The Third Wisconsin man stuck the five-spot of diamonds on a black oak tree just outside the lines and nearly in sight of the water at the Spring river ford. The ground was paced off and the firing at target had proceeded until my brother had one shot left and Johnny two, when like a clap of thunder from a clear sky the guerrillas rode up out of the Spring river ford carrying our flag and dressed in our uniforms, stripped from the bodies of Union soldiers they had killed along the border. By this time they were sixty paces from the three men and moving on in column of fours. The tally man, standing where he had a view of the whole line, noticed that only about half of them were dressed in our uniform, and Johnny Frey's suspicions being aroused he said "Run, boys, for your lives; they are guerrillas!" "No," said my brother, "that's the militia from Carthage."
But the Third Wisconsin man took his pistol from its scabbard and threw it on the ground in front of him and begged for his life, and they spared it. He told us afterward that they seemed to ignore his presence; but halted, fired a left-oblique volley of about twenty shots at Johnny and my brother. The shots brought both men to the ground. Johnny rose on his knees with both hands gripped to his pistol, and fired. As he did so he fell back, dead. My brother, getting to his feet, fired his last shot, when he too fell forward on his face.
About fifty of these devils incarnate clustered around their bodies. Turning my brother over face upwards one of them called to another that was farther back in the line, saying, "Come here, Storey! Here is your man, by God! We've got him." This fellow came up, dismounted, and drawing a heavy bowie-knife whacked my brother a blow over the front part of the skull, cutting a gash about five inches long.
The Third Wisconsin man had been herded inside this group around these quivering bodies. He saw them rifle Johnny's pockets and take my brother's uniform; then he was ordered to go to the rear and mount one of the extra horses.
Their firing had alarmed the camp, and as they charged up along the northern side of it they were met with a spirited irregular fire from the darkies, and as they swung around the western angle the Third Wisconsin boys took a turn at them and they passed on out of range on the open prairie and marched up the trail, our flag at the head of column in fours dressed as Union soldiers. Is it any wonder that Blunt's advance thought they were the troops from Baxter coming out to give them a fraternal reception?
Blunt had nooned that day at Brushy, four miles from Baxter, and coming down the trail riding in an ambulance and his big gray horse tied behind barebacked, everybody unsuspecting, the Third Wisconsin band getting ready to play a patriotic tune, nearly all of the men that Blunt had being raw recruits, not knowing nor thinking of harm. Is it any wonder, I repeat, that Quantrill made the shambles he did in such an amazing short time? And does it not seem strange that Jack Splain would be lying on the ground badly wounded and Quantrill placing a pistol to his face telling him that when he got to hell he should tell them that Quantrill was the last man he saw, and fired in his face, and that Splain lived to tell it at Grand Army reunions? Was she not a heroine when Mrs. McNary picked up her dead husband's gun that day and killed a bushwhacker at Baxter Springs?
Gen. Blunt's escort was demoralized; but he mounted his horse and with ten men fairly cut his way through the guerrillas and got safely to the garrison, where he established his headquarters in my brother's tent. When my brother's body was brought in for burial it was found he had received twenty-seven bullets in his body. He had gained a notoriety along the border. Among other things he had killed a guerrilla near Westport who carried a dead list, and among the names not yet crossed out were those of Captain Hoyt, Chief of the Red Legs; John Jones, sheriff of Johnson county, Kansas; Doctor Beech, of Olathe, Kansas; and R. E. Cook, my brother. Unfortunately, this list was published at the time, together with the details of the fight between the Border Ruffians and my brother. So he was a particular mark for vengeance and revenge. When it was also known that he was an officer of "nigger" troops, and being recognized when the guerrillas rode onto them, they wreaked their vengeance with revenge.
As I sat by the camp-fire listening to the story of the finding of the body of that brave, generous, kind-hearted and loyal boy, it was then that my pent-up grief came home to me. Those in the garrison were not willing to take chances, that first evening after the attack, to look on the timbered side for dead or wounded friends. So the next morning a strong party went out; they found Johnny's body where it fell, and it was rigid. And, remarkable to say, my brother's body was not yet rigid. He was found in a clump of hazel brush sixty yards from where he had fallen. And the mute evidence of the trails he had made through the blood-stained grass, to where he was found and both hands with broken hazel brush gripped in them, seemed to indicate to those who found the body that life had not been extinct until near morning. Johnny Fry had six wounds, all mortal. But when the soldiers washed my brother's body after bringing him to the garrison, preparatory to dressing him for burial, they found, besides the knife wound, twenty-seven bullet wounds.
Reader, would you call that war? No; it was murder, pure and simple.
I could not go home and tell this story to my dear little old Irish mother, whose God was the Lord; but I did, if anything, worse. When my brother was killed he was wearing a soft white hat which fitted his head rather tightly, and when the guerrilla turned him face upward and called to Storey, his hat was still on and nearly in the position in which he wore it. So when this fiend delivered the knife-stroke, he cut through the hat a gash nearly six inches long, running from near the center of the crown diagonally across the forehead on the left side.