When within a few miles of Warrensburg, we learned that a portion of Mulligan's force was camped there. We camped for the night and next morning discovered that the detachment had gone during the night to join the main force at Lexington. Gates was ordered to follow them. We traveled all day on a forced march, and when within a short distance of Lexington were fired upon from both sides of the road from behind corn shocks. We hastily dismounted and commenced shooting at the corn shocks. The firing from behind then soon ceased and the men hurried away towards Lexington. We followed, but as we were then less than a mile from the town we thought it unwise to go too close until our main force came up.

Next day Price came up and made his headquarters in the fair ground just south of town. We camped there three days picket-fighting but getting ready all the time to attack Mulligan behind his breast-works. We had to mold our bullets and make our cartridges and when sufficient ammunition had been prepared we were ready. We marched up and were met at the edge of the town where the fighting began. We marched down the sidewalks on each side of the streets with a battery in the center of the roadway. Mulligan's men fought well and kept the street full of musket balls, but when the battery would belch out its grape shot they had to go back. I well remember, that at every opportunity we would jerk the picket fences down and go in behind the brick walls to shun the bullets. When the end of the wall was reached we had to step out on the sidewalk and face the music. They made a great effort to keep us out of town before they went behind their breast-works, but they had to go.

When Mulligan reached and went behind his fortifications we closed in and surrounded him except upon the side next the river. Price sent a regiment up the river and one down the river. They charged and captured those portions of the breast-works which prevented us from getting to the river front and thus in their rear. This was done late in the evening and Gates' regiment lay on the hillside behind a plank fence all night to prevent a recapture. They made several attempts during the night but failed each time.

The warehouses were full of hemp bales, and next morning we got them out and rolled them up the hill in front of us—two men to the bale—both keeping well down behind it. When we got in sight of their ditches we had a long line of hemp bales two deep in front of us, and then the fight commenced in earnest. They shot small arms from their ditches and cannon balls from their batteries. Sometimes a ball would knock down one of our top bales, but it soon went back in place. We brought our battery up behind the breastworks and by taking the top bale off we made an excellent porthole for the muzzles of our guns. The fight went on some two or three hours in this way. They in their ditches and we crouched behind our hemp bales. Every time a man showed his head half a dozen took a shot at him. They soon learned to keep their heads down, but they would put their hats on gun sticks and hold them up for us to shoot at, but we soon discovered this device and wasted very few bullets afterwards.

If this situation continued it looked as if the siege might last a month, so we decided to move closer. The top bales were pushed off and rolled forward with two men lying nearly flat behind each bale. When within forty yards of the trenches the front row halted and waited for the rear line of bales to come up. It took but a moment to hoist the one upon the other and thus we put our breastworks in much better position. Our batteries came up with little trouble, as we covered the opposite line so completely that no one dared to raise his head and shoot. Their batteries were posted on an exposed hill some two hundred yards away, but not a man was to be seen about them. Their gunners had all gone to the trenches. Our only suffering was when moving our hemp bales up the first time, and again when we advanced them the second time, as at these times we were too busy to return the fire, but we were well protected and lost very few men.

We lay in this position for three days. Mulligan's trench must have been nearly two miles long. We had no idea what was going on at any other point, but guessed the situation was very much the same along the whole line. We could hear through the woods a single gun now and then, reminding us more of a squirrel hunt than a battle. At the end of three days Mulligan surrendered. We were glad to see the white flag, not so much because it meant victory for us as because we were hungry and tired.

Mulligan marched his men out and had them stack arms. Then we marched them away from their arms and lined them up unarmed. Price took charge and put a guard around them, and then paroled them and sent them home. Some of them went back to Buchanan County where they told friends of ours that Price had no privates in his army; that they saw nobody under a lieutenant. They may have reached this conclusion from the way all left the hemp bales and went up to see the surrender.

Price went back to Springfield and Gates and his company came home. Billy Bridgeman, a nephew of mine who lived near Bigelow, in Holt County, was with us and when we reached my home he wanted me to go on with him to his home. It was a dangerous trip. St. Joe, Savannah, Forest City and Oregon were full of soldiers. We left home in the morning about daylight, passed up east and north of St. Joe, crossed the Nodaway River just above its junction with the Missouri, hurried across the main road between Oregon and Forest City, where we were most apt to be discovered, and reached his home on Little Fork, about night. We remained there about three days when some zealous female patriot saw us and reported us. We learned that we had been reported and kept a close watch all day and at night, feeling sure that the Forest City company would try to capture us, we saddled our horses and rode out away from home. It was bright moonlight, and when about two miles from home we heard them coming and stopped in the shadow of some trees. When they got within forty yards of us we fired into them with our navies, and kept it up until we had emptied our six-shooters. They whirled and ran back as fast as their horses could carry them. We loaded our guns and followed. The first house they passed one man jumped off his horse and left him standing in the road. We stopped at the fence and called. A woman came out of the house. I asked her if any soldiers had passed there. She said—I use her words just as she uttered them: "Yes, they went down the road a few minutes ago like the devil was after them." Billy and I did not know we had scared them so.

The fine mare Billy's father had given him hurt her foot in some way and was limping badly, so he pulled off the saddle and bridle and turned her loose. She started at once for home, and Billy saddled up the horse that had been left and we started on. It was then midnight and we had sixty miles before us. It was dangerous to ride in daylight, but more dangerous to stop anywhere on the road as we had no friends or acquaintances on the way. We could do nothing but go on and take chances. When, early in the forenoon, we reached the ford of the Nodaway on the old Hackberry road leading from Oregon to Savannah, we met a man who told us that a regiment of soldiers had left Savannah that morning for Oregon. We crossed the river and turned to the right, leaving the main road and picking our way to the bluffs of the Missouri and down along these bluffs to a point just above St. Joseph. There we left the bluffs and went across the country to Garrettsburg on Platte River and reached home just at night. I called our old black woman out of the house and asked her if she had heard of any soldiers in the neighborhood and if she thought it would be safe for us to stop for supper. She said she had heard of no soldiers and she thought there would be no danger, but that Brother Isaac and George Boyer were up at Brother James' house waiting for us, so we rode on up there.

We watered and fed our tired and hungry horses and had a good supper—the first mouthful since supper the night before—and all sat down to rest and talk. The house was a large two-story frame building fronting north, built upon a plan that was very popular in those days. A wide hall into which the front door entered from a portico, separated two large rooms—one on the right and the other on the left. A long ell joined up to the west room or end and extended back to the rear. A wide porch extended along the east side of the ell and along the south side of the east room of the front or main part of the building. A door in the rear of the front hall opened upon this porch, while doors from each of the rooms in the ell also led out upon the porch. We were all in the east front room with Brother James and his family. Brother Isaac and I were talking over our business affairs. Bridgeman had lain down upon a sofa and dropped off to sleep, and Boyer and Brother James and his family were chatting pleasantly, when a company of soldiers sneaked up and stationed themselves around the house. After they were sufficiently posted the captain gave us the first notice of their presence by calling out in a loud voice, "Come out, men, and give yourselves up, you will not be hurt." We knew by that call that a good strong force was outside and that trouble was at hand. We hurriedly lowered the window shades and blew out the light and remained perfectly still. The captain called again, urging that we would be treated as prisoners of war if we would surrender. We knew too well the value of such a promise made by the captain of a self-appointed gang of would-be regulators, who did not know the duty of captors toward their prisoners, and if they had known were not to be trusted. Besides we had no notion of surrendering as long as our ammunition held out.

When the captain found we were not to be coaxed out by his false and flattering promises, he began to show his real intentions. He said, "Come out! G— d—— you, we have got you now." We still gave no answer. Then he said if we did not come out he would burn the house down over our heads. When that failed he called on us to send the women and children out so he could burn the house. We accommodated him that much and sent them out. I told them to go out at the front door and to be sure and close it after them. When the women were gone we opened the door and passed into the hall and then to the back or south door, Bridgeman in front. He opened the door just enough to peep out. He had a dragoon pistol in his right hand and a Colt's navy in his left. When the door opened a man stepped up on the porch with his bayonet fixed and told Billy to come on. Billy gave him an ounce ball and he fell back off the porch. The fight was then on and had to be finished. Just after Billy fired the shot he accidentally dropped his navy from his left hand and it fell behind the door in the dark. He stooped to feel for it and Brother Isaac asked, "Billy was that you shot?" I told him that it was. He then said, "we must get out of here now." With that, and before Billy found his gun, I jerked the door wide open and went out. Brother Isaac followed me, Boyer next and Billy last. There was no one to be seen but the dead man by the side of the porch. The others had taken shelter behind the east end of the house and the south end of the ell. I went south along the ell porch and Isaac followed close behind me. When I got to the end of the porch I jumped off and there I found about a dozen men lined up. They fired at me but the blaze went over my head. I turned my face to them and took a hand myself. By that time Brother Isaac was at my side, and, although unaccustomed to warfare, he did good service. We opened fire and they turned and ran. We followed them around the house and ran them off the premises and out into the public road.

When Billy found his navy and came out, he saw men at the east end of the house firing across at us from the rear so he ran down the porch that led to that end of the house. Just as he reached the end of the porch a man stepped from behind the house and raised his gun to shoot at us. Quick as a flash Billy stuck the end of his navy within six inches of the man's face and shot him in the mouth. The man dropped down on the ground and bawled like a steer. At this the men farther around in the chimney corner broke and ran and Billy followed. They did not stop running and Billy did not stop shooting until they were well off the premises.

Boyer who was the third man out of the house afterwards related his experience to me. He jumped off the porch and ran out through the back yard. He stumbled and fell over a bank of dirt that had been thrown out of a well, but Brother Isaac and I were keeping all of them so busy that no one seemed to notice him. He was up in a moment and going again. When he got to the rear of the smoke house he ran over a man who lay hid in the weeds. The fellow jumped up and ran and Boyer shot at him, but both kept on running. Boyer reached a corn field and lay hid the remainder of the night.

After the fight was over Billy, Brother Isaac and I went down into the woods and sat for a long time talking it over. We had no idea how many men were in the company, but were confident that it went away somewhat smaller than when it came. They got our horses and saddles and, as we had fired all the loads out of our pistols in the fight, we had nothing but the clothes on our backs and our empty revolvers. We didn't dare go back to the house, so, late in the night, we started out first to replenish our ammunition. We stopped at Jack Elder's, a mile to the west. He gave us powder and bullets, but he had no caps. We then went over to Judge Pullins' who had a good supply and furnished us plenty of them. After loading our guns we went north to the home of Joe Evans. Evans was a lieutenant in the Southern army, and his wife, who was Nelly Auxier, was at home with her children. We had known her from childhood, so we went in and went to bed. Nelly sat up the remainder of the night and kept watch. This was the first sleep in nearly forty-eight hours. At seven she woke us for breakfast. About ten o'clock Judge Pullins, who knew where we were, brought over the morning St. Joe paper. It contained a long account of the fight, and said that Penick's men had gone down into "the hackle" the night before and killed two of the Gibson boys and captured the remainder of the "gang." This was amusing news, and about as near the truth as most reports of that kind.

Although it was dangerous for us to travel by daylight, we concluded we might, with proper caution, get back over the ground and see for ourselves what had been done. We kept well in the timber and reached Brother James' house about noon. The house was considerably scratched up by bullets and blood was strewn all around it. Four men had been killed and five wounded. Harriet, our old negro woman, told us the soldiers had first stopped at father's old place and inquired for us. She started across the fields at once to notify us, but could not make the half mile on foot in time and had reached only a safe distance from the house when the fight began.

We remained in the neighborhood, hidden at first one place and then another for several days. Brother Isaac, being rather too old to go in the army left home and went to Illinois for safety, as he knew there would be no peace for him after the fight, no matter how conservative he had been in the past or how well behaved he might be in the future. The unfortunate circumstance which, on account of his association with us, had compelled him to fight for his life, had rendered his efforts to remain at home out of the question. Billy and I, having lost our horses, saddles and blankets, were compelled to remain, in spite of the fact that soldiers were hunting us like hounds, until we could get properly equipped to leave. We were not long in doing this, and then we set out on horseback through a country patroled by many soldiers to join our company at Springfield.