Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

44 страница из 136

My father had only a muzzle-loading, double-barrel shotgun, with two charges in the gun—and no more ammunition — with which to defend himself and his little family against that mob of armed men. The main body of guerillas, on horseback, were in the front yard. The house stood upon the bank of a deep gully, with little or no backyard. A wide plank served as a walk across the gully. Beyond that was heavy timber.

Believing that his family would be safer with him out of the house, my father, only partly dressed, grabbed his shotgun and flung open the back door. He quickly emptied both barrels of his gun into the two men who were guarding the back door. The revolver in the hands of the first man in line, standing on the plank, was being brought down on him when the charge from father’s shotgun cut off the crook of the man’s arm at the elbow and entered his body, killing him instantly. The bullet from the guerilla’s revolver plowed through my father’s hat. And that was the revolver my father shot squirrels with in Kansas. It was retrieved by Federal soldiers and presented to him.