Well, we are in the ballpark with Tom Hunter of Randolph County since Silver Creek is located in south-central Randolph County. I know of no other Silver Creek in the state of Missouri (although there may very well be another one or two). I don't have much on Tom Hunter except he led a band of about 20 guerrillas in that region during August and September 1863. With his band he shot at a riverboat at Rocheport, south Howard County, and also shot at a passing railroad train near Sturgeon, north Boone County, and robbed stores in Renick, Randolph County and at Sturgeon. He seemed to have a thing against mass transit. Confederate Colonel Sidney D. Jackman was busy recruiting a large number of southern men in this region at that time, and perhaps Hunter was one of his subordinate officers. Other than that, I don't have much on him, and I don't have biographical detail on him, either, and Neil Block (Hi, Neil) did not include a Tom Hunter in his list of Randolph Countians in the Civil War.

I have nothing on Tom Hunter in this region during 1864, but with the large influx of Confederate recruiters here in 1864, Hunter may have been there and I just missed him.

I'm not a Jesse and Frank James expert by any means, but Jesse was only 16 years old that year. Old records indicate he had two bullet wounds during 1864 and one during 1865. His first was when he shot the end of his own finger off in one of his first actions in his home Clay County in early June 1864. He was seriously wounded with a bullet in the lung at Wakenda Creek, southeast Carroll County 13 August 1864 while Jesse and Frank were part of Bill Anderson's band and got jumped there by a conglomeration of militia from two counties. I haven't worked on the spring 1865 wounding in a while, but I seem to recall from reading that a Minnesota infantryman guarding the Pacific Railroad in west-central Missouri shot him in the chest again and he barely recovered. The exhumation records of Jesse from his grave at Kearney, Clay County, a few years back state that the forensics guys recovered two of those Civil War bullets from his remains, which with the DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that it was Jesse in that grave. I don't know what bullets he took (if any) during his postwar outlaw adventures, but I don't believe much of that folklore stuff about him in that period, anyway. All that stuff has been mixed with folklore that little of it is reliable and I stay away from the outlaw period for that reason.

Your story about the poker game does have holes in it since Cole Younger left the bushwhacker business in late 1862, spent time that winter of 62-63 in regular Confederate service in Texas, Louisiana, or Arkansas, and later headed out to California until the war ended. This I seem to recall I found in Cole's autobiography. I don't know if any of his relatives were in Rebel service of in the guerrillas.

I don't know what you have, but except for the Youngers being at Silver Creek in 1864, there is enough coincidence and true stuff that it actually has a ring of truth to it. That I offer for what it's worth.

Bruce Nichols