderson intended to do with him—or, rather, to him.

He looked about and observed the guerrilla chieftain sitting with George Todd, John Thrailkill, and other leaders, apparently discussing future operations. Can, he thought, yon pale, sad looking man be this fiend in human shape? Anderson’s face, when passive as it now was, did not look like that of a man to be feared. Even his cold and expressionless eyes revealed nothing; they were “unfathomable.” So what had made him what he so terribly was? The best that Goodman could think of was a scrap of poetry remembered from school days: “Man’s inhumanity to man/Makes countless thousands weep.”

Suddenly a rider came racing full speed across the prairie toward the camp. At the same time another horseman, coming from the north, rode up to Anderson, who along with everyone else sprang to his feet. Goodman could not hear what the second rider said to the chieftain, but within minutes the guerrillas had mounted their horses and formed into squads of ten or twenty. While they were doing so, the first rider reached Anderson, who asked him a couple questions, after which a bushwhacker came over to Goodman and spoke to his guards: “Have your prisoner saddle yon gray horse, and mount him quick—and mark me, if he attempts to escape in the battle, kill him instantly!”

As he saddled and mounted the designated horse, a wave of hope surged through Goodman. There was going to be a battle! Forgetting the threat of death hanging over him, he could think only of the battle. He longed to see a line of Federal blue dealing retribution, like avenging angels of God, to the murderers of his comrades.1

Should this happen, perhaps he would be rescued and so live to see his wife and children again after all. . . .

Centralia: 3:00–3:30 P.M.

Major Johnston and his men rode into Centralia from the east, having headed straight for the place on seeing columns of smoke rising from its vicinity.2 Nothing they had ever encountered or imagined matched the dreadful scene they now beheld. The few people of the village who had not fled or remained cowering in their homes stood around as if transformed into statues, mute, pale, and with vacant eyes staring from frozen faces. Debris from the looted stores littered the streets. Alongside the railroad track lay heaps of smoking ashes. Far worse were the bodies which seemed to be everywhere. One sprawled near the burned depot was a black and almost shapeless mass.

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