Volunteers were undergoing training.

Many of my boyhood friends were enlisting.

I was eager to join them.
But I was still the breadwinner of the family, the sole support of my sisters and my invalid mother.

Not because of this, but because of her love for me, my mother exacted from me a promise that I would not enlist for the war while she lived.
But during the summer of 1861 a purely local company, know as the Red-Legged Scouts, and commanded by Captain Bill Tuff, was organized.
This I felt I could join without breaking my promise not to enlist for the war, and join it I did.

The Red-Legged Scouts, while they cooeperated with the regular army along the borders of Missouri, had for their specific duty the protection of Kansas against raiders like Quantrell, and such bandits as the James Boys, the Younger Brothers, and other desperadoes who conducted a guerrilla warfare against Union settlers.
We had plenty to do.