There was that spring greatly increased, widespread provocation amongst the pro-slavers, and threatening noises from the clans of Border Ruffians down along the Pottawatomie, and at Browns Station, especially, we were increasingly agitated and kept ourselves in a constant state of alarm, if not readiness. All the Free-Soil militias were pledged to participate strictly in defensive action, but it was growing less clear by the day as to what that term meant. Particularly in the face of constant death-threats from the settlers on the Pottawatomie — the Dutch Sherman faction, as we thought of them. They had settled that narrow, eroded gorge several years back, well before the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and thus they were mainly concerned with land-grabbing, not politics. We knew that they were using the slavery issue only to justify burning and driving us out and capturing our claims up on the more fertile open floodplain of the Marais des Cygnes, which, in their ignorance, they had passed over when they first came out from Arkansas and Tennessee.
Then one day late in April, the pro-slavery Sheriff Jones rode over from Atchison to Lawrence with a small posse of U.S. troops and apprehended six Free-Soil citizens and charged them with contempt of court for refusing to identify the leader of the party that had rescued John the previous month, that brave adventure which had led to the first Lawrence siege and stand-off. That same night, an unknown person shot Sheriff Jones outside of Lawrence as he and his troop of federal soldiers were leading their six prisoners off to Atchison. The prisoners did not flee, however, and Jones did not die of his wound. In fact, to my and Father’s astonishment, the entire town of Lawrence and its leadership were aggrieved by the shooting and publically apologized for it and condemned the unknown shooter outright.
The shooter, of course, was me. In company with the Old Man and my brothers. We had learned of the sheriff’s mission and had ridden over towards Lawrence to help oppose it, and at nightfall, a mile north of Hickory Point, had come up on the posse and prisoners on their way back to Atchison, where the six were to stand trial. There were but four soldiers in the posse and the Sheriff. The Old Man was all for throwing down on them at once and seizing their prisoners in person and delivering them safely back to Lawrence, where he said we were sure to be acclaimed as heroes, recalling, perhaps, our previous miraculous intervention.
I said to him, “No, it’s near dark. They’ll hear us coming and will run. Or else they’ll use the prisoners as hostages and put up a fight. The prisoners may be killed and the slavers escape.”
“But Jones and his men are cowards at heart;’ the Old Man argued. “They’re just conscripts. And the Lord will protect His children.” We were perched unseen in the growing darkness on a rise, hidden in a stand of black walnut trees, and Sheriff Jones’s party was heading slowly along a draw below, which led south to the crossroads of the Santa Fe Trail and the old California trail, thence north and east to Atchison. The sheriff was in the lead, and his prisoners were seated in a trap driven by one of the troopers, while the others rode along in a line behind.
“Look, it’s almost too dark to do anything at all” I pointed out. “But I can bring down the sheriff with a single shot now. The soldier-boys will panic, and the children of the Lord can escape in the confusion. We’ll pick them up later for return to Lawrence.” I got down from the wagon box and took a position behind a tree and leveled my rifle.
In a second, Father was at my side. “Hold up, son. Maybe we should think on this a bit.”
“If we think on it, the opportunity will be lost.”
I did not say it, but we both knew that if I did not drop the sheriff now, Father would once again be jumping up and down in a foaming rage, crying that nothing had been done to oppose this outrageous illegality, and he’d be blaming the men in Lawrence for their failure of nerve, instead of himself for his. I was as weary of his complaints as I was of their inaction.
He nodded approval, and I turned back to my task, aimed, and fired. Done. Sheriff Jones toppled from his horse.
A simple act. But instantly, with that shot, much changed.
With that one shot from my Sharps rifle, we shucked our identity as defenders of freedom and became full-fledged guerilla fighters. I knew it beforehand and intended it and recognized it when it happened.
Having finally gone on the offensive this way, we could no longer claim to ourselves or to anyone else that we had come out here to Kansas to farm or even to make Kansas a free state. No, it was now inescapably clear to all, but especially and most importantly to the Southerners, that we Browns were here in Kansas solely to wage war against slavery. The Missourians and pro-slavers all over the South who had been screaming for abolitionist blood, who had cried in the headlines of their newspapers, War to the knife, and knife to the hilt! were justified now. Their very lives, as much as their foul institutions, were under attack. We were their enemy now, as much as they had been ours all along.
The sheriff had gone down. But then he crawled to the wagon, and to our surprise, the Free-Soil prisoners from Lawrence helped him aboard and laid him out and appeared to be tending to him, while the soldiers got off their horses and drew close around the wagon and waited to be fired upon. “Did you kill him?” Father asked in a tense whisper. “Did you kill the man?” He was at my ear and had a hand on each of my shoulders. The others, Fred and Salmon, had come forward and were crouched behind us.
“No.”
“You bloodied him, though,” Salmon said. “They’re ripping off his shirt.”
“But why are they helping him and not escaping?” Father asked. “All they’ve got to do is run, right?”
No one answered.
“I think we should go down there and I should address them,” Father announced.
“No;’ I said. “Better they don’t know who has shot at them or from where. Make them think we’re everywhere. A single, well-aimed shot can be more terrifying than a fusillade.”
The Old Man pondered that for a second, and then he smiled. “Yes. Good. That’s good, Owen. Very good. Come on, boys,”he said, suddenly in charge again, although I detected a new note of apprehension in his voice. Certainly, Father understood the implications of this act as well as I did. “Let’s ride on to Lawrence. And we’ll say nothing of this to anyone. Nothing. All either side needs to know is that there are some abolitionists who are not afraid to shoot, and that such men are everywhere — nowhere and anywhere. They don’t need to know the names of the shooters. Not yet anyhow. You look down there, boys, look,” he ordered, and pointed into the arroyo below at the sight of Free-Soil prisoners and federal troopers scrambling to protect and aid a fallen proslavery sheriff. “See how little we can trust even our own kind. Traitors;’ he pronounced them. “There below, children, there are the Israelites who betrayed Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, gone to worship the golden calves of Jeroboam. Look at them, boys. Let us, from here on out, keep completely to ourselves,” he said. “Completely.”
And so we did. There were, of course, immediate and serious consequences to my shooting the sheriff, but they were not by us particularly unwanted. Although we were widely suspected, by both sides, to have been the hotheads who wounded Sheriff Jones, Father neither admitted nor denied the charge and said only that he himself had not fired on the man but it was a shame he hadn’t been killed. The pro-slavery newspapers went wild, and rumors of imminent war flew across the territory, exciting and frightening everyone on all sides. Missourians and other Southerners gathered together in packs along the border, as if ready to invade. Mobs in Atchison and Leavenworth captured a pair of prominent Free-State men there on business and tarred them and stuck tufts of cotton all over their bodies, tied the men to their horses, and sent them down the Santa Fe Trail, where they were found the next day a few miles north of Lawrence.