Hoping the Times will publish just as I have written, I will close.
Jesse James.
CHAPTER XLVII.
GLENDALE.
The eastern part of Jackson county, the western part of Lafayette, and down southward through Cass county, constitute the very center of the field of operation chosen by the old Guerrilla leaders—Quantrell, Todd, Anderson, Younger, Pool, Clements, and the Jameses—during the war. The Sni hills and the timber-crowned undulations bordering the Big Blue, afforded them excellent hiding places when sorely pressed, and from their fastnesses in the hills they could easily make forays into the very suburbs of the garrisoned towns of Kansas City, Independence, Lexington, Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville. They knew every pathway over the hills, and every crossing place along the streams. Around and among these forests were the farms and dwellings of their friends, and warm sympathizers in their cause. Time has wrought some changes in the country since those days; but the forest-crowned hills and the deep, tangled thickets, and the sparkling streams still are there. The face of Nature has changed but little among the hills of the Sni, or along the banks of the Blue. It was meet that the bandits, who are believed to be the same men who once were Guerrillas, should come back to the scenes of their earlier adventures, to consummate their latest and most daring robbery.
October 7th, 1879, was a beautiful, sunny, warm day. The woods had not yet assumed the sober brown hues of autumn, but nature was lovely in the rich ripeness of the summer's close. The great tide of human life flowed on in its accustomed channels. Some were engaged in the pursuit of pleasure; some were in search of gain; others were toiling for bread; some were happy in having accomplished their designs; others were wretched in realizing the bitterness of disappointment; some were glad in the knowledge that they had contributed to the happiness of their fellow-mortals; others were miserable because they beheld the gladness of their neighbors, and knew of the triumphs of their rivals; some planned good deeds; others plotted dark crimes. These all go to constitute the atoms of the mighty tide of human life; and their plans, purposes and deeds all contribute to the production of the surges and swirls of the stream as it flows through time to the gulf of eternity.
There were always plotters. Since the world began men have schemed, and until the end of time there will be the good and the bad in humanity, sometimes one and sometimes the other quality predominating. And so, while the autumn sunshine was golden, and the wood-cricket's chirp was mournful, the schemers were prodding their brain in the devising of a scheme to commit a grievous crime.
Glendale is a lonely wayside station in the western part of Lafayette county, Missouri, on the line of the Chicago & Alton railway, Kansas City branch. There is a water-tank, a little station-house, and a few houses in a narrow vale, wedged in between rugged hills, which are covered with lofty trees and tangled thickets, a fit place for the rendezvous of a banditti.
Glendale is about twenty miles from Kansas City, and on the line of the road between Independence and Blue Springs, in the very midst of a region where many of the darkest crimes and deeds of blood which marked the Guerrilla warfare of the border were committed both by the Federal militia and the Confederate Guerrillas. The country about Glendale is one of the wildest regions in Western Missouri, and the hills and dark ravines afford excellent opportunities for the concealment of both men and horses. A better situation for a successful foray by brigands does not exist on the line of the road between Chicago and Kansas City.
The night express train, bound from Kansas City to Chicago and St. Louis, left the Union Depot in the first-named city on the evening of the 7th, at six o'clock, and consequently was due at Glendale at about seven o'clock—a short time after daylight had faded from the west.