shot spies. So does everybody. If we hadn’t we
wouldn’t have lasted a week.”
Jesse was wounded twice that summer. The
more serious of the two injuries came when he
tried to steal a seemingly unattended saddle.
The saddle’s owner, a German Unionist farmer,
saw what was happening and got off a quick shot
from the doorway of his home, hitting the young
thief in the right chest. Jesse didn’t need a sad-
dle for the next few weeks. The second wound
occurred as Jesse was cleaning one of his revolv-
ers. The gun suddenly went off, blowing away
the tip of the middle finger on Jesse’s left hand.
As blood squirted everywhere, Jes-
se cried, “O, ding it! ding it! How
it hurts!” From that day forward,
Jesse James was known to family
and close friends as “Dingus.”
September found Jesse and
Frank riding with guerrilla lead-
er “Bloody Bill” Anderson, whose
men became infamous for tak-
ing the scalps of dead enemy sol-
diers. On the 27th, Anderson’sfamily farm required tending. Jesse raised and
harvested that crop with the help of a slave.
The following winter months found most of
the Missouri guerrillas encamped in Texas, but
they were back in the spring and looking for re-
cruits. Crops or no crops, nothing was going to
stop Jesse from enlisting this time. Like his big
brother Frank before him, he“went to the brush.”
The James boys began exacting their re-
venge in June 1864. Accounts vary, but Jesse
is reported to have killed Brantley Bond, one
of the militiamen who had whipped him and
hanged his stepfather. Bond surrendered to
the bushwhackers and begged for
his life, but Jesse, the story goes,
reminded Bond of his deeds and
then shot him dead. Another mi-
litia member, Alvis Dagley, was
found the next day working in a
field near his home. The guerrillas
marched him to the road, where
Frank put a bullet in him. “We
did burn the houses of Yanks,”
Frank admitted years later. “WeSTATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURIQUANTRILL’S
RAIDERS
W
ILLIAM CLARKE QUANTRILL
(1837-1865), a teacher
who turned to banditry be-
fore the outbreak of the Civil
War, began forming a guerrilla force after
deserting the Confederate Army in 1861. On
August 21, 1863, Quantrill swooped down
on Lawrence, Kansas, with more than 400
men, among whom were Frank James and
Cole Younger. This attack was claimed to be
in retaliation for the deaths and maiming of
several young women, guerrilla supporters,
who were being held in a makeshift prison
when it collapsed. In what became known
as the Lawrence Massacre, Quantrill and
his followers slaughtered more than 150
men and boys, most of them civilians. “We
knew he was not a very fine character,” re-
called Frank James, “but... We wanted to
destroy the folks that wanted to destroy us,
and we would follow any man who would
show us how to do it.”WILLIAM CLARKE QUANTRILL
IN AN ENGRAVING ON THE
FRONTISPIECE OF J. N. EDWARDS’
1877 BOOK, NOTED GUERRILLAS
MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
RAIDERS’
REUNION
In the decades
following the Civil
War, veterans would
gather at annual
reunions. Quantrill’s
Raiders (below, circa
1920) began holding
theirs in 1898 and
continued for more
than 30 years.82 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019