EARLY in the month of March, 1865, Captain Clements, having been reinforced by ten men under the command of Captain David Poole, marched from Sherman, Texas, to Mount Pleasant, Titus County, Arkansas. From Mount Pleasant, on the 14th of April, the march began once more and for the last time into Missouri. Forming an advance of David Poole, John Poole, John Maupin, Jack Bishop, Theo. Castle, Jesse James and Press Webb, Clements pushed on rapidly, killing five militiamen in one squad, ten in another, here and there a single one, and now and then as many together as twenty. In Benton County, Missouri, a Federal militiaman named Harkness, was captured, who had halted a brother of Clements and burnt the house of his mother. James, Maupin and Castle held Harkness tightly while Clements cut his throat and afterwards scalped him.
At Kingsville, in Johnson County, something of a skirmish took place and ten Federals were killed. A militiaman named Duncan, who had a bad name locally and who was described as being a highwayman and a house burner, also was captured at the same time. Being fifty-five years of age and gray headed did not save him. But before he surrendered he fought a desperate battle. Knowing instinctively what his fate would be if he fell alive into the hands of any hostile230 organization, much less a Guerrilla organization, he took a stand behind a plank fence, armed with a Spencer rifle and two revolvers, and faced the enemy, now close upon him. Arch Clements, Jesse James and Jack Bishop dashed at Duncan. The first shot killed his horse, and in falling the horse fell upon the rider. At the second fire Clement’s horse also was killed, but James stopped neither for the deadly aim of the old man nor for the help of his comrades who were coming up as fast as they could on foot. He shot him three times before he knocked him from his feet to his knees, but the fourth shot, striking him fair in the middle of the forehead, finished the old man and all his sins together.
The last of April a council was held among the Guerrillas to discuss the pros and cons of a surrender. Virtually the war was over. Everywhere the regular Confederate armies had surrendered and disbanded, and in no direction could any evidences be discovered of that Guerrilla warfare which many predicted would succeed to the war of the regular army and the general order. All decided to do as the rest of the Southern forces had done.
Anxious, however, to give to those of the command who preferred a contrary course the dignity and the formality of official authority, Captain Clements entered Lexington, Mo., on the fifteenth, with Jesse James, Jess Hamlet, Jack Rupe, Willis King and John231 Vanmeter, bearing a flag of truce. The provost marshall of Lexington, Major J. B. Rogers, was a liberal officer of the old regime, who understood in its fullest and broadest sense that the war was over, and that however cruel or desperate certain organizations or certain bodies of men had been in the past, all proscription of them ceased with their surrender.
Shortly after the surrender, and as Jesse James was riding at the head of a column with the white flag, eight Federals were met who were drunk and who did not see the flag of truce or did not regard it. They fired point blank at the Guerrillas, and were charged in turn and routed with the loss of four killed and two wounded. These eight men were the advance of a larger party of sixty, thirty Johnson County militia, and thirty of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry. These in the counter attack drove back the Guerrillas and followed them fiercely, especially the Second Wisconsin. Vanmeter’s horse was killed but Jack Rupe stopped under fire for him and carried him to safety. James and Clements, although riding jaded horses—the same horses, in fact, which had made the long inhospitable trip up from Texas—galloped steadily away in retreat side by side, and fighting as best they could. Mounted on a superb black horse, a single Wisconsin trooper dashed ahead of the balance and closed in swiftly upon James, who halted to court the encounter. At a distance of ten feet both fired simultaneously and when232 the smoke cleared away the brave Wisconsin man was dead with a dragoon bal............