nd lost at Booneville. Footsore,
but undaunted, he pushed on to join the army, which he heard was
retreating southward along the western tier of counties of the state.

On the banks of the Osage he fell in with two other young amen in as bad
a plight as himself. They travelled together, until one day some rough
farmers with shotguns leaped out of a bunch of willows on the borders of
a creek and arrested all three for Union spies. And they laughed when Mr.
Clarence tried to explain that he had not long since been the dapper
captain of the State Dragoons.

His Excellency, the Governor of Missouri (so acknowledged by all good
Southerners), likewise laughed when Mr. Colfax and the two others were
brought before him. His Excellency sat in a cabin surrounded by a camp
which had caused the dogs of war to howl for very shame.

"Colfax!" cried the Governor. "A Colfax of St. Louis in butternuts and
rawhide boots?"

"Give me a razor," demanded Clarence, with indignation, "a razor and a
suit of clothes, and I will prove it." The Governor laughed once more.

"A razor, young man! A suit of clothes You know not what you ask."

"Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?" George Catherwood was
brought in,--or rather what had once been George. Now he was a big
frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into his
trousers in place of a sword. He recognized his young captain of dragoons
the Governor apologized, and Clarence slept that night in the cabin. The
next day he was given a horse, and a bright new rifle which the
Governor's soldiers had taken from the Dutch at Cole Camp on the way
south, And presently they made a junction with three thousand more who
were their images. This was Price's army, but Price had gone ahead into
Kansas to beg the great McCulloch and his Confederates to come to their
aid and save the state.

"Dear mother, I wish that you and Jinny and Uncle Comyn could have
seen this country rabble. How you would have laughed, and cried,
because we are just like them. In the combined army two thousand
have only bowie-knives or clubs. Some have long rifles of Daniel
Boone's time, not fired for thirty years. And the impedimenta are a
sight. Open wagons and conestogas and carryalls and buggies, and
even barouches, weighted down with frying-pans and chairs and
feather beds. But we've got spirit, and we can whip Lyon's Dutchmen
and Yankees just as we are. Spirit is what cou