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.
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