Here's a historical non-fiction piece I wrote. I did research and everything. Hope you enjoy the story. My great-great-great grandfather, Calvin Cloud, lived with his wife Mary Jane outside Ponce de Leon, Missouri in a house built by Calvin’s own hands. Calvin was a farmer of German descent, not a rarity in 1850’s Missouri, who raised hogs and corn. The Cloud’s lives were uncomplicated until a young guest approached their door. In the winter of 1842, a pregnant Matilda Bolden gave birth to a son in the backwoods of Stone County, Missouri. The child was known as a “wood’s colt”. Meaning one born from unwanted horse breeding in secluded fields. He had no father. When he was eleven his mother deserted him for a roving horse-trader, leaving him motherless as well. His name began as Alf Bolden, but is also recorded as Bowlin, Bolen, or Bolin. These variations are unsurprising, since Alf had no family from which to receive a name. When Alf drifted to the home of Calvin and Mary Jane Cloud, they took pity received the young man into their home and raised him as their own child. The newly adopted Alf should have thrived in this environment, yet he remained an oddity. At age seventeen he slipped away, vanishing for months, with selfish mayhem as his only mentor. Word came months later of his entanglement and apprenticeship with Sam Hilderbrand, an outlaw and bushwhacker. Thieving mercenaries who prowled the hills of Southern Missouri and northern Arkansas during the civil war were the bushwhackers, chiefly southern sympathizers. They slaughtered Northern soldiers and their Southern brethren as well at a whim or for the blood money alone. Bolin and his company were the most feared of these guerrilla mobs. The swept the hills like a plague. The victims of their raids were innocents, soldiers, wagon trains and even family. Once, Bolin and three of his men invaded the home of Billy Smith, a 70 year-old man, who lived alone in a log cabin near Pine Top, Missouri. The pack commanded Smith to prepare them a meal. Smith arranged a meager feast of pork, beans and cornbread. Following the meal, Bolin enquired as to where Smith stored his money. Newspaper accounts recall their conversation. “Now, I reckon you’d might as well tell us whar ya got yer money hid away, old codger.” Smith had no money and was scarcely able to feed himself. Bolin seized Smith by the shirt. “All ya old codgers has got a little savings hid around! I’ll make you talk.” Bolin produced a large knife. Playing the part of a butcher, he smoothly carved off one of Smith’s ears, dangling it for the old man to examine. “Now tell me whar yer money is er I’ll whack off the tothern!” The old man trembled saying, “I can’t tell where something is that I ain’t got.” Bolen’s cold fingers clamped Smith’s solitary ear, slicing as he had done before. The elder Smith fainted before the men. Bolen jerked a pistol from his coat and pummeled the old man’s lifeless head unceasingly. “He’s dead Alf,” his comrade whimpered. The men lived off Smith’s food and home for another few weeks. It wouldn’t be Alf’s last murder, for he killed over 40 men. Many times, he seemed to seek revenge for unknown trespasses. Early in his career he was shot at by a Union soldier, and from then on Alf targeted the families of Union men. Bolin’s gang also had a particular spot of ambush, now called Murder Rock, where many were robbed and killed. In the vastness of his carnage, there was one murder of particular significance. The spring of 1862 brought a hooded horde to the home of Calvin Cloud. Calvin was standing at his barn. His wife, Mary Jane, was 50 yards from that barn. Calvin informed the men that he had no money, but would provide food for the masked gang. A familiar voice echoed across the rolling Ozark hills. “We don’t want nothin’ but yer gun. Jist give it to us an we’ll ride on.” “Well, I ain’t got a gun,” said Cloud. “Yer a black liar, Calvin. Ya got a good gun, and I’m aiming ter takkit.” Calvin stared silently at the men as he finally recognized the voice. “Alf Bolin! It ain’t beholding of you to come here robbin’, after all me and Mary Jane have done for you. If you’re wanting something, you know you can have anything I’ve got. But get off that horse and take that mask off your face—and ask for it like a man!” This proved to be a useless summons, for Bolin was not a man at all. His pride defaced, Bolin tore off his mask. Perhaps memories of a fatherless childhood stabbed at him from his past, a thirst for vengeance on his true father. Are these the things that make men into animals? If Bolin had had a structured home, would he not have rotted? It seems he received such a home from the Clouds, yet he still performed his tragedy. Is it possible he was destined for this part? Grabbing the nearest rifle to himself he choked its trigger while aiming at his surrogate father. The Furies shrieked as Calvin’s chest inscribed his death letter in a red cascade. Mary Jane ran screaming to her husband while Alf discharged a bullet in her direction, missing her as she fell to the ground. Bolin and his men seeped into the woods as crows heralded the slaughter. Man-hunters roved the Ozark wilderness looking for Bolin after a reward of $5000 had been placed on his head. Months passed. Eventually a cohort of Bolin’s, Ted Nelson, was caught by a group of soldiers. One of the soldiers, Zack Thomas, and Nelson agreed to catch Bolin in return for Nelson’s release. Using Nelson’s wife and a promise of cheap goods as bait, they staged an ambush in Nelson’s home. Bolin cautiously arrived at the home and found its residents trustworthy. The accounts of his death differ some, yet in a moment of laxity during which Bolin was either drinking coffee or blowing his nose, Thomas hammered Bolin’s head with an iron poker. Believing him to be dead, the newfound undertakers got ready to depart, when Nelson’s wife screamed as his body began to rise again. Quickly, Thomas shot him with his pistol, finally concluding the horrid chronicle of Alf Bolin. Needing only the head for identification, the party lopped it off with an axe and transported it to Springfield, Missouri in a burlap sack. As his next of kin, Mary Jane Cloud was brought in to identify the trophy. His head was taken to Ozark, Missouri where it was placed on the top of a long pole for all to witness and ridicule. A photograph of Bolin post-mortem has survived. His severed head lay stately on a canvas of forest leaves and twigs, leaned gently against a log. The burlap sack that once held the Hellish cargo is sprawled out beside him. His blood-sapped face is a clownish white. His chaotic mane of thick black crowns and girds his jester’s face; his eyes look dark, like puncture wounds. Were they always as shadowy? Perchance it to be true, are any of us unwillingly fated with these eyes? | 
