Terrell pledged his word that he should not be removed, and rode away in pursuit of those who had escaped.
Some of the fugitive Guerrillas soon reached the well known rendezvous at the house of Alexander Sayers, twenty-three miles from Wakefield’s, with tidings of the fight.
Frank James heard the story through with a set face, strangely white and sorrowful, and then he arose and cried out: “Volunteers to go back. Who will follow me to see our chief, living or dead?”
“I will go back,” said Allen Parmer, “and I,” said John Ross, and “I,” said William Hulse.
“Let us ride, then,” rejoined James, and in twenty minutes more—John Ross having exchanged his jaded horse for a fresh one—these four devoted men were galloping away to Wakefield’s.
At two o’clock in the morning they were there. Frank James dismounted and knocked low upon the door. There was the trailing of a woman’s garments, the circumspect tread of a watching woman’s feet, the noiseless work of a woman’s hand upon the latch and Mrs. Wakefield, cool and courtly, bade the strange armed men upon the threshold to enter.
Just across on the other side of the room from the door a man lay on a trundle bed. James stood over the bed, but he could not speak. If one had cared to look into his eyes they might have seen them full of tears.
Quantrell, by the dim light of a single candle, recognized James, smiled and held out his hand, and said to him very gently, though a little reproachfully: “Why did you come back? The enemy are thick about you here; they are passing every hour.”
“To see if you were alive or dead, Captain. If the first, to save you; if the last, to put you in a grave.”
“I thank you very much, Frank, but why try to take me away? I am cold below the hips. I can neither ride, walk nor crawl; I am dead and yet I am alive.”