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. Quantrell once
managed to collect a thousand men in a hurry, and to raid and sack
Lawrence before the troops could head them off. But when we got on
their trail they were driven speedily back into Missouri.

In the meantime we took care that little mischief was done by the gangs
headed by the James Boys and the Youngers, who operated in Quantrell's
wake and in small bands.

In the spring of '63 I left the Red-Legged Scouts to serve the Federal
Government as guide and scout with the Ninth Kansas Cavalry. The Kiowas
and Comanches were giving trouble along the old Santa Fe trail and
among the settlements of western Kansas. The Ninth Kansas were sent to
tame them and to protect immigrants and settlers.

This was work that I well understood. We had a lively summer, for the
Indians kept things stirring, but after a summer of hard fighting we
made them understand that the Great White Chief was a power that the
Indians had better not irritate. November, '63, I returned with the
command to Leavenworth. I had money in my pockets, for my pay had been
$150 a month, and I was able to lay in an abundant supply of provisions
for my family.

On the twenty-third day of December my mother passed away. Her life had
been an extremely hard one, but she had borne up bravely under poverty
and privation, supplying with her own teaching the education that the
frontier schools could not give her children, and by her Christian
example setting them all on a straight road through life.

Border ruffians killed her husband, almost within sight of her home.
She passed months in terror and distress and, until I became old enough
to provide for her, often suffered from direst poverty. Yet she never
complained for herself; her only thoughts being for her childre