John R. Kelso’s Civil Wars:
A Graphic History - Episode 12

More on the text

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy, 2-4, 151-2.  How had Kelso ended up charging the cabin on his own?  He had been second-in-command of a scouting party of sixty men from his cavalry regiment.  With a Confederate deserter as their guide, they rode seventy miles through the Ozark Mountains into Arkansas, toward the Medlocks’ hideout.  About forty outlaws, their guide told them, occupied four large houses spaced about half a mile apart.  Each house was a fortress, built of thick hewed logs with port holes cut for the rifle barrels of the Medlocks’ men.  Such well-defended structures would be impossible to take without artillery, which Kelso’s party did not have.  “Our only hope, therefore,” Kelso said, “was that we might be able to capture them by surprise.”

Before dawn, the sixty mounted men moved slowly, quietly, on a trail through the dark woods.  When about half a mile from the first house, they dismounted.  A dozen men stayed behind to care for the horses.  The remaining forty-eight advanced silently on foot.  They divided into four groups of a twelve each, a dozen men for each of the four houses.  Kelso was to lead the attack on the furthest house, Capt. Medlock’s place, where most of the outlaws were thought to be.  The plan was for the first three squads to surround the first three houses and wait to begin their attacks until they heard the sound of Kelso and his men firing on the fourth.   

At the first house, they spied only three men, so they captured them quietly without firing a shot.  Three squads hurried on half a mile to the second house.  But here, a dog heard them and started barking, rousing the half dozen men in the house who fled into the woods as the soldiers tried to shoot them down.  Two dozen men now sprinted onward to the third house, where they expected to find the younger Medlock brother, the Lieutenant, and where they now knew the gunshots must have been heard.  Gasping for breath, some of the men fell behind.  When Kelso and the others reached the house, the men inside opened fire from the windows and the portholes.  Scrambling for cover and returning fire, most of the soldiers settled in for a hard fight.  But there was still the fourth house, Capt. Medlock’s, at least another half mile further on, where most of the enemy was said to be.  Maybe this last group was far enough away that they wouldn’t hear the gunfire.  Maybe they could still be taken by surprise, before they had time to wake up, dress, and prepare to fight.  Kelso and three of his men sprinted onward toward the fourth house.

On they dashed, with “reckless speed.”  Two of the young soldiers gave out and then finally the third gasped that he, too, couldn’t run any further.  “Come on as soon as you can,” Kelso called back as he raced onward.  “I will go ahead and have the enemy stirred up by the time you get there.”  And here, as he later told the tale in lecture halls, Kelso would have had his audience, hushed and leaning forward in their seats, running with him.  “Alone, then, I rushed onward, feeling a kind of strange, wild delight in the very madness of my undertaking.”