The guerilla element was composed of Southerners, not in colors — and they made life miserable for any o ne who dared to express an opinion, on the aspects of the war, contrary to their views.
The hush of a November night lay upon the forest, in the thick of which was located my father’s home, his tan-yard, his shoeshop. The night’s stillness was broken by a volley of bullets from the guerilla guns crashing through the windows and doors of the log house.
My mother—herself only a girl in her teens—took her two babies and crept under the bed, which, luckily, had been moved to another part of the house that very day. And that shift of the bed saved the family from the death-dealing bullets poured into the house with that first onslaught.
My father had only a muzzle-loading, double-barrel shotgun, with two charges in the gun—and no more ammunition — with which to defend himself and his little family against that mob of armed men. The main body of guerillas, on horseback, were in the front yard. The house stood upon the bank of a deep gully, with little or no backyard. A wide plank served as a walk across the gully. Beyond that was heavy timber.
Believing that his family would be safer with him out of the house, my father, only partly dressed, grabbed his shotgun and flung open the back door. He quickly emptied both barrels of his gun into the two men who were guarding the back door. The revolver in the hands of the first man in line, standing on the plank, was being brought down on him when the charge from father’s shotgun cut off the crook of the man’s arm at the elbow and entered his body, killing him instantly. The bullet from the guerilla’s revolver plowed through my father’s hat. And that was the revolver my father shot squirrels with in Kansas. It was retrieved by Federal soldiers and presented to him.
The other man was mortally wounded and lay there in yard, at the far end of the plank walk, until morning, Things had happened so quickly, and so disastrously to their ranks, that the mob believed the house was occupied by armed men. And, after firing another volley into the home, many of the bullets this time penetrating the bed under which my mother, with her babies, lay flat on the floor, the mob withdrew to a safe distance—but sentinels were kept posted in the nearby woods until morning. All told, more than one hundred shots were fired into the house.